Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts (3119)

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Trek Eschatology...

700th post on BSFS: enjoy!


They did a run of "Trek Nation" on the Science Channel (as I'm apt to watch). What Rod Roddenberry  (Gene's son) didn't cover in the biopic was his father's declared atheism as I guess it didn't matter towards finding out about his father post his demise. Gene and his mother, Majel Barrett in an interesting contrast to Gene's declarative were married in a Shinto ceremony, and he spent a large part of their marriage (his second, and like Einstein) in the beds of other women.

However, Gene described himself an "eternal optimist." He was an observer of the 60's, the loosening mores on sex; the beginning of diversity and racial strife; riots, assassinations of people striving to make the lives of others within their group and the nation as a whole better: Chavez, Evers, Kennedy (JF and RF); King, Shabbaz (Malcolm X). Some southern markets refused to play the space opera, even before Kirk and Uhura's famous forced-by-aliens first televised interracial kiss; Richard and Mildred Loving were anomaly, controversy and topic one of fire and damnation sermons.

His optimism was an eschatology: his belief that humans would eventually evolve from and resolve the older conflicts that had plagued it. A view of of the world from World War II, Korea and Vietnam that made it a little less bleak. Though Gene was not a scientist or engineer, the show inspired many of us into STEM fields. The series "created" things to tell the story of humanity: warp drive was so they wouldn't have to deal with lifetimes of thousands of years; astronauts having to deal with the loss of loved ones decades or centuries in the past would get old quick. Automatic doors are now a product of optical electronics; tricorders are reality; the communicator is now an I-phone; 3-D printers are the closest thing to "tea: Earl Grey, hot!"

In excerpts of the afterword to Orwell's "1984," Eric Fromm wrote this:

This hope has its roots both in Greek and in Roman thinking, as well as in the Messianic concept of the Old Testament prophets. The Old Testament philosophy of history assumes that man grows and unfolds in history and eventually becomes what he potentially is. It assumes that he develops his powers of reason and love fully, and thus is enabled to grasp the world, being one with his fellow man and nature, at the same time preserving his individuality and his integrity.

One of the most important ones is a new form of writing which developed since the Renaissance, the first expression of which was Thomas More's Utopia (literally: "Nowhere"), a name which was then generically applied to all other similar works. Thomas More's Utopia combined a most penetrating criticism of his own society, its irrationality and its injustice, with the picture of a society which, though perhaps not perfect, had solved most of the human problems which sounded insoluble to his own contemporaries. What characterizes Thomas More's Utopia, and all the others, is that they do not speak in general terms of principles, but give an imaginative picture of the concrete details of a society which corresponds to the deepest longings of man. In contrast to prophetic thought, these perfect societies are not at "the end of the days" but exist already -- though in a geographic distance rather than in the distance of time.

So, Gene's writing of Star Trek is an extension of this thought, perhaps our reaching towards it an unspoken need to seek hope from hopelessness.

The other observation of Trek Eschatology: the need of Old-School Trek to do plays; Will Riker playing jazz trumpet; Spock on Vulcan harp; Data, Geordi, Picard, Worf on the holodeck: living and working for months/years in space probably drives one kind of stir crazy: your world is literally a tritanium "can" separating you from the cold and sure death of space. It's also a clever way to showcase the actors' other talents, as Trek isn't guaranteed a long run.

I'd like to also think in some  cramped future confines - warp core, or sleeper ship - one lesson we should take from art is never surrendering to technology what makes us "human" in the first place...

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Warp Fields and Research Efficacy...


Actually, it's called a White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer, part of on-going experiments into the Miguel Alcubierre paper of how to achieve warp drive without violating Einstein Relativity.
Credit: see link @ end of post

The Michelson-Morley Experiment was also an interferometer, invented to measure what was called the "luminous ether" and it's motion relative to the Earth. They didn't find it, but they were one of the giants on whose shoulders Einstein stood when his annus mirabilis happened in a German patent office in 1905. Poincare-Lorentz-Einstein: Sometimes previous failures can set up fabulous successes.

The NASA research paper is part of the focus of the 100 Year Starship project by Mae Jemison, M.D. and former astronaut. Giving oneself a century to develop a technological advance will be a test of our patience in a download, microwave dominated world.

