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a reply to: mungbean

I don't know what could have caused the second explosion, but as far as the ground conditions you are partially correct. But the machinery would have been traveling on set paths mostly, on concrete pavement and reinforced foundations. In soil conditions like that (well, what I assume the soil composition is) wood or concrete piles are typically driven into the ground and then the heavy foundations are build onto the tops of them. The soil between them can still be removed with sufficient effort. And the proximity to the water would have assured a high moisture content, keeping it generally softer.

a reply to: mungbean

The fracturing could very well have been just that, then. The material being pushed up and out at the edge of the crater could easily have undergone massive shearing. And also, yes, the area would obviously have been paved. I was just commenting based on soils experience. Let me do my due diligence on this and I will try to give you a better answer. Should have done that first, actually. Sorry about that.

a reply to: pfishy

No need for apologies. I appreciate the effort you are making to try and shed some light on this for me.
Thankyou

a reply to: mungbean
It is possible to estimate the amount of energy released from a series of photos or a video. There's a famous case where that was done with the first atomic bomb test, so this gives you some idea of the calculations involved:

Estimate of the energy released in the first Atomic Bomb explosion.

The math used is fairly simple, mostly just high school algebra, but the hard part is making accurate estimates of the explosion size at various times. I'm not sure it works the same way with the fireball as it does with the shock wave of the trinity test, but both were roughly spherical so it might. If you know high school algebra you could even give the math a go yourself.

I think you need more than 23 tons of TNT to make a crater 3 acres in size, but I wouldn't attribute this to a conspiracy, but rather to either underestimating the power of the explosion or overestimating the size of the crater, or else it's not exactly a real crater. There are other possibilities besides a mismatch between the explosive estimate and the crater size, if for example there was an underground storage at the site that collapsed, it could resemble a crater but it takes far less energy to flood a basement than to evacuate a crater. There's a formula for crater size here, see equation 4. That suggests 23 tons TNT isn't enough and so does this impact calculator:

www.convertalot.com...

If I did my math right 3 acres is 124 meters in diameter, and you can see that shows a 124 meter diameter crater takes 62 kilotons of TNT energy equivalent to form but it's a bit oversimplified as it doesn't take into account varying soil conditions, composition, water content, etc. Still 62 kilotons is 2695 times greater than 23 tons so that's a big discrepancy which varying soil conditions could not explain.

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: mungbean

I don't know what could have caused the second explosion, but as far as the ground conditions you are partially correct. But the machinery would have been traveling on set paths mostly, on concrete pavement and reinforced foundations. In soil conditions like that (well, what I assume the soil composition is) wood or concrete piles are typically driven into the ground and then the heavy foundations are build onto the tops of them. The soil between them can still be removed with sufficient effort. And the proximity to the water would have assured a high moisture content, keeping it generally softer.

The fire department caused the second explosion trying to put out the fire. It was a chemical storage facility. It stored everything from potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate,sodium cyanide,hydrogen iodide, sodium hydrosulfide, and sodium sulfide. hydrogen iodide, sodium hydrosulfide, and sodium sulfide and here is the worst calcium carbide, another chemical that emits flammable gases when it becomes wet. Firefighters at the scene used water initially, but that only made the situation worse when the calcium carbide was exposed. So they had the cocktail for one huge explosion.

a reply to: Phage

E=MC^2 would indicate that light does in fact bend to gravity

Just wanted to say thankyou for you guys taking the time to talk me through on this question.

a reply to: mungbean

Sorry I drug you off on that tangent about soils. But I did look at the before and after images rather thoroughly last night, and the aforementioned fracturing is likely just pieces of the pavement.
As far as the possibility that the crater was created by the force given by officials, Arbitrageur answered that far better than I ever could have, as usual.

originally posted by: semperfortis
a reply to: Phage

E=MC^2 would indicate that light does in fact bend to gravity

No it doesn't let me explain, First this equation is just telling us energy and mass are the same thing not about gravity. Now in truth light is unaffected by gravity. Light just does one thing travel in a direction it starts off in. What gravity does effect is space causing it to bend. So when light travels through curved space if you could ride on a photon your path wouldn't change. To you you have travelled a straight line through space, But a third person looking at it the light appears to bend and it travels the bends in space time caused by mass. Or in other words Phage is right light is unaffected by gravity but is affected by space time according to Einsteins field equations.

a reply to: dragonridr

To be fair, I do believe that in using E=MC2, semperfortis was probably just referring to Einstein's relativity theorem in general.

originally posted by: semperfortis
a reply to: Phage

E=MC^2 would indicate that light does in fact bend to gravity

Actually that's not the right equation, and I'm not sure how you're attempting to apply it here, but Einstein did say that "a ray of light passing near a large mass is deflected" as cited below. In Phage's defense though, there are thousands of physicists saying more or less what he said, but not only is it a little confusing, it's got several problems with accuracy. It's probably not confusing for physicists because they all know what each other means by it, but it might be confusing for the layman and I think even the physicists should reconsider the accuracy of that claim.

originally posted by: Phage
Gravity cannot bend light but it can bend space. From the outside it appears that the path light follows is bent. From the point of view of light, it's traveling in a straight line.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but the problem I have with this statement is that the photon has no valid frame of reference, therefore it's the same kind of gibberish we end up with talking about "frozen time", the concept that time doesn't pass for a photon because time dilation becomes infinite at the speed of light.

