Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Something From Nothing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 15, 2014 at 7:01am

A discussion between Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins. Admittedly, both are enthusiasts of scientific, critical thinking and, ahem..."not friendly" to theistic viewpoints, to say the least.

Source

I personally don't think there is a Venn diagram intersection between science and faith. I think both have helped society - Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Civil and Voting Rights - and both have contributed to errors and wrongs, e.g.: The Inquisition; Salem Witch Trials; Eugenics; the atomic bomb. I don't think either professor is willing or able to absorb the intrinsic needs of society into the halls of science. I think both pursuits should endeavor to "stay in their lanes" and not intervene with/demean the other.

Meanwhile: enjoy their discussion. It is enlightening.

Dating Methods...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 14, 2014 at 6:45am

Image Credit: Huffington Post

Similar to "Flat Earth Society" conspiracy theorists (they ironically have a web site and a Facebook "info" page, go figure), I hear a lot of "young Earth" enthusiasts that confuse, or blatantly obfuscate the distinct differences between Carbon 14 dating and Radiometric dating. Both are related to the decay of isotopes over time as measured by the half lives of the materials read to date it. However, the difference is where the elements are found, how they occur in nature, and what they tell us. This short primer hopefully, clears up any misconceptions and clarifies the inaccuracy of holding onto the notion - sometime propagated by our elected officials - of an Earth only a few thousand years old. Or, for that matter after the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle and International Space Station is flat or an oblong Frisbee-like disk (though it's not "round," it's not a flying saucer).

Carbon 14 dating

Essentially called so because it involves us "carbon-based life forms," to use a Trek techno-babble phrase. It has a limit of around 50,000 years and uses things like wood, bone, cloth, hair, plant fibers. (1) Page 2 of the "How Stuff Works" link has an excellent graphic on the natural manufacture of the phenomena. Cosmic rays collide with energetic neutrons creating Nitrogen-14, eventually turning into Carbon-14 that is absorbed by plants, that are then consumed/used by animals or humans. Following death and burial as the link implies, word and bones change from Carbon-14 to Nitrogen-14 by Beta particle decay. The key to understanding this is Carbon-12 is considered a stable, i.e. non-decaying isotope, whereas Carbon-14 is unstable. (2) C-14 decays over time, and tells us how long ago an organism died and stopped producing it. This rate, or knowledge of how long this process should take, is how scientists date something using this method. However, it is not without some controversy as decay rates may have been accelerated, or at least different in the distant past. More info at "The Straight Dope" link below, discussing some assumptions in the process and thereby limits to the accuracy. (3) However, the key to this method is what's measured originates from living things.

Radiometric dating

This is on the order of larger and longer time scales, billions of years, starting with the destruction of a distant star by supernova, which gave us the elements in our own bodies ("We are made of 'star stuff' - Carl Sagan) as well as what I'm about to discuss next. The death of distant stars gave us for better or worse: uranium, as such a heavy metal has to be manufactured in an atomic fusion process. (4) Some of that expended material finds its way to forming accretion disks, proto-solar systems of dust and rock that attract one another. The center will eventually become hot enough to become a sun itself and the outer, less thermally energized rings will coalesce into eventual planets. The Earth was initially in a molten state; uranium, silicon and zirconium form ZrSiO4 (Zircon). A faux diamond popularly sold is based on Zirconium (non-radioactive, I might add to alleviate any worries). Once locked into the lead-free crystal, ²³⁸U can decay in a similar fashion to C-14 dating, with a half-life of 4.46 x 10⁹ years. The decay eventually leads to ²¹⁰Pb (Lead). Moon rocks brought back from the Apollo missions are even older, and used as a comparison to the oldest rocks found on Earth, thus 4.54 billion years is the usual time scale given for the age of the globe, give-or-take a few million years (4). Geologic time is admittedly an approximation, and not as precise as any notion of "exactness" (5), but it is the best estimate of how old the planet is that's reported. Dr. Roger C. Wiens gives a primer on radiometric dating "from a Christian Perspective," his concern stated here:

