Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Magical Thinking...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 17, 2014 at 9:00am

The series COSMOS has been under heavy assault by science deniers from the first show. When science deniers on mainstream cable news (the ORIGINAL cable news, I might add) accuse Bill Nye of being "a bully," we've gone past the Rubicon; completely off-the-rails.

What precisely has this faux "knowledge" of intelligent design/young Earth/flat Earth/young Universe/dinosaur bones via Beelzebub/Mood Rings/vibrating crystals/telepathy and telekinesis/Loch Ness Monster/Leprechauns/UFOs/claims of faked Moon landings/pyramid-building aliens/unicorns/Bigfoot helped us "design"? Or patent for reproduction and consumption? When did boondoggle become science?

Has it generated any cures for cancer? A new electronic usage for graphene on the horizon? Room temperature superconductivity? Quantum supercomputers? A faster way to get to Mars? Near-warp drive? Or better yet: how are we going to supply drinkable water for an expansive, global population? Talk about "wars and rumors of wars": lack of resources has always resulted in human conflicts, especially when you have the bigger weapons.

Producing web sites and You Tube videos are entertaining, but they're not created for venues where they'll be torn apart; rigorously debated using the Scientific Method. They are not generated (or, inclined towards) solving any real-world important problems, and just because you have an "opinion," no matter how loudly you state it, it does not make it "fact."

Scientists, the 97% that have consensus on the subject, would LOVE to be absolutely wrong. Hurricanes Katrina/Rita/Irene/Sandy/____; droughts and fires (San Diego and southern California); melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels convince them otherwise. They live on the planet too, and have a vested interest - their own lives and their families - in the continuance of the human species.

Deniers - the 3% - are cock-sure they are "right." An estimate by a Anglican Archbishop found nowhere in the Bible becomes the unquestionable 6,000 year age of Earth, the Universe and stars (never mind the whole speed-of-light-red-shift-thing: they have Conservapedia to faux "refute" that). The excuses on AM talk radio from meat heads with no science background (and no degree period), are typically "the sun is getting hotter"; "we're going through a natural cycle," blah, blah, blah. A coworker at a previous company (a stochastic modeling firm) could not believe the data I sent from the NOAA to refute their conspiratorial claims from a similarly-inclined "theory" site. Of course, in the same office was a moon-landing denier - who wasn't on the planet, mind you - but brimmed with male-member certitude the laptop-generated You Tube video on the conspiracy, requiring no doubt preternatural government thought control greater than a Vulcan mind-meld, was genuine (glad I don't work there anymore).

It's not a punchline to ask: what pray tell,is the plan B if the 3% are wrong, and it all blows up in our faces? I've stated the climate scientists have a vested interest - survival - in being off-the-mark. The fossil fuels industry funding the 3%-ers have a vested interest, too - money. "My bad" just won't do it if we screw this one away, more like "bend over and kiss your rear adios!"

Millennial voters will have to participate in representative democracy and make their voices known at the polls. They need to demand science literacy in those who wish to lead our nation going forward, and call politicians when the the same are clearly trying to BS their way into power. This is the only world the young know, and I think they'd like to inherit one somewhat intact.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

And now, cue the trolls...

Tomorrow: Deja Vu All Over Again

Separate Is Not Equal...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 17, 2014 at 9:00am

A salute to the 60th Anniversary of the Brown Decision, and Moral Mondays in my home state of North Carolina. The struggle obviously continues...

Segregated America

After the Civil War, millions of formerly enslaved African Americans hoped to join the larger society as full and equal citizens. Although some white Americans welcomed them, others used people’s ignorance, racism, and self-interest to sustain and spread racial divisions. By 1900, new laws and old customs in the North and the South had created a segregated society that condemned Americans of color to second-class citizenship.

Taking away the vote

Denying black men the right to vote through legal maneuvering and violence was a first step in taking away their civil rights. Beginning in the 1890s, southern states enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, and eventually whites-only Democratic Party primaries to exclude black voters.

The laws proved very effective. In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age African Americans were registered after 1890. In Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in 1896, the number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.

Poll tax receipt

Poll taxes required citizens to pay a fee to register to vote. These fees kept many poor African Americans, as well as poor whites, from voting. The poll tax receipts displayed here is from Alabama.

