Comments on: They're not available from Edmund Scientific

They're not available from Edmund Scientific

Kronos_to_Earth — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:42:32 -0800

Later this year, geophysicist Dan Lathrop's DIY Planet Earth will be filled with liquid sodium, weigh in at 26 tons, and will be spun-up to 80mph at its equator in an effort to discover how the earth's magnetic field is generated. Currently undergoing tests, even those can be pretty impressive.

By: hangashore

hangashore — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:54:47 -0800

filled with liquid sodium, weigh in at 26 tons, and will be spun-up to 80mph "And we figured it'd look so pretty if we floated it out into the middle of a pond."

By: tss

tss — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:55:41 -0800

If this geomagnetism experiment fails, I hope the lab next door has an Apple 2 handy.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:58:53 -0800

"We are essentially trying to build planetary cores in the lab." And hey, even if it doesn't work, we'll be able to do about a year's worth of laundry in this thing!

By: Mblue

Mblue — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:31:32 -0800

"The Earth's magnetic field is anything but simple," he says, pointing out that the field has flipped directions many times over the ages. Fascinating.

By: DU

DU — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:33:33 -0800

I somehow read that at first as them filling THE GUY with liquid sodium. And I was like...whoa, this guy is hardcore. Or liquid core, anyway.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:34:09 -0800

Given that the Earth's core is believed to be primarily iron, why sodium? Sure, it's got a low melting point but generating liquid sodium is a royal pain and then there's that pesky little reactivity thing that Hangshore alluded to. I thought it might have something to do with orbital filling, but even that doesn't make any sense.

By: jewzilla

jewzilla — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:35:26 -0800

The youtube comments on that second link are incredibly intelligent! What's going on? Do I have a brain tumor? Are we in the matrix? Maybe we should start posting misspelled racist graffiti here to keep the universe in balance.

By: DU

DU — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:41:08 -0800

Given that the Earth's core is believed to be primarily iron, why sodium? The youtube comments on that second link are incredibly intelligent! The first is answered by the second! Survey says....MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:52:19 -0800

Every time I hear about someone doing anything at all with tons of liquid sodium, I feel like running for the hills. Christ, that stuff is dangerous!

By: The Tensor

The Tensor — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:58:49 -0800

During the test, the sphere makes truly excellent Krell-machine moaning sounds. Sounds like Big Science to me!

By: steef

steef — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:02:33 -0800

All mad science experiments would be improved by having one of things that makes a spark and goes "Bzzzt." Still, pretty impressive.

By: DU

DU — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:10:42 -0800

..one of things that makes a spark and goes "Bzzzt." That's good during the experimentation phase, but at implementation time most customers prefer an amplified bing machine.

By: subgear

subgear — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:31:52 -0800

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you!

By: meinvt

meinvt — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:07:13 -0800

Every time I hear about someone doing anything at all with tons of liquid sodium, I feel like running for the hills. Christ, that stuff is dangerous! Don't worry, according to the article: Water can actually make things worse — Lathrop's team has disabled the sprinkler system. Sounds like they have it all under control...

By: loquacious

loquacious — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:10:29 -0800

I totally saw this thing in one of the weird labs in that Buckaroo Banzai movie, but I think they were actually using it to do laundry. Lab coats, lasers, ectoplasmic interdimensional slime, you know how it goes.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:18:23 -0800

"and will be spun-up to 80mph at its equator" What they don't say is that he will be using the back left tire on his jacked-up pickup truck to do it, or who will be holding his beer at the time. Yee-haw, earth science!

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:53:28 -0800

Hey, if it works, his mom will be so proud, she can stick the refrigerator on IT!

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:56:45 -0800

That's a great photo of him in the first link, the slightly-squinty, manically smiling expression that says "mad scientist".

By: cell divide

cell divide — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:51:33 -0800

I was initially confused when it talked about the pole being in Canada, I then realized they were talking about the magentic pole.

By: effugas

effugas — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:16:22 -0800

Class Goat-- ...every time? Is this common for you?

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:09:36 -0800

Effugas, not common, because I don't hear about such things very often.

By: Slap*Happy

Slap*Happy — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:20:57 -0800

Most of the time, lab equipment is a bunch of boring plastic phials, or machined aluminum tubes with random wires sticking out, sitting there, doing science quietly and all to itself. Then there's this, which is easily the coolest science experiment special effect in a movie I've seen all year - only it's not a movie at all, it's real. They are using that massive, spinning, thrumming, ominously bronze-colored sphere to do real science, and not just any science! Science investigating mysterious magnetic fields on a planetary scale! What's better? It's filled with a superheated substance that explodes when it gets wet. "They said my plan to recreate the core of the earth was mad! Laugh at me, will they? I'll show them... I'll show them all!"

By: Free word order!

Free word order! — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:20:53 -0800

Oh no, the magnetic sphere reversed the polarity of observing internet communities. FAKE, FAKE, FAKE!!1!

