Mont Blanc

I was walking down from Chamonix to commence a tour of Mont Blanc, and whom should I meet walking up but Joule, with a long thermometer in his hand and a carriage with a lady in, not far off. He told me that he had been married since we parted in Oxford [two weeks earlier] and that he was going to try for the elevation of temperature in waterfalls. 

However, in the Alps there are only a few glaciers suitable as natural archives. A prerequisite is that fim temperatures are well below 0°C and melt-water percolation is negligible in order to preserve the signal of past climate and environmental changes. Such conditions can be found above 4,000 m a.s.l. in the Northern part and above 4,300 m a.s.l. in the Southern part of the Alps [3]. Thus, potential sites for obtaining useful samples are limited to a few high-elevation areas, for instance the Bernese Alps, the Monte Rosa area, and the Mont Blanc area. 

Louis Soret was a professor of physics at the University of Geneva He studied the laws of electrolysis, defined the conditions for the production of ozone and determined its density and chemical constitution devised ingenious optical instruments and was the first scientist to make actinometnc measurements on the summit of Mont Blanc (67). In 1878 he recognized the presence of a new earth X in erbia and characterized it by its absorption spectrum, but later accepted the name holmia which Cleve gave it (67). He died in Geneva in 1890 at the age of sixty -three... 

The QSCP-IX workshop took place at the world-renowned conference centre of Les Houches, which is owned and operated by the Universite Joseph-Fourier Ecole de Physique. The Les Houches facility is situated in the French Alps, overlooking the famous winter resort of Chamonix, with stunning views of Europe s tallest mountain, Mont-Blanc http //lepes.grenoble.cnrs.fr/QSCP9/. 

Professor Daudel acted as Honorary President of the Centre de Mecanique Ondulatoire Appliquee (CMOA) for the award of the Promising Scientist Prize, which was won by Professor Piotr Piecuch (Michigan State University, USA). An impressive ceremony took place at the meeting banquet, held in the restaurant La Caleche at Chamonix-Mont Blanc. The Prize was awarded at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris http //www.ccr.iussieu.fr/lcpmr/pri7e.btml. 

It thus appears, that under a diminished pressure water seethes at a lower temperature, and theeame happens with other liquids. Saussure found that, on the top of Mont Blanc, water boiled at 184° Fahr, In deep mines, on the contrary, It requires a muoh higher temperature than 212° to bring it to a state of ebullition. On this circum stance lias been based the con-... 

A new analysis of the special low threshold trigger counts strongly indicates that KAMIOKANDE did not observe any signals at 2 52 36 which is the time claimed by the Mont Blanc group. 

M. Aglietta et al. (the Mont Blanc group) have reported the observation of five events in 7 seconds beginning from 2 52 36 UT. [6] This time is about 3 40 earlier than our time. Therefore if this observation is indeed true, the... 

We present here the other argument against the consistency between Mont Blanc and KAMIOKANDE. The KAMIOKANDE trigger system possesses a special low level discriminator output, the rate of which is counted with an online scaler. The low level discriminator has a threshold of approximately 6.4 MeV at 50% efficiency. The scaler count is read out at every event occurrence. The result is shown in Fig.6. The count rates between 2 52 UT and 2 54 UT are compared with the average rate of 9.96 Hz. They are all consistent with background. Since the threshold level is similar with Mont Blanc, one can easily calculate the event rate inferred from the Mont Blanc result ... 

Scaler count rates with 6.A MeV threshold as a function of time. Hatched region is the count rate expected from the Mont Blanc burst (5 5 /2 events> burst period = 10 sec). Our data are well below the burst rate, thus failed to confirm the Mont Blanc result. The dashed line is the expected background rate. 

MeV. This in turn leads to the v output of SN1987a of 8 x 1052 erg. for an assumed average energy of 15 MeV. Our data between 2 52 UT and 2 54 UT did not confirm the Mont Blanc result, unless the Mont Blanc threshold energy is much lower than 6.4 MeV. 

