Author Archives: gaussling

About gaussling

Gaussling is a senior scientist in the chemical business. He occasionally breaks glassware, spreads confusion and has been known to generate new forms of hazardous waste. Gaussling also digs aerospace, geology, and community theatre.

China Aiming to Dominate Near Space

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2/10/23. News is breaking that China wants to militarize the near space environment, defined as 12 to 60 miles in altitude. News reports are appearing that claim that the balloon was carrying radio antennas capable of receiving and possibly geolocating radio transmissions over the US according to The Guardian. A senior State Department source said that a U2 flyby was able to determine that the balloon was being used for gathering signals intelligence.

Chinese balloon in rapid descent maneuver.

According to CNN, the military was aware of the balloon from the very beginning and avoided any unencrypted radio communications along the flight path.

The Chinese government reacted angrily to the downing of the balloon, continuing to maintain that it was for weather research. It seems to me that the public display of anger is mostly for internal consumption although there could be those elsewhere who actually believe the official story. From various reports, it appears that the Chinese government is embarrassed that it got caught in a lie. Like other autocracies, it screeches in displeasure when contradicted.

The balloon was judged to be absent any threat to the US by the North American Defense Command when it was discovered off Alaska. Shooting it down over the US was determined to be unsafe for the citizens below. Later, in a press conference, Gen. Glen VanHerck, Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command stated that the balloon debris that fell into the ocean is expected to be within a 1500 meter by 1500 meter field and in about 50 feet of water. The US Navy and Coast Guard are on station for recovery efforts.

From the press conference-

STAFF:  Let’s go to — let’s go to Jennifer Griffin, Fox.

Q:  Thanks, General VanHerck. Can I just ask you, on the record again, because there’s been a lot made in recent days still about why this was not shot down after it crossed or neared the Aleutian Islands? Can you just explain what you were watching then, what you were thinking then? What the decision-making process was. And why it — you didn’t have enough time to do so, if that was the case?

GEN. VANHERCK:  Thanks, Jennifer. It wasn’t time. It — the domain awareness was there as it approached Alaska. It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America, this is under my NORAD hat. And therefore, I could not take immediate action because it was not demonstrating hostile act or hostile intent. [emphasis mine] From there, certainly, provided information on the status of the whereabouts of the balloon. And moving forward, kept the department and the governor — the government of Canada in the loop as my NORAD, I have a boss in Canada as well. Over.

The General made an interesting comment about collecting intelligence-

Again, this is on record previously. We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese.

And with that said, you always have to balance that with the intel gain opportunity [emphasis mine]. And so there was a potential opportunity for us to collect intel where we had gaps on prior balloons, and so I would defer to the intel community, but this gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed, and I think you’ll see in the future that the — that time frame was well worth it’s value to collect.

A Kerfuffle over Science in Montana

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One of Montana’s ‘elite’ conservative thinkers, State Senator D. Emrich has submitted 2023 Senate Bill No. 235 to limit science instruction in Montana to the teaching of scientific fact and not the teaching of scientific theory. The Bill reads-

2023 Montana Legislature

SENATE BILL NO. 235

INTRODUCED BY D. EMRICH, S. HINEBAUCH, T. MCGILLVRAY

A BILL FOR AN ACT ENTITLED: “AN ACT ESTABLISHING REQUIREMENTS FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS; DEFINING “SCIENTIFIC FACT”; AND PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE EFFECTIVE DATE.”

WHEREAS, the purpose of K-12 education is to educate children in the facts of our world to better prepare them for their future and further education in their chosen field of study, and to that end children must know the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory; and

WHEREAS, a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation and is for higher education to explore, debate, and test to ultimately reach a scientific conclusion of fact or fiction.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:

NEW SECTION. Section 1. Requirements for science instruction in schools. (1) Science instruction may not include subject matter that is not scientific fact.

(2)        The board of public education may not include in content area standards any standard requiring curriculum or instruction in a scientific topic that is not scientific fact.

(3)        The superintendent of public instruction shall ensure that any science curriculum guides developed by the office of public instruction include only scientific fact.

(4)        (a) The trustees of a school district shall ensure that science curriculum and instructional materials, including textbooks, used in the district include only scientific fact.

(b)        Beginning July 1, 2025, a parent may appeal the trustees’ lack of compliance to subsection (4)(a) to the county superintendent and, subsequently, to the superintendent of public instruction under the provisions for the appeal of controversies in this title pursuant to 20-3-107 and 20-3-210.

(5)        The legislature intends for this section to be strictly enforced and narrowly interpreted.

(6)        As used in this section, “scientific fact” means an indisputable and repeatable observation of a natural phenomenon.

NEW SECTION. Section 2. Transition. The board of public education, the superintendent of public instruction, and school district boards of trustees shall fully implement the requirements of [section 1] no later than July 1, 2025.

