A trip to the south

We went on a tour of the south last week. It involved passing through the Watford Gap services on the M1. These have huge cultural siginificance because they are said to be the place where the south starts. They are actually nowhere near Watford, being just north of Northampton. The north/south thing is a bit odd here in Wigton, where almost everywhere in England is south of us.

We were struck by the amount of traffic and general busy-ness in the south. There is a constant hum of traffic noise in many places. These photos were taken at 11am on a Monday morning. Look at the difference in the people heading north (towards us in the second photo) and south. I stood on the bridge and counted 40 cars going north in 1 minute. That's probably about 3000 people an hour moving at what is not a particularly busy time in that direction...

Sundial

I went to Amble in Northumberland. Next to the harbour is this large modern sundial. The notice explaining sundials is very interesting. It explains why a sundial doesn't show perfect clock time. Part of that follows on from my previous post which noted that true sun-highest-in-the-sky midday is different in Wigton compared to London. This display panel also explains that the height of the sun in the sky (time of year) has an effect too. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Climate change on Panorama

Last week's Panorama programme on BBC1 was about the science of climate change. Now Panorama is a far more tabloid style programme than was the case when I used to watch it 30 years ago. However, I was interested that the supposedly disagreeing scientists all seemed to beleive that the world is warming. The only people who didn't believe in global warming were members of the public. Small sample size, for sure, but interesting none the less. The controversy amongst the scientists seemed to be the validity of the "hockey stick" global temperature graph.

Anthorn aerials

If you look carefully into the sunset in the pictures of the previous post, you can make out the aerials at Anthorn, 10 miles north of Wigton. They now have the Greenwich Time Signal. This takes some thinking about. Noon should technically be defined as the time at which the Sun is highest in the sky. This varies from place to place even within England. So noon in Carlisle is 8 minutes later than in London if done this way. Before the industrial revolution, this is exactly how they set the time on the big tower clocks in each time. Then they invented the train which ran to timetables. If each town had its own locally set time, the timetables wouldn't work so it was decided to standardise the UK so that all clocks said 12noon when the Sun was highest over Greenwich in London, because that's where the official observatory and naval headquarters were. A signal was sent out to all towns to synchronise the clocks. This type of time is called Greenwich Mean Time (G.M.T.) Until recently, the signal was sent out by radio waves from big aerials next to the M1 at Rugby. Now we've got the honour of broadcasting the nation's time!

Summer solstice

It was the longest day of the year yesterday. From our house, the Sun sets well to the north west. That's the payback we get in the north for the very early sunsets in mid winter. Watching the Sun touch the horizon and then visibly go beyond the horizon is about the only way I know of experiencing the turning of the Earth. If you enlarge the first picture you can see Anthorn aerials. More on them in a future post. In the second picture, the hill to the right of the telegraph pole is called Queensbury. It is nearly 40 miles away across the Solway in Scotland.

James Lovelock

I have been reading this book. James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis has been one of the more controversial theories in recent years. He claims that the whole Earth acts as a living organism and regulates the conditions on the planet to ensure the continuance of life. I still find it hard to accept in full but there is now irrefutable evidence that living organisms do have a sizable effect on the atmosphere and thus affect the living conditions. I changed my mind on Lovelock after watching a BBC4 profile of him. He invented the detector that enabled the hole in the ozone layer to be found. He clearly believes in science done by making observations. This is important.

Campaign for mass

Further to my post last autumn about the Campaign for Mass, imagine my horror when my wife pointed this shocker out to me over the breakfast table. Any fool knows that if it is measured in grams it must be mass. Perhaps they could state the weight of the cereal as 4.5Newtons...