M. Moles, and J. P. Vigier, Possible interpretation of solar neutrino and Mont Blanc muon experiments in terms of neutrino-boson collisions, Lett. Nuovo Cimento 9(16) (Ser. 2), 673-676 (1974). 

Fig. 10.13 A geological cross-section and composition of waters sampled along the Mont Blanc tunnel. More data are given in Table 10.2 and in Fig. 10.14. The good correlation with the lithology is discussed in the text. (After Fontes et al., 1979.)...

The chemistry of water encountered in the Mont Blanc tunnel is thus directly related to the lithological section. This was interpreted as indicating recharge along almost vertical joints, with little horizontal flow. 

Table 10.2 Composition (ppm) of Representative Water Samples from the Mont Blanc Tunnel...

The average recharge altitude of the ends of the Mont Blanc tunnel and of the central part can be calculated using the isotopic altitude equations for the Maritime Alps (section 9.8) ... 

Fig. 10.14 Tritium, <5D, and d180 in waters collected along the Mont Blanc tunnel during its construction in 1974. The <5D and d180 axes have been plotted in a reverse mode to facilitate comparison with the topographic profile. The high tritium values indicate post-bomb recharge, and in the cases of over 200 TU one may even conclude post-1961 recharge (Fig. 10.3). (From Fontes et al., 1979.)...

Fontes, J.Ch., Bortolami, G.C., and Zuppi, G.M. (1979) Isotope hydrology of the Mont Blanc Massif. In Isotope Hydrology 1978, IAEA. Vienna, 411 136. 

The material is suitable for packaging fruits, vegetables, salads and other consumer products. One of the first applications for Biophan was a salad bag for French organic food company Mont Blanc Primeurs. 

Zimmermann J. L. and Poty B. (1970) Etude par spectrometrie de masse de la composition des fluids dans les cavites alpines du massif du Mont Blanc. Bulletin suisse de Mineralogie et Petrographie 50, 99-108. 

Massiot D, Fayon F, Alonso B, MontouiUout V, Fernandez C, Morals C, Rocha J (2003) The 3rd Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR, Chamonix Mont-Blanc... 

Kolodziejski W, Kaflak-Hachulska A (1999) Proton MAS NMR studies of human hone and bone components. In Materials of the Alpine Conference on Sohd-State NMR. Chamonix - Mont Blanc, France... 

S decreased the pitting potential to 380 mV and 170 mV respectively. The low resistance against pitting of the DIN 1.4305 steel in comparison with the DIN 14301 steel was also proved by the examination of fastening elements in the Mont Blanc alpine road tunnel [14]. Small-area experiments showed the same effect as a reduction of the sulfur content. In both cases the number of sulfide inclusions was decreased. 

Aged ice layers can also be found at high elevation sites at mid latitudes. Briat (1978) analyzed the trace metal trends in an ice core from the Mont Blanc massif covering the years 1948 to 1974. The author concluded that the levels of Pd, V, and Cd have increased by a factor of two during the observation period, whereas no statistically sigmf-icant trends were found for Mn, Cu, and Zn. 

Case study 1 for typical natural background values granitic Si-rich silicate rocks from the Mont Blanc area (Argentiere, France)... 

Fig. 8A,B shows the general geographic-geological context of this site, which is located at an altitude of 1950 m, north-west of Mont Blanc. The site is situated in a pasture area above the tree limit. It is characterized by a soil cover of about half a meter on local till material, formed by granitic gneisses (Atteia, 1992 Dalla Piazza, 1996). Fig. 8D shows the complete profile which has the typical characteristics of an evolved silicate-dominated soil (podzol with its characteristic eluvial ash-grey E-horizon). The same figure shows the pH values of the local rain, the soil, the percolation and local spring waters. Complete analyses can be found in Appendix A.l. To the right of the soil column, some of the chemical variation of the solid material and the percolation waters of the six different soil horizons and the parent rock (granitic gneiss) are portrayed.

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