In science, there are specialities and camps, e.g. those who pursue String Theory and those who compare it to bovine excrement. There's a strong consensus in our understanding of Special and General Relativity that there is no such thing as a "light barrier" analogous to the sound barrier that you can just speed beyond. We are all time-traveling forward, and experiencing the effects of that through Entropy: anything faster-than-light would inevitably lead to travel backwards. The equations show issues of causality (i.e. "what if you killed your own grandfather" paradox), that can't be remedied in a single hour on a Trek episode.

Research has been placed in the confining rubric of "the market," as something MUST be produced of immediate value before it's worthy of being examined. The increase of knowledge, being more informed about a subject and where to go with it than you were before, has lost most of its value. Under this criteria, Edison's invention of the light bulb in 1,000 steps (failures) would not be tolerated; we'd all still be using candles and homing pigeons.

The set of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" was shot at the actual National Ignition Facility as the cargo bay and warp core of the Enterprise. Nuclear fusion with lasers - creating a sun on the Earth - is a long shot, but a worthy experiment in that as I recall from the Science Channel, a single glass of water (source of Deuterium) could power a city the size of Los Vegas or New York. Such a long shot, unsuccessful up to this point, could truly make us energy independent not just as a nation: the price of food is tied to fossil fuels used to harvest them and to ship them to grocery stores and other countries. The cost of food is directly proportional to your grocer's fuel cost: notice it between the beginning of summer and Labor Day (at least in the US). Heating costs would be reduced. The nature of wealth and income inequality would take on a whole new meaning, that sadly would probably be resisted by the energy industry. This, I think should be an interim step before interstellar travel if possible is attempted, which in the Common Era with our predilection towards self-centered avarice would make us all the galactic equivalent...of locusts. Such I do not wish us to proliferate to our neighbors, nor reap the reciprocity of their responses.

Sometimes, science is as much a candle as it is a shot in the dark: the knowing, wonder and application occurs on the other side of your previous ignorance. That enlightenment, above whether or not we achieve something like warp speed, should be vigorously pursued.

NASA: Warp Field Mechanics 101, Dr. Harold "Sonny" White
NY Times: Faster Than the Speed of Light?
SPACE.com: Research Warps into Hyperdrive

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Boldly Going Backwards...

SPACE.com: This artist's concept shows an unmanned NASA spacecraft approaching a near-Earth asteroid for capture and transport to a location near the moon.

House lawmakers debated NASA's 2014 budget today (July 18) during a meeting that saw stark partisan divisions over proposed funding cuts for the agency's science and space exploration programs.



A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014 — $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill — which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding — would roll back NASA’s funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget.



Democratic members of the committee spoke strongly against the proposed cuts, which Republicans say are necessary under the federal sequestration cuts prompted by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

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"

ANTONIO

Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice," Scene III

#P4TC: To "Boldly Go" Was Never Exclusively a Business Incentive
SPACE.com: Proposed NASA Budget Cuts Spark Bitter Debate in Congress
Clara Moskowitz, Assistant Managing Editor

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Electrical Highways...

Credit: Muller lab
Three dark field-transmission electron microscopy images of bilayer graphene are overlaid with colors to show diffraction angles. The lines are soliton boundaries.

By Anne Ju

Just an atom thick, 200 times stronger than steel and a near-perfect conductor, graphene’s future in electronics is all but certain. But to make this carbon supermaterial useful, it needs to be a semiconductor – a material that can switch between insulating and conducting states, which forms the basis for all electronics today.

Combining experiment and theory, Cornell researchers have moved a step closer to making graphene a useful, controllable material. They showed that when grown in stacked layers, graphene produces some specific defects that influence its conductivity.

On the experiment side, a research group has imaged and analyzed the structure and behavior of graphene sheets stacked one on top of the other, called bilayer graphene. The group, publishing online June 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, includes Paul McEuen, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics and director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science; David Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics and Kavli co-director; and Jiwoong Park, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology and Kavli member.

They showed that instead of flat sheets of repeating carbon atoms arranged like chicken wire, when graphene grows layers, it ripples, like wall-to-wall carpet exceeding room dimensions. These ripples, called solitons, are like electrical highways that allow electrons to shoot from one end of the sheet to the other. The rest of the non-rippled graphene, when stacked, is semiconducting.

