This pasta has a distinctive property: it changes the way energy is dissipated and transported within the star. The magnetic field generates currents in the pasta region, which provides an intermediate step in converting magnetic energy to rotational energy. Hence, the crust changes the way the star spins down. In a series of models that take different neutron star masses, different crust diameters, and differently pasta region sizes, researchers from Spain showed that without a pasta region of some kind, a neutron star continues to spin down indefinitely, and we should observe X-Ray pulsars with periods that extend out past one minute.

The pasta, however, disrupts the magnetic field, stealing energy from it. In the end, that energy is transferred to rotational energy, keeping the spin period up. This is not such an efficient process, though, so for the early stages of the neutron star's life, it rapidly spins down. This continues until the additional energy from the magnetic field counters the losses due to other processes, stabilizing the rotational period at the cost of the magnetic field. The exact period at which this occurs depends on the mass of the star, the thickness of the crust, and the fraction of impurities in the crust.

August 08, 2013

Corrosion eats away 75 billion euros of economic output annually in Germany alone. But it may soon be possible to better assess which steels and other alloys will be affected, and how to limit the damage: An international team led by scientists from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH in Düsseldorf analysed an amorphous steel comprising iron, chromium, molybdenum, boron and carbon. They found that the more ordered a material’s structure is, and the more uneven the distribution of its atoms, the more easily it is corroded by rust. If the elements of the alloy don’t form a regular crystal lattice and are distributed completely uniformly across the material, then, under corrosive conditions, a passivation layer forms on its surface and protects it from rusting. If, in contrast, ordered nanocrystals form that sometimes contain more chromium and sometimes more molybdenum, the corrosion quickly eats away the material because no protective passivation layer forms. These findings give materials scientists clues as to what they should pay attention to regarding the composition and production of materials.

I am 51 today. And physics is just as exciting to me as it was at 15...or 10...or 5...

"Throughout history, artists and poets, lovers and mystics, have known and written about the 'knowing' that comes from the loss of self - from the state of subjective fusion with the object of knowledge." Evelyn Fox Keller

"The state of feeling which makes one capable of such achievements is akin to that of the religious worshipper or of one who is in love." Albert Einstein

The theory describing those interactions is known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and is an important component of the Standard Model, the reigning theory of the interactions of subatomic particles.

"An important goal in high energy physics is to make predictions that are as precise as possible," said SLAC theoretical physicist Stan Brodsky. "This makes tests of QCD more rigorous. Most important, if QCD doesn't pass our experimental tests, it could reveal new physics beyond the Standard Model."

Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and other collaborating institutions have discovered a surprising twist in the magnetic properties of HTS, challenging some of the leading theories. In a new study, published online in the journal Nature Materials on August 4, 2013, scientists found that unexpected magnetic excitations—quantum waves believed by many to regulate HTS—exist in both non-superconducting and superconducting materials.

"This is a major experimental clue about which magnetic excitations are important for high-temperature superconductivity," said Mark Dean, a physicist at Brookhaven Lab and lead author on the new paper. "Cutting-edge x-ray scattering techniques allowed us to see excitations in samples previously thought to be essentially non-magnetic."

It was the second bombing on Nagasaki, some say since the Japanese were looking for a path to surrender, completely unnecessary. Possibly a sophomoric display of military might on our part.

It was the beginning of being raised on "duck and cover" drills (as IF that would save anyone!).

It was bomb shelters if you could afford them (suburbia for the most part), stockpiling supplies and perhaps the genesis of people waiting for doomsday rather than solving the problems that could lead to it.

It was the aftermath of the darker side of science: the ability to make academic advances, medical miracles, technological wonders and yet possess within ourselves the ability to commit mass global genocide by the slow moving train wreck of polluting the atmosphere and oceans, or the flash of thermonuclear brilliance followed by its inevitable winter.

It was once considered "scientific" to promote eugenics. A Nobel laureate in physics, William Shockley, and co-founder of the transistor, one of its staunchest advocates.

I am an advocate of all branches of society: art, history, literature, politics, religion, science, etcetera working together rather than pointing fingers, reciting talking points and placing blame on one another.

Or: we may soon discover the other reason the stars of SETI are silent, is the aliens eventually became their own entropy...

Today marks the 68th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The bomb, named “Fat Man,” was the first plutonium bomb ever to be deployed, and followed the Aug. 6 dropping of the uranium bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.

But even after 68 years, both the history of nuclear weapons and their future are still the subject of debate.