The Decision: A Landmark in American Justice

In 1952 the Supreme Court decided to hear school desegregation cases from across the country. When the trial began, everyone in the courtroom knew that the future of race relations in America hung in the balance. The attorneys for both sides believed that law and morality supported their arguments.

A victory by the plaintiffs would mean that the highest court in the land officially endorsed the ideal of equal opportunity, regardless of race. Defeat would mean that the Supreme Court continued to sanction a system of legal segregation based on the notion of racial inferiority.

“With All Deliberate Speed”

The Brown decision declared the system of legal segregation unconstitutional. But the Court ordered only that the states end segregation with “all deliberate speed.” This vagueness about how to enforce the ruling gave segregationists the opportunity to organize resistance.

Although many whites welcomed the Brown decision, a large number considered it an assault on their way of life. Segregationists played on the fears and prejudices of their communities and launched a militant campaign of defiance and resistance.

Smithsonian: Separate Is Not Equal: Brown vs. Board of Education

Tomorrow: Deja Vu All Over Again

Thinking Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 16, 2014 at 4:30am

So, you won't think it's just me...

On the blog "Physics and Physicists," Zapper Z writes the following:

A while back, I started a series of blog entry titled "You Can Teach Yourself To Think Like A Scientist". In Part 3 of this series, I mentioned about the general principal that one might be able to draw when reading the statements made by a US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. To refresh your memory, in a GQ Magazine interview, the senator was asked on how old he thinks the Earth is. He evaded answering the question by claiming that he's not a scientist, and that the issue has nothing to do with the economy of the US, which one would gather is the more important issue on his plate at that time.

Based on that interview, I tried to illustrate trying to extract the principals that Senator Rubio was using, which presumably are the principals that guide him in his decisions. His refusal to answer this question and based on his responses, one can conclude that he would rather defer such questions to experts. There's nothing wrong with that, and certainly, being put in a position like that, deferring to the experts is a rather smart way to respond to such a question.

However, such a principal no longer applies anymore, it seems. In the latest news report, it seems that Senator Rubio thinks that he's a climate expert.

"I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it," Rubio said.

The dear senator is picking himself up from a personal debacle with tea party constituents, i.e. actually trying to solve problems with immigration reform, an effort he now absolves himself of.

The title of his blog entry is "US Senator Marco Rubio Shifts Position And Thinks He's A Climate Expert." A long title/URL I'll admit.

The point he's making is the convenience of duplicity; clearly demonstrable Orwellian doublespeak. The senator is obviously making a political calculation, not reporting facts, or new data that would make him reconsider the science.

Governor Romney was for climate change in Massachusetts, working to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions until he was against it to win his party's presidential nomination, and gaff about it at the GOP convention (kind of like his flip-flop on the public mandate regarding healthcare reform). Unfortunately, we cannot ignore it, nor couch the group into a witty comedic punchline.

Tomorrow: Magical Thinking

At The Bottom of the World...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 15, 2014 at 6:18am

Antarctica's Twaites Glacier, one of the six glaciers of the Amundsen Sea Embayment of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Credit: NASA

Sea level rise estimates are going to need to be revised upward: A portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is home to some of the fastest-flowing glaciers on the continent appears to have entered a state of retreat and melt that is “unstoppable,” two new studies have found.

“It has passed the point of no return,” said Eric Rignot, lead author on one of the studies and a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been of concern to climate scientists because it contains enough ice to add 10 to 13 feet to global sea level rise were it all to melt. (Because the ice sheet’s ice is bound to land, it increases the volume of the ocean as it flows into it, like ice cubes added to a glass of water; sea ice, on the other hand, doesn’t change the ocean’s volume as it melts because it is already displacing that volume, just as a melting ice cube doesn’t add volume to the glass.)