Cornell Chronicle: Imperfect graphene renders 'electrical highways'

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FRBs and Magnetars...

Radio map of the whole sky in Galactic coordinates, with pulsars found within the High Time Resolution Universe Survey (HTRU) project marked as black dots. The positions of the newly detected four Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are marked as red asterisks.© MPIfR / C. Ng

With some irony, published on their site 4 July:

An international team of researchers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn have detected burst of radio waves that appear to have originated billions of light years away - when the Universe was just 6 to 9 billion years old. The researchers are still baffled about the origins of these emissions. In the future, they intend to use these flashes to probe the intergalactic space.

Four Fast Radio Bursts or FRBs with durations of only a few milliseconds were detected at high Galactic latitudes in the southern sky. The extremely short duration of the bursts and the inferred great distance imply that they have been caused by some cataclysmic cosmological event, such as two merging neutron stars or a star dying or being swallowed by a black hole.

The results point to some of the most extreme events in astrophysics involving large amounts of mass or energy as the source of the radio bursts.

The team used the CSIRO Parkes 64metre radio telescope to obtain their results. Swinburne's Professor Matthew Bailes thinks the most likely source of the bursts are cataclysmic explosions in the Universe's most magnetic neutron stars otherwise known as magnetars. "Magnetars can give off more energy in a millisecond than our Sun does in 300,000 years and are a leading candidate for the bursts", he says.

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: Flashes in the Sky

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Optical Electronics...



Optical connections are slowly replacing wires as a means of shuffling bits in between systems—there are already plans afoot to have different components within a single system communicate via an optical connection. But, so far at least, all the processing of those bits is taking place using electrons.

 

Yesterday's edition of Science includes a demonstration of an all-optical transistor that can be switched between its on and off states using a single photon. Although it's an impressive demonstration of physics, the work also indicates that we're likely to stick with electrons for a while, given that the transistor required two lasers and a cloud of a cold atomic gas.

 

The work relied on a cold gas of cesium atoms. These atoms have an extremely convenient property: two closely separated ground states, each with a corresponding excited state. All of these states are separated by an energy that corresponds to a specific wavelength of light, so using a laser of that wavelength allows you to shift the system into a different state.

 

Ars Technica: Optical transistor switches states by trapping a single photon

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Collective Efficacy...



I've often referred to my neighborhood and some of the things I encountered as I grew up. There are still good people there despite the socio-economic challenges. I recall however, that the changes were gradual; a slow descent over time, the ubiquitous deletion of "neighbor" making all the difference.

I was looking at the AAAS site and happened upon this story. Trayvon came to mind, living in what should have been a safe, non-violent neighborhood. The term "collective efficacy" stood out:

 

Childhood experiences, both good and bad, can affect the developing architecture of the brain. When parents and other caregivers read frequently to a child, it reinforces the brain connections that will help the child develop reading and thinking skills. Experiences and environment also determine whether neural circuits involved with motor skills, behavior control, memory and other functions form robustly. Experiences also can influence gene expression in the developing brain by affecting the production of proteins that bind to DNA in the neurons, Cameron said. Scientists are just starting to understand such "epigenetic" factors in brain development.

 

When the body's response to stress — the rush of adrenaline, the increase in heart rate, the elevation of certain hormone levels — is constantly active, Cameron said, the result is "toxic stress" that can reduce the number of neural connections in the cognitive areas of the brain at a time when they should be proliferating.

 

A Kaiser Permanente study on adverse childhood experiences with 17,000 participants found that childhood exposure to violence, domestic abuse, family neglect or other stresses can have life-long consequences, including a higher probability of alcoholism, illicit drug use and depression. Cameron said the research suggests that children exposed to many adverse events early in life even have an elevated risk of heart disease in their 50s.

 

There are ways to prevent such outcomes. Good parenting, better nutrition and more cognitively stimulating experiences can "contribute very positively to a healthy trajectory" in life, Cameron said.

 

The most important influence on a neighborhood's crime rate, the researchers found, was the neighbors' sense of "agency" or willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good.