NEW SECTION. Section 3. Codification instruction. [Section 1] is intended to be codified as an integral part of Title 20, chapter 7, part 1, and the provisions of Title 20, chapter 7, part 1, apply to [section 1].

NEW SECTION. Section 4. Effective date. [This act] is effective on passage and approval.

============================

A lot of the kerfuffle stems from a misunderstanding of the word “theory”. According to Wikipedia–

A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment.

Now for a moment of reductionism. This is a bill that seeks to control how people think and to prepare a cozy nest for religious teaching in the schools. Florida is off and running with this ball. They are aiming at what they believe is the source- public education. Youth tend to be hungry for new ideas and open vistas. Science naturally fills some of this void. Science education aims to inform people on how the universe works based on measurement and analysis. You might suppose that this would appear to be neutral in terms of ideology. It doesn’t rely on ancient writings and the acceptance of a spirit world. It is the absence of theology in science that ruffles feathers.

It seems plain that the sponsors are focused on a few concepts that are most troublesome to them, evolution being one of them. Perhaps Critical Race Theory is another. Christians in particular have been riled up about evolution ever since the notion first appeared. You can explain the biochemistry and biology of evolution to religious followers until you are blue in the face. Unless they are willing to dive into a personal journey of discovery to learn about it for themselves, they will never see that it makes sense without having to invoke a universe driven by magic.

It isn’t clear that this bill will work its way into law. However, it would seem to be another thinly veiled attempt to pierce the delicate membrane between church and state. My guess is that the GOP Senator must be checking off all of the boxes to establish his conservative bona fides to the lunatic fringe.

We are all born ignorant. Some choose to live out their lives and die that way too.

Poor Dumb Bast*rds

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An article in The Telegraph notes that Taliban fighters who have moved to Kabul are already fed up with traffic congestion, boring jobs and crime.

Huzaifa, a 24-year-old former sniper, was enrolled in the capital’s police department on arrival. He echoed his comrade’s disdain for office life.

“The Taliban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Life’s become so wearisome; you do the same things every day,” he said.

Another former insurgent said- “I sometimes miss the jihad life for all the good things it had”.

The poor dumb bastards. After driving out and humiliating the West, they are left to face bad traffic and thieves in the big city.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has been scraping away the rights of women in the country. Women are now second-class citizens in Afghanistan. It is the only country in the world that forbids women and girls from attending secondary school and university. Male health care workers are now banned from caring for women. The health situation for women in Afghanistan is dire. On top of this women are required to be covered head to toe in public and escorted by a male chaperone virtually everywhere they go. Punishment for infractions can be vicious. Outside aid by NGOs or other influence has been curtailed by the Taliban.

This kind of malignant patriarchy is suffocating Afghan women and has stunted their development. The large scale maltreatment of women is a crime against humanity validated by male selfishness and stupidity. You’re right- I don’t understand Afghan culture and history. I’m sure there is much positive to be said for it. You can try to be respectful of the culture and beliefs of others, but at some point it can cross the line into plain old cruelty.

Filthy Lucre, Again

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Yet another reprint of posts from the past, this time from April 11, 2008.

As usual, Th’ Gaussling’s most interesting observations of the ACS meeting are of a proprietary nature and will have to go with me to the grave. Our student and academician friends can expound openly on what lights their fires. The lusty satisfaction of compelling oratory in the darkened halls of convention centers is part of the reward for the cardinals of the academy.  Members of the merchant class have to be satisfied with better dining.

People who are involved in personnel issues often speak of an employees “deliverables” as their work product. For those lucky enough to be in the academy, the work product includes teaching young minds, conducting research, and participating in the dissemination of the results in the form of papers and conferences.

For we chemists who did the deal with the devil in exchange for filthy lucre, our performance is rated somewhat differently.  Like academics, our performance metric only starts with some understanding of science. Once it is possible to begin understanding a thing, the task of transforming a process or material property into an item of commerce begins. In the chemical industry we do the most important reaction of all- the transformation of chemicals into money.

The part of the brain that sees a stick on the forest floor that resembles a tool is the same part of the brain that scans a molecule and sees latent functionality or value. The extraction of value from a composition or a process is a complex anthropological activity. Product development is anthropological because it involves the use of tools and organizational structure to provide products or services that are exchanged between groups.  

An industrial science group has to isolate value in some material property and contrive to bring some product or service into being.  But to get it to market, the science tribe has to cooperate with those with other skills. Organizations often resemble a confederation of tribes who cooperate with complex rituals and methods of exchange.