Scientific American: Melt of Key Antarctica Glaciers "Unstoppable"

Tomorrow: Thinking Science

Reporting Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 14, 2014 at 5:04am

Media Bistro

An interview with Miles O'Brien and how science in an entertainment-driven media frequently gets reported, often by many who don't have a science background or training. Mr. O'Brien did bring his training as a history major and enthusiasm for getting stories accurate - he demonstrates his chutzpah during the interview. Miles sadly had a traffic accident where a portion of his arm had to be amputated afterwards, (he seems to be in good spirits). If anything, the interview gives perspective on how science is reported to the nation, what holds our attention and what we ultimately emphasize and deem as important. Unfortunately, it also describes quite well the tripartite Venn diagram between dogma, ignorance and science denial. Source: StarTalkRadio.net

Tomorrow: At The Bottom of the World

Acoustic Tractor Beam...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 13, 2014 at 7:48am

Credit: Physics World (link below)

An acoustic "tractor beam" that can pull an object by firing sound waves at it has been created by physicists in the UK and US. The beam was made using a commercial ultrasound surgery system and differs from previous tractor beams that use light. The researchers say their technique could be readily adapted for medical applications that manipulate objects or tissue within the body.

The new tractor beam has been created by Mike MacDonald and colleagues at the University of Dundee, University of Southampton and Illinois Wesleyan University by using an ultrasound ablation system, which is normally used to destroy tumours thanks to focused beams of intense sound. First proposed in 2006 by Philip Marston of Washington State University and realized using light in 2010 by David Grier and colleagues at New York University, the technique involves firing two beams of ultrasonic waves upwards at a triangular-shaped target at about 51° either side from the vertical direction. The target is shaped such that the beams bounce off opposite sides of the triangle, causing the reflected sound to travel straight up (see figure "Reflecting beams").

Physics World: Physicists sound-out acoustic tractor beam

Saturn Opposition...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 12, 2014 at 6:48am

Image Source: Link below

On May 10, at 2 p.m. EDT, Saturn reaches opposition — the point in its orbit when it lies opposite the Sun as seen from Earth. The planet then appears as a bright yellowish object at magnitude 0.1 in the constellation Libra the Scales. In the Northern Hemisphere, that star pattern rises in the southeast at sunset.

As you might guess, opposition means the planet rises at sunset, climbs highest in the south around 1 A.M. local daylight time, and sets as the Sun comes up. Opposition also brings Saturn closest to Earth, so it shines brightest for the year (at magnitude 0.1). During times of good seeing (atmospheric steadiness), an observer can pick out the more prominent features of the globe and rings through a 3-inch telescope.

There’s no rush to do this. An apparition (observing season) of Saturn spans a bit more than 10 months. The current one began in late November 2013 when Saturn emerged from the solar glare in the morning sky. The planet will remain visible until October, when it will sink too low in the west after sunset for useful observations.

Astronomy: Saturn shines brightest in May, Michael E. Bakich

Mother's Day (re post and add)...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 11, 2014 at 6:08am

Image Credit: IndieRockCafe.com

An anniversary, of sorts...

History of Mother's Day

"The first official Mother's Day celebrations in the United States took place in West Virginia in 1908, at the urging of Anna Jarvis. Anna's mother (also named Anna), who was active in her community, frequently organized women's groups to promote friendship and health. It had been her dream to reunite families divided by the Civil War with a day dedicated to mothers. When she passed away on May 12, 1907, Anna held a memorial service at her late mother's church in her honor. Her mother's idea of Mother's Day quickly caught on, and within five years of her death, virtually every state was observing the day on the anniversary of her death. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May as the official Mother's Day.

"You can do anything you want to do, if you set your MIND to it. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you." Mildred D. Goodwin, sunrise 15 September 1925, sunset 7 May 2009, laid to rest 12 May 2009.

Despite my challenging background, she said this often, and believed the quote I reproduced above, and more importantly: she (my MVP) believed in me. I am ever grateful that even as the light was fading from your eyes, you knew who your children - my sister and I - were.

Mildred: Her name means "gentle strength." She was that. Her name for me was "stink": diapers. You understand.

Please honor your mother (while she lives), who assists you in fulfilling your dreams: http://www.e-cards.com/area/mothers-day/ (also source of "history of Mother's Day" above)

Nuclear Fusion With Hammers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 10, 2014 at 7:48am

Michel Laberge’s favorite type of energy is the nuclear energy. And the reason for that, as Laberge discusses in this recent TED talk, is that it is the energy of the future. Today nuclear energy generates close to 20% of electricity in the US, but that is, of course, done through nuclear fission. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is thefuture of nuclear power, however generating energy in such a way is a gargantuan task for the engineers. There are many potential ways of harnessing the power of the atom and Michel Laberge offers a rather interesting one. High speeds, scorching temperatures and crushing pressure produced by synchronized hammers is the key of Laberge’s idea.