 

Earls and his colleagues found that some neighborhoods were functioning well and that the entire city was not under siege as some news reports might suggest. "We found that collective efficacy was, indeed, operating as a protective factor," he said.

 

The researchers also found that the benefits of collective efficacy go beyond easing violence. It also seems to be associated with more use of parks and recreational spaces in neighborhoods, initiation of sexual activity at later ages among youths, and even less obesity and fewer admissions to hospitals for asthma attacks.

 

I experienced my own personal collective efficacy from parents, a sister, a faith community that cared about me despite my circumstances. That charity was also extended to my closest friends.

 

"United States" seems idealistic to the point of oxymoron. We are divided: between sound science and utter fantasy; facts and ideology. I've read the most inspiring as well as inflammatory postings since the Zimmerman verdict (some calling him a "patriot"; Coulter tweeted "hallelujah"). It is more than just a tragic event centered on iced, tea, skittles and profiled suspicion. It is our addiction to talking points; our predilection to making sensation provocateurs equivalent to journalists; our treatment of Americans as aliens on their own soil: never mind immigration reform.

 

New York has just experienced one of the warmest days on record, but the doubt of climate research has been planted by forces that want to confuse the issue to maximize energy industry profits. Fracking used to be a curse on Battlestar Galactica, and has been studied with as much resolve. We're falling behind in science, technology, engineering and mathematics largely, unlike other countries we completely lack a "collective efficacy": we don't encourage women and minorities into the sciences; we fight political chimeras and windmills with the resolve  of quixotic dragon slayers; we want the usual suspects and magical thinking to keep us on top as whole industries are shipped overseas; we have an "us-versus-them" mentality so that we don't see the value in our fellow countrymen and women to pursue liberty, happiness...and life (reorder intentional).

 

And, our fast-approaching last place has never been a good place to start a sprint.

 

AAAS: Experts Describe Long-Term Impacts of Stress on the Young Brain
Chicage Tribune: CPS lays off more than 2000, including 1000 teachers

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Grossly Warped Nanographene...



...no, I did not make that up!

Chemists at Boston College and Nagoya University have together synthesized the first example of a new form of carbon, the team reports in the most recent edition of the journal Nature Chemistry. This new material consists of many identical piece of grossly warped graphene, each containing exactly 80 carbon atoms joined together in a network of 26 rings, with 30 hydrogen atoms decorating the rim. These individual molecules, because they measure somewhat more than a nanometer across, are referred to generically as “nanocarbons,” or more specifically in this case as “grossly warped nanographenes.”

In a nutshell:

  1. 1985: discovery carbon atoms could join together to form hollow balls - fullerenes, or "buckyballs" (sounds kind of nasty). A plethora of images here. Nobel in 1996.

  2. Ultra thin hollow Carbon Nanotubes followed.

  3. Large, 2D single flat sheet of graphene atoms followed: Nobel in 2010.

Now:

Graphene sheets prefer planar, 2-dimensional geometries as a consequence of the hexagonal, chicken wire-like, arrangements of trigonal carbon atoms comprising their two-dimensional networks. The new form of carbon just reported in Nature Chemistry, however, is wildly distorted from planarity as a conse­quence of the presence of five 7-membered rings and one 5-membered ring embedded in the hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms.






Odd-membered-ring defects such as these not only distort the sheets of atoms away from planarity, they also alter the physical, optical, and electronic properties of the material, according to one of the principal authors, Lawrence T. Scott, the Jim and Louise Vanderslice and Family Professor of Chemistry at Boston College.






“Our new grossly warped nanographene is dramatically more soluble than a planar nanographene of comparable size,” says Scott, “and the two differ significantly in color, as well. Electrochemical measurements revealed that the planar and the warped nanographenes are equally easily oxidized, but the warped nanographene is more difficult to reduce.”

Altering "physical, optical, and electronic properties" means doing different stuff with electronics that will make your current smart phone...kinda dumb soon by comparison.

Need you to "get some skin in the game," academically speaking. Don't just think of mobile technology: look around you and notice how much electronics surrounds you, from your flatscreen to your laptop to your iron that "knows" when to shut off; your remote key fob that warms your car up on a cold morning. Faster computers that could help us cure diseases; explore space for colonization; end hunger (and yes, for you "reality bites" fans): start wars.

