I can report, yes, the guaifenesin makes a difference. I left it off yesterday in the theory it might be contributing to the sinus congestion: wrong. I coughed. A lot. And by evening I was coughing really badly every few minutes (postnasal drip was bad) —and finally took guaifenisin that evening. Stopped the drip, stopped the cough for the most part, so I actually got some sleep.
Discovery/Science/History2 has a couple of nice programs, btw. One is How the Earth Works: I could do without the cutesy athletics of the hosts, but any program that can tell me or show me things I didn’t know… is a delight. And the athletics may appeal to some who desperately need to understand this stuff. Program #2 is a one-shot called The First Apocalypse, which is a thorough go-over on all the reasons for the demise of the dinosaurs and going back to other events, such as new info on the Deccan Traps eruption, which has long been discounted, and is now being looked at far more seriously.
Which is how I spent the restive bits of last night.
Here’s the interesting bit: the Deccan Traps eruption is now understood to have been more intense and shorter than previously believed. And it coincides with the era of the Chicxulub impact. The measurement of the SIZE of the Chicxulub impactor is due to the thickness of the iridium deposits around the world…ergo, with that much iridium, plus Mexican rock frags in the iridium layer in Colorado, you’re dealing with a 6 mile asteroid impactor. BUT volcanoes also emit iridium from the Earth’s own core/mantle, and the massive Deccan eruption was around the time of the Chicxulub Event.
From Wikipedia: “The Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary of 65 million years ago, marking the temporal border between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods of geological time, was identified by a thin stratum of iridium-rich clay.[41] A team led by Luis Alvarez proposed in 1980 an extraterrestrial origin for this iridium, attributing it to an asteroid or comet impact.[41] Their theory, known as the Alvarez hypothesis, is now widely accepted to explain the demise of the dinosaurs. A large buried impact crater structure with an estimated age of about 65 million years was later identified under what is now the Yucatán Peninsula (the Chicxulub crater).[42][43] Dewey M. McLean and others argue that the iridium may have been of volcanic origin instead, as the Earth’s core is rich in iridium, and active volcanoes such as Piton de la Fournaise, in the island of Réunion, are still releasing iridium.[44][45]”
I’ve thought for some time that the Deccan traps were connected to Chicxulub. They’re about where the seismic waves would have intersected after going around the world, and they know from looking at craters on the Moon that big impacts leave a mess (‘chaotic terrain’ is the phrase used) at the other end of the diameter.
Glad you’re feeling better!
I use guaifenesin on the theory that my body is producing fluids for a reason, and I shouldn’t use a anti-histamine to stop that process. I rarely use a decongestant, but when I do, I find good old pseudoephedrine HCl works best for me. I had a wacky little cold a couple months back: I woke in the middle of the night with zero sense of balance. I mean zero! I couldn’t stand until I turned on the light and got strong visual references. On the theory that my ear canals were congested, I went hand-over-hand down the stairs to take some pseudoephedrine. I had a little residual dizziness in the morning, but I was fine by noon.
Wow: “The impactor had an estimated diameter of 10 km (6.2 mi) and delivered an estimated energy equivalent of 100 teratons of TNT…” I suppose my question is, how big a hit do you need to crack to the core and get volcanic iridium mixed up with the meteoric iridium? It depends on where you hit, I’m sure.
Do you know about the “Epley Maneuver”? 😉 🙂
But the Deccan Traps were already going, same period. Who knows? Maybe it was a 1 mile asteroid and a nasty strike at Chicxulub, but an ongoing volcanic disaster which itself contributed enough iridium to fox the meteor-strike theorists…
The word (in human skulls) for a manifestation of injury on the opposite side from a blow is contracoup, I believe, a reverse blow; and one does wonder if some of these plume blowouts could result from a heavy hit diametrically opposed through the globe. We have our own Traps in the Columbia valley, and there are several ancient volcanos which contributed that: the Grande Ronde, etc, maybe Newberry and the Sisters, but I’m not sure even the volcano guys really have a fixed opinion…There are of course the Siberian Traps. The Deccan is about the size of Texas, the Siberian is the size of the USA, and the Columbia area is about as big as, well, Washington. There are supervolcanoes: Yellowstone, Newbury, the one near Shasta in CA; Toba in Indonesia; and apparently the Phlegrean Fields of Italy. And there are some big meteor hits: there’s Sudbury in Canada, Chicxulub in Mexico (you can’t really count Barrington Crater in AZ, which is only a 150 foot impactor) and there’s one big one in the heart of the Sahara which made the glass that ended up used as jewels by the Egyptians. But then—look at all that oceanic real estate and say that nothing of size has ever landed in the sea. The Earth has many interesting features that could change the whole ball game…the volcanoes and such are at least polite enough to forecast their intentions, but ironically, it may be easier to divert a 6-mile impactor from outside than to dissuade a supervolcano that’s building up steam.
There is a determined chap who is drilling into the Phlegrean Field supervolcano to get better readings. My vote says if he gets close to the magma chamber, he’s going to be out a fortune in drill bits.
