Þingvellir National Park is magnificent, but of course, being my unimaginative self, I was too fixated on the fact that this was where Icelanders held their first parliament, and that they called it, literally, a Thingy, to notice the scenery. Maybe they were too gobsmacked by the scenery to think of a better name for their parliament? I think we should be told, Mike.
Yes! I learned of the Thingy/Thing last year via Katherine May. How glorious politics would become if everyone was marching around waving signs that said COME JOIN OUR THING...
Ok yes the literal translation is "thing" but I think thingy makes it clearer, eh? 😂I did the stopover that Iceandair offers between the States and London, and while Iceland was wallet-shrivelingly expensive (that's what makes the stopover pay off for Iceland), the standard one-day tourist route near Reykjavik was worth the money all by itself.
You see, the thing that REALLY bugs me is how much money goes into space science when our own planet has so much untold. More specifically, just think of all that space money going into managing this planet's health! The oceans are such a wealth of excellence and beauty and yet we'd rather expend dollars putting up rubbish into space and have it fall into our beautiful sea-scapes to defile them.
I don't care if Mars or the Moon is mapped. When I look at the stars they are simply sparkling beauty. The moon I tell my little 5 year old grandson, has a rabbit living on it. 'See it? There, if you look really hard.'
That's all that matters. That my grandson and his generation actually have an earthly world that they can cherish the way I do.
Cheers, Prue! I agree that we need to be fixing the many problems our planet is going to be dealing with (at incredible expense) in the not-too-distant future. But the space programme is actually both a bargain AND a way those problems get solved. For starters, in 2023, NASA's budget was $25.4 billion - while the US national defence budget was $857 billion. Not only that, but NASA's research has created a lot of the tech that's being used to tackle environmental issues: water filters, solar cells, insulation, satellite imagery, power tools, foil blankets, air purifiers...all massively life-improving (and sometimes life-saving) things for millions of people back here on Earth. That side of NASA's work doesn't get anywhere near enough publicity, sadly.
I totally get how space research has been getting a bit of a lame reputation with billionaires hogging the headlines and taking their mates into space. That side of things can get eye-rolly. But the scientists who are working behind the scenes...I have nothing but admiration for what they do, because they're creating the tools that can help - and are helping! - reverse the dangerous messes that blight our planet.
Do the research to save our planet, not as a by-product of space-science and 'Somewhere Out There'. I agree the scientists are brilliant and we owe them thus far. But morally I'd owe them a lot more if I thought they were doing research for love of Planet Earth and not to enable any sentient being from venturing into Outer Space.
When I grow up I want to be like Mike! Thanks for sharing! I write about travel and exploration, and this is just wonderful to read on an early Friday morning. Thanks!
Head explosion. I read and read your posts so that I can try to understand what's happening around me. And then I try to impress other people by repeating it. It never works.
Fascinating topic. I still have to visit Iceland, want to, need to. I zoomed in on that ocean view, too. Getting lights down there is one thing, getting down there at all... find all those spaceships. 😅
I read a while ago about Hydrothermal Vent Creatures in those superheated volcanoes of the deep. How little we know.
Absolutely! There is quite possibly another world's worth of things to learn about life at the bottom of our oceans (no spaceships required) if it turns out the way that hydrothermal vent life gets its energy - ie. not directly via the sun, like almost all other life on our planet - is a correct indicator of what's happening elsewhere in the universe or even our own Solar System! It's exciting to think that life may have found ways to emerge that we haven't yet discovered, in the same way as "carbon chauvinism", as Carl Sagan put it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism
It's mind-boggling! "Carbon Chauvinism" indeed, humans and their limited carbon-based theories, tsk tsk. Oh, and that mention of Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" ... another book to add to my list! Thanks for that.
Later this year we'll be getting to see one of the places where Iceland is splitting apart. Assuming I don't fall in and vanish forever, I shall report back to you.
