‘The Brochs of Scotland’ is a bit of an unusual book for me to review; the book is a type of publication that is known as a monograph, that is, a book or pamphlet on a single scholarly topic. Monographs are usually small, ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ is only 56 pages total, and tend to be a bit technical. Because of their narrow focus of interest typically only a few thousand copies of a monograph are printed, often by a publishing house that specializes in such small, scholarly works. ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ is in fact printed by Shire Publishing, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing that is devoted to such books.
Cover of ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ by J. N. G. Ritchie. The book is available at Amazon. (Credit: Amazon.com)
In the history of science a few monographs have gone on to become famous, the best example would probably be Galileo’s ‘The Starry Messenger’. Most monographs however remain virtually unknown to everyone but a specialist in the field or a devoted amateur.
Cover page of Galileo’s ‘The Starry Messenger’ sometimes considered to be a founding document of modern science and certainly one of the most important publications in history! (Credit: Wikipedia)
As I was reading ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ I happened to notice that I have quite a few monographs, a few examples are ‘Stonehenge and Avebury’, ‘Seeing Stars’, and ‘A List of Devonian Fossils collected in Western New York with notes on their Stratigraphic Distribution’. I decided to review ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ not only because it would give me a opportunity to discuss these unusual Iron Age structures that are unique to Scotland but because it would also give me the chance to talk about monographs.
Mousa Broch is one of the best preserved Brochs giving a real impression of just how impressive the structures could be. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Brochs are a distinctive form of stone tower or fortress that were built by the hundreds between approximately the years 100 BCE and 100 CE. Brochs are unknown outside of modern Scotland and most are concentrated in the northern and western parts of the country, only a few Brochs can be found in the middle and southern parts of the country. The majority of Brochs are now ruins but a few are complete enough to show what impressive structures they were in their heyday.
Artist’s impression of what archaeologists think the interior of a Broch could have looked like. Obviously such large-scale structures required the efforts of many people to build and were probably the dwelling of the local chief or clan leader. (Credit: The Isle of Mull)
As I said Brochs are stone towers with a central open area round 10 meters in diameter where the inhabitants lived. This area was surrounded by a massive circular wall between 4 and 5 meters in thickness and as much as 10 meters in height. Those thick walls are perhaps the most striking feature of the Brochs because they are really a double wall with a space in between that averages around a meter wide inside them. Often the space between the walls was used as a room or storage area. At the same time stairways to the top of the Brochs were also built into the walls.
This image of the Dun Telve broch clearly shows the double wall construction technique. Storage areas and stairs to the upper floors were built into the walls of brochs. (Credit: MyHighlands.de)
Each Broch had only a single entrance from the outside to the central area, often with one of the rooms attached to the entrance, perhaps as a guard post? In any case the entrances were well protected, attachments for bolting heavy wooden doors can still be seen in the better preserved Brochs.
The area around a broch was also built up with houses and barns or other structures. The whole area was surrounded by a wall creating something of a small town, a well defended one! (Credit: Caithness Broch Project)
The whole design of the Brochs indicates that they were built for defense, the Iron Age equivalent of castles for local chiefs. However only a very few of the remaining Brochs show any sign of ever having been attacked, the author Ritchie suggested that they may have been built so well that it was a waste of time and effort to even consider attacking one.
The Castles of their day Brochs appear to have been so successful that archaeologists have found little evidence of any of them ever being attacked! (Credit: BBC)
If that was so then why did the 2nd century inhabitants of Scotland stop building them, why over the next few hundred years were the Brochs abandoned? In ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ the author considers both this question and the also unknown origins of the Broch style of architecture. The monograph also considers the questions of what it was like to live in Scotland at the time of the Brochs along with brief descriptions of some of the better known, better preserved Brochs along with some of the artifacts that have been found among them.
Some of the tools, jewelry and weapons made in Scotland during the age of the Brochs. There must have been something of an advanced civilization there at that time to have made both these artifacts and the Brochs as well! (Credit: Phys.org)
Now I don’t suppose that anyone out there is going to rush to buy a copy of ‘The Brochs of Scotland’ unless you’re as interested in the archaeology of the British Isles as I am. It is actually available from Amazon if you are. Still, I do recommend ‘The Brochs of Scotland’; it is a wonderful overview of these ancient, formidable yet kinda weird habitations.
