Super Special Exciting Guest Blogger Announcement! Marcus Chown Answers Your Science Questions!

Dec. 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 AM

Hey there! On 11/12/09 Marcus Chown, popular science author of We Need To Talk About Kelvin, will be guest blogging on these humble pages. He's agreed to answer science questions from SF writers, so if you've got a plot issue or setpiece that's bugging you, or you ever wondered what would happen if a certain scenario came true, here's your chance to get an expert opinion!

You can start asking questions now and posting them in the comments, and the answers will be posted on the 11th!

Have fun!

Location:London
Mood: excited
Music:Celestial Crown - The Sword

Comments

( 11 comments — Leave a comment )

(Anonymous) wrote:

Dec. 3rd, 2009 12:47 pm (UTC)

Question from Pelotard

Cool!

I have it on good authority (NS, and I actually wrote to the scientist in question and asked) that Mercury might be flung out of the solar system in about 10 billion years.

Now... if another planet had been flung out of the solar system sort of recently (astronomically speaking), would there be any obvious signs of this today?

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hecallaghan wrote:

Dec. 3rd, 2009 12:52 pm (UTC)

Re: Question from Pelotard

Nice one! Shall forward it on tonight!

My own is also cosmological - if the Moon, for whatever reason, were suddenly to wobble in its orbit, what would the consequences be to Earth?

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(Anonymous) wrote:

Dec. 3rd, 2009 01:21 pm (UTC)

Science questions

Hi Helen and Marcus,

Thanks for doing this. As a regular reader of New Scientist I always enjoy Marcus's articles. My question are about anti-matter:
- how much would you need to make a bomb with a yield of say 100 terrajoules?
- any idea what would happen if you set it off inside a hurricane?

Thanks again.

Dave Gullen

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(Anonymous) wrote:

Dec. 3rd, 2009 01:55 pm (UTC)

Question for Marcus

A popular trope for near-future SF is interplanetary space travel involving flight times stretching into years. How much of a hazard to travellers is exposure to cosmic rays and radiation from solar wind really?

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(Anonymous) wrote:

Dec. 4th, 2009 10:38 am (UTC)

Re: Question for Marcus

Mythbusters have driven a diesel car on used frying fat from a chipper. Apparently many forms of oil - this includes vegetable oils - are possible substitutes; if memory serves me the chipper oil was only 5-10% less efficient that the stuff from BP.

/Pelotard

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scribblingseaserpent.blogspot.com wrote:

Dec. 4th, 2009 08:58 am (UTC)

If, in a future world with no diesel, I found and old boat in working order - but with a diesel-electric propulsion system, is there an alternative method I could use to recharge the electric and get it going since I don't have any diesel?
thanks
(my poor characters got stuck here several years ago and hope you'll be able to get them out of their predicament - they'll be most grateful as they're running out of food) :-)

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hecallaghan wrote:

Dec. 4th, 2009 11:27 am (UTC)

Cheers Kate - I'll put it to him (just in case the world runs out of chip fat!)

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scribblingseaserpent.blogspot.com wrote:

Dec. 4th, 2009 11:54 am (UTC)

Ah the old chip fat scam!!! But am I right in saying that that only works with vegetable oil? We all know that the best chips are fried in beef dripping :-)

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(Anonymous) wrote:

Dec. 7th, 2009 11:20 am (UTC)

Bio diesel

Pretty much any triglyceride fat can be converted to bio-diesel by a trans-esterification process with methanol to give the methyl ester plus glycerol. The fatty acid methyl ester is usable as bio-diesel.

Martin Owton

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denni_schnapp wrote:

Dec. 4th, 2009 09:13 pm (UTC)

It gets cold at night (in Wagga Wagga)

It gets cold at night in the Australian desert—an argument much favoured by climate change skeptics—but I wonder how cold it would really get there if the Earth had no atmosphere at all, and ditto how hot it would be during the day, say at noon in Wagga Wagga ;)

Thank your very much for taking the time to answer our questions!

Denni

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hecallaghan wrote:

Dec. 7th, 2009 10:58 am (UTC)

Submission Closure

Hi guys,

Have got the answers back and there is more than enough there, and in enough detail - so I'm closing the submissions. The answers will get posted on Friday.

Thanks so much for the questions!

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( 11 comments — Leave a comment )

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Super Special Exciting Guest Blogger Announcement! Marcus Chown Answers Your Science Questions!

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