Other Blogs And Books

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

My main blog, where the most recent postings on all topics are to be found, is http://www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/

If you liked this blog on meteorology and biology, you will also like my blog about geology and global natural history for topics other than glaciers, http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ and my natural history blog concerning glaciers, http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/ is my autobiography

http://www.markmeektravel.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of North America. http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek"

METEOROLOGY

The first section of this blog is about meteorology, with some articles about oceanography.

Sunset Measurements

One thing that we could be getting a lot more out of is sunsets and sunrises. This is particularly true for amateur meteorologists.

One day, just as a mental exercise, I tried to think of a way to calculate the height of a cloud in the sky. First, I considered measuring the cloud's shadow and then measuring it's angular diameter in the sky. But this method would surely be very cumbersome and prone to error.

Then, I thought of a better way. Wait until sunset and position yourself so that you have an unobstructed view of the western horizon. As soon as you see the sun dip below the horizon, start a timer. Then look up at the cloud. Since it is high up, the sun will still be shining on it when the sun is no longer visible to you on the ground. Stop the timer when you see the cloud start to turn orange, since this means that the sun has dipped below the horizon from the cloud's point of view and it is only lit by orange refracted light from the sun.

Now, we know how fast the earth is rotating. Since we know that your location rotates 360 degrees in 24 hours, we can easily tell how many degrees the earth rotated while you were waiting for the sun to fade from the cloud. All we have to do is divide 24 hours by the time measurement you took. Then divide 360 degrees by that. The earth rotates an angular degree every four minutes.

After you use your measurement of the time it took for the cloud to begin the orange phase after the sun dipped below the horizon, find the angle that the earth rotated during this time, which is one degree for every four minutes.

Find the cosine of that angle, you should get a number just below 1.

Now find the reciprocal of that cosine so that you get a number just above 1.

Now subtract 1 from your answer so that you get a very small number we will call x.

Next, multiply the radius of the earth (4,000 miles) by the cosine of your latitude.

Now, multiply that number by x.

The result will be the altitude of the cloud in whatever unit you expressed the radius of the earth.

You can also use the sunset to measure the angle at which the earth's atmosphere refracts light relative to empty space. You can see the refraction of light by putting an object at the bottom of a bowl of water. When you reach in for the object, you can see that it is not quite where it appears to be because water refracts light at an angle relative to air. It is easy to see that the atmosphere refracts light and that it refracts blue light more than red by watching the reddish tinge to the earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse.

To measure the atmosphere's angle of refraction, watch the cloud and begin measuring when the eastward point on it enters the orange phase. This means that it is lit by the sun's refracted, rather than direct light. The light is orange because the atmosphere refracts blue light more than the light at the red-orange end of the spectrum and the sun's bluish light is refracted away into space and the orange-red remains. If you look at images of earth from space, you can sometimes see a bluish tinge along the line where night meets day.

Stop the timer when the cloud begins to turn purplish. This means that it is lit only by the sun's scattered light and not by either it's direct or refracted light. You do not need an unobstructed view of the western horizon to measure how much the atmosphere is refracting light.

Divide 24 hours by the time that the cloud is in the orange phase.

Then divide 360 degrees by that.

The result will be the angle at which the earth's atmosphere is refracting light. As with the cloud altitude, it will be one degree for each four minutes.

I wonder if the angle of refraction varies under different circumstances, such as how much pollutants or dust are in the air. I would think that clean air would have a lower angle of refraction because such particles will reflect light.

As another mental exercise one day, I tried to think of a way to find my position if I found myself somewhere on the earth's surface with a map of the earth but no idea where I was.

Many types of cloud, such as those fluffy cumulus clouds, usually form around the same altitude, about 4,000 feet, anywhere in the world. We can find our approximate latitude on the earth's surface by using the cloud altitude measurement in reverse. A sighting on the altitude of the north star above the horizon can also tell you your latitude but this cloud method can be used when the northern horizon is obstructed.

The earth rotates in 24 hours. But since it's circumference is greatest at the equator, a point on the equator is travelling faster than elsewhere. This means that a cloud of given altitude will exit the sun's light following sunset faster near the equator than nearer the poles. Measure how long it takes a cumulus cloud to enter the orange phase after the sun dips below the western horizon from your perspective. Divide 24 hours by that reading and then divide 360 degrees by that.

You will get the angle that the earth rotated before the orange phase began. It will be one degree for every four minutes.

Find the cosine of that angle.

Then find the reciprocal of the cosine.

Then subtract 1.

Divide the height of the cloud by that small number.

Then divide that answer by the radius of the earth. The result will be the cosine of your latitude.

When measuring a cloud's altitude, do not try for great accuracy. First of all, a cloud is a somewhat nebulous object. Second, the ground is rarely perfectly level. The same type of cloud may not all be at near the same level.

If you cannot easily get an unobstructed view of the western horizon, most ideally over a body of water, you can look at the sun's reflected light on a high object. I live near a tall brick smokestack which I used for this purpose.

You should watch a few sunsets and the resulting light changes on clouds to familiarize yourself before trying these measurements. Familiarize yourself with the types of cloud and their usual altitudes and make sure your answer makes sense. Cumulus clouds average right around 4,000 feet while high wispy cirrus clouds are maybe five miles in altitude. Clouds with an alto- prefix such as altocumulus and altostratus are in between. If the sky is overcast or you have those low layer stratus clouds, obviously this method will not work.

Sunset measurements or sunset geometry is not an entirely new idea. But few people of heard of it and I believe that we could be getting much more out of it. Obviously these techniques can also be used at sunrise in reverse, you would look for signs of direct sunlight on a cloud above and then time how long from then it took for the sun to become visible above the horizon.

The Removal Of Salt From The Sea

A topic that I do not recall ever reading anything about is the long-term implications of removal of salt from the sea by tectonic processes over very long periods of time.

In the posting on the meteorology blog, "Is The earth Losing Water?", I explained my idea that if coral forms in water, then the coral atolls that abound in the Pacific and Indian Oceans should not break the surface of the water. Since they do, that must mean that the earth is gradually losing water by evaporation into space. There must be water that was once in the oceans, but is not any more.

I would like to introduce a kind of parallel theory as to what happened to the water that must have been taken from the oceans so that coral atolls break the surface of the water. The scenario of evaporated water being gradually lost into space may still be the reason, or at least part of the reason, for the lowered sea level. But there is another possible reason involving the salt in the oceans.

All of the salt on earth was originally in the oceans. I explained this in "The Mystery Of Salt" on http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ . Today, a vast amount of salt is found on land. This can only mean that salt is being removed from the sea by tectonic processes over very long periods of time.

Common rocks like limestone and sandstone are actually formed at the bottom of the sea, before being forced upward by tectonic activity. Any layered or sedimentary rock that you can see must have been formed in this way.

But when such tectonic uplifting of wide areas of land takes place, a lot of water may be separated from the oceans to form an inland sea. Unless there is enough water entering such a new inland sea by rivers and streams, the water will eventually evaporate and rejoin the oceans. But when it does, it will leave it's salt behind. We could say that this is a natural form of distillation, and is the reason that salt is found on land.

What usually happens is that the inland sea, shrinking by gradual net evaporation, has it's salt content increasingly concentrated by this shrinkage. This is why the Dead Sea in Israel has such an incredibly high salinity, it is what is left of a sea that was cut off by tectonic activity. When the inland sea finally evaporates altogether it thus leaves behind a concentration of salt, which is why there are salt mines.

In the posting "The Vital Role of Salt", on the meteorology and biology blog, we saw that the salt in the seas must have an effect on weather and climate. My reasoning is that the addition of salt increases the boiling point of water. Boiling means that vapor (vapour) is evaporating from the entire volume of the water, rather than just from the surface of the water as when water is below the boiling point. So, if salt in water raises the boiling point, and if boiling is evaporation, salt must also hinder evaporation in water below the boiling point. Salt therefore increases the heat capacity of water, and this must have an effect on weather and climate.

Now, if salt is being removed from the oceans over long periods of time by tectonic processes, this means that the seas must have had a higher concentration of salt in the distant past. That must have had a biological effect, on life in the seas, but it also must mean that 1) the water of the oceans had a higher capacity to hold heat than they do now and 2) less water would evaporate into the atmosphere than does today.

This would mean that there would have been less weather and fewer clouds, meaning that there would be less rainfall so that there would be less of the earth's water on land. It would then mean that there would be a higher level of water left in the oceans, and this could explain why coral atolls today break the surface of the water.

Two more implications of the higher salt concentration in the oceans of the far-away past is that those oceans would be warmer, since salt increases the boiling point and thus the heat capacity of water. Also, less rainfall would mean less oxygen in the water to sustain aquatic life, since the splashing of rain falling on water dissolves oxygen in the water.