M 7.8 Quake in Central Turkey

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The US Geological Survey (USGS) has technical information on the Feb.6, 2023, magnitude 7.8 earthquake in southern Turkey. The event happened at 1:17:35 UTC and the epicenter located at 37.174°N 37.032°E at 17.9 km depth. The strike slip quake occurred in a seismically active region near the triple-junction of the Anatolia, Arabia, and Africa plates. As of this writing the exact location isn’t clear but the USGS suspects it happened either along the Eastern Anatolian Fault zone or the Dead Sea transform fault zone.

Image from Wikipedia. Dead Sea transform.
Image from Wikipedia. East Anatolian fault.

According to USGS, the East Anatolian fault accommodates the westward motion of Turkey towards the Aegean Sea and the Dead Sea Transform accommodates the northward motion of the Arabian plate.

The quake was reportedly felt as far away as Istanbul, Tbilisi and Cairo.

National Aphorism Day, Redux

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Sometimes I repost essays out of pure laziness and other times because the content seems apt. This one is from 7/7/07.

Below are a few quotations that patch together in a particular way.  

Here is a great quote lifted from the internet. With any luck it is accurate-

 “They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.” (Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose)

Here is another good one-

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)

And then there is this-

“Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas F–king Edison.” (Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon)

Neal Stephenson’s book, Cryptonomicon, is quite good though ponderously large.

Below is a comment from the notorious Uncle Al-

Uncle Al

Mediocrity is a vice of the doomed.

Beware any society that has grown comfortable within its ancestors’ nightmares.

To guarantee a good product, bill Customer Support costs to Design Engineering’s account.


“Freedom” said the policeman, and played baseball with his truncheon.

When swine vote, the man with the slop bucket is always elected swineherd(er) no matter how much slaughtering he does.

What is the foundation of American zero-goal education, corporate management, and government? Mud packs more tightly than jewels.

Social engineering: How easily we obtain what we do not want.

First ecstasy, then laundry.

Lost Capsule of Cs-137 Recovered in Western Australia

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According to Reuters, a 6 mm diameter by 8 mm long capsule of radioactive Cesium-137 was lost along the 1400 km road between a storage facility in suburban Perth and Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri iron mine in the Kimberley region of western Australia. The source was lost sometime between January 12 and the 25th, 2023. The capsule had been attached to a piece of equipment in a crate but evidently vibrated loose in transport from a road train– a multi-trailer vehicle- and fell off. While the activity was not disclosed the source was described as one that “emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour”.

On February 1, 2023, the source was reportedly located after a week-long search along the 1400 km road. It was discovered by a vehicle moving at 70 kph with special detection equipment.

US LNG output to double by 2027

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According to BloombergNEF, the United States is on course to double its natural gas liquefaction (LNG) capacity by 2027. US export capacity is expected to rise to 169 million metric tons per year with the opening of 3 new projects slated for funding approval this year. They are- Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG, Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG, and NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG. This new capacity will place the US well ahead of Qatar in annual production.

Appendix–

LNG should not be confused with LPG, Liquified Petroleum Gas. LPG is a mixture of the somewhat heavier hydrocarbons propane, propylene, butylene, isobutane and n-butane. LPG is a fuel gas and can be used as an aerosol propellant and refrigerant.

LNG is composed mainly of methane (CH4) with a smaller amount of ethane (C2H6). Lesser amounts of propane and butane are isolated and sent to a separate stream. Natural gas is “sweetened” prior to cooling to remove corrosive hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbon dioxide (CO2) gases as well as helium, mud, water, oil and mercury. Once the impurities are removed, the remaining methane/ethane mixture is cooled to −162 °C for bulk transport. On arrival at its destination, it must undergo a regasification process. In some locations seawater can be used to vaporize the LNG for injection into pipelines.

As an alternative to sea water heat transfer for regasification, LNG can be utilized for its “cold energy” potential. One application uses low temperature LNG as a refrigeration coolant for producing liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. Another use of the cold energy is to cool the exhaust of a gas turbine in a closed joule cycle with argon as the fluid.

Since we are talking about gaseous hydrocarbons, there is also a category of liquid hydrocarbons called condensates that accompany the production of natural gas and must be channeled into a separate processing stream because, well, they are liquid. Raw natural gas straight out of the ground may have varying amounts of condensates-

  • Crude oil wells can produce natural gas called associated gas and condensates may be entrained in the gas flow.
  • Dry gas wells produce gas that have no associated liquids.
  • Condensate wells produce natural gas with associate natural gas liquid.

Wikipedia explains the condensate situation in greater detail.

Furious Russians on Television

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In following the savage Putin war against Ukraine I have become partial to watching short video’s on TVP’s Military Mind via YouTube. TVP is Polish public television. They have unique and up to date war footage and coverage every episode. The war footage they get is mostly drone or smart phone in origin and is pretty rough but it gives a sense of what it is like on the ground. If you are expecting politically balanced war reporting, this is not the place to get it. This Polish station is clearly wary of Russia, or Putin at least, and it’s geopolitical intentions.