But with the right values, and the right people studying the technology: it could help end them too.

Space Daily: A new form of carbon: Grossly Warped 'Nanographene'

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NASA Going Green...

This rendering shows the spacecraft that will carry the green propulsion system into orbit in 2015. Image: Ball Aerospace

Although, it reminded me of a scene from Wall-E. Just saying...Smiley

For decades, NASA has relied on an efficient but highly toxic fuel known as hydrazine to power satellites and manned spacecraft. Now the agency is laying the groundwork to replace that propellant with a safer, cleaner alternative.

 

NASA's Green Propellant Infusion Mission, or GPIM, has passed its first thruster pulsing test, a major milestone that paves the way for a planned test flight in 2015, agency officials said. NASA unveiled the rocket thruster success Tuesday (July 9) in Washington, D.C., during a briefing with aerospace industry officials and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).

 

The GPIM initiative aims to demonstrate that a green fuel with nearly 50 percent better performance than hydrazine could power Earth-circling satellites and eventually deep space missions.

 

Scientific American: NASA's Quest for Green Rocket Fuel Passes Big Test

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From Head to Toe...



When Vincent Rodgers was six years old, he and his twin brother Victor got toy robots for Christmas. The robots could walk across the floor and shoot ping pong balls from their arms. “But the most fascinating things about this,” he recalled, “was a panel you could take off the side of it, and you could actually see inside, all the gears and all the workings inside. After that, I was hooked,” he said. “I had to see how all these things worked. I was always in competition with my twin brother, to find out who could be the smartest, who knows the most about how everything worked."

Vincent and Victor are still competing to learn about the world, but they have chosen different ways of learning. Victor became a chemical engineer, while Vincent became a physicist. “[Victor] wanted to be much more practical with his way of handling things, and I wanted to really learn what was going on in a fundamental level,” Rodgers said. Vincent studies an offshoot of superstring theory, a theory that says the universe's fundamental constituents are tiny vibrating strings. He studies the way gravity works in various conceptions of string theory. He uses mathematics to describe his theories, and he sometimes takes a pen and paper to bed with him at night to make calculations. “It's fun,”Rodgers said. “I think there's some really great stuff [in physics] to play around with.”

Vincent Rodgers teaches a class at Iowa called “Physics from Head to Toe,” which studies how physics can apply to the human body.

Rodgers greatly admires Albert Einstein, who in addition to discovering new ideas in physics such as the theory of relativity, also campaigned for world peace and wrote about the society around him. In his 1950 book, Out of My Later Years, Einstein wrote about racism in segregated American society. “What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice?,” Einstein asked. “He must have the courage to set an example by word and deed, must watch lest his children become influenced by this racial bias.” “He's much bigger than people already think he is," Rodgers said. “When you read the way [Einstein] acts throughout his life - this guy was really on it.”

Physics Central: Vincent Rodgers

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Sound Levitation...



A new approach to contact-free manipulation could be used to combine lab samples while also preventing contamination

 

By Josh Howgego and Nature Magazine

 

Water droplets, coffee granules, fragments of polystyrene and even a toothpick are among the items that have been flying around in a Swiss laboratory lately — all of them kept in the air by sound waves. The device that achieves this acoustic levitation is the first to be capable of handling several objects simultaneously. It is described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

Typically, levitation techniques make use of electromagnetism; magnetic forces have even been used to levitate frogs. It has long been known that sound waves could counter gravity, too, but so far the method has lacked practical application because it could do little more than keep an object in place.

 

To also move and manipulate levitating objects, Dimos Poulikakos, a mechanical engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, and his colleagues built sound-making platforms using piezoelectric crystals, which shrink or stretch depending on the voltage applied to them. Each platform is the size of a pinky nail.

 

Scientific American: Sound Waves Levitate and Move Objects

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Paleo Mind...


I can honestly state this is the first blog post inspired by a nightmare (of sorts).

Flashing back to undergraduate, I was in my dream looking at an exam in Thermodynamics. In typical dream fashion, even though I read and understood the questions - mind you, I recall passing this particular test on the Carnot cycle with an 87 - I could not answer. Dream state, I was a blank!

I relate this to the word "paleo" meaning ancient; prehistoric. Hence, the current "paleo diet" craze to "eat like a caveman," though cavemen didn't do things like Cross Fit.

