The accidental scientist

  Kawah Ijen Volcano Where the expression “ red-hot ” comes from? To work a piece of steel, a blacksmith puts it in burning charcoals (more red) and activates the blower until the iron becomes red hot. So red is hot, OK? End of story. Well, maybe not. In the good old days, we had tungsten filaments globes and power brownouts. When this happened, the lights looked reddish brown because of low power. When the good 240V came back, surely the lights looked white again. Besides the blue flame of any gas cooker, I thought of two examples of very hot blue things. The first one is a weird volcano in Indonesia called Kawah Ijen. In most volcanoes the lava that comes out is red-orange melted rock, or magma. This is pretty hot stuff, 700 to 1,250 degrees C. But Kawah Ijen beats that. Its lava spits out blue flames of burning sulphur, at about 6,000 degrees C. Most unusual. The second one is a star. If you look at the Western horizon after sunset at the moment, you can ’ t miss the Orion co

 Macquarie Island, year 2000. I am in the science lab doing routine stuff. Suddenly I hear a frantic scratching sound coming from the back room. About half a second later the ground shifts a little bit under my feet and I hear this powerful rumbling sound that seems to come from the centre of the Earth. A minor earthquake. The scratching sound came from the pens of my trusted old seismograph that went crazy about the thing a little bit before I could feel it with my body and my ears. The cause of earthquakes is the friction of tectonic plates. When two plates rub together, they do not glide smoothly. Sometimes they get a little bit stuck and energy builds up. When the motion suddenly resumes the energy is released, creating shock waves in all directions. These shockwaves travel from the quake epicentre all around the Earth and can be picked up by seismographs. A seismograph consists of three sensors: X, Y and Z. X and Y detect horizontal ground motion (East-West and North-South) an

  Some of the fossils found on more than one continent In 1912, Alfred Wegener noticed that the shape of South America somewhat matched that of Africa. He thought that these two continents were once joined and were drifting apart. Then, he came out with the concept that all continents were part of a a single one, Pangaea. He backed his idea with the fact that similar animal and plant fossils exist on various continents now separated by vast oceans. In the 1950 ’ s to 70 ’ s, a more general theory called Plate Tectonics was developed. Yes, it took all that time for scientists to realise that the Earth being finite, if continents are drifting apart on one side, they are bound to bump into each other somewhere on the other side, aren ’ t they? This is how mountain ranges appear: for example, the Himalayas are the result of the Indian plate moving into the Asian plate (not shown on the picture). Are we sure the continents are moving? Yes. When I took up my job as geophysics engineer

In the Amazon, a huge mass of water hovers above the canopy in the form of mist and clouds. It has been calculated that an adult tree evaporates up to 1000 litres a day. The whole forest thus releases over 20 billion tons a day, which is more than the Amazon river flow (about 18 billion tons a day). How does it all work? Under the heat the trees perspire, just like us. This is called evapotranspiration. While raising into the air, the steam cools off and condenses into mist and clouds. The wind moves these clouds around and brings some welcome rain to the Amazon basin itself and to other parts of the continent. In addition, the evapotranspiration cools off the air. This induces a pressure drop which attracts air from above the closest ocean, causing more rain. This recharges the trees, and the cycle can start again. This cycle is vital for the whole South American continent, which could turn into a desert without it. Is this relevant in Australia? Yes. I found the comment below in an a