Yellowstone is a hot spot, and it used to be under what’s now the Columbia plateau, like Hawaii is the remains of a still-going hot spot. There’s also Long Valley caldera, which had a rather spectacular blowout quite a while back – not as big as Yellowstone, but big enough to have messed up a good part of the continent.
One of the problems is that when you have atmosphere and actual weather, the craters tend to disappear. Add in plate tectonics, and you need a good computer to figure out where the pieces were at the time.
I wonder if there aren’t markers in meteorite iridium as opposed to terrestrial iridium that would let you determine the relative proportions of each in the CT boundary layer, rather like C12 vs. C14? Something like that would let you say definitively how much of a contributing factor the Chicxulub impact was to the Deccan Traps, and thence to the dinosaur demise.
The isotope distribution is different, as I understand it. What they’ve found at the K-T boundary is close to the same as in asteroids, but not similar to the distribution in terrestrial deposits.
Thank you; I had a feeling some smart bunny would have checked on that 🙂
I remember reading an article, probably in the New Scientist, that explained how they thought the Chixculub impact could have triggered the Deccan Traps eruption.
That would mean the timing was very close, but the Deccan traps couldn’t have been going strong before the impact.
How sure is that timing, as CJ says, that the Deccan traps were already going? Or could that have been just a relatively small, ordinary volcano, marking the weak spot on the opposite side of the globe from Mexico where the shockwaves from the impact could most easily break the crust in a more massive way?
Besides isotopic distribution there’s the geographic distribution. 😉 Supporting the Alvarez Hypothesis is concentrations of Iridium diminish with distance from the Carribean. Gubbio is less than Alberta.
The whole ball game: interplanetary billiards? 😀
LOL, Smokey’s had attention and now *really* wants to play. I don’t think in-systemer billiards would be the best option, though!
PJ mentioned Long Valley, around Mono Lakes, CA; good. 🙂 That was huge.
And it’s Barringer Crater. 😉
It’s only sleeping – if it goes, which isn’t likely in the near future, it will take out some pricy real estate. There are some crevasses you don’t want to get close to, because of the gases they give off. Also I watch the earthquakes page (I use SCEC.org, because they do CA-NV with special sub-pages for LA, SF, and Long Valley).
Fascinating topics – shows that I’ll look forward to watching when work slows down a bit in December/January.
Very glad that you’re feeling better and that the Mucinex helped. I take some every day as a preventative for asthma (it doesn’t do anything to prevent an attack, but it reduces the severity of the attack for me).
My guitar appt. is postponed until Tuesday. Aarrgh. Cabbie. But I’m getting that done then even if I have to put off other errands until later in the week.
I got a recommendation from AbigailM (and another) for a good shop here in town, Fuller’s Vintage Guitars. Much appreciated. So we’ll see. I have my notes ready, and from what I’ve seen, this’ll be cheaper than I’d first thought, which is great.
In thinking about it, I realized I’d need to ask about how to mike the (acoustic) guitar in case I want to try recording, whether a clip-on or mic stand; with the stipulation I don’t plan to buy a mic right now. (Still getting used to one I got a few months ago.) Also not yet ready for a guitar stand, but a bag or case is on the list.
Hah, I’m also going to ask about apps and resources for my computer and iPad. Might as well see what they say.
Feeling good about this, and I’m “noticing” music more, or in a different way, as I listen to songs and pieces.
Thanks, y’all for the continued inspiration.
you can get relatively inexpensive pickups that either clip on to the sound hole under the strings, or you can use a pickup that sticks to the guitar body. I don’t know how well the stick-on pickup works, I haven’t done anything to my guitars to electrify them, other than I suppose I could use the tuner pickup and plug it into an amp and play that way, but then, I’m not doing anything that needs that kind of setup.
I think the clip type would work, although I don’t know about the adjustments. Most electrified acoustics have a set of controls on the upper side of the body that let you adjust settings without having to go fiddle with the amps.
Sorry about the cabbie. Sounds like the cabbie needs to separate personal life from professional life and get back to work.
I think what’s going on with my cabbie is he’s giving preference to a corporate account and/or airport appointments, and scheduling too tightly, so that even though I already had the appt., he called yesterday evening to ask if we could reschedule. On the one hand, I understand him wanting to keep a steady, higher paying client, but on the other, hey, I had my appointment scheduled too. If mine were work/professional, or urgent, I’d be more aggravated, but I’ve been trying to allow for that. Only it’s been happening more often lately, and the last time, I let him know I wasn’t happy about it.
if your cabbie was being honest with you, there’d probably be less tension. if he’s got a corporate/business client that he’s trying to juggle at the same time as your appointment, then it’s really dishonest of him to slight you this way. I would be understanding if the other client paid more, heck, cabbies don’t drive for free, but at least be honest enough and own up, and I’ll get another cabbie or we’ll pick another time. If he can’t be honest with you in this respect, is he being honest with you in other things, too? Maybe it’s just my mistrust of cabbies from my days in San Diego when they’d pick up a sailor and take the longest route possible to get him where he needed to be.