By: adipocere

adipocere — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:09:20 -0800

I, too, am in the WHY SODIUM DAMN?! camp. Okay, mercury would be no fun, and probably costly. I'm sure cost is a factor in most of the other metals, but ... I would think that the prohibitive cost of compensating for the danger of molten sodium would outweight the benefits from a low materials cost. No indium-bismuth alloy? Wood's metal? Cerrosafe? You can even mix potassium and sodium to make them liquid at room temperature. That would seem to satisfy any "one free electron" requirement and it wouldn't have to be REALLY FREAKING HOT.

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:16:46 -0800

The magentic pole is in San Francisco. Or T-Mobile headquarters, whichever.

By: Slap*Happy

Slap*Happy — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:48:46 -0800

adipocere - This is so when they unleash it on an unsuspecting populace, Superman can't just go and hit it, because it would spray molten sodium over all the innocent bystanders, with the added benefit that it would be immune to his super-breath! This is a science experiment that works for me on so many levels.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:11:09 -0800

A sodium fire can't just be put out with water. Water can actually make things worse — Lathrop's team has disabled the sprinkler system. That's an understatement**. Sodium + water--> FIRE! It seems to me that they've made a very nice bomb. Glad the sprinklers are off, but this still sounds a bit off. Wouldn't the sodium being liquid make it more prone to reaction, should something go awry and it comes into contact with water? Are they just being extremely careful? The part where they spin the thing adds to my alarm. ** Skip ahead to about 1:30 to avoid lecture and camera issues. The short and sweet version.

By: quin

quin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:43:13 -0800

I watched that second video and I gotta ask, are we sure he isn't a Mad Scientist or maybe an Evil Genius or something? Because that big spinning ball filled with liquid sodium... that sounds a bit like some Bond villain weather-machine, planet destroying shit right there.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:15:30 -0800

I'm saying. Superman would fly the fuck away from this thing. Every chemistry professor covers this. If they do demos, it's the most exciting lecture all year, unless there's another one with liquid nitrogen. One professor I know blew tiles off the lab ceiling doing this. It's one of the first things chemistry students try if they can get access to a little sodium-- they run outside and throw it into a snowbank, a pond, a puddle, a bucket. They blow shit up for fun with a little bit of this stuff. And that's mostly harmless. But this is a lot of it. And liquid. And spinning. I did find their lab webpage. They seem to be tracking the media coverage. Maybe they'll address the sodium concern.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:20:24 -0800

I would have gone with solder, myself. But the melting point is a lot higher. (Sodium melts at 98 degrees C; solder somewhere in the range of 200 degrees C.)

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:22:14 -0800

Everyone is making a big deal over the dangers of molten sodium. By way of comparison, consider that the reason the outer core of the earth remains molten is because of the radioactive decay of thorium, uranium, and radioactive potassium in the mantle. To heat other metal with similar conductivity to their molten state and then spin it around is a non-trivial engineering problem. But this is a very exciting experiment, if it works. It isn't immediately obvious why Earth even has a a magnetic field, as Mars and Venus do not. The magnetic field prevents the solar wind from blasting away the atmosphere, so without a magnetic field, there would be no life on Earth.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:34:41 -0800

Sodium filled valves. It's not as crazy as it sounds, they have a pretty good margin of safety.

By: pombe

pombe — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:59:46 -0800

I got to visit Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-1) a couple years ago. It had a liquid sodium-potassium coolant system which has since been used in a lot of other reactors. I imagine there's a lot of experience with handling liquid sodium out there. In one of the links I read that they were using sodium for this experiment because of its high conductivity. EBR-1 is awesome, by the way.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:31:33 -0800

But this is a very exciting experiment, if it works. It isn't immediately obvious why Earth even has a a magnetic field, as Mars and Venus do not. The magnetic field prevents the solar wind from blasting away the atmosphere, so without a magnetic field, there would be no life on Earth. Which, of course, explains why Venus has no atmosphere, right? As to why Earth has a magnetic field, I didn't think it was a huge mystery. The details, of course, remain to be worked out, but the general reason is because the Earth has a lot more metal than Venus or Mars, and because a combination of radioactive decay and tidal flexing has kept the core particularly hot and fluid. And all of that is because the Earth got hit by something about the size of Mars early in its life, gaining a lot more metal and losing rock, which eventually coalesced into the Moon. Actually, when comparing the Earth to Venus, the interesting question is why the Earth has so little atmosphere. Air pressure at the surface of Venus is 90 times that of Earth. Where did ours go? I've thought a lot about that, and it seems to me that the Moon is the key to regulating Earth's atmosphere. Tidal flexing keeps plate tectonics going, which means volcanoes keep erupting, producing new atmosphere. Meanwhile, the Moon acts like a gravitational vacuum cleaner. When air molecules rise to the point between Earth and the Moon which is equipotential gravitationally, they can go into orbit around the Moon, and thus get a free ride to the far side of the moon, outside the Earth's magnetic field, where the solar wind can blow them away. The interesting thing is that those two effects scale differently. The amount of atmosphere is not a factor of the amount of vulcanism. But when our atmosphere is thicker, then the Moon sucks more of it away. So over the long term (tens of millions of years) there's a tendency to reach an equilibrium where the amount of new atmosphere resulting from volcanoes equals the amount removed by the Moon.