The people that the Greeks called Celts are still mostly a mystery. Although archaeologists have learned a great deal about them there is still a lot to be learned. (Credit: World History Encyclopedia)
And I also recommend monographs in general. They are wonderful little books, containing a great deal of information on very select subjects. So, if you have an interest in Hindu temples, or the birds of Chile, or the paintings of Rembrandt check to see if there are any available monographs on the subject. I’m sure someone has written one sometime or another!
We live in a galaxy that contains an estimated 200 billion stars, yes that’s billion with a ‘b’, and our galaxy is only one in a Universe of tens of billions, more likely hundreds of billions of galaxies. So there are a lot of stars out there yet only a few are known to the average person. In this post I’ll be talking about some of the latest discoveries about three of the best known stars starting with the most important star of them all, at least to us, our own Sun.
Have you ever visited the site spaceweather.com. It’s a great place for all sorts of information about our Sun and the way it affects us here on Earth. (Credit: Spaceweather.com)
Even after 400 years of intense study our Sun still holds many mysteries. One of the biggest is the fact that the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, the part we can only see during a total eclipse, is much, much hotter than the Sun’s surface, which we call the photosphere. Now we know that the Sun’s source of energy is the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium that takes place in the star’s core, at the very center, which is at a temperature of about 15 million degrees Kelvin. As that energy flows outward the temperature decreases until at the photosphere it’s only 5800 degrees Kelvin. However beyond the photosphere, in the corona the temperature suddenly goes back up to a million degrees Kelvin. The mystery is what is causing the corona to have such a high temperature.
The surface of the Sun that we see is the Photosphere at a temperature of about 6,000 degrees Kelvin. For some reason however the Sun’s Corona, which we can only see during an eclipse, is much hotter at over a million degrees Kelvin. (Credit: Sites.UAlberta.ca)
Prior research had also discovered a similar phenomenon. The solar wind, the charged particles that flow out from the Sun and which cause the Aurora if they strike the Earth, are actually moving rather slowly when they are close to the Sun but accelerate as they move further away. The question once again is, where is the energy coming from to cause that acceleration?
The Sun is so energetic that it is constantly ejecting material from its surface, material that we call the solar wind. That material flows outward striking the planets like Earth and eventually reaching interstellar space. (Credit: Space.com)
Now both the particles in the corona and those in the solar wind are charged subatomic particles, electrons and protons, a state of matter that is known as plasma, and unlike neutral atoms they are greatly effected by electromagnetic forces. Therefore astrophysicists have long theorized that it was the Sun’s magnetic field that was supplying the energy via a type of electromagnetic wave called Alfvén waves. The precise details of how the process worked however were difficult to work out without measurements from within the corona itself. In fact two sets of measurements would be required at the same time, one from close to the Sun and the other from a considerable distance further away in order to see if the magnetic field dropped in strength as the solar wind increased in velocity.
Alfven waves are generated by the interplay of an external magnetic field and the bulk movement of a fluid plasma. It’s strongest, and simplest to calculate when the field and plasma are at 90 degrees to each other and can get quite complicated in other situations. (Credit: SpringerLink)
Recently two separate space probes, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, the closest man-made object to the Sun ever, and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter were in just the right position to take those measurements. Parker was orbiting the Sun at a distance of just about nine million kilometers, again that’s the closest any man-made object has come to the Sun, and was making a series of measurements that included both the density and velocity of the particles in the solar wind as well as the strength of the Sun’s Magnetic field along with the fluctuations caused by the passage of the Alfvén waves.
The Parker Solar Probe has come closer to the Sun than any man-made object ever teaching us things about the Sun we never imagined. (Credit: European Space Agency)
Two days later the same section of the solar wind that Parker had measured flowed past Solar Orbiter and it took the same set of measurements. Upon examination what the two sets of data showed was that the strength of the magnetic field had dropped to almost nothing while the speed and hence temperature of the solar wind particles had increased. Precise calculations showed that the transfer of energy was balanced; the magnetic field had lost exactly the same energy that the solar wind had picked up. Like zillions upon zillions of tiny surf boards the protons and electrons had ridden the crests of the Alfvén waves and gained energy in the process.