Another reason that this would have made the earth somewhat warmer in those days is that the evaporation of water absorbs heat, and produces a cooling effect. This is why you have sweat glands. With evaporation hindered by a higher salt concentration in the seas, the earth would be warmer. The removal of salt from the seas could be yet another factor in cooling the earth enough to bring about the ice ages. A few degrees of cooling would bring about a cooling spiral by increasing the area covered by the ice caps, which reflect away solar radiation.

Clouds would seem to be a vital factor in determining the temperature on earth. However, clouds work both ways. The earth absorbs solar radiation by day, but then re-radiates it back to space by night. Clouds tend to block both solar radiation and re-radiation.

Cloud cover during the day produces a cooling effect by reflecting solar radiation back to space, but cloud cover at night has a warming effect by acting as a blanket and preventing re-radiation by the earth back to space. Since cloud cover tends to average out as about equal during day and night, the two cancel each other so that clouds have little overall effect on the earth's temperature.

If The Sun Was Blue

The sun is a star that radiates light most strongly in the yellow-orange-red range. What would it be like if the sun were a hot blue star? There are many such stars that radiate more in the blue range and are considerably hotter than the sun.

The environment on earth very much depends on what type of star the sun is. My hypothesis is that, if the sun were a blue star, the earth would actually be colder than it is even though blue stars are typically hotter than the sun.

The reason for this is the way that the water in the earth's oceans handle light. Water absorbs light, but it absorbs the longer-wavelength red end of the spectrum first, and the shorter-wavelength blue last. The reason that deep water appears blue is that it is only blue light that can pass through enough distance in water to be refracted back to the surface. You may have noticed that, in photographs taken underwater, there is no red to be seen in depths below about 9 meters (30 feet), or so.

The earth's surface is about 72% water, making this a very important factor. The earth is as warm as it is because the water absorbs the sun's yellow-orange-red light before it can be refracted back to the surface. But if much more blue light was coming from the sun instead, much of this would be refracted back to space. The oceans would be a truly brilliant blue, seen both from earth and from space, but the earth would actually be colder.

With colder oceans, there would be less evaporation of water into the atmosphere. This means that there would be less weather, less rainfall, and more area of desert. The reason for the desert in southern Africa, for example, is that the ocean current offshore is cold so that there is less evaporation and thus less rainfall.

With less heating of the water near the equator, there would not be the ocean currents that we have now and which redistribute heat to higher latitudes. This would enlarge the polar ice caps and get a cooling spiral underway since ice and snow reflects much more solar radiation back to space, thus cooling the earth still further.

Land would get hot quickly during the day, but temperatures would plunge at night as in any desert. All in all, we are better off with the sun as it is no matter how brilliantly blue the water would be with a blue sun.

Low Clouds Made Really Simple

To begin, let's define what we mean by low clouds. There are three basic types of cloud: stratus, cumulus and, cirrus. The cirrus clouds are those high, wispy strands that are usually seen as aligned parallel to one another along the wind direction at that altitude. It gets colder as altitude increases and cirrus clouds are so high, in the upper troposphere, that they are composed of ice crystals rather than water droplets.

It is the other two types that we are concerned with here, the stratus and cumulus. These are composed of water droplets that have condensed on particles of dust in the atmosphere. These are the low clouds because they are found at altitudes much lower than cirrus clouds. Cumulus are those fluffy clouds that are seen especially in the summer and can reach great heights. Stratus is a dull sheet of cloud that covers much, or all, of the sky.

(By the way if you have ever wondered why we can have water-based clouds in winter, the posting "Water Made Really Simple", on the meteorology and biology blog, gives my explanation of it).

Most books about weather and the atmosphere explain the difference between the formation of stratus and cumulus cloud as being the motion of air. If there is a strong vertical motion to the air, often caused by the heating of the ground in the morning, we get cumulus clouds at interval with spaces in between them. The updrafts are what forms these clouds, and the returning downdrafts take place in the spaces between the clouds.

The layers in hail stones form in towering cumulo-nimbus storm clouds when water gets pulled into a powerful updraft, is carried high enough in the atmosphere to freeze, falls back down before being caught in another updraft and repeating the circuit. This forms another layer and continues until the hailstone is heavy enough to fall to the ground.

If such a vertical motion to the air is lacking, we get a simple layer of continuous cloud that is known as stratus. The word "stratus" means layer.

But there is a profound difference between stratus and cumulus cloud beyond the vertical or horizontal alignment of the cloud. This difference lies in the altitude of the base of the cloud.

A layer of stratus cloud can be found at any altitude from the ground up the the level of cirrus cloud, which might be 8 km (about 5 miles) above the ground. Stratus cloud at ground level is known as fog.

Cumulus cloud, in sharp contrast, always seems to have it's base right around 4,000 feet (about 1200 meters) or so. In fact, this is such a strict rule that larger cumulus clouds usually have a bottom that appears as flat as a floor or ceiling. How many times have you seen cumulus clouds across the sky with their bases appearing as neatly parallel straight lines?

I got to wondering what makes stratus and cumulus clouds so different in form.

As we gain in altitude, there are two primary factors that change. There is a drop both in temperature and in atmospheric pressure, a drop in either decreases the ability of the air to hold water vapor (vapour). The change in pressure is much more precise than the change in temperature. The change in temperature as altitude increases can be affected by any number of other factors, from wind to the terrain or water below.

But the change in pressure tends to be so constant and precise that it can be used to measure the altitude. The altimeters used on smaller aircraft are basically barometers calibrated at ground level and adapted to measure the altitude. Regardless of whether we are near a high or a low pressure area, in terms of the weather, pressure still tends to decrease at a virtually constant rate with increasing altitude.

It became clear to me that, instead of defining stratus cloud as a result of horizontal air motion and cumulus as vertical, it would be more accurate to state that stratus cloud is based on temperature while cumulus cloud is based on pressure.

Stratus cloud forms when water evaporates, moves upward in altitude, and then condenses when it reaches an altitude that cannot hold as much water vapour (vapor). This can take place at a very wide range of altitudes, starting at ground level.

But cumulus cloud is based on change in pressure, not on temperature. An updraft of warm air carries it's heat with it, so temperature ceases to be as much of a factor. A column of air, rising upward from the ground, reaches a height with lower pressure. This causes the section of air to expand, so that it cannot hold as much vapor (vapour). The water condenses into a cumulus cloud.

This is why the bases of larger cumulus clouds can form such nearly-perfect straight lines. It is because the change in pressure with altitude is so much more precise than the change in temperature.

Water Made Really Simple

THE MOLECULE STRING MODEL OF WATER

My concept of water is based on the formation of "strings" of water molecules, held together by hydrogen bonding. This has absolutely nothing to do with my version of string theory on my cosmology blog.

A water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms joined to an oxygen atom, hence the familiar chemical formula H20. But since oxygen atoms are so much bigger than hydrogen atoms, this means that the two sides of a water molecule are not identical. In fact, one side of the molecule is more negatively-charged and the other side more positively-charged. In other words, a water molecule is polar.

Water is actually lighter than air by molecule and this is why it evaporates. But this polarity causes water molecules to join together, negative side to positive. The result is that water is 800 times as heavy as air at sea level.

This lining up of water molecules by hydrogen bonding is also the cause of water's transparency to light. With the molecules lined up by the opposite electric charges, light can pass between the molecules.

These strings or rows of water molecules must run in all directions. We can be sure of this because if the strings were aligned by direction, water would flow more easily in one direction and it doesn't. Another factor is that water should apparently be a good electrical conductor, but it isn't unless it contains certain impurities. This is again the result of the strings of molecules being aligned in all directions.

The flowing of water results from strings sliding over one another. Molecules of other substances can easily be trapped between the strings of water molecules and this is why water is such a good solvent.

Water has such a tremendous heat capacity because these strings are like springs that can absorb energy by bending and twisting. But eventually, heat will snap the strings. In my model, water molecules can evaporate into the air only from the ends of strings. When a string is broken in two by heat energy, this leaves twice as many molecules which could evaporate.

Molecules, bound in strings by hydrogen bonding, freely slide over one another. But if we lower the temperature enough, we slow the strings down enough so that hydrogen cross-bonding between positive and negative sides of molecules in adjacent strings takes place. This effectively locks the strings of water molecules in place so that they cannot slide around any more. The water becomes a solid and we have what is known as ice.

Since water is actually lighter than air by molecule, a water molecule will evaporate into the air when it breaks free of it's string. Ice will form when the strings begin moving slowly enough, due to colder temperatures, for cross-links to form between strings by hydrogen bonding. This locks the string in place in a much tighter way than when the water was liquid.

