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Schrödinger's scissors
The back pages Almost the last word Why does a lightning strike make the air sizzle and light bulbs glow?
Schrödinger’s scissors
Stephen Mitroff, professor of cognitive neuroscience George Washington University, Washington DC There is no single answer to this question. A visual search can fail for any number of reasons. If the person had a different picture in their mind of the item while searching, that could interfere with finding it. For example, they might be thinking of an older or different version of an object. Other items that were recently looked at but weren’t the desired object can also interfere with finding an item. Stress can affect performance, and just being tired can also make searches hard. Janet Mackenzie Thurso, Highland, UK Once when I was looking frantically for something, my daughter came in and said: “Don’t look for, mum, look at”. I did this, and it worked. Maybe this is what happened with your reader. He was looking for, his wife came in and looked at.
Future fossils If, some day, our civilisation fries itself out of existence, will new reservoirs of fossil fuels eventually accumulate, and could they power some future industrial revolution?
Tony Power Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Coal is the remains of plants, collected long ago in slowly sinking basins. The northern hemisphere coal deposits built up in the Carboniferous period, between about 360 and 300 million years ago. In the southern hemisphere, coal was mostly deposited in the Permian (some 54 | New Scientist | 10 August 2019
ALEXEYS/GETTY
I was once looking for nail scissors but couldn’t see them. My wife then entered the room and immediately saw the scissors in plain view, exactly where I had been looking. Why couldn’t I see them until she found them?
This week’s new questions Lightning bulb A summer storm woke me around 2 am. I heard a sizzling sound before lightning struck about 100 metres away. Then I saw a 1.5-volt solar-powered outside light glowing like a 50-watt bulb. It faded after a few minutes. What caused the sizzling sound and made the light glow so brightly? Douglas Fairchild, Two Harbors, Minnesota, US Battery power Why has there never been an international standard requiring manufacturers to display the capacity of alkaline batteries? All we have to go on is words such as “super power” or “long life” on the packaging. I want a number! Stephen Brown, Girona, Spain Time and tide What is the smallest body of water that is influenced by the moon’s gravitational pull? Hilary Perry, Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan, UK
300 to 250 million years ago). Around 290 million years ago, several species of fungi evolved that could digest the main components of wood: cellulose, lignin and hemicellulose. One theory suggests that fossil fuels formed before these fungi evolved, but afterwards, plant material rotted and was returned to the carbon cycle. Deposits known as brown coal formed more recently, but they are relatively uncommon and low quality. So if the fungus theory is correct, unless the fungi get fried before the trees, not much coal will form in the future. Jeff Dickens Strachan, Aberdeenshire, UK Assuming we don’t completely sterilise the planet in frying our
civilisation, the answer is almost certainly yes. All it takes is time and the continued tectonic development of the planet. Plate tectonics continuously pushes and pulls Earth’s crust in different directions. If a basin forms, it could be filled by sediment eroded off uplifted areas. To form a fossil fuel accumulation, certain conditions are required. Swampy delta regions are good for coal. For oil and gas, there needs to be a substantial influx of organic material. Marine microorganisms do nicely; the process will then
work even if we trash the rest of the biosphere. The present day Black Sea is a good example, where a deep water basin has become anoxic. This lack of oxygen has resulted in the preservation of the organic material falling into the basin. On top of that, we need suitable temperatures and pressures, and a geological event that results in the surrounding rocks forming effective traps for the petroleum fluids. This process can happen surprisingly quickly, geologically speaking. A lot of the action described above is ongoing, and has only recently generated some oil and gas fields, in basins like the Gulf of Mexico and the Caspian Sea. You could get your first new accumulations in as little as a couple of million years. Finally, there are some schools of thought that postulate an abiogenic origin for some fossil fuel accumulations. In other words that natural gas develops from methane deep in the mantle, for example, without the input of living organisms. So you might not even need the biosphere, although you might expect the resulting volumes would be much lower. Douglas Thompson Whitford, Flintshire, UK Of course new reservoirs of hydrocarbons will accumulate after humanity has shuffled off its mortal coil. Whether they power a future industrial revolution is another matter and could depend on whether a future intelligent community had access to information about the disastrous way we exploited our own reserves. ❚
Want to send us a question or answer?