Radiometric dating--the process of determining the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements--has been in widespread use for over half a century. There are over forty such techniques, each using a different radioactive element or a different way of measuring them. It has become increasingly clear that these radiometric dating techniques agree with each other and as a whole, present a coherent picture in which the Earth was created a very long time ago. Further evidence comes from the complete agreement between radiometric dates and other dating methods such as counting tree rings or glacier ice core layers. Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating. (6)

That is an admittance that may disturb some on both sides of a politically contrived "debate." However, this Tweet from Bill Nye (a bit off-color, I will admit), says the point succinctly in less than 140 characters:

Adherence to the Scientific Method produces tangible, often profitable results - for the theist or skeptic alike - and it doesn't discriminate.

Sources:

1. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/carbon-14.htm

2. http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/carbon-14-dating-faq.htm

3. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1836/how-does-carbon-14-dating-work

4. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_scientists_tell_the_age_of_the_Earth?#slide=1

5. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html

6. http://asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Vortex Whiplash...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 13, 2014 at 8:09am

Image Source: B&N

My first B&N link, like...ever! I saw a lot of this image on the way to work in Winter Storm Hercules (that was ahem: after digging my car out). NOTHING in New York, or should I say nothing rarely, stops for snow.

I sincerely hope we're over it.

I earlier posted a widget from 4hiroshimas.com (see original link at "we're over it" above). You can see it below my Facebook badge. It's quite impressive.

Like I said, I'm sincerely hopeful we're over it. It snows in the northeast regularly enough. That cold was biting! My Labrador gained 10 pounds according to the vet. "She's not walking very far," I replied. To put it bluntly, she became...extremely efficient in very short distances. As I personify her: "...1!...2! OK, let's go back in!" (She's a Texas gal, after all.)

This is a good link on it with a very humorous title:
What Is The Polar Vortex And Why Is It Doing This To Us? So personal I know, but that's how one feels at -8 degrees Fahrenheit (reread the Lab's personification).

CNN gives a primer on it as well, walking the delicate line of whether it's global warming or not - can't upset the armchair experts too much, or Donald Trump. [Personally, I tend not to trust billionaires tied to reality shows that can't purchase a decent toupee or hair implants from "Hair Club for Men."]

I'm not holding my breath that my widget nor the fluctuating temperatures will change anyone's mind. The irrational, made-up mind is beyond logical discussion. Besides, climate denial makes for good ratings when preaching to the convinced choir.

Related links from Science blog:

Yes, it was a remarkable cold snap, but in what way? posted by Coby
Go home Arctic, You're Drunk, Greg Laden
More on weather whiplash and the Polar Vortex, Greg Laden

Layered Cake...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 12, 2014 at 7:50am

Marie Antoinette never said it, but cake nonetheless, its stratification, its 99% base and crowning glory of 1% sugar and lard personification of our inequitable "education" system:

Is American Culture to Blame for Failing Schools? NY Times Mobile

By DAVID FIRESTONE

December 18, 2013

“Americans do not support an egalitarian society.”

That was the response of one reader, Jay David of New Mexico, to the final editorial in our series on science and math education, and in many ways it summed up the bitterness that many others expressed when the American school system was compared to those of other countries.

The editorial looked at some of the reasons students in Finland, Canada and Shanghai do much better in science and math than American students, and concluded that those places care more about preparing teachers and elevating the cultural position of education, while ensuring that more resources go to the neediest schools. In this country, teachers are poorly paid, poorly prepared and generally disdained, while the richest schools and students get by far the most money.

Scores of readers blamed that disparity on this country’s more libertarian culture, and on an outlook toward learning that if not overtly anti-intellectual is at least non-intellectual.

“Canadians’ acceptance and indeed pride in their more egalitarian society contrast with Americans’ acceptance of having an underclass,” wrote Blair P., of Palm Desert, Calif. “It’s an Ayn Rand philosophy.”