There is another model of water in some science books in which the water molecules are moving around, but are moving at different speeds. When a molecule is moving fast enough, it can escape the body of water altogether in the form of evaporation. When this happens, the average speed of the molecules decreases. This is why cooling takes place when there is evaporation.

But if the molecules of the water were loose enough, relative to one another, to move at different speeds, why wouldn't they all evaporate since the bonds between them would then be too loose to hold them together?

In my string model of water, the cooling effect of evaporation is caused by the fact that energy is required to break the bonds between the molecules in the strings so that a molecule from the end of a string can evaporate. Notice that when more heat is applied to water that is already boiling, it does not raise the temperature of the water.

But it does cause the boiling water to turn to steam at a faster rate. This is because the additional heat, in my model, goes to break the hydrogen bonds between molecules in the strings. Steam provides such heat because when it condenses, it releases the heat that it took to form it in the first place.

On this blog, there is a posting called " The Collision Imbalance And The Evaporation-Dissolution Balance". This portrays water as a "matrix" of molecules. But this is just the model which I used for that posting, which was a posting about the atmosphere, and not mainly about water. But if water is a matrix, rather than a collection of strings, how do we explain the structural difference between liquid water and ice?

This string model can easily explain the three states of matter in terms of dimensions. A water molecule with zero hydrogen bonds to other water molecules will be a gas. If there are bonds in one dimension, we will have a liquid and if the bonds are in two or three dimensions, ice will result.

I would also like to introduce the idea that the radiation received by the water must be a factor in evaporation. Heat is a cause of evaporation, because it tends to break strings of water molecules thus exposing more to potential evaporation, but it cannot be the only factor. In the posting "The Air Pressure Vector" on the meteorology blog, I explained why the wind must be able to "push" water molecules directly into the air without going through the usual process of evaporation.

The reason that heat cannot be the only factor in evaporation of water is simply that if it was, there would be much more evaporation, and thus weather and precipitation, in summer than in winter. Yet, this is not the case and the addition of wind to heat still does not entirely explain why there is just about as much weather in winter as in summer.

The logical conclusion is that the effect of radiation on water is to promote further evaporation. Strings of water act as tiny antennae to receive the radiation from the sun. When they do, the strings move more quickly with the heat energy and are more likely to break or to throw off their end molecules. The length of the strings is limited by the "whip factor", the longer the string the faster the end molecules will move.

CLOUD DROPLETS, TEMPERATURE AND, WATER

Here is something that you probably have never given much thought to. You know that water freezes at the freezing point. You also know that most clouds are composed of tiny water droplets condensed on specks of dust, salt or, smoke.

So why, then are there clouds in winter? (Those high, wispy cirrus clouds are actually composed of ice crystals, but I am referring to the lower cumulus and stratus clouds here.)

The answer is a phenomenon known to meteorologists and atmospheric scientists as "supercooling". In the supercooling process a tiny droplet of water, such as those of which clouds are composed, can remain liquid even well below the freezing point. A larger drop of water, such as a raindrop, cannot be supercooled and will freeze at the usual freezing point.

But how can this possibly be? Logic would seem to tell us that the smaller volumes of water should be the first to freeze because they have more surface area per volume and less capacity to hold onto heat.

As it turns out, this string model of water provides a simple explanation for supercooling. A level and horizontal water surface provides the greatest possibility for the cross-linking of strings which forms ice. But the smaller a droplet of water is, the greater will be the curvature of it's surface and thus the strings of water molecules of which the droplet is composed. This curvature hinders the cross-linking which forms ice and this is why the tiny droplets of water of which clouds are composed do not freeze at the usual freezing point of water.

What about the cirrus clouds higher up? These are the high wispy clouds that might be found at altitudes of 7-8 km (5 miles or so). Cirrus clouds usually align in parallel with the winds at that altitude and are always composed of ice crystals, rather than water droplets, even on hot summer days. All of these clouds form from the same evaporated water, so why is this the case?

I noticed that this is very neatly explained by that model of water as being composed of strings of molecules. The high winds in the thin air at the altitude of cirrus clouds generally does not move the clouds along, as takes place in the much denser air at the level of the lower clouds. Instead, these winds in the thin air distend the shape of the spherical water droplets into a more elongated form by the continuous collision of air molecules with the droplets. This makes it easier for the strings of water molecules in the droplets to form the cross-links that bring about freezing so that cirrus clouds consist of ice crystals aligned along the high winds.

Instead of being spherical in shape, the ice crystals of which cirrus clouds form are hexagonal in shape, a six-sided figure. This is why cirrus clouds sometimes display the rainbow-like optical illusion known as a sun dog. The hexagonal ice crystals composing the cloud acts like prisms and refract the sunlight passing through them. Droplets naturally form spheres, because that is the shape with the least surface area per volume and thus the lowest energy state, but cannot freeze until the impacts of high-speed air molecules reshapes them into hexagons.

But this also proves that my model of the structure of water must be correct. The droplets in clouds cannot freeze as spheres, but only as polygons because the strings of water molecules cannot effectively cross-link as spheres.

Wasn't that simple? Is there another way to explain why low clouds are always composed of water droplets and cirrus clouds of ice crystals, regardless of the season? I was going to put that posting on the physics blog but so much of meteorology depends on the nature of water that I decided to put it there.

SIMPLE HARMONIC MOTION AND WATER

Let's look at more evidence that this string model of water molecules must be correct. As we know, one side of a water molecule is more negatively-charged and the other side more positively-charged. In other words, the molecule is polar. This opposite charge causes water molecules to line up negative to positive in what is known as hydrogen bonding.

This concept of water molecules lining up in strings explains so much about the behavior (behaviour) of water. Once again, it has absolutely nothing to do with string theory on my cosmology blog.

Consider simple harmonic motion, such as that of a pendulum. If we start the pendulum swinging, it swings back to the vertical position but momentum takes it further so that the process repeats itself until too much energy is lost to friction and air resistance.

On one recent morning, I had a bowl of water on the sink beneath a window which faced east. The blinds on the window were closed, but there was enough room for a ray of sunlight to shine on the water in the bowl so that it reflected onto the wall opposite the window.

I could see even the faintest disturbance in the water reflected on the wall in the darkened room. I began wondering about my theory of water and I dropped a coin into the bowl. There was a great disturbance reflected in the pattern on the wall, but the water returned to it's original stillness within a few seconds.

There is a ball hung from the ceiling in the basement, which was used for athletic training. If I took the ball and started it swinging like a pendulum, it was a full fifteen minutes before all motion ceased and the ball remained in a vertical position.

Why was it that the suspended ball remained in motion for fifteen minutes, but the disturbance in the water lasted only a very few seconds? Both are examples of simple harmonic motion.

What is it about the nature of water which so quickly stifles such motion?

The sides of the bowl would exert friction on moving water, but this friction would not be very much since liquid friction is much less than solid friction. It cannot be that the kinetic energy of objects dropped into water is transformed primarily into heat. If this were the case, water could be effectively heated by dropping things into it, and it can't. Water would also be warmer after rain had fallen into it, and it isn't.

I concluded that, unless there was another factor involved, water in a confined space should display simple harmonic motion for an extended period of time. The water itself must be absorbing the kinetic energy of objects falling into it, but cannot be simply scattering the energy as heat.

Now, let's consider the model that I have been writing about in which the polar water molecules line up negative end to positive end so that they form strings of molecules of various lengths, depending on the temperature. The kinetic energy of objects falling into the water could be readily absorbed by causing bends in the strings. This accounts for the fact that water only maintains simple harmonic motion for a very brief time.

The strings of molecules of which the water consists are already bent and twisted so the new movement causes no discernable changes in the water. These strings are aligned in all directions so that water does not flow more easily in one direction than another.

If the primary structural unit of water was the molecule, rather than the string as I am proposing, and if water molecules are polar so that they line up from positive to negative, then water should, at least on a large scale, flow more easily in one direction than another. Flow in one direction would be supported by the large-scale attraction between positive and negative, while flow in the perpendicular direction would not be.

But if the predominant structural unit of water is the string, so that hydrogen bonding in liquid water takes place primarily within the string, and such strings throughout the volume of water run in all directions at random, it explains why water flows equally in all directions.

VARIOUS PROPERTIES OF WATER EXPLAINED

What about magnetism? It is simply the alignment of electric charges in a material. Water molecules are polar, which is a partial such alignment. Yet, water exhibits no magnetism whatsoever.

Once again, this can be easily explained by this model of strings of molecules held together by hydrogen bonding, but with the strings running in all directions independently of each other.

Have you ever wondered why drops of water form when water is falling? This string model also conveniently explains that. Strings of water become heavy enough to fall upon reaching a certain length. Since they are aligned in all directions, both horizontal and vertical, the strings catch together as they fall. The size and shape of water drops is actually more a property of the air resistance than it is of the water.