I extended this departure from modernity to the mind...

What if: we're still that caveman that depended on our memory to survive? "Knowing" the part of the forest the mamoths would stampede in; the Saber Tooth tigers hunted US in packs was probably necessary to our continued survival! Nikola Tesla was said to have a photographic memory. In the age of search engines, are we neglecting Memory Consolidation: sometimes called "no mind" in martial arts, the product of acquiring new information, rehearsing it and putting it from short-term to long-term memory; "wiring ourselves" to see a pattern and know how to solve a math problem; Sudoku puzzle or spot the charging Mamoth/Saber Tooth from a mere rustle of the trees. We have leaned on the combination of the Internet, computer and power point, delivering complex concepts online with little human interaction, meaning you either have the motivation to go beyond the flurry of slides thrown at you (read the class text book), or we may be fooling ourselves with something that's fast and cheap but not as efficient as repetition and adequate sleep to reinforce neural pathways in our brains.

And if so: what are we losing to technology...of ourselves?
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Rosetta...

Image Source: Women in Planetary Science

 


Dr. Alexander is the Project Scientist for the U.S. portion of the international Rosetta mission. She has also been the Cassini Project Staff Scientist and as the final project manager of the Galileo mission, overseeing its fiery crash into Jupiter. Her scientific interests include gaskinetic theory, theory of gaseous escape from planetary and cometary regoliths, theory of surface bound exospheres, magnetospheric plasma theory (terrestrial and planetary), exobiology, interdiciplinary science, and oxidation / reduction potential of planetary and cometary regoliths.

Her most recent publications include:

  • C. Alexander, A. Chmielewski, S. Gulkis, P. Weissman, D. Holmes, J. Burch, R. Goldstein, P. Mokashi, S.A. Stern, J. Parker, S. Fuselier, M. Kueppers, A. Accommazzo, “The U.S. Rosetta Project at its second Science Target: Asteroid (21) Lutetia,” IEEE Conference Proceedings, in press.
  • C. Alexander, D. Sweetnam, S. Gulkis, P. Weissman, D. Holmes, J. Burch, R. Goldstein, P. Mokashi, J. Parker, S. Fuselier, L. McFadden, “The U.S. Rosetta Project at its first Science Target: Asteroid (2867) Steins,” IEEE Conference Proceedings, 2010.
  • C. Alexander, R. Carlson, G. Consolmagno, D. Morrison, 400 Years of Discovery at Europa, Europa, Pappalardo, McKinnon, Khurana eds., University of Arizona Press, 2009.

2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkoand land a probe on it, two firsts.



Rosetta’s goal is to learn the primordial story a comet tells as it gloriously falls to pieces.



Comets are primitive leftovers from our solar system's 'construction' about 4.5 billion years ago. Because they spend much of their time in the deep freeze of the outer solar system, comets are well preserved—a gold mine for astronomers who want to know what conditions were like back “in the beginning.”

 

NASA Science News: Mission to Land on a Comet
European Space Agency: Rosetta

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I AM (repost)...



I’ve posted on this elsewhere: “Old Tapes”; “BWB”; “Self-Portrait.” I’ve changed my Facebook profile photo to Trayvon, and spoken with my sons. Let me explain:

In “Old Tapes,” I revisited an incident in which I was forcibly frisked by a store detective. He didn’t care if I had a microscope, a telescope, a tool kit, a chemistry set at home, physics and science books nor did he ask if I had a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. No, I was a suspect for shoplifting for merely combing my hair: guilty until proven innocent. “BWB” was an admittedly emotional response directly to the absurdity of a teenager losing his life over his dress, an iced tea and skittles; “Self-Portrait” was written earlier, but reflected the same concerns.