Source: PhysicsDatabase.com

Loop Quantum Cosmology...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 9, 2014 at 8:20am

This classic video discusses the rapidly growing field of loop quantum gravity or, more generally, loop cosmology. The main idea behind loop quantum gravity is that space-time is granular and that such granularity is a consequence of quantum mechanics. The powerful implication of this, if, of course, the theory turns our to be correct, is that quantum theory and general relativity can be joined together in what is usually called quantum gravity. Such a powerful junction of the two fields would enable cosmologists to answer some fundamental and almost esoteric questions, for instance, what was the nature of the big bang and what caused it. This video introduces the main ideas of the field and the leading experts, including their interviews.

Source: PhysicsDatabase.com

Expanding the Alphabet...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 8, 2014 at 7:05am

Image source: Huffington Post Science

For billions of years, the history of life has been written with just four letters — A, T, C and G, the labels given to the DNA subunits contained in all organisms. That alphabet has just grown longer, researchers announce, with the creation of a living cell that has two 'foreign' DNA building blocks in its genome.

Hailed as a breakthrough by other scientists, the work is a step towards the synthesis of cells able to churn out drugs and other useful molecules. It also raises the possibility that cells could one day be engineered without any of the four DNA bases used by all organisms on Earth.

“What we have now is a living cell that literally stores increased genetic information,” says Floyd Romesberg, a chemical biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who led the 15-year effort. Their research appears online today in Nature.

Nature: A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet
Denis A. Malyshev, Kirandeep Dhami, Thomas Lavergne, Tingjian Chen, Nan Dai, Jeremy M. Foster, Ivan R. Corrêa & Floyd E. Romesberg
Nature: First life with 'alien' DNA
#P4TC:
DNA Codex
Google Mapping Human Genome
Book of Life

El Niño...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 7, 2014 at 7:38am

Source: NOAA's El Niño Page

The El Niño / La Niña climate pattern that alternately warms and cools the eastern tropical Pacific is the 800-pound gorilla of Earth’s climate system. On a global scale, no other single phenomenon has a greater influence on whether a year will be warmer, cooler, wetter, or drier than average. Naturally, then, the ears of seasonal forecasters and natural resource managers around the world perked up back in early March when NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued an “El Niño Watch.”

The “watch” means that oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean are favorable for the development of El Niño within the next six months. These maps reveal one of the most significant of those favorable signs: a deep pool of warm water sliding eastward along the equator since late January.

As the warm surface water is pushed westward by the prevailing winds, cool water from deeper in the ocean rises to the surface near South America. This temperature gradient—warm waters around Indonesia and cooler waters off South America—lasts only as long as the easterly winds are blowing.

If those winds go slack or reverse direction in the western Pacific, the warm pool of water around Indonesia is released and begins a slow slosh back toward South America. The slosh is called a Kelvin wave. If the Kelvin wave has a strong impact on the surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific, then it can help change the atmospheric circulation and trigger a cascade of climatic side effects that reverberate across the globe.

Climate.gov: Slow slosh of warm water across Pacific hints El Niño is brewing
Huffington Post: Climate Change Is Already Here
NOAA's El Niño Page

Ununseptium...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 6, 2014 at 7:00am

Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories

The official Periodic Table of the Elements is one step closer to adding element 117 to its ranks. That’s thanks to an international team of scientists that was able to successfully create several atoms of element 117, which is currently known as Ununseptium until it’s given an official name.

The paper for this experiment has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Ununseptium, like many superheavy elements near the end of the periodic table, is incredibly unstable, existing only for fractions of a second before decaying into other elements. In fact, scientists didn’t actually observe any atoms of element 117 – its existence was confirmed by its decay. Indeed, the elements that 117 decays to themselves decay.

As part of the Periodic Table, Ununseptium would be considered a Group VII element, putting it in the same family as flourine, bromine and chlorine.

