ScribbleLive

@Pedro Jesus , as to Cherenkov radiation, I found this math.ucr.edu : "A sonic boom is a shock wave which propagates from an aircraft or other object which is going faster than sound through the air (or other medium). In subsonic flight air is deflected smoothly around the wings. In supersonic flight this cannot happen because the effect of the aircraft wings pushing the air ahead cannot travel faster than sound. The result is a sudden pressure change or shock wave which propagates away from the aircraft in a cone at the speed of sound.

Objects cannot travel faster than c, the speed of light in vacuum (see the FAQ article on faster-than-light travel). But for light there is no ether to act as a medium being pushed aside like the air that is pushed by an aircraft. The result is that there is no equivalent of a sonic boom for light moving in a vacuum.

But light needn't always move in a vacuum. The phase velocity of light in a medium with refractive index n is vlight = c/n. (See the FAQ article on faster-than-light travel for an explanation of phase velocity.) For example, water has a refractive index of about 1.3, so the speed of light in water is considerably less than the speed of light in vacuum. Furthermore, it's in fact possible for a particle to move through a medium such as water at a speed faster than the speed of light in that medium—though not faster than the speed of light in a vacuum."

I've got to go again. About the speed of light thing, lets wait and see. Scientists are, once again, shaken by this finding (it's not the first time it happens but it's the first time that the error margin is by far overwhelmed by the, seemingly but not really, difference between the measured speed of those neutrino beams and the speed of photons in vacuum.) and they are scared as well. If the experience results are confirmed then we will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that our understanding of quantum physics is incomplete (which wouldn't be such a far fetched scenario). Just another comment about the understanding of the Einstein Theory of Relativity. If you dig through the mathematical outcome of Einstein's equations you will find that it doesn't state that a particle cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum... what those equations state is that it is impossible for a particle to accelerate to beyond the speed of light which is not, conceptually, the same thing. Interesting times for science and Mankind. Cheers all, keep up the excellent work you've been doing here. See you soon.

Hydrogen is much lighter than air so it rises to the top, but mixes downward by convection. At some point in that miscibility mix-master there is an optimal point for ignition, from which it will flash as a more imperfect flame outward through the rest.

en.wikipedia.org al-khalili's wikipedia page

provide some links and critical analysis:

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Yes, the disclaimer on the NYAS site:

www.nyas.org

is couched in very subtle terms. The main point is that they yanked it from publication, and have never said that they support the findings or vouch for the quality of the science. There was a lot of behind the scenes criticism from NYAS members about the publication, on scientific grounds, and I believe some people lost their jobs over it. And I believe this statement to be accurately reported:

“In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences or the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its publication do we intend to independently validate the claims made in the translation or in the original publications cited in the work. The translated volume has not been peer-reviewed by the New York Academy of Sciences, or by anyone else.”

Douglas Braaten, Director and Executive Editor, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, communication to George Monbiot, 2nd April 2011, as cited in
www.monbiot.com


Also,

atomicinsights.blogspot.com
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2010
Chernobyl Consequences - Myths and Fables Versus Science
by Rod Adams

"After reviewing the book, a number of nuclear professionals, including some credentialed and experienced radiation effects specialists began exchanging emails wondering how the New York Academy of Sciences could have possibly accepted this book for publication based on a number of specific errors, omissions and outright denials of the scientific method. At least one member of the email discussion group is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences; he volunteered to contact the people in charge of publications to find out what could be done.

After some discussion, the people at the NYAS agreed that the document did not reflect the views of the academy, but that the decision to publish the document was made before the person who is currently in charge of publication arrived in his job. That person has stated that he has no authority to withdraw the publication, but he did issue a statement that provides some, but not much, distance between the document and the NYAS. "


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Charles, Monty (2010) "Chernobyl: Consequences of the catastrophe for people and the environment" in Radiation Protection Dosimetry (2010) Vol. 141 No. 1. Oxford Journals. pp. 101–4.