Speaking at the memorial ceremony in Nagasaki, Mayor Tomihisa Taue publicly condemned Japan’s government for failing to push nuclear disarmament. Mr. Taue spoke out against the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – who was present – for failing to sign a UN disarmament agreement in April, according to the Japan Daily Press. Taue said the refusal to sign meant Japan was “betraying the expectations of global society.”

Rush Holt Holt’s supporters display bumper stickers that read, “My congressman is a rocket ­scientist.”

* On himself:

"I've always been an unusual member of Congress, partly because of my background, partly because of my approach to problems, partly because of my philosophy of governing. … I have a real commitment to the basic principles of equality and liberty."

* On helping the poor:

"The idea that somehow we had to guard so strongly against misuse of food stamps that we will deny hungry children food is not just hardhearted, it's cruel. … We have to get beyond the mentality in Washington that says we're a poor nation. We are not. We are the wealthiest nation in the world. … We have to get beyond the idea that the role of government is to provide ever more privilege for the already fortunate.

* On climate change:

"This is an urgent problem. … Climate change has to be dealt with by removing our emphasis on fossil fuels. … We are ruining our planet and killing people by the millions. … How do we do it? We have to keep presenting the facts. Presenting the evidence. And confronting those who would deny the evidence until they would deny it no more.

A team of physicists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the French CNRS have predicted deviations in the probability of one of the B meson decays that have been detected experimentally in the LHC accelerator at CERN. Confirmation of these results would be the first direct evidence of the existence of the 'new physics', a more fundamental theory than the current Standard Model.

The Standard Model, which has given the most complete explanation up to now of the universe, has gaps, and is unable to explain phenomena like dark matter or gravitational interaction between particles. Physicists are therefore seeking a more fundamental theory that they call "New Physics", but up to now there has been no direct proof of its existence, only indirect observation of dark matter, as deduced, among other things, from the movement of the galaxies.

Especially with what I term "representative reality." I've had yet another unpleasant encounter with someone convinced the Apollo Moon Landings were faked. (OK, this was only my second one in two tech companies.) It was with gentlemen that up to that point in our shared occupations, I had a lot of respect for their intelligence (still do): just not on this subject nor their conclusions. However, I've come to find merely working in an industry doesn't make you immune to dogma and propaganda. The first posited his theory with a You Tube video.

This particular gent mentioned discussing the subject with "real NASA scientists and engineers" of whom he could not (or, did not) name in his diatribe. These real NASA personnel also don't have New York Times bestsellers blowing the lid off "the game" if the jig is truly up (and, nine-year-old Trek fans are still dreaming of becoming astronauts, I'd bet)! It was one of those break room conversations that started on one subject and went left rather rapidly. I'm quick to call BS on anything without the facts, but it tires me nonetheless.

1. I was there, and I'm afraid gents you weren't on the planet yet.

2. RedOrbit gives latest third-party evidence for the Apollo Moon landings.

3. Radiation shielding/Van Allen Radiation belt dilemma: debunked here on Clavius.

4. How do you fake something SIX times and NO ONE talk about it? (see unnamed "real NASA scientists and engineers")

5. It doesn't help the current state of affairs we find ourselves in as a nation: climate change, our credit rating and/or threatened default, economics, education, governance, income disparity, the middle class, the national debt, outsourcing, teen pregnancy and how NOT to prevent it; wars and rumors of wars are factual, REAL problems we have to grapple with. Facts and data are the only means I know of solving any problem; an appreciation of the reality that data is telling you and ACTING on that reality.

Our current state of affairs is moribund: we simultaneously complain about the same congress we keep reelecting - it's like political codependency. The mayors race in New York, the sexual deviant in San Diego (ELECTED mayor!) and the possible feud/field of GOP candidates for 2016 (we're already discussing 2016) ranges from the lucidly mundane to the blithely insane and looks more everyday like the conclusions in the study of celebrity chimps!

We have in the halls of congress one chemist, six engineers, one microbiologist and one physicist pulling up the rear in House and the Senate (source here). Not a single one - excluding the nine aforementioned - would be caught dead debating any science issue (few of them are clergy, but they seemingly have an endless, extemporaneous riff on that subject), hence they make up the science they want to believe. We have lawmakers - if they weren't "job creators" - getting their life and governing philosophy listening to bloviating college drop outs on AM and satellite talk radio, for the most part were lawyers that by training are not interested in finding truth or deeper meaning in a subject...

...just winning an "argument."

And in that stance, we're all losing.

“The universe is inevitable,” he declared. “The universe is impossible.”