Another property of water is surface tension. This is a tension at the water's surface between the molecules. If it is done carefully, it is possible to place a sewing needle on water so that it floats even though the needle is heavier than water.

The surface tension is yet another property of water which is easily explainable by this string model. Strings at the surface running in both horizontal directions create a platform which can possibly support objects, such as the needle, which would otherwise sink. Due to the strings of water molecules, the weight of the needle is spread over an area that is somewhat wider than it's width and this makes it effectively lighter than water so that it does not sink.

WATER AND VISIBLE ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA

I would like to add yet more to it. I will alternate the two global spellings color and colour to avoid continuous use of parenthesis.

The creation of a rainbow in the sky requires large water drops, ones that are big enough to fall as rain, hence the name. Sunlight enters the drop and is partially reflected from the opposite side of the drop. The light is thus refracted backward in the approximate direction from which it came, but with the colors separated since the drop acts as a prism. You can look up "rainbow" on http://www.wikipedia.org/ if you wish.

Each raindrop that contributes to a rainbow actually refracts all of the colours of the rainbow. But an observer will see only one of them, which one depends on the vantage point. Another observer will see the same drop, and all of the other drops around it, as a different color.

Clouds consisting of water droplets, the ordinary cumulus and stratus clouds, do not produce rainbows. The reason is obvious, the droplets in these clouds are not large enough, relative to the wavelengths of light, to make the internal reflection possible that is necessary to split the light into it's component colours. The cloud droplets instead scatter the sunlight, causing them to appear white which is a mix of all colors.

(Note-By the way, the sky appears blue because of the size of the dust particles in the air and the wavelengths of light that they reflect. For my explanation, you can see the posting "The Blue Sky Hypothesis" on this blog.

Consider sun dogs, the rainbow effect produced by the shining of sunlight through high cirrostratus clouds. For more information, you can look up "sun dog" on http://www.wikipedia.org/ . In a sun dog, unlike conventional rainbows, the light is refracted into it's component colours 22 degrees on either side of the sun, rather than in the opposite direction from the observer.

The ice crystals of which cirrostratus clouds are composed are tiny enough to remain aloft. The cirrus family of clouds are so high up in the air that they are composed of ice crystals, unlike the lower clouds which consists of liquid water droplets.

Sun dogs can sometimes be seen in the wispy cirrus clouds, which align along the direction of the wind at those high altitudes. I define jet vapor (vapour) trails as cirrocumulus clouds and I have seen a number of sun dogs in them, although they are often faint. The ice crystals of high clouds act as prisms, splitting light into it's component colors.

So here is the obvious question: Why do clouds that are composed of ice crystals produce sun dogs, but those consisting of water droplets do not?

Droplets are spheres so that they scatter the sunlight passing through but do not refract it into it's component colours. This means that the ice crystals in cirrus clouds cannot be spherical in shape. The droplets actually change into a hexagonal shape upon freezing so that they will refract light.

We do not notice this at everyday scales, but if a spherical droplet is tiny enough it cannot remain spherical when it freezes. If it did, then sun dogs could not exist. The question is why must a spherical cloud droplet give up it's spherical shape in order to freeze?

My model of the structure of water is that of a line or string of molecules held together by hydrogen bonding, as described above. These strings run in all different directions within the water. Evaporation occurs as the end molecules in strings break away due to the movement cuased by heat and drift into the air, because water is actually lighter than air by molecule. Thus, we can expect that strings tend to get longer as the temperature gets lower.

Freezing in the water occurs when strings get long enough, and are moving slowly enough, for cross-links to form between chains of molecules. So, freezing can be explained as a multi-dimensional structure in the water while liquid is one-dimensional.

As I explained previously, water droplet clouds can exist in winter because the spherical form of the tiny cloud droplets hinders this cross-linking which causes freezing. The droplets do not freeze until the temperature is well below the ordinary freezing point. This is because the strings of molecules composing these droplets cannot form the cross-links that are necessary to freezing while the droplet is in the spherical form.

To form these cross-links and freeze, the strings must pull one another by electrical forces into the hexagonal shapes that we find in cirrus clouds. And this is why we can see sun dogs.

MINIMUM SIZE OF WATER DROPLETS

I now want to explain how this simple but extremely versatile model of water can also explain why the tiny droplets of water of which clouds are composed have a certain minimum size. First, let's have a look at a bowl of water to get another view of how this model of strings of water molecules, aligned in all directions, determines the properties of water that we observe.

We can generate simple harmonic motion, like that of a pendulum, in a bowl of water by tilting the bowl and then restoring it to a level surface. But notice that the harmonic motion of the water will not be confined only to the direction in which it was tilted. The motion will immediately spread to the perpendicular direction in the bowl. At the same time the motion is, of course, also taking place vertically.

Clearly in a three-dimensional quantity of water in a bowl, it is not possible to have harmonic motion in one of the dimensions without it taking place in the other two as well. Since we know that liquid water consists of molecules lined up end-to-end, the simple and logical way to explain this is that short strings of water molecules are aligned equally in all directions, at least on a large scale, within the liquid.

Whenever there is movement within the water, strings push against those aligned in a perpendicular direction, causing the motion to disperse equally over all three dimensions. If the strings of molecules were aligned in only one direction, or if there were more strings aligned in one direction than in others, this equal spreading of harmonic motion would not take place. If the strings of molecules were aligned in only one direction, harmonic motion could not take place in that direction, but only in the other two directions.

This model of strings of water molecules, held together by hydrogen bonding and aligned at random in every direction, provides a simple explanation of why water presses against a vessel in which it is contained, or an object floating in the water, equally from every direction. Those strings which are aligned parallel to the sides of the vessel or floating object are pressed against it by the strings of molecules behind it which are perpendicular to it.

This simple model of water explains, among so many other things, the minimum size of the water droplets which form clouds when suspended in the air. In any sizable volume of liquid water, there will be millions upon millions of these strings of water molecules of various lengths. Generally the warmer the water, the shorter the strings due to their more rapid movement. This means that the odds are that there will be a roughly equal number of strings of molecules aligned in each direction.

But as the volume of water that we are dealing with gets smaller and smaller, the odds become greater that this will cease to be the case. A droplet of water is three-dimensional and is held together by the strings of molecules aligned in all three dimensions. But when there is a significant inequality in the number of strings aligned in any one direction, the liquid is unable to hold together and the droplet re-evaporates.

Since the smaller the drop of water, the greater the chance that such an inequality will exist, we find that there is inevitably a certain minimum size to the droplets of liquid water of which clouds are composed. There would be no reason for such a minimum size if this model of the structure of liquid water consisting of short strings of water molecules, held together by hydrogen bonding, was not correct.

Since the structure of liquid water depends on approximate equality in directional alignment by random chance, there must be a certain minimum volume. Fortunately, this minimum volume is more than small enough to be suspended in the air, making clouds possible. When the droplets get close enough together to merge, they become too heavy to remain suspended in the air and fall as precipitation. There is a certain minimum size of water droplet, and the fact that we can have weather is dependent on this.

I have a stainless steel sink. One day, I was washing some dishes and there was water splashed all over the sink. It was obvious that the smaller the drops of water on the sink, the closer they had to be to circular in shape. This confirmed my model of the internal structure of liquid water as consisting of "strings" of water molecules, held together by the hydrogen bonding that holds water together, and running in all directions within the volume of water.

These "strings" of water molecules, by the way, have absolutely nothing to do with the string theory on my cosmology blog. Hydrogen bonding holds molecules of water together because one side of the water molecule is more negatively-charged, and the other side is more positive so that they line up negative-to-positive.

Smaller water droplets must necessarily be more nearly circular because each drop requires these strings running in all directions within it to hold the drop together by their mutual support of perpendicular strings. Due to the length of these strings of water molecules, the smallest drops must be closest to circular in shape because equal support in all directions is required for the drop to hold together. Finally, we will reach the smallest possible size that a water drop can be because if it were any smaller it will be unlikely that there can be an equal number of strings of molecules running equally in all directions within the drop.

I got the idea of looking at the water droplets splashed on the sink with a magnifying glass. Sure enough, there were hundreds of water droplets which could not be seen with the eye alone. All of these unseen droplets were of close to the same size, and all were perfect circles, at least in the two lateral dimensions because the vertical dimension is naturally distorted by gravity.

My conclusion is that these hundreds of the smallest of water droplets splashed on the sink, which can only be seen with a magnifying glass, are identical to the water droplets that make up clouds. This model of water explains, among so many other properties of water, the phenomenon of supercooling. This is the fact that the tiny droplets composing clouds do not usually freeze in the cold winter weather.

