Science

The irony of one in a century events came home here in the UK a few years ago

A vehicle towing a car trailer came off the road on the approach to a rail bridge. This resulted in the tow vehicle trailer and car on the trailer residing on the train tracks

There were no guard rails in place on the approach which is common here. After accident plenty of calls to put guard rails in place. Decided not to as was a once in a century event

One year later to the day another accident with a vehicle towing a car trailer. Different bridge approach but you guessed it no guard rails

UM, Antarctica used to be covered in forests and heaps of animals, the fossils prove it....
It must have been considerably warmer not just a degree or 2
But it also used to be in a different place, things change over time, sometimes human activity sometimes not, science is constantly learning and the more it learns the more it realises we were once wrong

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Originally Posted by superquag

So, Long time ago, when Romans were busy building their Top Quality roads all over the place... how did the population - then - breathe heavily and make the planet warmer than it is now ? - Swiss uncovering another R- road up in the mountains... where it has been under snow till just now?
- No point in building a road... if it can't be used.

And then there's the ... ? of whether CO2 levels are the same round the globe.... Consider a CO2 monitor on the side of a hill... Numbers trending up. = Global Warming from more CO2 !
But, Was that a lump of ground, or a Volcano ?. (Hawaii....) Oops !


Similar errors have grown into Temperature/Weather observations taken over Centuries. Urban sprawl cannot always be foreseen.
For example, One particular station in South Australia. Originally out in the open. Today, same spot, is surrounded by factories. Guess the temperature trend ? I'm told this particular point was moved around ?? years ago, after someone queried "reliability" in it's current pristine locale.

- One of the reasons Airports are favoured for locating weather measuring sensors... Wide open space very unlikely to be built-in, and lots of wind to mitigate jet exhausts.
But there IS. a silver lining, and it ain't reflective metal high in the atmosphere... MORE. CO2. =. More. Plant Food for the grasses and trees.. Y'know, the green plants that take in CO2, turn it into 'Fertilizer' and pump out oxygen.
Google this and see for yourself. Greenhouse supplies carbon dioxide equipment

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We should talk about statistical methods here but in all probability it would fail to effect any significance .[bigrolf]

So much history and information

This amazing science history on Fits in so many threads. Not meaning to add the political or war aspects it holds to general chat.

Used my running watch and GPS for a run tonight. Eu its Galiléo, Russia its GLONASS

The satellites for those country based systems are all country or military. The new systems like starlink are world changing in so many ways

IF a war was started my running watch might using a US military GPS system not work! If political pressure is applied, civilian tech might not either [bigwhistle]


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Originally Posted by NavyDiver

So much history and information

This amazing science history on Fits in so many threads. Not meaning to add the political or war aspects it holds to general chat.

Used my running watch and GPS for a run tonight. Eu its Galiléo, Russia its GLONASS

The satellites for those country based systems are all country or military. The new systems like starlink are world changing in so many ways

IF a war was started my running watch might using a US military GPS system not work! If political pressure is applied, civilian tech might not either [bigwhistle]


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Years ago, when the survey industry in Australia first started adopting satellite technology, I went to a seminar in which we were addressed by an American GPS boffin.

One of his remarks was that the US of A military could/would turn off or fiddle with the accuracy of the system, in time of need.

The head bloke of a large surveying company, which had invested a very large amount of money in equipment, just about fainted! [biggrin]

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Originally Posted by Saitch

Years ago, when the survey industry in Australia first started adopting satellite technology, I went to a seminar in which we were addressed by an American GPS boffin.

One of his remarks was that the US of A military could/would turn off or fiddle with the accuracy of the system, in time of need.

The head bloke of a large surveying company, which had invested a very large amount of money in equipment, just about fainted! [biggrin]

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A few test done moving the accuracy of GPS positioning and of course the Movie version of a evil dude doing in in James Bond was cool

"Tomorrow Never Dies"
It was not science - it was and is possible for the country, military or now a company to do. Star Link will not work over a board from a country which is currently being invaded as a very good example of the latter.

My running is not impacted really. Official clock times in both 5km Park runs and marathons almost always have discrepancies. The Clock time wins [thumbsupbig]

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Originally Posted by Saitch

Years ago, when the survey industry in Australia first started adopting satellite technology, I went to a seminar in which we were addressed by an American GPS boffin.

One of his remarks was that the US of A military could/would turn off or fiddle with the accuracy of the system, in time of need.

The head bloke of a large surveying company, which had invested a very large amount of money in equipment, just about fainted! [biggrin]

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Prime example was Operation Desert storm.
GPS offsets were deliberately made at that time.

Yes. While still possible today, it is extremely unlikely that GPS would be interfered with in a similar manner today.

There are two reasons for this.

1. Civil aviation and civil marine navigation is so dependent on GPS today that it would cause major worldwide disruptions.

2. A multitude of IT services, including mobile phones, are reliant on GPS time signals, and loss of this is likely to have a large number of issues, most of which are unpredictable.

Just a hint on how dependent we have become on complex systems that may have only a single point of failure. (GPS is designed as a resilient system with multiple backups for everything - the single failure point is that it could be completely switched off by a single decision in Washington!)

But there are other similar issues - one being the failure of the US NOTAM system yesterday that grounded flights throughout the USA for a couple of hours. This was probably because the system has multiple failure points, for example, it is almost certainly running on long obsolete hardware, using ancient software, with almost everyone who knew anything about it retired or dead. And nobody realised it was critical infrastructure, or if they did, was able to get funding to fix the situation.

I suspect there are many similar instances throughout our modern society.

Over the last couple of years there have been a number of instances in and around Europe where GPS has not behaved as expected. While fingers were pointed no country as officially named

GPS can be and is locally "spoofed" to disable it in a limited area. Typically used by US armed forces for exercises.