The spectacular discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012 confirmed a nearly 50-year-old theory of how elementary particles acquire mass, which enables them to form big structures such as galaxies and humans. “The fact that it was seen more or less where we expected to find it is a triumph for experiment, it’s a triumph for theory, and it’s an indication that physics works,” Arkani-Hamed told the crowd.

However, in order for the Higgs boson to make sense with the mass (or equivalent energy) it was determined to have, the LHC needed to find a swarm of other particles, too. None turned up.

With the discovery of only one particle, the LHC experiments deepened a profound problem in physics that had been brewing for decades. Modern equations seem to capture reality with breathtaking accuracy, correctly predicting the values of many constants of nature and the existence of particles like the Higgs. Yet a few constants — including the mass of the Higgs boson — are exponentially different from what these trusted laws indicate they should be, in ways that would rule out any chance of life, unless the universe is shaped by inexplicable fine-tunings and cancellations.

In peril is the notion of “naturalness,” Albert Einstein’s dream that the laws of nature are sublimely beautiful, inevitable and self-contained. Without it, physicists face the harsh prospect that those laws are just an arbitrary, messy outcome of random fluctuations in the fabric of space and time.

To explain this absurd bit of luck, the multiverse idea has been growing mainstream in cosmology circles over the past few decades. It got a credibility boost in 1987 when the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, calculated that the cosmological constant of our universe is expected in the multiverse scenario. Of the possible universes capable of supporting life — the only ones that can be observed and contemplated in the first place — ours is among the least fine-tuned. “If the cosmological constant were much larger than the observed value, say by a factor of 10, then we would have no galaxies,” explained Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist and multiverse theorist at Tufts University. “It’s hard to imagine how life might exist in such a universe.”

The search for dark matter involves a dizzying array of experiments, a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms, all using different techniques and technologies. This is how physicists look for something when they don’t know its precise properties. The problem is that although several experiments have detected possible hints of dark matter, the hints don’t agree with one another. Plot the color-coded results from various experiments onto a single graph, and it looks like abstract art.

Two years ago, Juan Collar of the University of Chicago was hopeful that dark matter was on the verge of being detected. But every subsequent new result seemed to point in a different direction. Small wonder that he opened a recent talk with a slide paraphrasing “The Big Lebowski”: “We are nihilists. We believe nothing.”

Ordinary visible matter — the planets, stars, galaxies and everything else that we see — makes up a mere 4.9 percent of all the matter in the universe. Most of the universe (68.3 percent) is made up of a form of energy dubbed dark energy, which is believed to be causing the expansion of the cosmos to accelerate. The remainder — roughly 26.8 percent of the universe — is made up of dark matter.

Physicists might not know precisely what the dark matter is, but they are confident that it exists. The notion made its debut in 1933, when Fritz Zwicky analyzed the velocities of galaxies in a certain cluster and concluded that the gravitational pull from visible matter alone could not prevent the speeding galaxies from escaping the cluster. Decades later, Vera Rubin and Kent Ford found further evidence of Zwicky’s “dark matter” in the stars orbiting the outskirts of spiral galaxies.

The result is a stunning success for the Standard Model of particle physics and yet another blow for those hoping for signs of new physics from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHCb and CMS experiments at the LHC have made the first definitive observation of a particle called a Bs meson decaying into two muons, confirming a tentative observation made by LHCb last autumn. The discovery has far-reaching implications for the search for new particles and forces of nature.

Beyond the Standard Model

There are many reasons to believe that the current Standard Model of particle physics is an incomplete description of nature at the fundamental level. Despite its excellent agreement with almost every experimental measurement to date, it has several gaping holes. It fails to describe the force of gravity and has no explanation for the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy that are thought to make up 95% of the Universe. The theory also requires a large amount of “fine-tuning” to match experimental observations, leaving it looking suspiciously like the laws of physics have been orchestrated in a very unnatural way to produce the Universe we live in.

In the last few decades a number of theories have been proposed that solve some of the Standard Model’s problems. One particularly popular idea is supersymmetry (SUSY for short), with posits the existence of a slew of new fundamental particles, each one a mirror image of the particles of the Standard Model. SUSY has many attractive features: it provides a neat explanation for dark matter and unifies the strengths of the three forces of the Standard Model. However, the main reason that physicists were first attracted to it is that it is aesthetically pleasing or “natural” – in other words it doesn’t require the same awkward fine-tuning as the Standard Model.

Note: it is my usual habit to italicize articles, with obvious attribution of their origins at the link after its text. However, in the two quotes following, the authors are recognizable and famous enough I think to depart from that format. Their poignant prose (sadly) relates.

*****

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand children's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

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