The geometry of these droplets means that there will be some curvature in the strings of molecules in these smallest possible droplets, whereas this would not be the case in a larger volume of water. This curvature of the strings of molecules effectively prevents the cross-linking of perpendicular strings that brings about freezing in the cold, when strings combine to form longer strings and there is less movement of strings.

Clouds and rain are absolutely dependent on the properties, and relationship to air, of these minimum water droplets that I have described here. If the strings of molecules composing liquid water were longer, at ordinary temperatures, so that the minimum water droplet was larger, it could be too large to float in the air. If this were the case, then clouds would not be possible.

When cloud droplets do combine together, once again by hydrogen bonding, they form droplets that are too large to remain suspended in the air and fall as rain. These falling raindrops do encounter air resistance as thay fall, but this resistance is not enough to break the raindrops back into the cloud droplets that are small enough to float in the air. If it was, we would have clouds but could not have rain.

The air resistance that raindrops encounter on their way down is also vital to life on earth. If not for air resistance, raindrops would be like bullets and tender young plants would be destroyed by the rain, instead of nourished by it.

This is just something that I never saw in science class. That there is a certain minimum size of water droplet, that must form a perfect circle. Hundreds of these droplets can be seen with a magnifying glass on any sink, where water has been splashed. Cloud droplets are identical to these minimum droplets, except that cloud droplets form perfect spheres, rather than perfect two-dimensional circles, because they have freedom of formation in all three spatial dimensions.

Once again, this model of water presented here as consisting of strings of water molecules aligned in all directions explains just so much about the observed properties of water.

Water evaporates as the end molecules on the strings break loose. Evaporation increases as the warming of the water both cause more motion in the strings, and breaks long strings into shorter ones, meaning that there is more end molecules to possibly break free.

The tremendous heat capacity of water is due to the ability of the strings to twist and bend, and thus to store energy.

Water is transparent because it's structure composed of strings forms a matrix structure, on a large scale, thus allowing light waves to pass between the molecules.

Water has it's great ability to dissolve substances, such as salt or oxygen, because this matrix structure of liquid water offers large numbers of potential openings into which other molecules can fit.

Water has surface tension due to the mutual support of the perpendicular strings of molecules at the surface aligned in the two lateral dimensions. If done carefully, a needle can actually be placed on the surface of the water so that it floats. It is not actually floating, but is supported by the water's surface tension.

Finally, water freezes into ice when the temperature gets low enough to slow down the movement of the strings of water molecules so that they form hydrogen bonds with strings aligned in the perpendicular directions so that they lock together. In fact, freezing can be defined as multi-dimensional hydrogen bonding while liquid is hydrogen bonding in only one dimension. Water in it's gaseous form, as water vapor (vapour) involves no hydrogen bonding.

The lateral hydrogen bonding that takes place in freezing must be weaker than the straight-line hydrogen bonding in liquid water. If it wasn't, ice would melt directly into water vapour (vapor) instead of into liquid water.

THE ELECTRIC SNOWFLAKE AND ICICLE HYPOTHESIS

It was recently (early 2015) noticed, at the University of Toronto, that the "ripples" which may form on icicles always have a wavelength of exactly one centimeter. But these ripples only form on the icicles when there are impurities in the water which freezes. It was found that the concentration of the impurity made no difference at all in the wavelengths of the ripples, which was always one centimeter. The ripples did not form at all when distilled water, which has no impurities, was used to form the icicles.

(Note-Icicles are the frozen hangings of ice from a roof or other structure in colder climates which form when water from melting snow on the roof drips down, but then refreezes into elongated, suspended lengths of ice that are usually roughly cone-shaped. The concept is similar to the stalactites which hang down from the roofs of caves).

I find that my theory of water provides a simple explanation as to why the wavelengths of the ripples on icicles, formed from water with impurities, are always exactly one centimeter. This explanation is related to a recent posting as to why snowflakes are perfectly symmetrical, and so I am going to incorporate it into that posting.


Snow is very much a part of life where I live. I have shoveled a lot of it over the years, and brushed a lot more off of cars, and occasionally gotten cars stuck in it. I have gone sledding on it when I was a boy, and had snowball battles with others while walking home from school. Since childhood, I have had quite a few days off first from school and then later from work because there was too much of it.

It seems to be about time that I introduced a theory about it.

Just how do snowflakes end up being so perfectly symmetrical? There was a recent article in a local newspaper about taking photos of snowflakes, and the perfect symmetry is absolutely amazing. But it leaves the question of how the forces of nature can form such complex and perfect symmetry. The fact is that the underlying physics of snowflakes must be relatively simple.

There is an article about snowflakes, with a gallery of images, on www.wikipedia.org . There are sets of photos of snowflakes online.

When looking at the amazing symmetry of snowflakes, one word immediately occurred to me. That word was "electric". The only force that could possibly be producing this perfect complex symmetry is electromagnetism.

Within a growing snowflake, how does one side of the snowflake "know" that an element has been added to the opposite side so that an equivalent one must be added to this side in order to achieve symmetry? It must be that any change on one side creates an electrical imbalance that must be re-balanced on the opposite side.

Remember the model of liquid water that I presented in this posting, "Water Made Really Simple", that I find explains so much about the observed properties of water.

We know that a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms joined to one oxygen atom. Since the oxygen atom is so much larger than the hydrogen atoms, one side of the molecule has more of a negative electric charge and the other side a more positive charge. Thus, the water molecule is referred to as being polar.

The result is that water molecules tend to line up end to end, negative to positive. This is known as hydrogen bonding. Water is actually lighter than air by molecule, which is why it can evaporate. But when water molecules are bound together into a liquid by this hydrogen bonding, water becomes about eight hundred times as heavy as air.

My theory is that liquid water consists of "lines" of molecules bound by hydrogen bonding. These lines can twist and move, the warmer the water the faster, this is why water has such a tremendous capacity to absorb heat. Water evaporates when molecules at the end of a line break off due to the energy of heat. The lines move more slowly as it gets cooler until it reaches a point where lines of molecules can form cross-links with other lines so that they are then locked in place. This causes freezing into ice.

Since these lines of water molecules are held together by hydrogen bonding, that means that one end of the line must be more positively-charged and the other end more negatively-charged. Thus, these lines of molecules are actually small magnets. A magnet is a material in which the orbitals of the electrons within the atoms are lined up.

The longer the line or string of molecules, the stronger the magnetism would be. We have seen that longer strings or lines of molecules can hold together when it is colder. This means that in winter snowflakes, the lines of water molecules would be considerably longer than in summer raindrops.

A snowflake begins with an ice crystal, and then builds around it. There is no such thing as freezing when these lines of water molecules are separated from one another, it is when they come in contact in the cold that they are cross-linked together by freezing. When the temperature falls below freezing, lines of water molecules that have formed are free to move about in the air but freeze together upon contact with one another so that a frozen structure forms.

My hypothesis is that this building structure of lines of water molecules that freeze together to form a snowflake is far from random. The construction of the snowflake is governed by electromagnetism. The lines of water molecules obey the rules of electric charges as to where to affix to the building structure and then freeze into place.

A filament forms of these lines and if another filament or line attaches to it, it creates an electrical imbalance throughout the structure that must be magnetically re-balanced by a matching line or filament attaching itself in an identical way to the opposite side of the structure. But with the end of the line that joins the structure being opposite with reference to electric charge in the two matching lines on opposite sides of the structure. One end of a line is more positively-charged, and the other end more negatively-charged, so that if the positive end of a line joins the structure on one side the negative end of a matching line will be drawn in to join on the opposite side of the structure on order to re-balance the electric charges.

Electrical balance must always be maintained when a line of water molecules joins the growing structure with either the negative or positive side facing inward. It creates an opening, with an electromagnetic force for the opposite to take place on the other side of the snowflake. The snowflake continuously "tries" to keep the charge balance by drawing in other magnetic lines of water molecules on the opposite side which then freeze in upon joining the structure.

The electromagnetism of these lines of water molecules will cancel out and become insignificant over greater distances, but is a factor on the scale of a snowflake and this is what limits the size of snowflakes. The difference between snowflakes and raindrops is that the lines are shorter in liquid water because it is warmer and there is no freezing to bind the lines together as cross-links. The longer lines of molecules in snowflakes tend to get one two-dimensional plane of snowflake formation dominant over the others, and this is why snowflakes are two-dimensional.

This scenario also explains why there is a nearly infinite variety in the patterns of individual snowflakes. It may not quite be true that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, but there are a vast number of possible forms. The lines of water molecules can form any pattern at all, as long as the electrical charges are balanced by symmetry in the structure.

As for the one centimeter wavelengths of the ripples which are found on icicles if the icicles are formed of water with impurities, notice that one centimeter is also just about the width of a snowflake. The extremely sensitive electromagnetic pattern which forms symmetrical snowflakes also accounts for this wavelength.