Forbes: Scientists Confirm The Existence Of Element 117, Alex Knapp
Phys.org: Superheavy element 117 confirmed
Radio Chemistry: Element 117, Ununseptium

Cinco de Mayo (re post and add)...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 5, 2014 at 3:22pm

Battle of Puebla - Wikipedia

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for "fifth of May") is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated nationwide in the United States and regionally in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla, where the holiday is called El Dia de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla). The date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride, and to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War. In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. Contrary to widespread popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is actually celebrated on September 16. (Wikipedia)

The National Society of Hispanic Physicists has a recognition page of Hispanic Americans in Physics - Past, Present and Future. Similar to what I posted during the month of February, my intention is to give the same attention to Hispanic Scientists and Engineers during the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Teaching for Change: Book link here

Almost 10 years before "Brown vs. Board of Education," Sylvia Mendez and her parents helped end school segregation in California. An American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage who spoke and wrote perfect English, Mendez was denied enrollment to a "Whites only" school. Her parents took action by organizing the Hispanic community and filing a lawsuit in federal district court. Their success eventually brought an end to the era of segregated education in California.

Praise for "Separate is Never Equal" by Duncan Tonatiuh
STARRED REVIEWS
"Tonatiuh masterfully combines text and folk-inspired art to add an important piece to the mosaic of U.S. civil rights history."
--"Kirkus Reviews," starred review
"Younger children will be outraged by the injustice of the Mendez family story but pleased by its successful resolution. Older children will understand the importance of the 1947 ruling that desegregated California schools, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education seven years later."
--"School Library Journal," starred review
"Tonatiuh ("Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote") offers an illuminating account of a family's hard-fought legal battle to desegregate California schools in the years before "Brown" v. "Board of Education.""
--"Publishers Weekly"
"Pura Belpre Award-winning Tonatiuh makes excellent use of picture-book storytelling to bring attention to the 1947 California ruling against public-school segregation."
--"Booklist"

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Tyranny of Authoritarians...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 4, 2014 at 10:57am

Image Source: The Graveyard Site

This was inspired by my read of the old COSMOS on my kindle. I happened upon this letter excerpt from Galileo to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615. Given the unbelievable, relentless assaults on the new show by Young Earth/Universe Creationists, Galileo might as well have been writing this letter in the 21st Century:

To the Most Serene Grand Duchess Mother:

Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.

.

Now as to the false aspersions which they so unjustly seek to cast upon me, I have thought it necessary to justify myself in the eyes of all men, whose judgment in matters of` religion and of reputation I must hold in great esteem. I shall therefore discourse of the particulars which these men produce to make this opinion detested and to have it condemned not merely as false but as heretical. To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even m purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.

That's aspersions...without asparagus!

Fordham University
Galileo Galilei: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615

Pseudo Gap Superconductors...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 3, 2014 at 4:32pm

Argonne National Laboratory

Thanks to a new study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have identified and solved at least one paradox in the behavior of high-temperature superconductors. The riddle involves a phenomenon called the “pseudogap,” a region of energy levels in which relatively few electrons are allowed to exist.

Despite their name, high-temperature superconductors are actually quite cold – roughly 250 degrees to 350 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Conventional superconductors, like those used in MRI machines or particle accelerators, are even colder. Even though they are still quite cold, high-temperature superconductors are of special interest to researchers because, at least in theory, they are much easier to keep sufficiently cold and are thus potentially more useful.

Argonne National Laboratory:
Scientists gain new insight into mysterious electronic phenomenon

A Plane That Drives...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 2, 2014 at 8:34am

Source: Link below

Flying cars have long been the stuff of science fiction, though plenty of entrepreneurs and visionaries have struggled to make the concept a reality – including no less than the original Henry Ford.

The group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni that developed the Transition flying car have said they’re ready to take a giant leap even farther into the wild blue yonder. They’ve announced a more advanced concept, the TF-X, that is rapidly working its way toward reality.

To start with, the four-seater would be capable of vertical take-offs and landings. And since it would largely be controlled by a central computer network, the TF-X would, claims a Terrafugia promotional video, require a pilot/driver to have as little as five hours of training, a slight fraction of what it now takes to get the most basic private pilot’s license.

Oh, and if that isn’t appealing enough, the team says their newest flying car design would use an environmentally friendly plug-in hybrid powertrain.