Downloadable at:
wonkythinking.org

In his review, Monty Charles (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham) found the conclusions in the book statistically flawed, unclear, and contradictory. I.e., bad science. i encourage you to read the entire review (as well as Ian Fairlie's more positive one in the same journal). But an excerpt:

"Numerous facts and figures are given with a range of references but with little explanation and little critical evaluation. Apparently related tables, figures and statements, which refer to particular publications often disagree with one another. The section on oncological diseases (cancer) was of most interest to me. A section abstract indicated that on the basis of doses from 131I and137Cs; a comparison of cancer mortality in the heavily and less contaminated territories; and pre- and post-Chernobyl cancer levels, the predicted radiation-related cancer deaths in Europe would be 212 000–245 000 and 19 000 in the remainder of the world. I could not however find any specific discussion within the section to support these numbers. The section ends with an endorsement of the work of Malko who has estimated 10 000–40 000 additional deaths from thyroid cancer, 40 000–120 000 deaths from the other malignant tumours and 5000–14 000 deaths from leukaemia—a total of 55 000–174 000 deaths from 1986 to 2056 in the whole of Europe, including Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. These numbers confusingly, do not agree with a table (6.21) from the same author. The final section on overall mortality contains a table (7.11), which includes an estimate of 212 000 additional deaths in highly contaminated regions of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. This figure is for the period of 1990–2004, and is based on an assumption that 3.8–4.0% of all deaths in the contaminated territories being due to the Chernobyl accident. One is left unsure about the meaning of many of these numbers and which is preferred."

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Mona Dreicer,
2010. Book Review: Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Environ Health Perspect 118:a500-a500. doi:10.1289/ehp.118-a500
Online: 01 November 2010

ehp03.niehs.nih.gov

Monica Dreicer made similar criticisms in Environmental Health Perspectives, pointing out flawed methodology, biases, and unsupported assertions. She concludes by saying that we need good studies of the health effects of Chernobyl, but that they must be objective and scientifically rigorous (which Yablokov's book is not):

"To document the negative impacts of the accident—the authors’ objective—many of the articles present lists of excerpted facts, tables, and figures taken from the large number of referenced studies to support the stated conclusions. The inconsistent use of scientific units, the grouping of data collected with variable time and geographic scales, the lack of essential background information, and the consistent exclusion of scientific research that reported lesser or no negative impacts leave objective readers with very limited means for forming their own judgments without doing their own additional extensive research. In fact, many major technical studies and reports on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident have been excluded."

[snip]

"Two significant methodological biases underpin the conclusions that are drawn by the authors from the large amount of data presented: the application of a downward extrapolation of the linear radiation dose–effect relationship with no lower threshold, and the distrust of the ability of epidemiologic methodologies to determine the existence of a statistical correlation between measured or calculated radiological dose and measured impacts.

The first issue has been around for decades and continues to be debated by the scientific community. However, by discounting the widely accepted scientific method for associating cause and effect (while taking into account the uncertainties of dose assessment and measurement of impacts), the authors leave us with only with their assertion that the data in this volume “document the true scale of the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe.”

Indeed, the world should not forget Chernobyl. We should continue to aid the affected populations and pursue the best possible understanding of the true impacts, taking care to be as objective and scientifically rigorous as possible."

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Lisbeth Gronlund, writing in the Union of Concerned Scientists "All THings Nuclear" blog:
allthingsnuclear.org

After providing estimates of mortality due to Chernobyl fallout, she points to Yablokov's book which gives much higher figures, and observes:

"The book is based on a wide variety of material, which has been compiled in a manner that is difficult to discern. …..Moreover, the book notes that at least some of this source material would be rejected by “Western” scientists (p.37):

'It is correct and justified for the whole of society to analyze the consequences of the largest-scale catastrophe in history and to use the enormous database collected by thousands of experts in the radioactively contaminated territories, despite some data not being in the form of Western scientific protocols. This database must be used because it is impossible to collect other data after the fact.'

