Thursday Throughput: Caldera Edition
[ThTh1] The Yellowstone caldera is the science disaster that the press likes to terrify the public with when asteroids are out of season. As with asteroids, the danger is quite real. The caldera has erupted in the past with an energy that makes Mount St. Helens look like a summer breeze. And if it erupted today, depending on the size, the fallout could cause a global famine and massive starvation. We could be looking at billions of deaths.
However, we have no indications that the caldera is going to blow anytime soon. We don’t understand it very well, of course, but we monitor it intensely. It probably will explode at some point. And it could happen tomorrow. But it could happen any time in the next million years.
Well, this week, a new study identified two new massive eruptions in Yellowstone’s past. What does this mean? Well, it may indicate that Yellowstone has been getting less active over the last few tens of millions of years. If so, this means we are not “overdue” for an eruption. We’re in a period where the caldera is calming down.
This conclusion is tentative, of course. We’re still learning about the caldera and its past. But perhaps this is one cataclysm a little less likely to hit in 2020.
[ThTh2] Fast Radio Bursts are getting more mysterious every day.
[ThTh3] The WHO first claimed asymptomatic spread of COVID was rare, then walked it back. ORAC has the details.
[ThTh4] Great. Now I have imposter syndrome about having imposter syndrome.
[ThTh5] The headline is misleading, but the mystery is real. Theoretically, the universe should be half-antimatter and it should annihilate matter. So why isn’t it?
[ThT6] Lockdowns may have averted half a billion infections, including 60 million in the US. Color me somewhat dubious, though. That’s a gigantic number, probably five times the number of infections we have had so far. Of course, there’s still lots of time for those infections to occur anyway. But this is yet another argument for having done the lockdowns. Imagine what would have happened to the economy if COVID had been five times worse.
[ThTh7] Lizard turns up after a 130-year absence. It wasn’t missing because we thought it was extinct. It was missing because it was so damned rare it took another century to find one. Even with seven billion of us, much our world remains unexplored.
ThTh5 I don’t understand. This must be an old article.
I am quite sure Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler-Cooper were awarded the 2019 Physics Nobel Prize for their discovery of Super-Asymmetry, which, among other things, explains the discrepancy in symmetry between matter and antimatter.Report
Took me a second …Report
ThTh3: Did not realize there was a definitional difference between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission.
Huh…Report
Also, Orac is right that the messaging regarding pretty much anything and everything to do with Covid has been a train wreck. Much of that is on the medical/scientific community, but a healthy portion is also on our lazy/hack science journalists.Report
Pre-symptomatic transmission is a very common phenomenon in other diseases. It makes sense that it happens here.
A case was reported in Germany (I think) of an “asymptomatic” woman that transmitted Covid-19, and was later proven to be a pre-symptomatic/mild symptomatic case.
I think the challenge is trying to identify and trace truly asymptomatic infected patients, since, almost by definition, we can only catch them later via antibodies tests, when trace and contact is almost impossible. In the German case mentioned above, the woman had recently returned from China, and that is how several cases were traced back to business meetings with her.
I also don’t think we understand how asymptomatic infection works in Covid-19. Is it like the immune system is able to detect and kill the virus immediately after infection, because of some residual immunity from a previous flu of flu vaccine, before the virus multiplies enough to be transmittable, or is it more that the body does not react to the virus presence “at all” while letting the virus multiply, until, eventually, the immune system clears it out in a couple of weeks? In the first case, the carrier would likely not transmit the virus, in the latter, it would.Report
Estimates seem to be that one-third of colds these days are caused by common human coronaviruses. There is speculation that the Covid-19 virus doesn’t affect children — who pass colds around like candy — as much because of partial resistance due to prior CHC infections.Report
This is one of those things where natural language gets in the way of scientifically precise language. When I think of asymptomatic, that covers people who never show symptoms as well as people who merely haven’t shown symptoms yet.
Scientists use the term very differently. One means one thing the other means something else entirely.
Heck, that’s confusing even now. “What do they mean by ‘asymptomatic’?”, I’ll now ask for the next decade when I encounter the word.Report
This is one of the reasons I don’t get worried when I hear the media report X many new cases of Covid. AFACT, all that means is that there is a positive test result, but it says nothing regarding how serious the case is.
The more interesting number really is how many ICU beds are full and how many deaths are positively* caused by Covid.
*i.e. clearly a death from Covid, and not a GSW with indications of a respiratory infection.Report
ThTh5: I’ve started having deep doubts about the Big Bang. Too many stars are showing up that don’t have enough lithium and helium, and I can’t think of a way that hydrogen could be naturally distilling out of the early atomic mix to explain that.Report
Joke aside, this is one of the most interesting problems in physics.
My first exposure to the existence of antimatter was in a Superman comic, and since I was a wee nerd before becoming a full grown one, I checked it in the encyclopedia and was surprised antiparticles did exist and did destruct each other in a burst of energy.
For a long time I was under the impression that antimatter was a byproduct of nuclear reactions. I was only in my college days that I understood there should have been 50-50 matter/antimatter at the Big Bang, too.
Somewhere, symmetry breaks down, and the hypothesis that gravity might be the clue (since we don’t know of antigravitons (though we actually probably don’t know that there gravitons either )) makes at least intuitive sense. Of course, in real life (sic), super-asymmetry is built upon string theory, so there’s that, too.
In any case, I am really curious about the explanation. I hope they get something soon enoughReport
ThT6 – This is one of those spots that politics rubs up hard against science. And as with almost all things* politics wins. It explains anti-vaxers, anti-climate changers, pro-climate changers, and a whole hose of other things.
ThT1 – I think I have heard about Yellowstone being about to blow for at least 40 years. The constant reporting of this does the media no favors in the credibility dept.
*the saying that politics is the personal is very true, as long as there isn’t a political consensus. and it will always try to form that consensus. People ignore this at their peril and ignorance.Report
It’s the same with earthquakes.
In geologic time, “tomorrow” and “1,000 years from tomorrow” are essentially the same moment, so “we’re due for another eruption/ earthquake” is a completely truthful headline for…about a thousand years.Report
ThTh1: Tomorrow (a) I could be hit by a runaway bus, (b) I could be diagnosed with terminal cancer, or (c) the Yellowstone Caldera could erupt with the wind in the right direction and bury me in hot ash. I know which one I’m not worrying about.Report
Keith Moon did less damage to hotel rooms than the WHO has done to its credibility.Report