The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XXXVIII

[aimeeandbeatles]

@aimeeandbeatles - your questions about the black hole looking thing in the previous thread (it won't let me quote)

I'd bet that's either the sun or the moon.

Huh. That makes sense. How would it make that funny shape?

 

[Zkribbler]

Question: North of the equator, has a hurricane ever started traveling south?

The rotation of the Earth turns it northward.

Occasionally their will be a little wiggle southward, but it will return to going north.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Don't really know. The moon does have an exosphere of dust and thin gas but I'm not sure it'd be picked up by the IR cameras of that satellite. Could also be an artifact of instrument saturation - when a camera is pointed at something that registers off the rails (either high or low), it can do funny things as it tries to interpret the data.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That makes sense.

Any idea what's going on in the left part of this image? I noticed a few images like this, where there's a straight line and the clouds disappear.

 

[Zkribbler]

Satellite photos, taken at different times, pasted together.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The data from that region wasn't included in the image for whatever reason. The images likely came from a geostationary satellite which would be able to take data of the entirety of that image area but the data would likely be sent down in distinct frames and they just didn't include all of it as it was outside the scope of interest.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The website says North America Composite so them being stitched together makes sense. I went to the Western North America animation (IR + Visible) and there were a few frames missing.

EDIT: Or maybe that was just my internet connection being glitchy. The frames suddenly reappeared.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I wonder how much Canada pays the US for access to the data or if they're given it for free?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I wonder how much Canada pays the US for access to the data or if they're given it for free?

http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/default.asp

Might be somewhere in here?

EDIT: I am not very smart today. I somehow didn't see the "courtesy of NOAA" on the page.

 

[Cutlass]

Question: North of the equator, has a hurricane ever started traveling south?

No. Hurricanes that start north of the equator travel north, those that start south travel south.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Wonder why the South Atlantic doesn't really get them?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is it possible they don't track them? But there's that one.

Interesting that they never cross the equator either.

EDIT: Wikipedia says that the weather conditions there aren't good to make hurricanes.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Their rotation would have to change direction to cross the equator so I guess they kind of 'bounce' off it as it takes less energy to do that than change spin direction. I guess (I'm spitballing)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I wonder what would happen to a big hurricane if the earth suddenly started spinning the opposite way.

EDIT: Actually, what would happen to us? Would everyone end up with super-whiplash?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We'd fly off the Earth at supersonic speeds and die

 

[Synobun]

We'd fly off the Earth at supersonic speeds and die

 

[Broken_Erika]

We'd fly off the Earth at supersonic speeds and die

That sounds like an awesome way to die.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

We'd fly off the Earth at supersonic speeds and die

What if everyone was given a parachute first?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Then something would break from the massive acceleration - either the straps or your bones.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well that's not fun.