Upon freezing, the impurities in the water are locked into place within the structure. But, by random chance, the distribution pattern of the impurities varies from place to place within the icicle, and this upsets the electromagnetic pattern. The icicle takes the form of separate units, each one centimeter long and with differing electromagnetic patterns of the lines of water molecules locked into place by the freezing, so that each section behaves, relative to the others, like radios tuned to different stations. This is simply because the effective range of the electromagnetic signal of a line of water molecules is limited to one centimeter.

When an icicle is forming, and passes the once centimeter mark, the electromagnetic influence of the first lines of water molecules becomes insignificant. Thus, a new electromagnetic structure begins to form, influenced by the random pattern in which the impurities settled into the structure, which is different from the first one centimeter structure.

How else is there to explain the effect of impurities in water bringing about ripples on icicles that are always exactly one centimeter in wavelength? It was shown that it cannot be from the surface tension of the water, because no ripples at all form on icicles formed from pure water. If the impurities could be somehow made to form a perfectly even distribution pattern, it would be logical to presume that this would also eliminate the ripples.

This model of snowflake and icicle formation by electric charges fits in perfectly with the posting "Weather As a Model Of The Universe", on the cosmology blog. As in the entire universe, electric charge balance is all-important. This is accomplished in drops of water by having lines of molecules aligned in all directions equally. But the process is necessarily more complex in snow due to the fixation in place by freezing.

THE STORY OF SAND AND WATER

So why is it that rock can be broken down over long periods of time by the action of moving water into particles the size of sand, and then can be broken down still further into particles the size of silt, but yet are not broken down to the molecular level so that rock could effectively dissolve in water?

The conclusion that I have come to is that this minimum size of particle that rock can be broken down into by the action of water is due not to the nature of the rock, but to the nature of water. It is because water, as a liquid, must be of a certain minimum size.

There is no such thing as liquid water at the molecular level. A molecule of water consists of an atom of oxygen bonded with two of hydrogen, with the familiar chemical symbol H2O. The reason that water evaporates is that it is actually lighter than air, by molecule. but when water molecules are brought together, they undergo what is known as hydrogen bonding. Because the oxygen atom in the molecule is so much larger than the two hydrogen atoms, one side of the molecule is more positive and the other more negative. This causes the molecules to line up negative-to-positive because opposite charges attract one another.

The result of this hydrogen bonding is liquid water. If water molecules are not linked together like this then water is a gas, water vapor. Even though water is lighter than air by molecule, it is eight hundred times as heavy as air, at sea level, when the molecules are bound by hydrogen bonding.

What this means is that there must be a certain minimum size to liquid water droplets. It takes a certain number of molecules in a chain, with the chains going in all directions, to make a droplet of water possible as we saw many examples of in this posting, "Water Made really Simple". These minimal water droplets are those which compose clouds, including fog and mist.

Since it is the water in waves that acts as a "hammer" to break down rock into sand, and sometimes further into silt, we should expect that there is a certain minimum size to this "hammer". This explains why rock is broken down by waves, but cannot be broken down to the molecular level so that rock would dissolve in water. It is not due to the nature of the rock, but to the nature of the water. The grains of sand on a beach are the reflection of the practical minimum size of water droplet.

WATER AND NUCLEAR FUSION

My theory of water shows why heavy water is the ideal material to undergo fusion in a hydrogen bomb. The difference between a hydrogen bomb and an ordinary atomic bomb is that, in the hydrogen bomb, an ordinary atomic bomb is surrounded by a layer of heavy water. Most of the energy released by the hydrogen bomb is from the fusion of the heavy water molecules, the atomic bomb itself acts as a mere detonator by having it's resulting radiant energy fuse the molecules of water together.

The reason for being an ideal fusion material is that water is a small molecule, with plenty of room for fusion into larger atoms. It has it’s molecules already lined up by hydrogen bonding, waiting to be fused into larger atoms by the energy released by the detonator nuclear device..

In my theory of water, the molecules are lined up like strings. These strings of water molecules, which really do not have anything to do with my string theory on the cosmology blog but are arranged in the same pattern, then act as antennae to receive the tremendous amount of radiation from the nuclear bomb that acts as a detonator to initiate fusion in the surrounding layer of heavy water. The radiant energy fuses the strings of molecules together into larger atoms, and the leftover binding energy, electron orbital energy, molecular bond energy and, energy in the hydrogen bonding between water molecules in the strings is released as the tremendous energy of the hydrogen bomb.

Heavy water is like ordinary water, except that the two hydrogen atoms in the water molecule each have a neutron, as well as the proton.. More nucleons are thus available for fusion. This is important because the heavier the element is, the higher the proportion of neutrons in the nucleus relative to protons. Heavy water is about 10% heavier than ordinary water.

In nuclear fission, the opposite of the fusion that we are dealing with here, the excess binding energy released in the detonator bomb when the resulting “daughter” atoms from the splitting of the large atom, either plutonium or the 235 isotope of uranium, fuses the much smaller atoms of heavy water together into larger atoms. The atoms of heavy water are lined up already by hydrogen bonding. More energy is released by fission of heavier atoms than lighter ones, because there is more energy from previous fusions in star interiors in heavy atoms. Plutonium and the 235 isotope of uranium are the only known elements that will undergo fission to release some of their binding energy when split by the impact of a neutron at high speed.

The reason that only these heavier atoms can be split by nuclear fission to release energy is that atoms heavier than iron and nickel are only created, from crunching smaller atoms together, when a large star explodes as a supernova. The reason for this is that formation of these heavy atoms requires an additional input of energy. Some of these heavier atoms are not entirely stable, and this is the reason that they can be split during the fission process. The release of particles or radiation by heavier atoms seeking a more stable condition is known as radioactivity.

In contrast energy released by fusion, as opposed to fission or splitting, is a reversal of previous electron repulsion that was reversed into binding energy when the lighter atoms were crunched together into heavier ones by fusion in stars. The energy that is released is thus energy in missing electron orbitals of previous lighter atoms that were fused together within a star. Remember that we saw in the posting “Electron Repulsion And Density”, on the physics and astronomy blog, that there is more total energy in the electron orbitals in smaller atoms because there is more total surface area. There is also less binding energy, and when the smaller atoms are crunched together within stars into larger atoms, some of the excess orbital energy is reversed into binding energy within the nucleus.

There is more energy in a proton and an electron, in orbit around it, than there is in a neutron. This is true, even though an electron can be crunched into a proton to create a neutron in the process known as K-capture. Heavier atoms have more neutrons but fewer electrons than the lighter atoms together that the heavier ones were crunched together from. This means that excess energy must be released as electrons are crunched together with protons to create neutrons. This provides energy that is released by nuclear fusion. There is actually more binding energy per nucleon, which is either a proton or a neutron, in successively heavier elements up to the curve in the Binding Energy Curve, which would mean that energy would have to be absorbed, during a supernova explosion,  to accomplish the nuclear fusion process.

But there are fewer electrons per nucleon in the successively heavier elements that are the products of fusion, and some of the energy in the orbitals of these electrons must be released. Heavier elements have many more neutrons per proton in the nucleus than lighter elements. Electrons are crunched into protons during fusion to form neutrons, and there must be excess energy because the neutron represents a lower energy state than the electron in an orbital around a proton. Some of the released energy of the electron orbitals is changed into the additional binding energy per nucleon in successively heavier elements, up to the curve in the Binding Energy Curve, but the rest of the energy that was in electron orbitals must be released.

Nuclear fission only releases energy for heavier elements after the curve in the binding energy curve, of the binding energy in the atom per nucleon. The binding energy curve peaks around the elements of iron and nickel. This is where the nucleus contains the most binding energy per nucleon, a nucleon being either a proton or a neutron in the nucleus. Remember that elements heavier than iron and nickel are not created by ordinary fusion in stars, but are only created during actual supernova, with it's tremendous release of energy because it takes an input of energy to create these heavier atoms by fusing lighter atoms together, and so they have decreasing binding energy in the nucleus per nucleon. This input of energy required to create the heavier elements comes from the explosion of a large star in a supernova.

In the hydrogen bomb, the energy that went into fusing uranium or plutonium atoms together from smaller atoms in a supernova, minus energy that went into fusing fission product daughter atoms which is the two smaller atoms that the plutonium or Uranium-235 atom that undergoes fission is split into, is released by the explosion of the detonator atomic bomb and can then go into fusing strings of heavy water molecules into heavier atoms and thus releasing the excess energy there.