Another fascinating thing about oceanic crust…. The oldest ocean crust is only 200 million years old, remarkably young considering the planet is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Oceanic crust recycles pretty rapidly through subduction zones so we really can’t directly observe the oceans very far into the past.
Appreciate you sharing the paper, I’ll check it out. Slab graveyards at the Core-Mantle Boundary is super interesting, and still debated. A lot of people claim that slabs get stuck at the transition zone, but there’s several ultra low velocity zones at the CMB that are compelling for partially molten subducted slabs. Really complicated physics trying to get slabs all the way down to the CMB, but it’s super interesting. The fact that we see earthquakes at crazy depths of ~650 km is good evidence that structurally sound slabs able to support brittle deformation do at least extend into the transition zone, but beyond that is still uncertain.
"Space is far from silent! It sings, buzzes and roars, but all at frequencies far too low for our ears to perceive.
How can this be, if sound waves can’t travel through a vacuum? The answer is that space is not a vacuum at all - it’s a very dilute plasma...
An eardrum the size of a galaxy with ULF sensitivity would hear a universe alive with sound, including the ringing of stars, which resonate like bells, the roar of black holes eating the matter around them and the cataclysmic detonations of supernovae."
Fantastic. Do these mid Atlantic seamounts look like volcanoes? I imagined they would look more like Hawaii than a mountain chain caused by the plates crashing together and compressing.
Þingvellir National Park is magnificent, but of course, being my unimaginative self, I was too fixated on the fact that this was where Icelanders held their first parliament, and that they called it, literally, a Thingy, to notice the scenery. Maybe they were too gobsmacked by the scenery to think of a better name for their parliament? I think we should be told, Mike.
Yes! I learned of the Thingy/Thing last year via Katherine May. How glorious politics would become if everyone was marching around waving signs that said COME JOIN OUR THING...
Ok yes the literal translation is "thing" but I think thingy makes it clearer, eh? 😂I did the stopover that Iceandair offers between the States and London, and while Iceland was wallet-shrivelingly expensive (that's what makes the stopover pay off for Iceland), the standard one-day tourist route near Reykjavik was worth the money all by itself.
You see, the thing that REALLY bugs me is how much money goes into space science when our own planet has so much untold. More specifically, just think of all that space money going into managing this planet's health! The oceans are such a wealth of excellence and beauty and yet we'd rather expend dollars putting up rubbish into space and have it fall into our beautiful sea-scapes to defile them.
I don't care if Mars or the Moon is mapped. When I look at the stars they are simply sparkling beauty. The moon I tell my little 5 year old grandson, has a rabbit living on it. 'See it? There, if you look really hard.'
That's all that matters. That my grandson and his generation actually have an earthly world that they can cherish the way I do.
Cheers, Prue! I agree that we need to be fixing the many problems our planet is going to be dealing with (at incredible expense) in the not-too-distant future. But the space programme is actually both a bargain AND a way those problems get solved. For starters, in 2023, NASA's budget was $25.4 billion - while the US national defence budget was $857 billion. Not only that, but NASA's research has created a lot of the tech that's being used to tackle environmental issues: water filters, solar cells, insulation, satellite imagery, power tools, foil blankets, air purifiers...all massively life-improving (and sometimes life-saving) things for millions of people back here on Earth. That side of NASA's work doesn't get anywhere near enough publicity, sadly.
I totally get how space research has been getting a bit of a lame reputation with billionaires hogging the headlines and taking their mates into space. That side of things can get eye-rolly. But the scientists who are working behind the scenes...I have nothing but admiration for what they do, because they're creating the tools that can help - and are helping! - reverse the dangerous messes that blight our planet.
Then re-brand the whole thing.
Do the research to save our planet, not as a by-product of space-science and 'Somewhere Out There'. I agree the scientists are brilliant and we owe them thus far. But morally I'd owe them a lot more if I thought they were doing research for love of Planet Earth and not to enable any sentient being from venturing into Outer Space.