We are allowing sociopaths to abuse our intellect and common sense; we're dumbing down our curriculum to fit a dogma best left in constitutionally separated voluntary places of worship for Sunday school lessons:

This lunacy is confirmed on Snopes (its made its rounds on the web); what we do to ourselves is child abuse and cultural psychopathy. Our elected officials encourage this for the electorate to vote for them against their own interests. WHAT OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET DOES THIS TO THEMSELVES?

We are non-intellectual. We attack nerds-cum-intellectuals-cum-engineers-cum-teachers-cum-professors and expect to advance as a nation. We celebrate replaceable athletes and "reality shows'" family dysfunction exacerbating a writ large dysfunction of a democratic republic originally designed for its citizens to be educated, involved, curious; questioning. CRITICAL THINKING skills, not magical thinking is what our competitors excel in:

America’s stature as an economic power is being threatened by societies above us and below us on the achievement scale. Wealthy nations with high-performing schools are consolidating their advantages and working hard to improve. At the same time, less-wealthy countries like Chile, Brazil, Indonesia and Peru, have made what the O.E.C.D. describes as “impressive gains catching up from very low levels of performance.” In other words, if things remain as they are, countries that lag behind us will one day overtake us.

The United States can either learn from its competitors abroad — and finally summon the will to make necessary policy changes — or fall further and further behind.

The link for the 2nd excerpt is below. We're headed for the "Hunger Games."

NY Times: Three Reasons Students Do Better Overseas

The New COSMOS...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 11, 2014 at 6:35am

...and why it's important to our democracy.

As we get closer, I'll post more...you can COUNT on it!

Open Letter...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 10, 2014 at 9:00am

Open Letter to Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel

To Whom It May Concern:

Even though it's an old story, I see you chose to run your faux documentary on Mermaids, replete with interviews from faux oceanographic scientists, faux CGI representations of evolved-from-Africa mermaid-hominids with a fake "discovery" by children at a beach, and the ubiquitous claims of a "government cover-up." The NOAA made an official statement on its web site the last time this was attempted. The off-hand scripted involvement of children got my attention.

EW: Mermaid hoax drowns Animal Planet's ratings record

Here is a video of a whale sighting I participated in last summer:

Yes, it's amateurish and not shot with CGI as your hominid tribe of mer-men. The jiggles are from my breathless sprinting back and forth to each side of the boat with my mobile phone where the sightings happened. I'm quoting my You Tube page for this blog:

"Sighting 1 of 2 Finback whales, a Minke and an Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola). More videos to follow of 2nd and rest of sightings. All in all, a good day!"

That was FOUR non-mythologized sea creatures. There was no need for fake effects for the thrill of adventure. It was a good day, and a good time enjoyed by all, young and old and a diversity representing many countries that launched into the deep from Nantucket. I assure you, if a mermaid had been sighted off the bow, stern, port or starboard of our boat, there would have been even more excitement, and a lot of interviews by major networks like yourselves.

On other channels, we get schlock, crap, faux news and faux "reality shows," and as a nation we're rapidly losing our grip on critical thinking skills, healthy skepticism, scientific reasoning and the thrill of adventure for young people to seriously think about exploring a career in the sciences. In my opinion, we're just making our young people "good consumers" and not good thinkers or producers. Other nations are not doing this to themselves.

TLC: it stands for "The Learning Channel," yet hosts "Honey-Boo-Boo," and its current lineup is not too far removed. The competition for viewership in the universe of hundreds of options for consumers must be fierce, and I appreciate the struggle for viewership in a sea of options. However, we will not be a functional democracy for much longer if the only thing you can produce does not inform the citizenry, but instead dumbs down our most vulnerable via manipulation - of the very young and the very old - propagates "magical thinking" and its hand-in-hand cousin conspiracy theories.