NBC News: Flying Car Moves from Science Fiction Toward Reality,
Paul A. Eisenstein
#P4TC: From Fantasy, To Reality (2011)
Site: Terrafugia.com

Team Tesseract...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 1, 2014 at 6:45am

Source: Museum of Flight

Orion is the first spacecraft designed to transport astronauts as far as Mars. NASA plans to launch the first Orion test flight later this year. Longer distance space flight poses a number of design challenges.

“In deep space the challenges are zero gravity and a radiation environment. So bone loss, muscle loss and the radiation as you don’t have the atmosphere of the Earth to protect you,” said Laurence Price Deputy Program Manager at Lockheed Martin.

Price is talking about the Van Allen Belt, a tightly packed field of radiation around the earth that acts as a layer that protects earth from charged ions. NASA has to study this area of radiation before they can send a manned spaceflight through it, and possibly on to Mars sometime after 2020.

The test flight will allow NASA to, among other things, experiment with different approaches to shielding radiation.

To come up with a radiation shield, Lockheed Martin, NASA and the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) created the Orion spacecraft Exploration Design Challenge for high school students. “So the idea behind the challenge is to get the students interested in something that is very necessary and we need to make a lot of progress in it… the students put a proposal together and build an experiment to measure the different approaches to radiation shielding,” said Price.

Student teams from around the country participated in the competition.

While at the USA Science and Engineering Festival last week, the winning design was announced by Team ARES from the Governor’s School for Science and Technology in Hampton, VA.

The American Radiation Eradication in Space (ARES) team created a 7” cubic shield called the Tesseract. It will house and protect a dosimeter from radiation while in flight. The final incarnation will be made of Tantalum, Tin, Zirconium, Aluminum, and Polyethylene. The heavy metals will block gamma rays while ions and neutrons are captured by the hydrocarbons of the polyethylene. The students selected their materials based on cost, malleability, machinability, weight, and abundance. Thanks to CAD models, the design was made to have flanges and bolts which allow the Tesseract to be strong, easily produced, and opened.

Engineering.com:
Orion Spacecraft will carry Radiation Shield designed by High School Students

Supersymmetry...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 30, 2014 at 8:12am

The best hope for discovering evidence of supersymmetry will come from the Large Hadron Collider, which is currently shut down so that it can be upgraded.
Credit: Thinkstock

The first run of the LHC, which ended in early 2013, produced enough data to allow researchers to identify the long-sought Higgs boson. During the shutdown, scientists and engineers will make improvements to the machine, which will let it reach the highest energies that it was designed for.

Caveat to the link below: crisis in this case for a science publication I'd take to mean "conundrum," which is a good way to sell print copy. When I think of a crisis, I recall the "Black Hole War" between Leo Susskind and Stephen Hawking (a very good read, I might add). However, if you're a string theorist, SUSY or lack thereof can get you a little agitated I plan to purchase at the local supermarket to have an off-line physical copy.

Scientific American: Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics

Diamond Teleportation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 29, 2014 at 6:42am

The ability to teleport quantum information between diamond crystals that can also store it is a small but important step toward a quantum Internet.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The prospect of a quantum Internet has excited physicists for two decades. A quantum Internet will allow the transmission of information around the world with perfect security and make cloud-based quantum computing a reality.

But first, physicists must perfect the technology of quantum routing—the ability to receive and transmit quantum information without destroying it.

That’s a significant challenge. The key is a technique called quantum teleportation, which transmits information from one point to another without it passing through the space in between. This is a routine operation in any decent quantum optics lab but quantum routing—which concatenates the process—is another challenge altogether.

Today, Wolfgang Pfaff at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft in the Netherlands and a few pals say they’ve take a significant step toward this goal with the first demonstration of diamond teleporters that can act as nodes in a quantum network. “These results establish diamond spin qubits as a prime candidate for the realization of quantum networks for quantum communication and network-based quantum computing,” they say.

The fundamental difficulty in quantum routing is that quantum information is fragile stuff. So quantum teleportation has always involved creating a qubit, teleporting it and then immediately measuring it to check whether teleportation has been successful.

However, the process of measurement destroys quantum information. So an important goal is to create routers that can read and write quantum information without destroying it.

Physics arXiv:
Unconditional quantum teleportation between distant solid-state qubits