If you eliminate the idea that a photon has a valid frame of reference, light doesn't travel in a straight line past a gravitational field from any valid reference frame. As Einstein said:

The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein

We can therefore draw the conclusion from this, that a ray of light passing near a large mass is deflected

Another reason this "light travels in a straight line from the light's perspective" claim isn't accurate is because if you really start figuring our what would happen from the photons reference frame, it doesn't travel in any line at all because it would experience length contraction to zero and hopefully you will agree that a line with zero length would be more accurately called a point instead of a line.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Really didn't want to get into the fact light doesn't travel any where that becomes massively confusing for people. And we'll beyond what most would understand. Light itself always maintains a straight path. However that path may seem curved to us. Because our only perspective possible is to view it from within space time. Like that better.

How strongly, if at all, does a gravitational field affect the path of a Neutrino?
I could easily be wrong, but given that we have determined them to have a non-zero mass, shouldn't they be influenced by gravity?
I've actually thought about this on multiple occasions, because they are capable of passing right through the entirety of a planet or star without interacting.

a reply to: dragonridr
I find that saying "a photon has no valid reference frame in general relativity" is a satisfactory resolution to the apparent paradoxes one encounters if assuming otherwise.

a reply to: pfishy
The effects of gravitation on neutrinos can be predicted, but due to the way neutrinos are detected, we are lucky to detect any so I don't see how we could detect enough to determine the exact direction of a source nearly in-line with the sun as we did when measuring deflection of light during solar eclipses. However some scientists figured out how we might get a chance about every 250 million years or so to make an observation related to your question:

Gravitational Lensing of Supernova Neutrinos

Amplification of the neutrino flux at Earth by many orders of magnitude may occur for near-perfect alignment of supernova, black hole, and Earth, but such events are exceedingly rare. We estimate that a lensing event with magnification by two orders of magnitude has occurred once in the history of the solar system, and the mean time between factor-of-ten events is 250 million years.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sadly, most things posted to Arxiv tend to be above my usual ability to interpret. I truly love physics, but my technical background isn't such that I can read most physics papers intended for peers.
That being said, the rest of your response makes sense. Though, I do wonder if there is any way to determine if it does have an effect locally. We have neutrino beam sources at facilities on Earth. Fermi, CERN, and probably one or two more I can't recall at the moment.
Is it that the gravitational force of the earth is not strong enough to have any measurable effect between those sources and the detectors set up along the beam lines?

a reply to: pfishy

And I know 'detectors' is kind of a misleading term, since they are still extremely hit-or-miss, but you get my meaning.

a reply to: pfishy

Photons do not have rest mass, and still they are affected by gravity. Well, in some interpretation at least. In relativistic thinking photons are following the geodesics of space-time. But following this example, I should expect neutrinos at least to follow geodesics. But like you surmised, our ability to measure the small differences in angle of arrival of neutrinos is severely limited, and I suspect we will have to wait long before we can measure the effect of gravity wells on neutrino streams.

a reply to: pfishy

Photons do not have rest mass, and still they are affected by gravity. Well, in some interpretation at least. In relativistic thinking photons are following the geodesics of space-time. But following this example, I should expect neutrinos at least to follow geodesics. But like you surmised, our ability to measure the small differences in angle of arrival of neutrinos is severely limited, and I suspect we will have to wait long before we can measure the effect of gravity wells on neutrino streams.

originally posted by: pfishy
Is it that the gravitational force of the earth is not strong enough to have any measurable effect between those sources and the detectors set up along the beam lines?

This is not my area of expertise but I think there are actually two problems, and that's one of them. You need enough deflection to be measured and the earth's gravity won't cause much deflection.

If you try to measure incredibly small amounts of deflection, you need very precise trajectories, and I suspect another problem would be not having precise enough trajectories. In other words, the "noise" of variations in the trajectories in the neutrino beam might overwhelm any "signal" of deflection.

You'd probably also have to design a new type of neutrino detector array which would have enough precision, so I think all those are related issues when you try to measure something that's nearly impossible to measure.

Never say never though, as Einstein said he thought parts of the theory of relativity couldn't be tested (and they couldn't when he said that), but we subsequently figured out how to test them (I think he was referring to frame-dragging).

a reply to: Pirvonen

Well, yes, I would also expect that they would follow any spacetime curvature. But are they actually influenced directly by gravity. Logically, it seems they would be, even if the effect is very slight.