I grew up watching Mr. Wizard (Bill Nye in the 90's thankfully carried on this tradition); the Apollo Moon Landing; Marlin Perkins' "Wild Kingdom"; "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" and as a young adult in college, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." THESE shows of actual events ignited the thrill of discovery in me, as I spent many a Saturday hunched around test tubes, testing electrical circuits, viewing human hairs and amoeba or peering through a refractor telescope. With respect to Cosmos, it spurred me to complete an undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics; it thrills me to go further. Surely your discourse could rise to this level, and elevate rather than insult the intelligence of and debase our nation's youth.

What you practice in these faux schlock-umentaries is frankly on the level of national child abuse. As a former high school math and physics teacher, I formally protest your actions, and ask you to reconsider broadcasting this pseudoscience ever again. I usually reserve these types of posts for Sunday, but it is a new school year, and impressionable minds should be guided in the correct way to view science: as an attempt to get at deeper truths; not propagate fiction.

Both official retractions and apologies are in order if you are mature enough to make them.

For branding yourselves under the name "Discovery Channel," ratings should not be your only criteria. Thank you.

Exomoons...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 9, 2014 at 7:04am

Image: NASA/JPL and article link

Exoplanets are almost old hat to astronomers, who by now have found more than 1,000 such worlds beyond the solar system. The next frontier is exomoons—moons orbiting alien planets—which are much smaller, fainter and harder to find. Now astronomers say they may have found an oddball system of a planet and a moon floating free in the galaxy rather than orbiting a star.

The system showed up in a study using micro lensing, which looks for the bending of starlight due to the gravitational pull of an unseen object between a star and Earth. In this case the massive object might well be a planet and a moon. But the signal is not very clear, the researchers acknowledge, and could instead represent a dim star and a lightweight planet. “An alternate star-plus-planet model fits the data almost as well” as the planet-plus-moon explanation, the scientists reported in a paper that was posted this week on the preprint site arXiv. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The thrill is obvious, but tampered with skeptical caution: a moon discovered circling an exoplanet with the presence of comet-carried water in the planet's early stage could give rise to the conditions similar to ours for intelligent life. I expect peer-review will be necessarily rigorous as the Scientific Method is about illuminating truth from fiction; facts from error to corroborate this finding.

Scientific American: First Exomoon Possibly Glimpsed

Mirror, Mirror...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 8, 2014 at 7:31am

Source: Article link below

Is there another you reading this article at this exact moment in a parallel universe? Dr. Brian Greene, author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, believes that this freakish quirk of nature may exist; and he discusses its amazing possibilities in this 3-minute TV interview.

A growing number of cosmologists agree with Greene that we are but one of many universes and at least one of these other worlds lies close to ours, maybe only a millimeter away. We can't see this world, because it exists in a type of space different from the four dimensions of our everyday reality.

MIT's Max Tegmark believes this multiverse model of 'many universes' is grounded in modern physics and will eventually be testable, predictive and disprovable. "This is not sci-fi," he says, "its real science."

As research at the CERN Large Hadron Collider progresses, scientists are talking increasingly of a "new physics" on the horizon, which promise to help researchers understand more of the unknowns about our universe. This new approach includes developing a better understanding of dark energy, a mystery force that some forward thinkers believe indicates that a 'sister' universe lurks in our neighborhood.

*****

For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. 1 Cor 13:12

And, of course:

IEET: #3 Parallel Worlds exists and will soon be testable, expert says

Superheroes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 7, 2014 at 6:34am

"You get what you celebrate." Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, creator of US First Robotics competition.

[From last summer] Leading theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander will join the Dartmouth faculty this summer as the Ernest Everett Just 1907 Professor. Alexander, a native of Trinidad who was raised in the Bronx, specializes in particle physics and cosmology and is also an accomplished jazz saxophonist.