The European Space Agency also has a solar probe, its Solar Orbiter which monitors the solar wind. (Credit: European Space Agency)
Whether or not other stars also have magnetic fields that produce Alfvén waves that drive their solar wind is unknown at present but little by little we are learning more about them. One of the best known stars, if only because of that movie, is Betelgeuse, a gas giant star that resides in the constellation Orion. Betelgeuse is also somewhat famous because astronomers think that sometime in the next million years or so it will explode as a supernova, shining so brightly that it will be visible during the daytime.
In the constellation Orion Betelgeuse is Orion’s right shoulder. One of the brightest stars in the night sky Betelgeuse is a red giant larger than the orbit of Jupiter around our sun. Astronomers think that Betelgeuse will likely become a supernova sometime in the next million years or so! (Credit: Live Science)
In fact just about five years ago Betelgeuse suddenly dropped significantly in brightness and rumours began on the internet that was star was getting ready to explode. Astronomers themselves were more cautious however; Betelgeuse’s brightness was always known to vary, although this degree of dimming was unusual. Over last few years Betelgeuse’s brightness has fluctuated and astronomers have concluded that a large dust cloud near Betelgeuse is occasionally covering much of the star’s disk causing the dimming event.
Betelgeuse’s brightest has always been known to vary quite a bit but in the last few years that fluctuation has increased leading to speculation that the star might explode soon! (Credit: Physics World)
Now a new paper by lead author astrophysicist Jared Goldberg at Flatiron University in New York City has proposed an alternate solution, Betelgeuse has a companion star just a bit more massive than our own Sun. Based upon measurements made of the star’s brightness over the last century astronomers had found that Betelgeuse had not only a fundamental period of oscillation of 416 days that was caused by an expansion and contraction of the star’s radius but an additional long secondary period of about 2170 days.
Is the recently observed variation in Betelgeuse’s brightest caused by a nearby companion star about the mass of our Sun? (Credit: Simons Foundation)
Dr. Goldberg asserts that this secondary period is caused by the orbit of a companion star 1.17±0.7 the mass of our Sun. This companion star orbits around the more massive Betelgeuse at a distance that is about 2.4 times Betelgeuse’s radius. Betelgeuse is so huge that if placed where our Sun was it would swallow all of the inner planets out to and including Jupiter. It is when this companion star is behind Betelgeuse that we see a dimming of the brightness of the two stars.
When two stars orbit each other if one goes behind the other from our viewpoint here on Earth what we see is a dip in the total brightness of the two stars. (Credit: YouTube)
Dr. Goldberg and his team may be right, and if they are then we may be wrong about our estimate as to how long before Betelgeuse goes nova, the star may have quite a few million years left to it. On the other hand if the dimming we have observed recently is caused by disturbances in the star’s outer atmosphere then time may indeed be running out for Betelgeuse.
When a star explodes as a supernova its brightest can exceed that of an entire galaxy, for a couple of weeks. (Credit: AAS Nova)
Another very familiar star is the North Star or Pole Star Polaris. As I mentioned in my post of 19August 2024 Polaris is a member of a class of stars known as Cepheids whose rhythmic oscillation in brightness allows astronomers to use them as distance markers. Polaris in particular brightens and dims ever four days.
To find the North Star Polaris first find the big dipper. The two front stars of the dipper point toward the North Star. (Credit: BBC Science Focus)
Polaris has made a bit of news lately because for the first time astronomers have succeeded in producing a rough image of the star’s disk. Now this is really a big deal, even in some of the biggest telescopes the very closest stars are still nothing but a point of light. The technology to resolve, as astronomers put it, another star’s disk has only been developed over the last twenty or so years and still requires a lot more work than just taking a picture. In fact astronomers had to combine the light gathered by six telescopes into a single instrument in order to resolve Polaris’ disk.
Just a few short years ago getting an image of the surface of any star but our Sun was impossible but with new technology astronomers can now see the surface of other suns! (Credit: Reddit)
And the astronomers who took Polaris’ picture were actually trying to confirm the existence, and learn more about a suspected second companion star to Polaris. The North Star was already known to have a companion star at a large distance from the main star but it was in 2005 that the Hubble Space Telescope discovered that Polaris also had a second much closer and smaller star orbiting it as well. In order to learn more about this second, much closer companion astronomers needed the greater resolution that could only be obtained by combining the light of several telescopes, a technique known as Interferometry. This technique also allowed the team to produce the image of Polaris’ disk, which shows large spots or blotches on the star’s surface, perhaps something akin to the sunspots on our Sun? Anyway, it’s nice to know that even as astronomers push ever farther into the depths of the Universe they are still learning more about some of the stars we humans have gazed at for thousands of years.
