I broke the van! (by alaric)

While in London with the van, I had to deliver a server to a data centre - (InterXion London)[http://www.datacentermap.com/united-kingdom/london/interxion-london.html]. There's parking at the DC, but it's £20 to park a van there, so I decided to try and get into the car park marked just north of it on the map, in Quaker Street.

While I could find the car park, I couldn't find the way in - I could see cars all parked behind a fence, but no sign of the entrance. But while navigating the narrow little roads, I had to turn around in Grey Eagle Street:

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The road was narrow, only a single track, but with a wide pavement, so I opted for a three point turn. I turned hard right to bring the front of the van up onto the pavement, and the right wheel went up, but then I heard a grinding scraping noise. I was a bit surprised to be bottoming out on a not-particularly-high kerb, but I reversed back and found a place further down with a dropped kerb (but less pavement, since there was a car parked up there) to turn.

However, I noticed that my steering was suddenly a bit funny. I had to hold the wheel at about seventy degrees left to drive in a straight line. And the suspension felt odd - I could feel every little stone in the road, and if I went over even the slightest bump, I heard a funny creaking sound.

BAD NEWS!

After a quick check for visible signs of damage as soon as I had parked (none), I did the business of the evening, and then drove carefully back to Highgate for a closer look.

I parked with the wheel perfectly straight, then got out and looked at both wheels.

Here's the left one, pointing nice and straight ahead:

And here's the right one... pointing twenty or so degrees to the right:

Looks like the tracking's totally out, then.

And by the scientific method of placing my hand in the gap between top of tyre and wheel arch then holding it still while I walk around and try on the other side, the right hand side seems an inch or so lower than the left, too.

And all this when I'm supposed to be doing a five-hour drive up motorways tomorrow evening. Eeek.

I'm going to see if I can find a place to look at my tracking and suspension first thing tomorrow... but I'm dreading what it'll cost, and doubting I'll get it fixed the same day...

Pooey Betsy (by sarah)

At lunch we were sitting eating falafels when Jean's looks down at her hands and says, 'I know Betsy's dead.' This was very quiet and subdued for Jean. 'She's in a hole, a bigger hole.'

'Yes Jean that's right,' I said.

Jean stared down for a while and then said, 'Betsys a silly pooey, pooey, poo.'

She was looking at me seriously with no mischief in her face - this is very unlike Jean - I said calmly, 'No Jean Betsy's not silly she was just very sick and died. It's not nice to say that she's pooey.'

Jean's face crumpled (that is the best descriptive term I can think off), 'But she's gone, in hole but gone, all gone?'

'Are you sad Jean?' Little forlorn nod, 'About Betsy?' nod - she then flung herself into my arms for very clingy cuddle.

This is the first time that an entity she has grown up with and interacted with has died but she has known of the concept of death for a while - not because of all the funerals as they are a bit far removed from her comprehension but because the cats kill mice and birds - something she tells them off for (well only when its a mouse actually she doesn't seem to mind the bird getting the chop).

I don't know if we handled this correctly but death is unfortunately a part of life and I hope this will help her come to terms with things easier than if we hide it all from her - still it was heart breaking to see her little face as she realised that Betsy really was gone. I think the pooey Betsy bit was her going through the angry stage of mourning.

A tail of two cats (by sarah)

I have received two messaged whilst being in London this week about the cats back at the Mill - Poor Betsy, Barbara's old black cat who looks like Minnie, our black cat, was off colour - not eating and the such like but still purring away and sitting merrily by the fire. Just to make sure she was fine they took her to the vets and it turned out that the strange coughing she was doing wasn't hair balls but lung cancer 🙁

So Betsy is no more :'(

They buried her this morning and Al says he took Jean to see her to explain but not overly labour the point. Jean initially asked when Betsy would wake up. It was explained she wouldn't - Jean has apparently spent the day mulling this fact over.

The second cat message is on a slightly lighter note - Mystery Cat was harassing one of the kittens so Alaric picked him up and tried to throw him gently to the other side of the stream so he'd have to walk to a way to get back to where the kitten was cowering up a tree. However Alaric slipped and accidentally dropped the poor cat into the stream - it instantly leaped out and instead off running away padded wet and miserable over to Alaric - meowed pathetically and rubbed up againt him - just to make sure he felt completely responsible and guilty.

Alaric was mortified - my dad is always threatening to trebuchet the cats Mystery Cat so he has named Alaric the Cat Soaker!

Al feels very guilty.

Cancelled (by sarah)

Well after being excited that even though I was now doing my MRes I would still be able to read at the poetry night during the Cheltenham Literature Festival I find that the night I was performing at was cancelled - now I know it was only what is termed a fringe event but I am really disappointed and I had organised people to come and see me. I had also organised to come back from London especially for the event.

I feel really stupid for having told people I was reading at it now as well :'(

Sun Quakes and Solar Structure (by sarah)

I had another really engaging lecture tonight - one that had me salivating for more and which has probably resulted in me alienating myself from the rest of the MRes group.