Source: Link "From last summer"

Web site: Stephon Alexander, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Krasnikov Tube...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 6, 2014 at 7:35am

Source: see paper at link

Abstract

The "warp drive'' metric recently presented by Alcubierre has the problem that an observer at the center of the warp bubble is causally separated from the outer edge of the bubble wall. Hence such an observer can neither create a warp bubble on demand nor control one once it has been created. In addition, such a bubble requires negative energy densities. One might hope that elimination of the first problem might ameliorate the second as well. We analyze and generalize a metric, originally proposed by Krasnikov for two spacetime dimensions, which does not suffer from the first difficulty. As a consequence, the Krasnikov metric has the interesting property that although the time for a one-way trip to a distant star cannot be shortened, the time for a round trip, as measured by clocks on Earth, can be made arbitrarily short. In our four dimensional extension of this metric, a "tube'' is constructed along the path of an outbound spaceship, which connects the Earth and the star. Inside the tube spacetime is flat, but the light cones are opened out so as to allow superluminal travel in one direction. We show that, although a single Krasnikov tube does not involve closed timelike curves, a time machine can be constructed with a system of two non-overlapping tubes. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that Krasnikov tubes, like warp bubbles and traversable wormholes, also involve unphysically thin layers of negative energy density, as well as large total negative energies, and therefore probably cannot be realized in practice.

Physics arXiv: A Superluminal Subway: The Krasnikov Tube

A Matter Of...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 5, 2014 at 8:14am

This is a graph I put together rather quickly, by going to the URL for NASDAQ, which I give in the title of it.

For convenient reference: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/swhc/historical. If you choose to duplicate, you will download a CSV file that is 2,520 lines, mine dates from 12/15/2003 - 12/15/2013, a ten-year span; save in Excel. If you do today, it will no doubt be from 1/5/2004 - 1/5/2014. The rest of the effort is just formatting it appropriately.

I placed historical notes and observed what seems this amazing correlation: sales for this particular manufacturer INCREASED after horrific shootings. I'd heard this before on the news, but not actually seen it. It can probably be inferred for other manufacturers that aren't traded publicly, i.e. privately-owned LLCs.

The 114th Congress will come back in session this month, on the heels of the 113th, the least-productive congress in national history. No amount of children slaughtered in the streets of Chicago nor the suburbs of Sandy Hook or Sanford, Florida shall move this political inertia; this legal, lethal lethargy.

This post was motivated by a Facebook lament from a fellow teacher I had the pleasure of serving with at Manor High School - who lamented this Texas Monthly article (following his italicized quote) on emergency response drills, AKA "active shooter" response:

This is what we're choosing as a society: we would rather train our students to live in constant fear in a place where they should feel safest, than even discuss sacrificing a part of one of our liberties for the greater good of our nation.

The article: "Is It Possible to Prepare Teachers and Students For School Shooting Situations Without Traumatizing Them?" by Dan Solomon. Probably not, or about as well as the old "duck-and-cover" drills would have saved us all from nuclear annihilation.

I type this on 18 December, and it posts automatically on 5 January 2014. No, it's not a physics or science-related post. You want science? OK, here's one technology review post link to a science paper on gun control, and Urban Dictionary's humorous blunt-force definition of what might be addling our fellow humans.

If you are shocked by my usage of the Manson embed and Urban's tongue-in-cheek synopsis, please don't be unless the "new normal" as this planet's most violent nation is now normal for you.

Many of our elected representatives love to quote the Bible when it suits their purposes. I'd be interested asking their opinion on this verse:

Because you have said, "We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol ("the grave") we have made a pact. The overwhelming scourge will not reach *us* when it passes by, For we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception." Isaiah 28:15

Step back, and watch the worms squirm in the salt beds of hypocrisy they have made for themselves.

Happy New Year.

It's not a matter of "if"...

Related: 7 Famous Quotes From a Tyrannical Gun-Grabbing Dictator

Dark Money...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 4, 2014 at 8:57pm

Image Credit: Metro Times

The largest, most-consistent money fueling the climate denial movement are a number of well-funded conservative foundations built with so-called "dark money," or concealed donations, according to an analysis released Friday afternoon.

The study, by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, is the first academic effort to probe the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the climate denial movement.

It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, whose funding cannot be traced, has risen dramatically over the past five years.

Matter of democracy

In the end, Brulle concluded public records identify only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars supporting climate denial efforts. Some 75 percent of the income of those organizations, he said, comes via unidentifiable sources.

