Colext/Macondo
Cantina virtual de los COLombianos en el EXTerior
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WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 5 May 00 Washington, DC
In this week's issue, we find that many public misconceptions
about science issues are related to difficulty in scaling.
1. DOOMSDAY? IT'S A SCARY UNIVERSE OUT THERE. The world remained
remarkably calm when the dreaded conjunction of the five visible
planets occurred at 4:08 a.m. ET this morning. A book by Richard
Noone, "5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster," had predicted that
powerful tidal forces would bring an awful end to the world as we
know it. However, even as he sought to reassure people, David
Ropeik, Director of Risk Communication at the Harvard Center for
Risk Analysis may have been misleading about the physics: "The
moon exerts more gravitational effect on the earth than any other
body in the solar system" (www.msnbc.com/news/402162.asp). Hmmm.
The sun's pull is about 180 times stronger than that of the moon.
The tides, however, depend on the gradient, and thus vary as the
inverse cube of the distance. Because the moon is so close, its
effect on the tides are about twice as great as the sun's.
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