Every year delegates from nations across the globe gather for the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties, this year’s meeting was the 29th such meeting or COP29. This year’s conference was held at the city of Baku in Azerbaijan from November the 11th through the 22nd.
Azerbaijan went out of its way to make the COP29 conference look inviting. Too bad the results didn’t match the venue! (Credit: African Arguments)
Even before it started COP29 was in trouble. For one thing the choice of host nation was problematic because Azerbaijan is an oil rich nation whose economy is heavily dependent on exporting the source of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. This fact was made clear when the environmental group Global Witness succeeded in posing as oil company executives and actually filmed the conference’s CEO, Elnur Soltanov, who is also Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister, trying to make a deal to sell his country’s oil. As a part of the conversation Minister Soltanov is heard to give his opinion that fossil fuels may be with us ‘perhaps forever’ along with describing natural gas as a ‘transitional fuel’.
As Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Elnur Soltanov was the logical choice to head the COP29 conference. It just would have been nice if he’d had any idea about what the conference was trying to achieve. (Credit: Globsec Forum 2024)
It got worse, again before the conference had even started news stories were published announcing that the host country Azerbaijan had granted access to the conference to over 1,700 lobbyists from coal, oil and gas companies. These lobbyists, whose sole objective was to prevent the conference from actually doing anything to stop climate change, in fact outnumbered the delegates. Exxon-Mobile, Shell, BP, Chevron and all the private energy companies sent their lobbyists, as did the national oil companies like AramCo.
Is AramCo the world’s richest corporation or is it a part of the Saudi Arabian government? The answer is yes to both questions! (Credit: The Cradle)
To add to the outrage the Azerbaijan security people began detaining and in some cases arresting members of environmental and human rights groups who are also trying to lobby the delegates to try to save the planet. Of course Azerbaijan has never been an open society where the right to protest is legally guaranteed.
The environmentalists trying to save the planet were kept out of the actual COP29 conference while the lobbyists for the fossil fuel industries were allowed in. You think maybe that’s why nothing was actually accomplished? (Credit: Climate Home News)
How countries like Azerbaijan, and last year’s host Dubai, are chosen as hosts is mind numbing, and indicates a lack of seriousness on the part of the international community. In fact there has been severe criticism of the whole COP climate change process with CO2 emissions continuing to increase even as the world’s temperature rises above the 1.5ºC increase that nations pledged to prevent just nine years ago.
Just nine years ago everybody seemed so happy as the world agreed to limit Global Warming to less than 1.5 degrees. Nobody’s smiling now! (Credit: Canvi Climatic)
Another factor that lowered expectations was the fact that very few heads of state even bothered to attend COP29. President Biden, China’s President Xi and India’s PM Modi headed a long list of world leaders whose absence clearly indicated how little they cared about the planet. The new British PM Keir Starmer did attend, highlighting his government’s determination to flight global warming but he had little support among the rest of the developed countries.
Of all of the world’s leading economies, who of course are the world’s leading polluters as well, only Keir Starmer of the UK even bothered to show up at COP29! (Credit: Reuters)
And as the icing on the cake just the week before COP 29 began the world’s most vocal climate denier Donald Trump was elected as the next President of the United States. With another Trump administration coming every delegate at the Conference knew that no matter what agreement they succeeded in reaching it would probably be immediately torn up when Trump takes office on January 20th.
As far as Trump is concerned saving the planet just costs too much! With that kind of brilliant thinking in charge we’re in deep trouble! (Credit: Instagram)
Even as the conference was proceeding the growing dangers of climate change was highlighted by a new study from the non-profit research organization Climate Central that analyzed the effect of this year’s highest ever recorded temperatures on the not quite over Atlantic hurricane season. According to the analysis all eleven Atlantic hurricanes saw their maximum wind speeds increased by 14-45 kph due to global warming.