Recently there was a particularly disturbing clip on TVP taken from a Russian television show called The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov . Solovyov is a state television mouthpiece for Putin. The format has guests standing at widely separated podiums and taking turns venting their sometimes murderous outrage. In it was a guest named Yevgeny Satanovsky who is President of the Institute of the Middle East who gave a very calm and matter-of-fact opinion on how to deal with their true enemies, the Americans. Russian TV has been startingly vocal about their perception of the “American threat” and what we deserve for standing up against them. From the Daily Beast article–

“First of all, our main enemy is certainly the United States. What does the U.S. react to? They react to two things: the threat of physical annihilation and the liquidation of a certain number of military personnel. What we know based on wars in Vietnam and Korea is that several tens of thousands of annihilated American servicemen will cause the public opinion in the U.S. to be severely strained. I will repeat: not several thousand, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, but a certain number of tens of thousands. Who will liquidate them, where they will be liquidated and in what way is completely irrelevant, but this is one of the objectives if we want to influence the American leadership. We have absolutely nothing to lose.”

Satanovsky concluded that based on how the Americans fought in Korea and Viet Nam, America could be counted on to limit it’s involvement up to a maximum of several “tens of thousands” of US casualties. They feign awareness of our dirty little secret of squeamishness about the body count in foreign engagements. Satanovsky said several times that Russia must “liquidate” several tens of thousands of Americans in order to stop America’s support of Ukraine. This is the key to American disengagement he says.

Resorting to grotesque threats in the same program, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, addressed the West with a line from an old Soviet movie: “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt when we cut your throat. We’ll slice just once and you’re in heaven… Our victory will take place wherever the Russian soldier will stop—and wherever he stops, from there he will never leave.”

Americanist Dmitry Drobnitsky commented: “In our country, we embraced one American we wouldn’t want to kill: that would be Tucker Carlson.” This is pathetic beyond words.

All of this is content generated by the host and his guests. But, their sentiments clearly are in line with the Kremlin’s interest in popular support for Putin’s war and antagonism towards the west. Much public sentiment seems to be tied up in national loss of face from the Russian military’s poor performance in the war but not so much in the actual need for the war. If you watch a few of these episodes you’ll see guests venting their white hot rage at America for it’s support of Ukraine peppered with references to WWIII and nuclear war with the west.

Propaganda, /ˌpräpəˈɡandə/, noun: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Americans should view some of this Russian television content to get an idea of the anti-American, anti-western bile being spewed continuously by the Russian propaganda apparatus. The Kremlin has been a master of propaganda for many years. They know the value of repeating big lies over and over. Unfortunately, certain Americans have been using this technique on our own population as well.

Hegemony, /həˈjemənē,ˈhejəˌmōnē/, noun: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others. “Germany was united under Prussian hegemony after 1871”

At present, Russia is publicly stamping their feet in outrage over western interference in their dirty little invasion, making every threat they can imagine. At the same time, actors for the state continue to conduct wave after wave of attacks on the west over the internet. Others are covertly interfering with our politics by trying to destabilize democracy. The overall goal the Russian’s share with China is to deflate American hegemony in the world and replace it with their own. You know, just your basic quest for world domination. It never ends.

100-year concrete aging experiment ends in 2023

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Somebody was thinking ahead at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1910. Civil engineering professor and later Dean of the College of Engineering, Morton O. Withey (1882-1961), began an experiment on the effect of age and environment on what was then a relatively new building material- concrete. Now, in 2023, a second 100-year batch of experimental castings are coming to completion.

Source: The Chi Phi Chakett, 1955

Withey, a 1904 Dartmouth graduate, began casting samples of various compositions of cement, sand and stone in 1910 when he initially cast 450 of the 6 x 12-inch cylinders. He cast other sets of samples in 1923 and 1937 for a total of over 2500 cylindrical castings.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal the 1910 samples were tested at the 100 year mark and the 1937 samples were tested at the 50 year mark. A comparison of the 1910 samples revealed that both the samples stored in the air and in water strengthened in similar increments for a time and thereafter the samples stored in water continued to strengthen. Exposure of the dry samples to carbon dioxide lead to chipping. The dry 1910 samples yielded to 75 tons of pressure whereas the wet samples yielded at up to 100 tons of pressure. This disparity is thought to arise from continuous hydration of the water-wet samples.

Since the time when the samples were cast, the chemistry of cement and concrete has changed to where the engineering data is no longer of interest for ongoing work. However, the experiment has broadened the envelop of known properties of various concrete compositions.

A wealth of interesting information on the properties of concrete can be found at the Wikipedia website.