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Hottest Day of December on Record in Australia - Most of It Over 42C

posted by martyb on Wednesday December 18 2019, @04:20PM   
from the let-it-snow-let-it-snow-let-it-snow dept.

c0lo writes:

Only 6 years after the weathermen needed a new color for just one spot of extreme temperatures on the map, this is how it looks when that color needs to be used for over 30% of the Australia's area. And that for 3 days in a row, starting today, Dec 18 2019 (like, meh, just a balmy 40C in Melbourne at 18:30, she'll be apples).

[40C is 104F and 50C is 122F --ed.]

Coverage:
BBC - Australia heatwave: Nation endures hottest day on record

Guardian Australia heatwave: records forecast to be broken as temperatures surge past 40C

Severe-weather.eu An extreme heatwave is about to swipe across Australia, raising maximum temperatures up to near 50°C (122°F) in S/SE parts of the continent, breaking many all-time records!

AFP Australia has its hottest day on record, more to come

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Original Submission

• Re:You know what this means... Re:You know what this means... (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:07AM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:07AM (#933997)

  The energy released by its decay is so large (140 watts/g) that a capsule containing about half a gram reaches a temperature above 500oC.

  https://web.archive.org/web/20120310145431/http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/polonium.pdf [archive.org]

  So 140 uW per ug. You can use 1 microgram to power about 140 watches:

  1×10−6 = tech: approximate consumption of a quartz or mechanical wristwatch

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power) [wikipedia.org]

  Parent

• Re:You know what this means... Re:You know what this means... (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:39AM (2 children)

  by anubi (2828) on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:39AM (#934046) Journal

  Until the Carnot tax.

  By the time you pay off all the energy to get the remaining energy in the form you want it, usually in the form of electricity or shaft work, you find there isn't much, if any, left.

  Kinda like a Cheetah expending 100 calories to catch rodents having 80 calories in them. No matter how many rodents the big cat catches, it's gonna starve.

  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

  Parent

  • Re:You know what this means... Re:You know what this means... (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:33AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:33AM (#934067)

    This is morel like harvesting 100 calories in per microgram of mouse.

    Parent

    • Re:You know what this means... (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:29PM

      by khallow (3766) on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:29PM (#934173) Journal

      So it's like 125 calories of work to harvest that 100 calories of microgram mouse?

      Parent