Great post, thanks for all the info.
I have read about this dam project and watched shows on it in the past, and it seems that most of the experts think that this was never a very good
idea.
I don't know alot about building dams, but from what I understand, the two main considerations are the bedrock under the dam to be built, and the
reservoir that will be created by the dam. The Hoover dam was an ideal location for both of these considerations, which is why they chose to build
the dam were it was built, and this is considered to be the reason why the project was so successful. The Three Gorges Dam is built on a solid
bedrock foundation, but the location for the reservoir was not very well chosen, thus the idea of building this dam in the first place was never very
well founded. We have a situation where the Chinese, who have proven themselves to not be very good at building dams, have built the largest dam ever
created, in a location that is anything but ideal. Basically, we are looking at a disaster in the making from the beginning.
Here is an article which gives some of the history on China's record when it comes to building dams. It doesn't give a great deal of information on
the problems with the reservoir that the dam creates, which is what I understand to be the largest problem, but it does point out several problems.
toxipedia.org...
The Chinese have a tremendously poor record of dam building. Prior to 1949, only twenty-three large to medium size dams existed in China.
Tremendous expansion of dam projects began during the "Great Leap Forward" - Chairman Mao's 1958 plan to springboard China into a viable economic
competitor by using China's vast natural and human resources - when over 80,000 dam projects where commenced, including a dam on every one of
China's main rivers (Qing, 1998). However by 1973, forty percent of the reservoirs created from that construction were so poorly constructed they
were unable to effectively control the flooding. In additional to the reservoir problems, nearly 3,000 dams had completely collapsed. When asked about
the history of dam failures of the past, one provincial water manager commented, "The crap from that era (the Great Leap Forward) has not yet been
cleaned up" (Qing, 1998). In addition to collapses, nearly one quarter of dams from that era were deemed unsafe and in need of repair, putting
hundreds of thousands of lives in jeopardy.
The project proceeded with numerous problems devloping from the beginning, cracks in the dam pointed out by the op, which is courting disaster on a
historical level.
Now, along comes this historical eclipse, as the dam is filling, with all the problems from a poor choice of a location from a reservoir, which have
turned out to be far worse than was predicted, or hoped for.
Here is a link which talks about why science is currently studying the effects of solar eclipses on Earths gravity. One thing I do know about is
instrumentation. Most people do not realize that gravity changes with location, so that when doing precise weight measurements, local gravity
corrections have to be considered. I imagine this has a great deal of effect on determining how solar eclipses effect gravity on Earth. The effect
would probably be subtle, but there is good reason to suspect that such a thing does occur.
This link points something out that I think is very important to this thread.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com...
The first sign that gravity fluctuates during an eclipse was in 1954, when French economist and physicist Maurice Allais noticed erratic behaviour
in a swinging pendulum when an eclipse passed over Paris.
Erratic behavior in the pendulum swing!
Is that symbolic or what?