(Hurricane storms) Prehistoric Extractions In The News
No commentsBy Aydan Corkern
I’m sure that you have, during some time your life, heard about some group of people finding some prehistoric fossil. Depending on the location or the size of the object, it could take months or even years to extract this piece of history. They will want to be able to take it out of this area in one piece.
They found whole animals frozen in ice from the Ice Age. This extraction took them years to complete because of the size and weight. They had to bring in special machines to remove the chunk of ice that would have had to been done without breaking the massive chunk of ice. Then they had to find a way to move it to a place where it could be looked at where the scientists wouldn’t be out in the cold.
These people doing the extractions had to withstand temperatures so cold that they couldn’t be out in the weather too long because they would be overcome by the cold. They would have to put themselves in danger not only with the weather but also because of the dangerous animals that might be in the area.
In other situations they might find whole ancient cities that have lain underground for centuries. Then you have the tombs in Egypt, and you might have heard of the tombs in Mexico. We have even had extractions here as well. Most of these have been sites of historic fights or old Indian villages. The biggest area has to do with the American Indians of the Great Basin of North America. We have learned much from these sites.
These sites could tell the people that are doing the work how these people lived and even how they died. They could tell by what they found how long this village had been at this location and could pinpoint the time of its demise.
We have scientists that go all over the world for the sole purpose of looking for old fossils and extracting these things out of the ground. The more they find the more the government will give them in grant money to keep this dig going. Some of these digs have been very well known and some of them you will never hear about. If you have ever been in a museum almost everything that you might see is from some extraction of one kind or the other.
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The Troll A - A Record Breaking Gas Platform
By Patrick Omari
Rising out of the North Sea where it takes a lashing from some of the roughest waters on the planet, the Troll A platform is one of the largest and most complex engineering projects in the world and, when it was towed into place in 1996, became the largest structure ever to be made and stands in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest offshore gas platform.
For any fan of engineering feats, the Troll A platform is something to admire. Even from afar it’s scale is jaw-dropping. This natural gas platform in the Troll gas field has an overall height of 472 metres. Put into context; that’s 148 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower and some sixty metres taller than the Word Trade Centre stood before it was destroyed. The construction involved 100,000 tonnes of steel - enough for 15 Eiffel Towers - and 245,000m3 of concrete, that’s the equivalent of 215,000 foundations for usual houses.
Of its 472 metres, the platform stands 303 metres below the surface of the sea. As each of the four legs of the platform are subjected to huge amounts of pressure - especially at the bottom - the construction method had to ensure that the concrete would be flawless, if it wasn’t the consequences would be disastrous. Accordingly, the legs are made up of over 1 metre-thick steel reinforced slip-formed concrete. This means that the concrete was formed in one continuous pour to mean there was no seams or cracks and each of the legs is a mathematically joined composite of conical cylinders flaring out to larger dimensions at the top and bottom.
Each of the Troll A’s mammoth-like legs are joined by a reinforced concrete box interconnecting the legs. This “chord shortener” serves as vital a purpose as the thickness and reinforcement of the concrete. As the Troll A is constantly hit by waves of varying size and force it’s structure is subjected to resonance. Sustained exposure to a certain resonance can crumble even the thickest of structures, as evinced by the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington in 1940. The concrete box that connects the Troll A’s legs dampens out the resonances by returning the legs’ natural frequencies.
A structure worthy of admiration, the Troll A was built by Norwegian contractors with work commencing on the base in July 1991. The deck was constructed separately and were joined in 1995 when the base was partially submerged - the only way to get the deck atop the giant legs. In an operation that took seven days, the platform was towed more than 200 kilometers out to the Troll field before being fixed to the sea floor with each leg using a group of 40 metre tall vacuum-anchors to keep it in place.
The purpose of all this awe-inspiring engineering? Natural gas. The gas rises through 40 wells to be exported through a series of pipes at over 2,000 miles-per-hour. That’s a lot of gas at a high speed from a structure that weighs 656,000 tons with new gas compressors scheduled to further increase production volume from Troll A.
atrick is an expert travel researcher and writer currently researching Manchester Airport Parking, Manchester Airport Hotels and Manchester Airparks
Is It Possible To Catch On Fire Due To Spontaneous Combustion
By Aydan Corkern
We always figure that if we safeguard our homes and do our best to be careful we will not likely have a fire to burn us up. We can go to great lengths to install smoke detectors and security systems that will alert us if there is smoke or flames anywhere in the house day or night. We can keep fire extinguishers on hand and use special care when we use our kitchens and in the way we heat our homes. What if you are still not safe from burning up even after you have taken all of these necessary precautions?
It seems that could be the case when it comes to a strange scientific mystery called human combustion. It is a rare phenomenon and is believed by some to have taken place with certain individuals. One minute they are lying in their beds or sitting in a chair and suddenly they simply explode and burst into flames. The flames are said to be so intense that it can char a human body in a half an hour or less.
There have been many mysterious cases of this type of human burning reported since the 1700’s. People have been found to have been burned to the point that their torso had nothing but ashes left, but sometimes there were small or large fragments of their lower or upper extremities that remained. In some cases they had portions of their skulls to remain. When these bodies were discovered, it was puzzling as to how the fire started and why the body and whatever apparatus it was resting on, a bed or chair, was burned so severely and not much else in the room affected.
The cases that prompted the internal combustion theory have had several possible causes although none of them have been entirely proven to be the specific cause. Some think that there had to be an external cause such as an abundance of secreted body fat on the outside of the body or clothes that was ignited by one thing or another. Another theory is that static electricity could perhaps cause the sudden burst into flames. Some explanations thought by some are that there are certain elements in the body such as oxygen, hydrogen, or perhaps potassium that somehow intermingle and cause this bizarre occurrence.
There have even been some cases where people have begun burning and survived. While some offer a plausible explanation as to the cause, some believe these really were examples of spontaneous combustion that did not end in fatality. We might not have ever considered just sitting around and blowing up for no reason a possibility, but evidently there could be some cause for concern.
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Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