Good lord, Mike. Have you been OR ARE YOU a science teacher ?
I WILL NOT FALL ASLEEP IN CLASS. I WILL NOT FALL ASLEEP IN CLASS ( Bart Simpson style ).....
Nobody in their right mind would let me teach in the real world, Daniel! Why do you think I live on the internet?
My reason is being SCARED RIGID of public speaking. It scares the STUFFING out of me, almost literally. I fainted once !
I just realized HOW that looked about not sleeping in class. Akwaaarrrddd.....
When I grow up I want to be like Mike! Thanks for sharing! I write about travel and exploration, and this is just wonderful to read on an early Friday morning. Thanks!
Today I learned that Motorhead got its inspiration for speaker design from the Sun.
Head explosion. I read and read your posts so that I can try to understand what's happening around me. And then I try to impress other people by repeating it. It never works.
Never works for me either, June! I write 'em, but I can't explain 'em in person, which is why I don't get invited to parties.
Fascinating topic. I still have to visit Iceland, want to, need to. I zoomed in on that ocean view, too. Getting lights down there is one thing, getting down there at all... find all those spaceships. 😅
I read a while ago about Hydrothermal Vent Creatures in those superheated volcanoes of the deep. How little we know.
Absolutely! There is quite possibly another world's worth of things to learn about life at the bottom of our oceans (no spaceships required) if it turns out the way that hydrothermal vent life gets its energy - ie. not directly via the sun, like almost all other life on our planet - is a correct indicator of what's happening elsewhere in the universe or even our own Solar System! It's exciting to think that life may have found ways to emerge that we haven't yet discovered, in the same way as "carbon chauvinism", as Carl Sagan put it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism
It's mind-boggling! "Carbon Chauvinism" indeed, humans and their limited carbon-based theories, tsk tsk. Oh, and that mention of Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" ... another book to add to my list! Thanks for that.
Later this year we'll be getting to see one of the places where Iceland is splitting apart. Assuming I don't fall in and vanish forever, I shall report back to you.
Please report back either way, either electronically or siesmically. Thank you in advance.
Another fascinating thing about oceanic crust…. The oldest ocean crust is only 200 million years old, remarkably young considering the planet is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Oceanic crust recycles pretty rapidly through subduction zones so we really can’t directly observe the oceans very far into the past.
Thanks, Jacob! Yes, and the fact it sinks so deep is fascinating too - I saw various articles recently about the research currently going into modelling a "graveyard" of crust slabs laying at the bottle of the Earth's mantle, eg. https://news.mit.edu/2017/ancient-earth-hot-interior-graveyard-continental-slabs-0822
Appreciate you sharing the paper, I’ll check it out. Slab graveyards at the Core-Mantle Boundary is super interesting, and still debated. A lot of people claim that slabs get stuck at the transition zone, but there’s several ultra low velocity zones at the CMB that are compelling for partially molten subducted slabs. Really complicated physics trying to get slabs all the way down to the CMB, but it’s super interesting. The fact that we see earthquakes at crazy depths of ~650 km is good evidence that structurally sound slabs able to support brittle deformation do at least extend into the transition zone, but beyond that is still uncertain.
Marie Tharp sounds like such a badass!
"Space is far from silent! It sings, buzzes and roars, but all at frequencies far too low for our ears to perceive.
How can this be, if sound waves can’t travel through a vacuum? The answer is that space is not a vacuum at all - it’s a very dilute plasma...
An eardrum the size of a galaxy with ULF sensitivity would hear a universe alive with sound, including the ringing of stars, which resonate like bells, the roar of black holes eating the matter around them and the cataclysmic detonations of supernovae."
That's FASCINATING!
Fantastic. Do these mid Atlantic seamounts look like volcanoes? I imagined they would look more like Hawaii than a mountain chain caused by the plates crashing together and compressing.