And for Brulle, that's a matter of democracy. "Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible," he said. "Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square."

If you're like me, it's frustrating to discuss climate change with coworkers. It's topped the list of things NOT to discuss: climate change, politics, religion, sensible gun control, [proper] science education. There seems to be no rational discussions one can have; there seems a dogma and talking points that people have memorized largely because simplicity is more attractive, and you cannot convince the made-up mind. Nuance is dicey and complicated; contemplation and understanding regarding a system as large as the planet is too vast for persons not versed in logic, mathematical modeling, the scientific method or syllogism is best left to the loudest, the shrillest; well-moneyed of voices among us. Sadly, many of them are talk-show radio heads with the collective education attainment of amoeba.

One problem: they have no "plan B" for the rest of us if the shrill (most likely)...are wrong.

"At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts."

Scientific American: "Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial Effort

Nerds...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 3, 2014 at 8:30am

Source: Pinterest.com

Stereotype: "people who think about science and technology are not human." (from the video)

Sorry if I sound sensitive, but I've lived this with bullying in my own life as I assume others have as well. We've made the "dumb down" a national mantra; we've elevated athletes and reality stars to godlike status for "much ado about...nothing." (Shakespeare) Our success as a nation is apparently supposed to just "happen," our technological advances are supposed to just drop out of the sky. Harold O. Levy's grim synopsis in Scientific American is stated quite well in this excerpt:

The full depth of America's educational failure is actually masked by the diversity of nationalities among grad students in those fields: Of the 1,777 physics doctorates awarded in 2011, for example, 743 went to temporary visa holders from many lands—and that figure excludes foreign nationals who had won permanent resident status. Only 15 of those 1,777 doctorates were earned by African-Americans. The totality is less and less American students PERIOD are going into science...why? May I posit few observations:

Source: Voctactic.com

We disdain kids for wanting to learn; express curiosity and excel academically: they are the "outcasts." We applaud kids for spending hours in the gym or on courts to fit through a narrow probability = raw talent + LUCK with a limited shelf life: for every ~30 draft picks, the same number are going to D-Leagues or out of the game; the leagues if the 2nd part of the formula - LUCK prevails! For their time in the secondary sun: they are "the cool ones."

It appears it is literally *nothing* that we celebrate; nothing of worth, self-satisfaction, personal gratification, value or that makes a difference. With few exception, most of the sports have updated rules, equipment and training methods only, with little fundamental change of mechanics from each sport's inception. It would be like running the global economy on Newtonian physics. We've become a "Seinfeld nation."

This moribund myth is as false as eugenics theories, xenophobic racists prejudices, and the height of breathtaking hypocrisy for narcissistic techno-bullies to Blog, Facebook, Pinterest, Text or Tweet their threats and disdain of nerds...on platforms CREATED by them!

Quantum Internet...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 2, 2014 at 5:37am

From Technology Review's "Best of 2013":

Credit: footnote (1) link

One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum internet that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.

The basic idea here is that the act of measuring a quantum object, such as a photon, always changes it. So any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping that the receiver can detect. That allows anybody to send a “one-time pad” over a quantum network which can then be used for secure communication using conventional classical communication.

That sets things up nicely for perfectly secure messaging known as quantum cryptography and this is actually a fairly straightforward technique for any half decent quantum optics lab. Indeed, a company called ID Quantique sells an off-the-shelf system that has begun to attract banks and other organisations interested in perfect security.

These systems have an important limitation, however. The current generation of quantum cryptography systems are point-to-point connections over a single length of fibre, So they can send secure messages from A to B but cannot route this information onwards to C, D, E or F. That’s because the act of routing a message means reading the part of it that indicates where it has to be routed. And this inevitably changes it, at least with conventional routers. This makes a quantum internet impossible with today’s technology

Various teams are racing to develop quantum routers that will fix this problem by steering quantum messages without destroying them. We looked at one of the first last year. But the truth is that these devices are still some way from commercial reality.