Email us at [email protected] Questions should be about everyday science phenomena Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms
Schrödinger’s scissors
Stephen Mitroff, professor of cognitive neuroscience George Washington University, Washington DC There is no single answer to this question. A visual search can fail for any number of reasons. If the person had a different picture in their mind of the item while searching, that could interfere with finding it. For example, they might be thinking of an older or different version of an object. Other items that were recently looked at but weren’t the desired object can also interfere with finding an item. Stress can affect performance, and just being tired can also make searches hard. Janet Mackenzie Thurso, Highland, UK Once when I was looking frantically for something, my daughter came in and said: “Don’t look for, mum, look at”. I did this, and it worked. Maybe this is what happened with your reader. He was looking for, his wife came in and looked at.
Future fossils If, some day, our civilisation fries itself out of existence, will new reservoirs of fossil fuels eventually accumulate, and could they power some future industrial revolution?
Tony Power Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Coal is the remains of plants, collected long ago in slowly sinking basins. The northern hemisphere coal deposits built up in the Carboniferous period, between about 360 and 300 million years ago. In the southern hemisphere, coal was mostly deposited in the Permian (some 54 | New Scientist | 10 August 2019
ALEXEYS/GETTY
I was once looking for nail scissors but couldn’t see them. My wife then entered the room and immediately saw the scissors in plain view, exactly where I had been looking. Why couldn’t I see them until she found them?
This week’s new questions Lightning bulb A summer storm woke me around 2 am. I heard a sizzling sound before lightning struck about 100 metres away. Then I saw a 1.5-volt solar-powered outside light glowing like a 50-watt bulb. It faded after a few minutes. What caused the sizzling sound and made the light glow so brightly? Douglas Fairchild, Two Harbors, Minnesota, US Battery power Why has there never been an international standard requiring manufacturers to display the capacity of alkaline batteries? All we have to go on is words such as “super power” or “long life” on the packaging. I want a number! Stephen Brown, Girona, Spain Time and tide What is the smallest body of water that is influenced by the moon’s gravitational pull? Hilary Perry, Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan, UK
300 to 250 million years ago). Around 290 million years ago, several species of fungi evolved that could digest the main components of wood: cellulose, lignin and hemicellulose. One theory suggests that fossil fuels formed before these fungi evolved, but afterwards, plant material rotted and was returned to the carbon cycle. Deposits known as brown coal formed more recently, but they are relatively uncommon and low quality. So if the fungus theory is correct, unless the fungi get fried before the trees, not much coal will form in the future. Jeff Dickens Strachan, Aberdeenshire, UK Assuming we don’t completely sterilise the planet in frying our
civilisation, the answer is almost certainly yes. All it takes is time and the continued tectonic development of the planet. Plate tectonics continuously pushes and pulls Earth’s crust in different directions. If a basin forms, it could be filled by sediment eroded off uplifted areas. To form a fossil fuel accumulation, certain conditions are required. Swampy delta regions are good for coal. For oil and gas, there needs to be a substantial influx of organic material. Marine microorganisms do nicely; the process will then
work even if we trash the rest of the biosphere. The present day Black Sea is a good example, where a deep water basin has become anoxic. This lack of oxygen has resulted in the preservation of the organic material falling into the basin. On top of that, we need suitable temperatures and pressures, and a geological event that results in the surrounding rocks forming effective traps for the petroleum fluids. This process can happen surprisingly quickly, geologically speaking. A lot of the action described above is ongoing, and has only recently generated some oil and gas fields, in basins like the Gulf of Mexico and the Caspian Sea. You could get your first new accumulations in as little as a couple of million years. Finally, there are some schools of thought that postulate an abiogenic origin for some fossil fuel accumulations. In other words that natural gas develops from methane deep in the mantle, for example, without the input of living organisms. So you might not even need the biosphere, although you might expect the resulting volumes would be much lower. Douglas Thompson Whitford, Flintshire, UK Of course new reservoirs of hydrocarbons will accumulate after humanity has shuffled off its mortal coil. Whether they power a future industrial revolution is another matter and could depend on whether a future intelligent community had access to information about the disastrous way we exploited our own reserves. ❚
Want to send us a question or answer?
Email us at [email protected] Questions should be about everyday science phenomena Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms