Brian Cox does The Planets

I've finally had time to catch up with the new Brian Cox series https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07922lr Website implies that these programmes will be up for a while. I was always so impressed by the photograph that was taken on the surface of Venus and that features. It also brought me up to date with the latest theories about Mercury.

Sgriob na Cailliche lateral moraine

We had seen on the map of Jura that there is an impressive glacial feature on the west side of the Paps, the inaccessible side. So I was really pleased that the feature was really obvious from the ferry to Colonsay. It is a long straight line of rocks over 2 mile long making its way down the hillside. It runs diagonally down the middle of this picture. 

In the picture below it is clear that it is more than one line.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4983084 has a picture taken looking down the line of the rocks from the hillside above and explains the legend. My Gaelic dictionary gives one translation of sgriob as "furrow". The double line looks a bit like that.  http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/gcrdb/GCRsiteaccount979.pdf has the full explanation. It is thought that the peaks of the Paps poked out above the ice forming nunatak peaks. The glacier split to go round them and where the glacier recombined, rocks were dropped in a long line. It is remarkable that over 10000 years later it remains uncovered by vegetation.

Measuring temperature at Kilchoman

I was interested that the Kilchoman distillery was using analogue thermometers. The resolution is +- 2 degrees Celsius. Also note that they are cross-wired: the upper thermometer is connected to a sensor lower in the tank so the temperature does get lower as you go up the tank. I wonder if the use of analogue is because they have a more averaging effect on the reading. In the era of high resolution digital instruments, the reading can seem to go up and down rapidly. But how relevant would that be in a large tank where local fluctuations wouldn't give an overall picture? I did see an examination answer recently that suggested that an analogue scale was better for monitoring a reading that needed to be kept roughly constant because you can draw on a line to show the necessary reading and that it easier to understand.

Is this a benchmark on St Raven's Edge?

I found this on the way up Caudale Moor from Kirkstone. It definitely looks like a survey benchmark with a small dint above the point of the arrow for an instrument. I can find no mention of it anywhere, though. The grid reference is approximately NY 419 088.

Stopping the ferry on Colonsay

When the ferry docked at Colonsay, you could see the two hawsers in the top photograph pulling tight to stop the ship. I looked over the side and timed 60 seconds, trying to work out how far the ferry moved in that time. I'd estimate 4 metres in 60 seconds before the ropes began to tense. That's 0.07 metres per second. The mass of the ship is about 3,000,000 kg so the momentum is about 200,000 Ns. If it then takes the hawsers 60 seconds to bring the ship to a standstill then the average rate of change of momentum is of the order of 3000N so 1500N on each hawser. If the ship is moving very slowly and the time to stop if long then the forces needn't be huge. Next time I go I need to get a more accurate time to stop after the hawsers become tense and I need to find out about the hawsers to calculate their properties.

Fred Hoyle's house

Clive Hutchby's excellent revision of Wainwright's Eastern Fells points out in the chapter on Great Dodd that this house above Dockray was the home of Fred Hoyle between 1965 and 1975. Fred Hoyle did some brilliant work on fusion in stars and how heavier elements were formed. It is called stellar nucleosynthesis. He comes up in class when I teach the development of the Big Bang theory. He had a rival theory called the Steady State which suggested that the Universe was expanding because new material was being created everywhere all the time rather than at one time in the past. I've always thought it was a logical idea based on what was known at the time but of course it couldn't survive the discovery of the Microwave Background Radiation. The dates in the Wainwright don't fully tie in with Wikipedia but make your own mind up! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

Microgabbro on Carrock Fell

We also found microgabbro on Round Knott just before we reached the summit of Carrock Fell. According to the book "Exploring Lakeland Rocks and Landscapes" published by The Cumberland Geological Society, the darker layers are augite and the paler layers are plagioclase. Gabbro is a plutonic rock that cools a long way underground so grows large crystals. The idea is that the augite crystallised first and sank to the bottom, depleting the magma of iron and magnesium. That made the liquid over-rich in aluminium and calcium so plagioclase crystallised out. This restored the original chemical balance and the cycle repeated, hence the layers. A further note to my wondering about granophyre or microganite for the summit: it is called granophyre in the book The English Lake District by Pearsall and Pennington.