Thus, the hydrogen bomb bears a similarity to the energy released in the explosion of a supernova fusing heavier elements together from lighter ones. Actually, the energy in the hydrogen bonding which links water molecules together in strings, because the molecule is polar one side being more positively-charged and the other more negatively-charged, is actually energy from the supernova which fused the molecules together, as described in the posting "New Thinking About The Origin Of Comets And Water", on the physics and astronomy blog www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com .

Remember that it is not the particular elements that are being fused together, but the total number of nucleons including neutrons. Heavy elements have proportionally more neutrons in the nucleus but proportionally fewer electrons in orbitals around the nucleus, in comparison  with the total number of electrons in the smaller atoms that were crunched together to make the heavier atoms. This is because an electron can be crunched into a proton during fusion to create a neutron, in the process known as K-capture.

My theory is that it is the energy of a supernova that has already bound atoms into water molecules, and these molecules have the energy of hydrogen bonding between them. When the molecules are fused into heavier elements, this energy must be released.

Molecules of water are held together by what is known as hydrogen bonds because one side of the molecule is more negatively-charged and the other side more positively-charged. The reason for this is that the oxygen atom in the molecule is so much bigger than the two hydrogen atoms, and is referred to as the molecule being polar. These hydrogen bonds between molecules in liquid water must have energy, just as molecular bonds between atoms do. There is energy in the hydrogen bonds and the amount of energy that it takes to evaporate the water is the amount required to overcome this energy so that molecules of water are broken loose from the bond. The energy of hydrogen bonding resists evaporation if the water is liquid and resists melting if the water is in the form of ice. When the molecules of heavy water are fused together in the hydrogen bomb, this energy is more energy that must be released.

Even though there is hydrogen bonding holding a line of water molecules together, there is still the electron repulsion between them that keeps atoms from merging together because electrons in nearby atoms are all negatively-charged and we know that like charges must repel. There is energy in electron repulsion, and this energy must also be released when molecules of heavy water are fused together in the hydrogen bomb.

This is true because when smaller atoms are fused together into larger ones, there is less overall surface area in the larger atoms. This is what we saw in the posting "Electron Repulsion And Density", on the physics and astronomy blog. My theory is that this energy is not actually released outward, but is reversed into binding energy in the new, and heavier, nuclei.

In the posting on the cosmology blog, “Atoms And String Theory” we saw that space between the nucleus and the electrons of an atom must have it's component electrical charge particles of space distorted by energy. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, this distortion must remain constant. If small atoms undergo fusion, there are both fewer electrons in orbitals and less total distance between the electrons and the nuclei. The energy that was in the previous larger distortion pattern, but not in the later smaller distortion pattern, is what gets released.

This shows that my string theory is correct because the energy of space charge distortion that was stretched within matter bundles along time dimension is released into the perpendicular directions. This is why a small amount of matter apparently contains a vast amount of energy. It is just that some of the energy that was locked within the matter before fusion appears to us as being released all at once.

But the lines of water molecules in my theory of water, held together negative side-to-positive side by hydrogen bonding of the polar water molecules, are already linked together and are waiting to be crunched together into larger atoms so that the electrical energy in this hydrogen bonding, which originally came from the explosion of s supernova which, according to my theory, fused the water molecules together to begin with as seen in "New Thinking About The Origin Of Comets And Water", is released by the fusion process.

The fusing of strings of water molecules, held together by the hydrogen bonding, into heavier atoms by absorption of radiation by the detonation of a nuclear device nearby, so that the strings of water molecules effectively act as antennae to absorb the radiant energy which "welds" them together, should sound familiar to my cosmology readers. Exactly the same pattern took place in the Big Bang, which began the universe.

My cosmology theory explains the Big Bang as a two-dimensional sheet of space, composed a checkerboard of alternating negative and positive electric charges that multiply by mutual induction, folded relative to the background space until one of it's two pairs of sides came into contact after charge migration had taken place within the sheet to achieve a lower energy state, positive to one side and negative to the other. This brought about a massive matter-antimatter mutual annihilation, which we perceive as the explosion of the Big Bang (I have never seen an actual explanation of why it happened, only what supposedly happened afterward). One of the two dimensions of the sheet thus disintegrated, the energy in that dimension as the tension between the adjacent opposite charges of space was released as the energy of the Big Bang. The other dimension remained as very long strings of matter, which we perceive as particles because we cannot see in one of the dimensions of space that we perceive as time.

Some of the energy released by the explosion of the Big Bang went into "welding" these strings of charges in the remaining dimension into strings of the matter that we have today, and something very similar to that is replicated in the fusing of strings of heavy water molecules together by the release of energy in the detonation of a hydrogen bomb.

Is The Earth Losing Water?

I was spending some time looking over various Pacific islands on Google Earth when a thought occurred to me. The islands with a flat surface that do not have a peak on them are coral atolls. These islands formed over millions of years when coral built up on extinct volcanos in the same way that limestone forms. Coral is formed from the bodies of microscopic creatures that live in warm water.

Has anyone else wonder why, if the organisms whose bodies go to form coral live in water, then why is the coral atoll above the surface of the water? If the atoll is composed of coral, composed of the bodies of creatures that can live only in water, then why does it break the surface of the water? My reasoning is just the fact that there is so many coral atolls, widespread in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans, must mean that the level of the sea was once higher than it is now.

These atolls are too widespread to argue that it is because of a local raising of the ocean floor. The tidal range may have obscured the fact that sea level was once several meters higher than it is now. Global warming is now raising sea levels but it is doing it not by creating more water but by melting ice. There is, theoretically, a fixed amount of water on earth.

Since the planet was once red-hot, it seems likely that our water is from one or more comets that landed on the earth. Even though hydrogen is by far the most abundant element in the universe, there is little free (uncombined) hydrogen on earth. The reason is that any free hydrogen is light enough to simply rise up and escape the atmosphere altogether.

But what about water? Even though water weighs 800 times as much as air at seal level, it is actually lighter by molecule than the other gases in the air like oxygen, nitrogen and, carbon dioxide. This means that wet air is actually lighter than dry air and is why the barometric pressure drops when a storm is approaching. Water, of which a molecule is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, has a molecular weight of 10, while diatomic oxygen has a molecular weight of 16 because oxygen atoms pair up in the air, as do those of nitrogen.

When liquid water becomes warm, more of it's molecules gain enough speed to escape the hydrogen bonds that cause water to be liquid. This bonding happens because one side of the water molecule is more positive and the other side more negative. The reason is the two hydrogen atoms attached to the one oxygen atoms make the molecule assymetrical. This causes water molecules to line up end to end and holds them together as a liquid instead of a gas.

Water molecules that have escaped the hydrogen bonds are said to have evaporated. But because the temperature gets cooler as we go higher, the water condenses on particles of dust, salt and, smoke in the air and hydrogen bonds with other water molecules. This is what forms clouds, and then when the droplets of condensed water get big enough to fall back to earth, rain or snow.

But what about the few water molecules that may not come close enough to droplets of condensed water or condensation nuclei, the particles of dust, to get pulled in and ultimately fall back to the earth's surface? Since a water molecule is actually lighter than air, as long as an evaporated molecule can avoid bonding in the air to another water molecule, which would make it heavier than air, it should keep on going up and up and finally escape into space. This, I believe, is the reason that coral atolls are above the surface of the water.

The addition of more carbon dioxide into the air by the burning of fossil fuels will mean that a water molecule is even lighter than the average molecule in the air since carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 24. Global warming can only increase the rate of water loss to space by causing more water to evaporate. The loss of several meters of water from sea level must have caused the earth's rotation rate to increase.

Notice that further evidence of long-term water loss can be seen at two large but shallow areas of water on opposite sides of the world. Hudson Bay is the vast, relatively shallow extension of the ocean into northern Canada. A number of former shorelines can be seen around the bay. This can only mean that it is contracting and there is no evidence of any uplifting of the land which could cause this contraction.

Across the globe, the Persian Gulf is another relatively shallow extension of the ocean. It can also be seen to have contracted over time since the remains of ancient fishing villages which were once on the shore are now well inland.

It is true that both Hudson Bay and the Persian Gulf are glacial in origin and that there is a phenomenon known as "glacial rebound" in which the land under a glacier is pressed down during an ice age and then the ground begins a very slow "rebound" when the ice melts. But I do not believe that the contraction of these two bodies of water are a result of this rebound. The Persian Gulf especially because it was carved by the lesser ice of bergs melting and breaking up in the nearby Zagros Mountains and then sliding to the sea. The area was not under the weight of the main glacial ice.

Not only do I feel that the contraction of these two bodies of water add further proof to my hypothesis, but I want to extend the concept from the earth to the planet Mars. It is known that there was once water on Mars because of certain landscape features, but now there is little or none left. It is not unusual for Mars, or any planet, to have had water since water almost certainly originated with comets which collided with the earth, as well as other planets.