Today, Richard Hughes and pals at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico reveal an alternative quantum internet, which they say they’ve been running for two and half years. Their approach is to create a quantum network based around a hub and spoke-type network. All messages get routed from any point in the network to another via this central hub. (1)

Abstract

Network-centric quantum communications (NQC) - a new, scalable instantiation of quantum cryptography providing key management with forward security for lightweight encryption, authentication and digital signatures in optical networks - is briefly described. Results from a multi-node experimental test-bed utilizing integrated photonics quantum communications components, known as QKarDs, include: quantum identification; verifiable quantum secret sharing; multi-party authenticated key establishment, including group keying; and single-fiber quantum-secured communications that can be applied as a security retrofit/upgrade to existing optical fiber installations. A demonstration that NQC meets the challenging simultaneous latency and security requirements of electric grid control communications, which cannot be met without compromises using conventional cryptography, is described. (2)

1. Technology Review: Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet for Over Two Years
2. Physics arXiv: Network-Centric Quantum Communications with Application to Critical Infrastructure Protection,
Richard J. Hughes, Jane E. Nordholt, Kevin P. McCabe, Raymond T. Newell, Charles G. Peterson, Rolando D. Somma

2013 Physics Highlights...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 1, 2014 at 7:02am

They were:

Four-Quark Matter
Strangers from Beyond our Solar System (Neutrinos)
Dark Matter is Still Obscure
Light Stopped for One Minute
Telescope Detects Twist in Ancient Cosmic Light
Lasers of Sound
Microscope Spies on Hydrogen
Facilities in a Box
Majorana Fermions Annihilate in Nanowires
A Year of Quantum Victories—But No Quantum Computer Yet
What’s Inside a Black hole?

Compiled by Matteo Rini and Jessica Thomas

APS: Highlights of the Year

The Day I Wept...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 20, 2013 at 6:30am

I wept because Carl had been such an inspiration to me, to astronomers, children, physicists, scientists, engineers, technologists, writers, television, movies and film: singularly as much popular impact as Star Trek on a vision of the future and our participation in it.

Three years later, the destiny of entropy came for my father.

Like the death of Charles M. Schultz in 2000 and my mother in 2009, I wept. I felt the passage of time as my childhood heroes were rapidly exiting the scene, seeing but not quite making it into the 21st century (except mom), where entropy will ultimately claim me.

I'm encouraged COSMOS is getting a "reboot" of sorts, but the media is so vastly different than then; so purposely distracting. Whatever the provider or package: can anyone watch all the channels you currently have access to? It's a quaint madness of sorts.

It's hard for kids these days to imagine television going OFF except for some interruption by storms or power outages; prior to 1980 of there being three main channels that broadcast locally, a UHF (ultra-high frequency station, with snowy reception) and PBS. In the advent of COSMOS in 1980, the only cable network news channel was CNN (1 June 1980); MTV would launch 1 August 1981. That was it, so Carl had for the most part, everyone's undivided attention by default, and captured the national imagination.

My concern is shared by David Morrison, a doctoral student of Carl's: your chances of seeing his professor were very high then, whereas Dr. Tyson, Hayden Planetarium Director and well-known for his Star Talk Internet Radio broadcasts, has a vastly more challenging landscape (see "I plan," next paragraph). The unfortunate consequence of popular shows like "The X-Files" and "Millennium" is that each in its own way reinforced the post-Fairness Doctrine demise narrative that "government can't be trusted," and by extension anything its researchers say about science and nature beyond another consumer product. Note the chart from the same article (link at "your chances of seeing" above, same paragraph):

I plan* to rebroadcast, post, Facebook, Tweet and embed; do as much as I can to help push the ratings up. This is important, now more than ever! Hard science is under assault in America, and the joke's going to be on us soon as the saner parts of the planet refuse to follow us down our yellow brick road primrose path of inanity. If we could stop fighting the Civil War for a nanosecond, I'm confident we'd increase our science sagacity as a nation.

