Rant on the news

[glacierscout]

I usually don't post on the news, even though I follow the news on TV, newspapers and a variety of blogs. But sometimes, I just have to comment on the idiocy of newscasters. case in point, the coal mine disaster in Utah. They've just announced that a "seismic bounce" killed three of the rescuers and injured six more. The media is acting

Comments

[cheshire23]

Thanks for posting this!

When I was an undergraduate student, a salt mine near the college I attended collapsed. It was originally reported as an earthquake, and quite a few people believed that the "earthquake" caused the mine collapse, not vice-versa. Retreat mining wasn't the issue there, but use of a small-pillar technique might have been.

(The really scary thing is that since this mine had been so stable for so long, negotiations to use it as a nuclear waste facility were underway when the collapse happened.

[glacierscout]

The problem with salt is that it flows. All rocks are really plastics, and will deform if stressed for long enough. An example is marble benches left out for a century or so. The two uprights look just the same, but the slab across the uprights will bend by an inch or two, just due to gravity. Glass in old windows flows as well, and individual panes will be twice as thick at the bottom of the windo than they are at the top in about two centuries.

Salt is one of the most mobile of materials. It doesn't explode the way that coal will, but as the remaining salt pillar flows outward into the mined-out areas, the roof of the mine will collapse.

Perversely, storage of nuclear wastes might have helped, if they had done it long before the mine collapsed. If you pack the mined out areas with waste, and seal it in with concrete, the salt will still flow around the waste, sealing it in, but the salt would not have flowed far enough to let the mine collapse. It would be better to do it in a new mine, designed for the purpose of storing

[thenewrobroy]

This is very informative - I'm no good with physical sciences and prefer to stick to computers, but this is easy to understand and comprehend and certainly gives more insight than the news as to what happened.

Thanks!

[glacierscout]

Thanks for saying it was easy to comprehend.

The question i came closest to failing on my Ph. D. qualifying exam was an essay question, which told me to set up a team to investigate the suitability of a site for a nuclear power plant. The question asked me what each member of the team should study and why. After I listed all of the geological specialties, i suggested having an intelligent person on the panel who was NOT a geologist, to read and approve of the final report, since it would be read by non-geologists. In a fit of creativity, I suggested my wife as an example.

In the subsequent oral exam, the professor who had asked the essay question said that it was an imaginative solution, but he'd have to dock at least a few points from the answer. His reason was "I've met your wife. You're grossly overestimating the intelligence of your readers if you use her as your editor."

She, on the other hand, was pleased with the compliment.

[vaudy]

Thanks for the explanation; I was watching that on the news this morning, and they did make it sound like some sort of random seismic activity caused the collapse. It sounded very fishy to me.

[glacierscout]

You were right to think it was fishy. Yes, there was an earthquake at the mine when the original collapse occurred, and there have been over a dozen since then, the most recent during the collapse last night. However, if an earthquake caused either of the collapses, the seismologists would have seen TWO "seismic" (noise events), the natural earthquake, followed by the mine collapse. Instead, only a single event was observed each time - the collapses caused the noise seen as an earthquake.

After all, an earthquake is nothing more than sound vibrations passing through the earh. The sudden collapse of parts of coal pillars in a square mile of mine makes a LOT of noise.

[erraticxthought]

There was this one guy on TV who was talking about how the readings on their earthquake meters were probably from the mine collapsing and not the other way around. I do believe they tried to cover that up though. I can't remember what channel it was on.

This was a good explanation of what is really happening in the mountains of Utah. At least they aren't claiming it was giants. That'd be pretty sensational. I should write to CNN and tell them I saw giants in Utah shifting the earth.