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Finding that the largest known Kuiper Belt object is a virtual twin to Pluto may only further complicate the debate about whether to categorize the large icy worlds that populate the belt as planets. If Pluto were considered to be the minimum size for a planet, then Xena would fulfill this criterion, too.
The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.
Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.
The first observations suggesting the circulation was slowing down emerged in 2005, in research from the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
Using an array of detectors across the Atlantic and comparing its readings against historical records, scientists suggested the volume of cold water returning southwards could have fallen by as much as 30% in half a century - a significant decline.
Driven by Hollywood, a popular image of a Gulf Stream slowdown shows a sudden catastrophic event driving snowstorms across the temperate lands of western Europe and eastern North America.
That has always been fantasy - as, said Josh Willis, is the idea that a slow-down would trigger another ice age.
The term "thermohaline circulation" is widely used in the context of past and future climate change. In his Perspective, Wunsch argues that there are many different, and inconsistent, definitions for this term. He defines ocean circulation in terms of mass fluxes, which are largely driven by surface forces such as wind and tides, and argues that thermohaline circulation should only refer to the separate transport of heat and salinity in the ocean.
Surface ocean currents are generally wind driven and develop their typical clockwise spirals in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise rotation in the southern hemisphere because of the imposed wind stresses. In wind driven currents, the Ekman spiral effect results in the currents flowing at an angle to the driving winds. The areas of surface ocean currents move somewhat with the seasons; this is most notable in equatorial currents.
As sea water freezes, salt is forced out of the ice in a process called "brine exclusion". Sea ice is, surprisingly, essentially fresh water!
The vague new age notion
Generally as real as fairy dust.
Why so complicated?
People can understand anything.
Certain Islanders easily understood that a God had flown over in a silver bird and dropped an empty pepsi bottle as a gift.
The height of wisdom in some parts.
Sure you have a soul? Or is that faith.
Is there any new messages? Or a diffrent standing or matter to digest?
Also, time... Id say it exists. Its oursystem of measurement to help determin past events and future events.
“Why so complicated? People can understand anything.”
It breaks down our day so that we can get organize'd. We can create a time table so the day is manageable.
Plus its better than saying "Ill be home when the shadow of the stick is 108degrees past North"
But I suppose ill hear the 'time is irrelevant' counter arguement though..
So you keep posting Moore's false information. Any comment other than spamming the thread?
Other theories which are not dependent upon polar ice masses include those involving:
* a high-velocity asteroid or comet which hits Earth at such an angle that the lithosphere moves independent of the mantle
* a high-velocity asteroid or comet which hits Earth at such an angle that the entire planet shifts axis.
* an unusually magnetic celestial object which passes close enough to Earth to temporarily reorient the magnetic field, which then “drags” the lithosphere about a new axis of rotation. Eventually, the sun's magnetic field again determines the Earth's, after the intruding celestial object “returns” to a location from which it cannot influence Earth.
* perturbations of the topography of the core-mantle boundary, perhaps induced by differential core rotation and shift of its axial rotation vector, leading to CMB mass redistributions. See, e.g., Bowin.[5]
* mass redistributions in the mantle from mantle avalanches or other deformations. See, e.g., Ladbury,[6] and Steinberger and O'Connell.[7]
....
Recent work by scientists and geologists Adam Maloof of Princeton University and Galen Halverson of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, indicates that Earth indeed rebalanced itself around 800 million years ago during the Precambrian time period.[10] They tested this idea by studying magnetic minerals in sedimentary rocks in a Norwegian archipelago. Using these minerals, Maloof and Halverson found that the north pole shifted more than 50 degrees — about the current distance between Alaska and the equator — in less than 20 million years. This reasoning is supported by a record of changes in sea level and ocean chemistry in the Norwegian sediments that could be explained by true polar wander, the team reports in the September–October 2006 issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.[11]
Research using GPS, conducted by Geoffrey Blewitt of the University of Nevada, has shown that normal seasonal changes in the distribution of ice and water cause minor movements of the poles.
By comparing the pattern of the depressions with fractures that would result from stresses caused by a shift in Europa's rotational axis, the researchers determined that the axis had shifted by approximately 80°. The previous axis of rotation is now located about 10° from the present equator.
Such a change is called "true polar wander" as opposed to apparent polar wander caused by plate tectonics. There is evidence for true polar wander on Earth, and also on Mars and on Saturn's moon Enceladus. "Our study adds Europa to this list," says Matsuyama. "It suggests that planetary bodies might be more prone to reorientation than we thought."
en.wikipedia.org...
True polar wander is a phenomenon in which a planet or moon undergoes a solid-body rotation with respect to its spin axis. As this occurs, the geographic locations of the North and South Poles change, or "wander". This can happen when the two larger moments of inertia are near equal....
Claimed examples
Cases of true polar wander have occurred several times in the course of the Earth's history.[1] The speed of rotation (around the axis of lowest inertia) is limited to about 1° per million years. Mars, Europa, and Enceladus are also believed to have undergone true pole wander, in the case of Europa by 80°, flipping over almost completely.[2] The crust of Titan has also shifted, though pole wander has not been detected.
With that defined better, a look at this:
bulletin.geoscienceworld.org...
We present new paleomagnetic data from three Middle Neoproterozoic carbonate units of East Svalbard, Norway. The paleomagnetic record is gleaned from 50 to 650 m of continuous, platformal carbonate sediment, is reproduced at three locations distributed over >100 km on a single craton, and scores a 5–6 (out of 7) on the Van der Voo (1990) reliability scale. Two >50° shifts in paleomagnetic direction are coincident with equally abrupt shifts in [delta]13C and transient changes in relative sea level. We explore four possible explanations for these coincidental changes: rapid plate tectonic rotation during depositional hiatus, magnetic excursions, nongeocentric axial-dipole fields, and true polar wander. We conclude that the observations are explained most readily by rapid shifts in paleogeography associated with a pair of true polar wander events. Future work in sediments of equivalent age from other basins can test directly the true polar wander hypothesis because this type of event would affect every continent in a predictable manner, depending on the continent's changing position relative to Earth's spin axis.
[edit on 16-4-2010 by Unity_99]
Among the scientific community, the evidence shows that no rapid shifts in the Earth's pole have occurred during the last 200 million years.[2] True polar wander is known to occur, but only at rates of 1° per million years or less.[3] The last rapid shift in the poles may have occurred 800 million years ago,[4] when the supercontinent Rodinia still existed. This hypothesis is almost always discussed in the context of Earth, but other bodies in the Solar System may have experienced axial reorientation during their existences.
The variation in density and crustal thickness causes gravity to vary on the surface, so that the mean sea level will differ from the ellipsoid. This difference is the geoid height, positive above or outside the ellipsoid, negative below or inside. The geoid height variation is under 110 m on Earth. The geoid height can have abrupt changes due to earthquakes (such as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake) or reduction in ice masses (such as Greenland).[7]
Not all deformations originate within the earth. Gravity of the Moon and Sun cause Earth's surface to undulate by tenths of meters at a point over a nearly 12 hour period (see Earth tide).