The lecture was by Vincent Tong who it turns out has been at Imperial where I studied as an Undergraduate!

First off we had to think about what our goal was, what were we actually trying to acheive - to see inside the Earth of other body and see of what and how it is made. Then with lots of analogies which steadily become more rediculous as the lecture went on.

We then decided we couldn't break the Earth (or Sun) open like an egg to see its internal structure but had to view it as a presant and shake it to see whats inside. The shaking equals eathquakes and these we record and measure. We had a quick run through of wave types which was cool as I found I had forgotten one of them!

I ended up having to answer why s-waves which can't travel through liquid are improtant along with many other things - I don't know if they others were just being shy. I found I had remembered alot of stuff and to my suprise I am finding it far easier to infer things from information I am given. I did find the periods of time when we were working with each other to work stuff out frustrating as everyone else just kept saying they didn't understand (bar the guy at the front who kept asking really really techniqual questions about the software used).

We ran through the standard this is how you look at the inner earth but then looked at the fact that the velocity of the earthquake waves are dependent on direction and temperature and their interactions with faults and other subsurface structures. This was interesting as I discovered you can basically use the arrival times of the waves to work out the velcocity of the waves which is temperature dependent - meaning that you can tell if it has had to pass through realitively hot or cold areas. If you then have sequences of these you can see how they change - meaning you've added time and can see how things are moving or flowing - this is so useful I can not even begin to tell you.

The implications to my mind are stagering and I thought seismics where boring!

We ran through (quickly) how imaging of sections works - these are generally done by man made seismic waves (big thumbing lorries or air guns at sea). Now most of the siesmic sections I looked at during my undergraduate (if not all) were of reflected waves that were bouncing off of say bedding plans and the such like. But now there is this thing called Tomography which (I think) involves refracted waves - so these are waves that travel through the rock and are slowed down by different substances etc... sort of a minni version of how we use earthquake waves. I think it is a method stolen from medical imaging but I am not sure.

This again opens a whole new world and means you can see things that are not picked up by the reflective waves. There was somehting involwing time and depths and seeing flow rates again with this but I need to look that up some more.

We also looked at the restrictions off all of this - basically we could really do with a global network of siesmometers and though we are getting there - most of the planet is covered in water - I suggested that they could put the detectors along the cable trunks that carry say the internet - this apparently has already been done. Plus they have detectors that onces having detected an earthquake bobb back to the surface adn tell the sattalites what they heard - I personally wondered what sort of fail rate they have for such instramentation.

I guessed correctly that time would be involved and the problems of refernce and angle etc... which I was impressed with myself for. Also another problem is that the earthquakes on the earth are not actually evenly spread out - they are concentrated along the plate boundaries and the such like giving certain biases to what we are finding out. Then the earthquakes are intermittent and we have no idea what strength they will be etc... meaning that it is quite - if not not impossible - to correlate the data.

Oh - one of things was that the waves travel faster along faults that are parralel to the direction of motion and go slower through ones that are perpendicular. And this effect is sort of amplyfied if there are say lots of parrellel fualts such as along the mid ocean ridges. Measuring flow there is quiet important as there is hydrothermal perculation and stuff through the newely formed sea floor as it is hot and stuff - this affects mineral exchange and the such like. But during the working things out time he gave us I came up with the concept of using the earthquakes to tell if you where in a back arc basin, or near an accretionary prism, ie looking at the big big structures as they have different minerals and things in them (stolen straight from Wednesdays lecture). The girl I was sitting with said she had thought the same thing - the lecturer said we were coming up with good ideas.

Later on he said I was asking the right sort of questions too - though as the lecture ended up over running what with me getting excited over the way in which the earth or spheres in general can distort with motions and the like (yes I asked more questions) I think the rest of the class where about to kill me.

We got on to the heliosiesmics and wow! I think i actually got how they are detecting the sun-quakes. Now on the earth we have seismometers on the surface but the sun is a) humungous and b) too far a way and c) uber hot. But we have images in all sorts of wave lengths and the suns surface is in continous motion. The sun is a plasma which moves as a fluid and you can see the convection cells on the surface. You can take images and see how they change - think about it - surface that is further away from you such as that in a trough or valley (earthquakes are waves with peaks and troughs) will have a slight red shift to it as the wave gets stretched on route were as the peaks will be like mountains and nearer the earth or satallite depending were the detector is and be blue shifted compared to the base level surface colour (we are assuming constaint composition of the sun here.

This is cool as you can basically do the tomography tequnic and look at flow!

We also looked at solar flares and sunspots which has me a bit disturbed - is it me or does the behavour of sunspots becoming solar flares seem to suggest that the sunspots individually are magnetic poles? But that would make them a magnetic monopole which I thought could not exist?

Am I missing something here?

Anyway to my suprise I am actually now considering writing my second essay (its due in december) on helioseismics! I must be mad - but I found this really really interesting!