The phenomenon of ‘Rapid Intensification’ had never been observed before 1980, it’s now happening to about half of all hurricanes. (Credit: Climate Central)
For seven of those hurricanes that increase in wind speed caused them to jump up one category on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Since it has been known for many years that a hurricane’s destructive power very nearly doubles for every increase of one on the Saffir-Simpson scale the paper estimates that of the economic damage caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton approximately 45% was due to global warming.
Even as the number of billion dollar disasters grows people still ignore the consequences of human induced climate change! (Credit: North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies)
With all of that controversy before the conference began it was hardly surprising that throughout the conference COP29 seemed on the verge of collapse. The nation of India, currently the world’s third largest polluter, in particular made it clear that it had no intention of halting or even slowing its economic growth, which is heavily dependent on increased fossil fuel use. At the same time India continued its criticism of western nations for not providing enough money to help undeveloped countries mitigate the damages caused by climate change.
Current CO2 emissions by country. So now you know who’s to blame! (Credit: 8 Billion Trees)
Things at the conference got so bad that on the meetings last day delegates from many of the countries facing the most severe harm stormed out of the negotiating room in protest. Environmental activists began chanting ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ and journalists reporting on the conference announced that COP29 could end with no deal being reached. Cooler heads did prevail however as the conference was extended by two days in order for a deal to be reached.
There were certainly fewer smiles at COP29 than there were at the Paris conference. (Credit: CNN)
It’s not much of a deal however, developed nations have pledged $300 billion a year to enable undeveloped nations to both cope with the damages caused by climate change while at the same time cut their growing CO2 emissions. That amount however is less than a quarter of the minimum estimated $1.3 trillion a year required, and much of that money is in the form of loans that most underdeveloped nations would find hard to repay. More than that, the world’s two biggest polluters, China and India, aren’t required to provide any funds at all, or reduce their own emissions. And remember, the original Paris agreement back in 2015 the developed world promised $100 billion per year to help fight climate but precious little of that money ever actually became available.
The promises made by the world’s richest countries haven’t been enough, and precious little of that money has actually been delivered. So, is it any wonder that the little countries, who just happen to be the countries suffering the most from climate change, are feeling abandoned! (Credit: France 24)
With the election of Trump and the almost certain possibility that the US will once again leave the original Paris agreement the whole idea of the world coming together to fight climate change must be considered to be in doubt. Even as the danger of global warming becomes more obvious every year the human race seems to become more determined to do nothing to protect itself.
When the environment collapses and the very survival of the human race becomes doubtful it will be our own fault. (Credit: bgfay)
P.S. More bad news. Even as I was preparing this post for publication a second UN conference on the environment was taking place in the city of Busan in South Korea. The talks, officially known as INC-5 were intended to deal with the ever-growing problem of plastic pollution worldwide.
Another meeting of the world’s politicians to solve an environmental problem. Why am I getting a feeling of Deja Vu! (Credit: YouTube)
Every year the human race produces 450 million metric tonnes of plastic, 350 million of which is single use plastic that simply ends up being tossed into the environment causing what has become a planet wide blight. Worse still, while plastic does not decay chemically in the environment it does break down mechanically into smaller and smaller pieces, microplastic and nanoplastic particles that are now literally everywhere, land, sea and air. They’re in our water; our food and now they have been detected in our blood and yes, even in our brains.
Is a caption even necessary? (Credit: World Ocean Day)
So the need for an international agreement to reduce the amount of plastic in the world has become as great as the need for an agreement to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and every bit as hard to reach. Of the more than 170 countries and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) that attended the meeting the vast majority favoured mandatory cutbacks in plastic production.
With so many ‘experts’ it’s hard to understand how they failed to accomplish anything! (Credit: Instagram)
A small minority made up of plastic producing nations disagreed. In their opinion the solution to the problem is recycling and better waste management. Solutions that have been tried continuously for the last fifty years with little success, less than 10% of plastic is ever recycled.
Despite the best efforts of many good people there was no agreement at INC-5. (Credit: X.com)
By the end of the week long conference the two sides were as far apart as ever and the conference closed without any agreement. So in the short space of a month the nations of the world had gathered together in two conferences to try to save our planet, with little or nothing to show for all the effort.