I hope you join me, I could use the help. One could become dozens; hundreds; thousands to 500 million; on a planet of 7 billion, a small fraction. Science not in the public sphere - resisted with open hostility - in an ever technological new century is the formula for national bankruptcy and moribundity.

We've become trivial beings, self-centered and more interested in the latest faux adventure on (non) "reality TV," fashion, gadgets and politicized news than things that really matter.

The Carl Sagan Memorial Station above is a fiction of "Enterprise." The Martian "monument" computer-generated, and featured in a scene on one of the last shows before its cancellation. If you can't read the quote above from Carl, it says:

"Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you."

If we ever get our acts together, it could one day be more science than fiction.

It would honor Carl, and ultimately ourselves.

Site: Carl Sagan

Please consider taking up my "COSMOS Reboot*" support challenge. Look for the show site when it's launched, and spread the word on social media. You're a hero in a few clicks.
Taking a blogging break. Please enjoy all the current posts.
See you with new posts in 2014.

Enjoy Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Noel, Saturnalia, Solstice, Yuletide.
Yep, that didn't cover it all, but I think it covered enough.

Trojan Asteroids...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 19, 2013 at 7:19am

Image and excerpt source: COSMOS: The SAO Encyclopedia of Astronomy

Asteroids sharing an orbit with a planet, but which are located at the leading (L4) and trailing (L5) Lagrangian points, are known as Trojan asteroids. Although Trojan asteroids have been discovered for Mars (4 to date, 1 at L4 and 3 at L5) and Neptune (8 Trojans, 6 at L4 and 2 at L5) and even Earth (1 Trojan at L4), the term ‘Trojan asteroid’ generally refers to the asteroids accompanying Jupiter.

SETI Institute: Scientific Premises and Technological Challenges of Deep Space Round Trip Exploration to Jupiter Trojans and Even Further

DNA Codex...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 18, 2013 at 6:13am

Scientists have discovered a code within a code (Source: cosmin4000/iStockphoto)

While we all know DNA instructs our cells how to make proteins, scientists have now discovered a second DNA code that suggests the body uses the same alphabet to speak two different languages.

The findings in the journal Science may have big implications for how medical experts use the genomes of patients to interpret and diagnose diseases, say researchers.

The newfound genetic code within deoxyribonucleic acid, the hereditary material that exists in nearly every cell of the body, was written right on top of the DNA code scientists had already cracked.

Rather than concerning itself with proteins, this one instructs the cells on how genes are controlled.

Its discovery means DNA changes, or mutations that come with age or in response to viruses, may be doing more than what scientists previously thought, say the researchers.

"Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture."

"Many DNA changes that appear to alter protein sequences may actually cause disease by disrupting gene control programs or even both mechanisms simultaneously."

ABC Science: Scientists discover second, secret DNA code
IEEE Explore: DNA and Quantum Theory

Ubiquitous Antiquity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 17, 2013 at 6:30am

Life on other planets could have been warmed by the afterglow of the Big Bang.
L. CALÇADA/ESO

Aliens might have existed during the Universe’s infancy. A set of calculations suggests that liquid water — a prerequisite for life — could have formed on rocky planets just 15 million years after the Big Bang.

Abraham Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has realized that in the early Universe, the energy required to keep water liquid could have come from the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the Big Bang, rather than from host stars. Today, the temperature of this relic radiation is just 2.7 kelvin, but at an age of around 15 million years it would have kept the entire Universe at a balmy 300 kelvin, says Loeb, who posted his calculations to the arXiv preprint server this month.

Loeb says that rocky planets could have existed at that time, in pockets of the Universe where matter was exceptionally dense, leading to the formation of massive, short-lived stars that would have enriched these pockets in the heavier elements needed to make planets. He suggests that there would have been a habitable epoch of 2 million or 3 million years during which all rocky planets would have been able to maintain liquid water, regardless of their distance from a star. “The whole Universe was once an incubator for life,” he says.

Nature: Life possible in the early Universe
Physics arXiv: The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe, Abraham Loeb