Given this disclaimer, we have to discount the conclusions of this book, at least unless and until further information becomes available."

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I would note that many have criticized Gronlund's figures themseves as having been based on flawed assumptions, particularly weaknesses inherent in collective dose estimates, which lead them to be unreasonably high -- even though they're much lower than what Yablokov et al suggest. You may have seen this post by Brian Mays in NEI Nuclear Notes, in which he points out that the same methodology leads to even higher cancer rate estimates for air travel over a 10-year period. It's intentional provocation of course, but also a reality check:

neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com

Sunday, April 17, 2011
UCS Science: How Many Cancers Did Airlines Really Cause?

"Using Dr. Gronlund's methodology (which was taken from the BEIR VII report), we should assume that "the expected incidence and mortality of solid cancers and leukemia are 0.1135 cancer cases and 0.057 cancer deaths per Sv." Thus, because of radiation exposure due to the airline industry, the expected number of cancer cases is 79,000, of which some 40,000 should result in death.

[snip]

It is somewhat illustrative to compare these numbers to the numbers presented by Dr. Gronlund for the Chernobyl accident: 68,000 cancer cases with 34,000 deaths. Given these numbers, one can scientifically conclude that the airline industry is far more dangerous -- in terms of deaths due to low-dose exposure to radiation -- than old, Soviet-era nuclear reactors."

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Finally, if anyone has time it's worthwhile to read the CERRIE report of 2003, which gave a very full hearing to Busby, Yablokov, the data they presented from FSU nations. The data were almost uniformly judged to be unsupportable.

www.cerrie.org

Sample quote:

p47: "10 The Committee was divided on the robustness of the human data. Some members
judged that the FSU data were sufficient to show that radiation can cause a detectable
increase in minisatellite mutations in the human germline.[reading further its clear that these members are Busby and his close colleague Richard Bramhall] Other members were not persuaded and cited evidence of inconsistent results from FSU studies; insufficiencies in
some study designs; substantial problems in the estimates of doses received; and, for one
study, the failure to adequately validate the mutation assay system used. In addition, the
results of genetic studies with the offspring of externally irradiated Japanese A-bomb
survivors and of cancer therapy patients were inconsistent with many of the FSU data, in
that no excess of mutations was detected."

It's like this in almost every case. Busby's findings and Yablokov's FSU studies contradict a vast amount of solid and verified research, and their own methodologies are extremely flawed often in elementary and obvious ways (as in the Sellafield leukemia clusters).

Busby claimed bias and whitewash later, of course, but he got a very fair hearing, and was allowed to chair sessions and workshops. Ian Fairlie was a co-chair, and in addition to Busby and Bramhall, Greenpeace was also represented. Busby and Yablokov constantly claim suppression, censorship, and conspiracy, but in fact they couldn't have gotten a more positive hearing.

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My conclusions: Busby and Yablokov have both been solidly refuted and discredited. They present what "looks" like a ton of evidence but isn't. Groups or individuals who use their data to support agendas cannot legitimately claim to be justified on scientific grounds. But scientists know never to say "never," and that we can only we proven wrong. There is undoubtedly some useful and important data in the FSU studies, and we need to find it. I think the best way is to translate as many of them as possible in full and make them available to all researchers to evaluate objectively.

Many people obviously got sick after Chernobyl, often in mysterious ways, but even though Busby, Yablokov and others have had years to make their case they've been unable to demonstrate that the radiation itself is responsible -- except in instances like high leukemia rates which were already predicted by the science and generally accepted by specialists. We need to understand what went on after Chernobyl not least because it has great bearing on what we will see after Fukushima, but bad science, particularly when it circulates in the media and is accepted in some circles as supported fact, which Yablokov's does, is worse than useless. It's actually irresponsible and damaging. In the case of Japan, this kind of misinformation has doubled the mistrust and tripled the anxiety, while the justifiable levels of both are high enough already.

Now back to trying to find out what the real hazards we face are.