Science - It exists

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

sounds of the world with some tragic before and after

[Serial_Apologist]

sounds of the world with some tragic before and after

I wonder if that's the same Krause of Beaver & Krause, who made an album in the early 70s involving some top jazz musicians, which I just about remember.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

cleaning air to make petrol

[Frances_iom]

cleaning air to make petrol

the key is energy out/energy in - 2nd law states this has to be less than 1 but how close they get to 1 is the key factor. My understanding is their end product is Ethnanol (alcohol) - plants turn CO2 + sunlight into starches + sugars which yeasts convert back to alcohols - not a very efficiente process however except that nature has provided millions of very low cost self replicating + repairing machines to do the CO2 to sugar/starch process - you can gain some estimate that a litre of petrol is about 50kWhr (a rough estimate - ethanonol is a little lower energy content than forecourt petrol and needs some changes to most modern car engines) - bright sunlight gives about 1kWhr/sq metre but conversion rates are typically around 10-20% at best - amount of PV panels to drive your car to/from work left as an exercise to the reader - an offshore windmill is 6MW but generates for at most 30% of time ie = 2MW average - one windmil assuming 100% conversion ratio = 40 llitres/hour but assuming conversion ration nearer 10% = 4litres/hour - my small use of fuel say less that 600l/yr means I need pay the capital cost + running costs of 1/12th of a windmill per year for my fuel.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

images of life from a micro perspective

[heliocentric]

I wonder if that's the same Krause of Beaver & Krause, who made an album in the early 70s involving some top jazz musicians, which I just about remember.

It is indeed. His book The Great Animal Orchestra is one of the most interesting things I've read in the past year. Particularly his demonstration of how an established complex ecosystem like a forest evolves its own "orchestration" so that the calls and other sounds of animals in it can all be heard across one another, occupying different and complementary frequency-bands and repetition-patterns, and at different times of day.

[Serial_Apologist]

It is indeed. His book The Great Animal Orchestra is one of the most interesting things I've read in the past year. Particularly his demonstration of how an established complex ecosystem like a forest evolves its own "orchestration" so that the calls and other sounds of animals in it can all be heard across one another, occupying different and complementary frequency-bands and repetition-patterns, and at different times of day.

I didn't know all this!

I wonder if Messiaen knew, or intuited something along the same lines (no pun)...

[heliocentric]

I wonder if Messiaen knew, or intuited something along the same lines (no pun)...

I expect so. Although presumably he wouldn't have regarded the phenomenon as a wonder of evolution...

By the way, while I'm on the subject, recently I watched the film Encounters at the End of the World, a somewhat unorthodox documentary about Antarctica, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog, which contains not only some of the most incredible underwater filming I've ever seen (with the experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser behind the camera, continuing the musicians-doing-science connection) but also the equally unbelievable sounds of the underwater signals used by seals, which you can hear in this clip from the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlrcbKlW4Tw

[johncorrigan]

but also the equally unbelievable sounds of the underwater signals used by seals, which you can hear in this clip from the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlrcbKlW4Tw

Thanks a lot - that would sit nicely in a Late Junction programme, heliocentric.

[heliocentric]

Thanks a lot - that would sit nicely in a Late Junction programme, heliocentric.

It would. And many people who didn't know what they were hearing might well associate the sound with "unnatural" electronic/atonal music rather than what they would think of as "natural" tonal music. The singing of gibbons is another example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLOn8F0p96s

[Serial_Apologist]

It would. And many people who didn't know what they were hearing might well associate the sound with "unnatural" electronic/atonal music rather than what they would think of as "natural" tonal music. The singing of gibbons is another example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLOn8F0p96s

I thought this was referring to Orlando Gibbons - b. Oxford 1583 d. Canterbury 1625.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

an emotional link between music and language .....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

so you thought The Matrix trilogy was fanciful huh

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a curious correlation between the health of trees and the health of humans

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

free online science programmes

where you can brush up on the Higgs Boson &c ...