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Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

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Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#101

Post by idlewords »

phoenixstrike wrote: post #39
idlewords wrote: post #6

The key claim in the paper ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12310.pdf ) is that there are detectable changes in cosmic ray activity around 15 days before major seismic events. One posited mechanism is that stuff happens deep in the earth that affects the magnetic field first, and then kicks off some big earthquake. But they don't rule out loopier ideas (like sunspot activity driving changes in the Earth's dynamo that the…

This is good research. >One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact this is how most science is done. This is pure experiment - try things and see what comes up. You're conflating…

Randomly sifting through data in search of patterns is not an experiment in the usual sense. With a big enough data set, you're guaranteed to find one in a billion, one in a trillion events by random chance.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#102

Post by idlewords »

zackees wrote: post #81
vanderZwan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-argument is equally simple: a sail is a surface. The earth is a sphere. A sphere made of solid rock the size of a sail will be even less moved by a 15 mph breeze than this hypothetical person.

We aren't talking about the earth being blown off course though, just that there is a large amount of energy that was previously unaccounted for and that this energy is large enough to trigger an earth quake at vulnerable parts.

Do the back-of-the-envelope computation of how much energy reaches Earth from a coronal mass ejection and see how well your idea holds up. (a typical flare is 10^16 grams of matter moving at about 450 km/sec)

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#103

Post by idlewords »

miika wrote: post #96

This was discussed quite a bit after 2004 asian tsunami, which was triggered by an earthquake near Antarctica and there was also some massive gamma ray burst (or something) occurring about the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a connected universe. No thing is an island.

Spoken like a true Scorpio

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#104

Post by admax88qqq »

idlewords wrote: post #101
phoenixstrike wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good research. >One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact this is how most science is done. This is pure experiment - try things and see what comes up. You're conflating…

Randomly sifting through data in search of patterns is not an experiment in the usual sense. With a big enough data set, you're guaranteed to find one in a billion, one in a trillion events by random chance.

Finding correlations is not the same as finding one in a trillion events.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#105

Post by s1artibartfast »

idlewords wrote: post #101
phoenixstrike wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good research. >One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact this is how most science is done. This is pure experiment - try things and see what comes up. You're conflating…

Randomly sifting through data in search of patterns is not an experiment in the usual sense. With a big enough data set, you're guaranteed to find one in a billion, one in a trillion events by random chance.

Yes, but you can test those signals against future data and see if they are accurate.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#106

Post by idlewords »

formerly_proven wrote: post #89
idlewords wrote: post #6

The key claim in the paper ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12310.pdf ) is that there are detectable changes in cosmic ray activity around 15 days before major seismic events. One posited mechanism is that stuff happens deep in the earth that affects the magnetic field first, and then kicks off some big earthquake. But they don't rule out loopier ideas (like sunspot activity driving changes in the Earth's dynamo that the…

> One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way ... just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. That's just p-hacking.

Thank you! That's the term I was looking for but couldn't remember.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#107

Post by TechBro8615 »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #30
jcims wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4oz pull that moves a trigger a small faction of an inch can release a thousand foot pounds of energy.

Yes, but we're talking about a system in which thousands of 4oz pulls are happening in different directions at any given moment. You model doesn't only have to explain why a particular pull triggered it, but also why the other thousand didn't . Throwing a cocked handgun into the dryer is different than a leaf falling on it.

This guy put a cocked handgun into the dryer and it didn't go off: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7es3zYRYLTs

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#108

Post by jandrewrogers »

idlewords wrote: post #21
hammock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the mechanism is true, could this information be used by humans to control earthquakes? There have always been a lot of theories around projects like HAARP that have the capability to send a lot of energy deep into the earth.

Pumping lots of water into the ground is a pretty reliable way to get earthquakes. Notice that Oklahoma, which used to be seismically inert, is now a bright red spot on the USGS map of the United States. This is due almost entirely to petrochemical-related human activity.

Oklahoma is not seismically inert. The region has active fault systems that have always generated earthquakes. Injecting fluids into faults can trigger earthquakes, essentially pulling future earthquakes forward in time.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#109

Post by busyant »

dekhn wrote: post #83
busyant wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I once had an advisor edit my draft over night and submit it as a paper with a bunch of juiced up numbers that weren't true, I'm stating the obvious here, but that is not a good advisor in any sense. It must have been difficult to leave, but it would be the only reasonable response.

Well, if I'd wanted a career in science and didn't have ethics, then they would have been a good advisor because they knew exactly how to ride their wave of falsehood to a professorship at Berkeley. It wasn't hard to leave, I just contacted another professor at berkeley and joined their lab the next day. The new advisor, while fairly dull, was methodic and pedantic and the idea of faking or juicing results would prob…

So, you're basically telling me that there is (or was) a bioinformatics prof @ Berkeley who was fucking with the data.

Yeeeesh.

I guess my science career was relatively clean. I knew a few fellow students who got screwed over by their advisors in the sense that the advisors demanded an excessive amount of publishable work to graduate.

And I saw plenty of personality conflicts, many of which could be lain squarely in the lap of the advisor.

But I never saw or heard of outright fraud, which makes me happy.

I'm not naïve. I know fraud is everywhere. And I know there's a lot of pressure to produce interesting results. I probably just got lucky.

edit: for anyone taking the plunge into grad school. I made my choice of advisor largely based on his reputation of looking out for his students ... and on his research as a secondary consideration. That may have helped me.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#110

Post by nick__m »

jjk166 wrote: post #64
jjtheblunt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when people say "orders of magnitude" do they always mean base 10? (i'm thinking of how decibels are a log scale sort of thing wrt power, where "orders of magnitude" used as a cliche probably does not mean what it would be read as.)

Base 10 is certainly the default. Decibels are base 10; more specifically a Bel is 1 factor of 10, and a decibel is 1 tenth of that, ie 10^0.1.

fractional exponents don't work like that, for example x^½ is the square root of x. You probably meant 10^-1 !
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