Where else could the Martian water have gone except into space? There is also some evidence that there was once water on the Moon. If water could escape from Mars, and possibly the Moon, then why could it not also escape from earth? Albeit more slowly due to earth's stronger gravity.

Remember that water is actually light by molecule and only becomes heavy when molecules join by hydrogen bonding.

This loss of water from the earth is not something that will be noticed over any short period of time, or even a human lifetime. It is not going to save coastal cities across the world from rising sea levels due to global warming. But it is clearly happening over the course of thousands of years.

Contrail Meteorology

I would just like to explain my observations that the contrails (or vapor (vapour) trails) of jet airplanes that we see high in the sky above us reveal quite a bit about the atmospheric conditions at the altitude of the contrail. Typical altitudes for long-distance flights are around ten kilometers or 6-7 miles.

A jet engine will leave no contrail at low altitudes simply because the air is more dense there. Air at low altitudes can hold more water vapor (vapour) because of it's higher density. (Let's alternate the two spellings). The long white contrails only become visible when the water from the burned fuel condenses upon being exposed to the cold outside air. By the way, it is my observation that jet contrails most resemble altocumulus clouds and could be categorized as such.

When an aircraft leaves only a short contrail, the air at that altitude is of a low relative humidity. That means that the air is holding only a fraction of the evaporated water that it potentially could due to it's temperature and density. Air can hold more water when it is warmer and when it is denser. The vapour from the jet at first condenses, forming the contrail, but then shortly afterward reevaporates because the air has plenty of capacity to hold more water vapor.

When the contrail lasts for a significant period of time, this indicates that there is a higher relative humidity in the air at that altitude. Meaning that the air already has much of the vapour that it could potentially hold due to it's density and temperature. The water vapor condenses upon meeting the cold air outside the jet engine and remains condensed for a while due to the scarcity of room in the air for more vapour.

The air with the highest relative humidity is that in which the contrail spreads. A jet contrail is usually a narrow white line, as seen from the ground, but if there is already a lot of vapor in the air, some of that will condense into the new water that has been introduced into the air by the jet exhaust. This will cause the contrail to spread in lateral directions so that it becomes a broad line across the sky.

Contrails also reveal the direction of the wind at their altitudes. Winds high in the sky may not be the same at all as those nearer the ground. On one recent day I noticed that the low cumulus clouds, with an altitude of about a kilometer, were moving eastward with the wind while a contrail much higher in the sky was moving southward. The two air movements were actually perpendicular to one another.

The Vital Role Of Salt

This posting has nothing to do with health. The human body needs salt, but only a little bit of it.

Salt makes up several percent of the water in the world's oceans. In the posting "The Mystery Of Salt" on my physics and astronomy blog, http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ , I explained my reasons for believing that the salt in the oceans must have originated with a meteor.

Salt is sodium chloride, chemical symbol NaCl, and virtually all of the sodium and all of the chlorine on earth is to be found united together in salt. It seems very unlikely that this thorough union could have come about unless the two were together before being scattered across the earth.

The water on earth itself was almost certainly delivered by one or more comets. A comet is basically a big chunk of ice in orbit around the sun. The tail of the comet forms as it comes close to the sun, causing some of the ice to evaporate and to trail behind the main body of the comet as water vapor (vapour), which is brilliantly illuminated by the sun.

The presence of salt in the seas appears, at least at first consideration, to be a disadvantage to humans. It makes it so that we cannot drink sea water, at least until it is distilled either artificially or naturally by the water cycle.

Salt raises the boiling point of water. The process of boiling is that when heat is applied to water (or another liquid), it increases the vapor (vapour) pressure of the liquid. When that pressure exceeds the atmospheric pressure on the liquid, evaporation begins to take place throughout the depth of the water, rather than from just it's surface. The result is the familiar bubbling of boiling water.

My reasoning is that if boiling is three-dimensional evaporation and the presence of salt in the water raises the amount of heat necessary to make water boil, it must also mean that salt in water hinders evaporation from the surface of the water when it is not boiling. This has far-reaching implications that I have never seen referred to before.

Water readily evaporates into the air, but the average relative humidity is far less than 100%. My hypothesis is that a major reason for this is the salinity of the vast majority of the water on earth. Per unit of surface area, more water must evaporate from bodies of fresh water, such as North America's Great Lakes, than from the salt waters of the sea. This must be another complicating factor which makes weather so difficult to predict more than a few days in advance.

It is easy to see the extreme weather that we get with a relatively slight increase in temperature due to global warming. This is because an increase in average global temperature of only a couple of degrees will cause a lot of ice to melt and a lot of water to evaporate, that otherwise would not have.

We can only imagine the wild weather that the world might have if evaporation were not reduced by the salt in the sea. I have even wondered if God arranged for the meteor which brought the salt to the earth, in order to make the planet more inhabitable for us.

Consider the Red Sea, a broad swath of water between two very dry areas of land. On one side of the sea is northeast Africa and on the other side is the Arabian Peninsula. It seems to me that the reason for this is that the Red Sea has a very high salinity level, thus greatly hindering the evaporation which might supply rain to the area.

A Discussion Of Global Warming

Just to clarify what the alarm is about global warming. It is not about humans or animals tolerating a slight increase in temperature. It is about the effect of heat on water. If we increase the average global temperature by even one or two degrees, more ice will melt and more water will evaporate in the earth as a whole.

When that happens, we will have a warming spiral underway. Ice and the snow that covers it is white in color (colour), which means that it reflects most of the solar energy falling on it back into space. But when the ice melts, it exposes the darker ground beneath it to the sun and this absorbs energy, causing still more warming.

Furthermore, water vapor (vapour) is itself a greenhouse gas. This means that when there is more water in the air because it is warmer, more solar energy is retained so that the temperature gets even warmer.

Global warming operates in the same way as a greenhouse. Ordinarily, solar energy falls on the earth and is then re-radiated into space. It is not reflected into space, but is absorbed first by the earth.

However, the re-radiation back to space takes place at different wavelengths than the primary solar radiation which originally landed on the earth. Greenhouses are hot inside because the panels of glass or plastic allow the solar radiation to enter, but block the re-radiated energy at the different wavelengths from leaving. Thus, energy builds up as heat inside the greenhouse.

Certain gases in the earth's atmosphere act in the same way as the glass panels in the greenhouse. Airborne molecules of these gases allow incoming solar radiation to pass by, but reflect the re-radiated energy back to the ground, so that the earth gets warmer as the amount of these gases in the air increases.

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas, it was absorbed by fossil plants during their lifetimes and is released back into the air when fossil fuels, such as oil or coal is burned. Water vapour (vapor) is another greenhouse gas and an especially dangerous one is methane. When dead plants decay in the presence of oxygen, we will get carbon dioxide, but if they decay without oxygen, methane is formed.

Global warming is certainly for real. Each report about it seems to be more ominous than the last. Mountain glaciers are melting all across the world, as well as the glaciers covering Greenland. This is ice that has been there since the last ice age and is only just melting now. And this is going on all across the world. I am a somewhat late convert to global warming, but now do not see how it can possibly be denied.

Global warming will not only produce more powerful storms and raise ocean levels, it will skew climate patterns. Dry areas may become even drier and wet areas wetter. There is no better example of what global warming can do than the planet Venus. There is such a runaway greenhouse spiral caused by the planet's dense clouds that the surface of Venus is actually hotter than that of Mercury, which is much closer to the sun.

I have three things that I would like to add to discussions of global warming that I have never seen before.

First, evergreen trees in high latitudes depend on sunlight reflected at a low angle off the snow. This is simply because the sun is low in the sky. If the sorrounding snow melts, the growth of these trees will be stunted because they will receive less sunlight. This will add to the warming spiral because evergreen trees grow fast and absorb carbon from the air in doing so.

Second, variations in rainfall, as a result of global warming, will contribute to forest fires. If an area receives more rain than usual one year, there will be luxuriant plant growth. But if, in the following year, the area receives less rain than usual, the lesser rain will not be able to sustain the growth of the previous year. The resulting dead and dry plant matter will be a fire hazard.

Third, I consider the real nub of global warming as a kind of competition between two factors. We know that water in the air is a greenhouse gas. Yet, clouds are a potential brake on the warming spiral because if warming causes heavier clouds to form, the white cloud will reflect solar energy back to space.

The big question is: Does the warming spiral caused by increasing water in the air offset the cooling effect due to the reflectivity of clouds when that water condenses into clouds?

In my opinion, the answer is no. The increase in the greenhouse effect caused by more water in the air due to warming is not offset by the cooling reflectivity of the clouds the water condenses into. Part of the reason is that the warming which prompted more water to evaporate also enables the air to hold more water that will not condense into cloud.