Ancient aliens on the history channel. Arrrrghhh!

[JRRNeiklot]

My biggest peeve with both History and Discovery is when they say "some experts believe..." and then go off on some crap about a comet hitting the earth in 2012 or planet x colliding with us next week, or the Jellystone super volcano erupting and killing us all. Just who are these "Experts," and what are their credentials?

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

My biggest peeve with both History and Discovery is when they say "some experts believe..." and then go off on some crap about a comet hitting the earth in 2012 or planet x colliding with us next week, or the Jellystone super volcano erupting and killing us all. Just who are these "Experts," and what are their credentials?

The 2012 stuff is pretty much crap.

Yellowstone, well, last I checked, was a pretty damn big volcano, and the eruption could send destructive ashfalls over much of the Midwest. While there would be climatic effects from the eruption, the destruction of the farming infrastructure in the Midwest could quite possibly be worse.

While it's not particularly *likely* at any point, such an occurence would be catastrophic, especially to the viewers of American cable channels.

Brad

 

[ProfessorPain]

The 2012 stuff is pretty much crap.

Yellowstone, well, last I checked, was a pretty damn big volcano, and the eruption could send destructive ashfalls over much of the Midwest. While there would be climatic effects from the eruption, the destruction of the farming infrastructure in the Midwest could quite possibly be worse.

While it's not particularly *likely* at any point, such an occurence would be catastrophic, especially to the viewers of American cable channels.

Brad

Yellowstone isn't an exageration. It probably isn't gonna blow any time soon, but it is a super volcano, and an eruption would be catastrophic for the US. I remember we had to study it in my geology class back in college. Basically its on something like a .5-1 million year cycle (for the large scale eruptions--there was a smaller eruption like 10 or 20 thousand years ago). The last eruption was over 600,000 years ago. So in a sense "we're due", but that could mean it will happen anywhere from tomorrow to 400,000 years from now; or that it might never happen.

 

[WhatGravitas]

While the physics and (probably -- I don't know myself) in Angels & Demons (at least the book) is pretty awful, the documentary may have some decent science about antimatter.

By the way, shouldn't the antimatter explosion at the end of the book... well, irradiate most people in the vicinity pretty hard? Because the annihilation should produce loads of high-energy gamma rays - even the annihilation of a simple e⁺ and e^- produces two photons of ~500 keV! And IIRC, hard X-ray radiation is usually around ~125 keV!

Cheers, LT.

 

[ssampier]

If Yellowstone explodes, that could suck royally. I am pretty sure Southeastern Utah is on the "kill zone".

What's more likely Yellowstone exploding or a large asteroid hitting Earth?

 

[freyar]

By the way, shouldn't the antimatter explosion at the end of the book... well, irradiate most people in the vicinity pretty hard? Because the annihilation should produce loads of high-energy gamma rays - even the annihilation of a simple e⁺ and e^- produces two photons of ~500 keV! And IIRC, hard X-ray radiation is usually around ~125 keV!

Cheers, LT.

Yeah, I'd expect the radiation from a 1/2-kilo of antimatter annihilating to be pretty bad.

The way the antimatter is created from nothing in the book is also ridiculous.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Yeah, I'd expect the radiation from a 1/2-kilo of antimatter annihilating to be pretty bad.

The way the antimatter is created from nothing in the book is also ridiculous.

...a half kilo? Shouldn't that turn Southern Italy into an island?

Brad

 

[freyar]

...a half kilo? Shouldn't that turn Southern Italy into an island?

Brad

The book is pretty terrible physics-wise. It was a 1/2 kilo IIRC.

Let's see. 1/2 kilo antimatter annihilating efficiently with 1/2 kilo matter gives mc^2 = 9x10^16 Joules. According to wikipedia that's about 1000 as much as the "Fat Man" bomb, or 21 kilotons TNT. Also on wikipedia, both the US and Soviet Union have tested or even deployed nuclear weapons in excess of 25 megatons TNT as far back as the early 1960s, which is comparable to our 1/2 kilo of antimatter. So 1/2 kilo antimatter is about like a big nuke from the 1960s.

 

[Korgoth]

The problem with History Channel first becomes evident when you watch a show about something you've studied. After that, you realize that you can't trust anything you've ever seen on any History Channel program, because if you didn't already know about the subject being presented, you have no way of knowing what was true and what was utter codswallop.

Case in point, a show about WWII. "German tanks roared across the border...", and they show footage of Russian tanks.

When you know about what is being shown, you'll find that a large percentage of what is said on a History Channel show is either extremely misleading or outright false. So if I didn't know about (for example) Alexander the Great, why would I watch their show about him? Half of what they said would be wrong, and I would go from ignorance about the person to the much worse state of fallacious opinion about the person. At least if I were wholly ignorant I wouldn't think that I knew something about him. Whereas the History Channel would possibly show him riding around on a late Seleucid war elephant fighting Mamluks with a Swiss halberd. Scratch that: with two Swiss halberds.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Some programs are better than others in that regard. I didn't notice any major errors in the recent Warriors series, at least of the battles/armies/leaders I knew about already.

The other series I tried to watch on that channel lately, Battles B.C. was AWFUL, though, in that regard. They portray King David as a sort of mafia don (which is fair, I guess), but mostly let Caesar and Alexander the Great off the hook for character criticism? Holy bias, batman!