Category Archives: News

Current affairs

How Big Was North Korea’s Bomb ?

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My good friend Alec wrote on hearing about the DPRK nuclear test:

One presumes that there is a small chance it’ll have been staged with conventionals;

That got me thinking – how large a bomb was it ? We know the USGS detected a mag 4.2 shock so I went hunting around to see if there was an algorithm for converting magnitudes on the Richter Scale into energy, and, hopefully, into kilotons or megatons. It turns out J.C. Lahr wrote up a method for the “Comparison of earthquake energy to nuclear explosion energy” and helpfully included a piece of Fortran code to create a table of comparisons.

A quick “apt-get install gfortran” and a bit of mucking around with the code and I had an approximate answer:

Mag.   Energy      Energy      TNT         TNT         TNT         Hiroshima
       Joules      ft-lbs      tons        megatons   equiv. tons  bombs
4.2   0.126E+12   0.929E+11   0.301E+02   0.301E-04   0.201E+04   0.134E+00

So a magnitude 4.2 earthquake is (roughly) equivalent to a 2 kiloton device, less than one fifth of the size of Hiroshima bomb. This means it’s probably unlikely to have been a conventional device.

So what North Korea tested was fairly small in these days of megaton devices but certainly nothing you’d want to be anywhere near..

USGS Reports Mag 4.2 Quake in North Korea

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Here’s possible confirmation of the nuclear test in North Korea, the USGS has a report of a magnitude 4.2 quake near Chongjin, North Korea. Capture of the map is below.

North Korean

Update 2014-09-30: Please note that the above links no longer work, thanks to Sharon Thornton (Research Coordinator at The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics) for pointing that out. Instead here is an alternative URL with information about the quake and also a PDF report on it from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Default ATM Passwords

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Dear gods, it’s the 80’s all over again, only this time with ATM’s..

In the operator manual freely available on the Web site of a Canadian reseller, a section titled “Programming” provides the specific key sequence that will pop up a screen on the ATM that asks for the master password. It then lists three default passwords – master, service and operator – that could be used to hijack and possibly rig a machine. (emphasis added)

Lets try this again – default passwords are bad, OK ? Sheesh…

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE Camera Returns First Low-Level Image

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Yay! After months of waiting NASA’s MRO has reached its science orbit and taken its first snap with its HiRISE camera. NASA has a press release with a link to the gallery page of the image which has a scale of about 1 foot per pixel. They also have an 8MB TIFF “sub-image” available for download from the MRO’s calibration gallery.

But for the very latest you’ve got to check out the HiRISE team blog where they already have the fact that the second image is down, of layered deposits at the Martian North Pole.

Below is the first image!

First MRO HiRISE Image (NASA)

Update: the page with the full image from which the above sub-image was taken is also available, but be warned, the full size JPEG is 23444 x 23377 pixels and ways in at a hefty 111.8 MBytes!

Bin Laden Dead ?

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The (Australian) ABC is publishing a Reuters story quoting a report in L’Est Republicain that the DGSE (the French intelligence agency) has briefed the French President and PM of Saudi Arabias belief that Bin Laden died of typhoid in August.

“The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of Al Qaeda was a victim while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very serious case of typhoid, which led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs,” the document said.

The original article is in French, and the Google translation of the full paragraph says:

“According to a usually reliable source, the Saoudi services from now on would have acquired the conviction that Usama Bin Laden died. The elements collected by the Saoudis indicate that the chief of Al-Qaïda would have been victim, whereas it was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very strong crisis of typhoid having involved a paralysis partial of his lower limbs. Its geographical insulation, caused by a permanent escape, would have made impossible any medical care. On September 4, 2006, the Saoudi services of safety collected the first information making state of its death. They would wait, to obtain more details, and in particular the exact place of its burial, to announce the news officially”.

If it is true (and remember this is a report of a report of a report of a suspicion) then whilst being a significant moment it is unlikely to materially change the situation anywhere in the world. These groups tend to operate as lots of independent small cells with no central leadership, infrastructure or coordination and so whilst this might mean something philosophically to them it is unlikely to cause them any operational problems. 🙁

Read more via Google News.

Update: The ABC is reporting that the Saudi’s are denying the basis of the French DGSE report, saying:

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no evidence to support recent media reports that Osama bin Laden is dead,” the Saudi Embassy in the US said.

California Sues Car Companies & Exxon Secrets

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Before I turn in for the night – the State of California has launched law suits against 6 car companies (GM, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Chrysler & Nissan) under the Federal Common Law of Public Nuisance. It contains this rather enlightening quote:

Defendants’ motor vehicle emissions in the United States account for approximately nice percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions

I don’t suppose I should be amazed by that, but it’s still a staggering statement – vehicle use in the US alone accounts for ~ 9% of global CO2 output.

You can read the actual law suit (PDF) mirrored at The Age. Thanks to my lovely wife for forwarding an email about the suit on to me..

On a related note, a friend and colleague (also called Chris) sent me a link to a site called ExxonSecrets.org where you can find out about the web of anti-climate-change organisations that get funding from Exxon and how they are connected.