In Nanos Gigantium Humeris Insidentes, I did describe my background a bit, but not so the photo. I became Brigade Commander of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools '79 - 80 on the negative answer to what I thought was a rhetorical question to the Commander for the ’76-77 school year: “what would it take for someone to rise to your rank?” His answer was specifically addressed (to my ethnicity and potential): “Your kind will NEVER get to this rank!” (Never) say never: the complete irony was he went in an enlisted, I an Air Force officer. We saw each other on active duty at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas. He had a Constitutional obligation to salute me.Smiley

Women and men of a certain age in my culture can trace back to when we lived in humble conditions on a segregated side of of our respective towns, I recall numerous times when the sight of drug dealers and runners; switch blades, kitchen hatchets (both directed at me) or guns threatened our lives. Despite these challenges, many of us went to college – HBCUs, Ivy League, Graduate Schools – and attained degrees for a better life. Our parents, and leaders of the Civil Rights movement (like my sister) inspired us to do this.

Tony Morrison said: "In this country American means white. Everyone else has to hyphenate." So, I am classed as African-American because Negro/Black wasn’t definitive enough for Malcolm X. As he went on his own pilgrimage of self-discovery to Mecca, he coined “Afro American,” founding the Organization of Afro American Unity (dissolved after his assassination). Reverend Jesse Jackson is credited as the source of “African-American,” since as a fellow engineering student from A and T pointed out: “there’s no such country as ‘Afro.’” And to be sure: Africa is a continent of 53 different nationalities, as diverse as this nation in cultures and ethnicity.

Yet, all this effort towards equity, to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” we as our parents must have “the talk” with our male sons, how to behave in public, how to talk to the police if stopped, how not to appear “a threat.” Yet, I still get quick looks when I get on an elevator, shifted purses, I must put others at ease; apologize when professionally embarrassed in email. Guilty until [I've] proven [myself] innocent...

I AM: the father of two statistics: The risk of dying from homicide among non-Hispanic black male teenagers (39.2 per 100,000 population) is more than twice that of Hispanic males (17.1 per 100,000 population) (Figure 4) and about 15 times that of non-Hispanic white males (2.6 per 100,000 population); at current levels of incarceration a black male in the United States today has greater than a 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during his lifetime, while a Hispanic male has a 1 in 6 chance and a white male has a 1 in 23 chance of serving time. That has nothing to do with their locale (suburbs); nothing to do with my education, their education or career choices. It is the aftermath of what historians tastefully describe as “the peculiar institution,” of the antebellum South, as with South Africa’s Apartheid, based on pigmentation, its wages and legacy. What happened to Trayvon is the unspoken nightmare; the uttered prayer each night, Psalms and Glossolalia. We do not have the luxury, or security to be blithely skeptic or agnostic. The slaughter of male children by Pharaoh and Herod are not biblical illustrations, but an evidential, everyday concern.

All I ask, all WE ask: is to be considered not as a threat, but for our potential.

Related links:

BlackAmericaWeb
TheGrio
TheRoot

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Teaching Quantum...



Abstract

The Institute of Physics New Quantum Curriculum consists of freely available online learning and teaching materials (quantumphysics.iop.org) for a first course in university quantum mechanics starting from two-level systems. This approach immediately immerses students in inherently quantum mechanical aspects by focusing on experiments that have no classical explanation. It allows from the start a discussion of interpretive aspects of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. This article gives an overview of the resources available at the IOP website. The core text is presented as around 80 articles co-authored by leading experts that are arranged in themes and can be used flexibly to provide a range of alternative approaches. Many of the articles include interactive simulations with accompanying activities and problem sets that can be explored by students to enhance their understanding. Much of the linear algebra needed for this approach is part of the resource. Solutions to activities are available to instructors. The resources can be used in a variety of ways from supplements to existing courses to a complete programme.

I'm encouraging this as our very advancement in technology takes place on the quantum level: your cell phone, your laptop, your I-pad, your apps. All of that would not be possible except for something Einstein derisively called: "Spukhafte Fernwirkung," literally "spooky action at a distance" (and he was not amused). I guess my only regret is there's not a more introductory class, a "laymen's course" in quantum mechanics; presented by kind of a Carl Sagan of theoretical physics.

So, when you get into a "debate" on quantum mechanics, you'll likely hear: "so is light a particle, or a wave, and why don't scientists know? When you answer its "both" it's seen as a cop out; that you really don't know what you're talking about (and neither do the scientists). Scrodinger's cat is both "living and dead" as light is both particle and wave; quarks; many-worlds theory. Quantum physics is weird, and it's why Einstein had such a strong reaction to it, even though he helped create it.

You can always utter "Spukhafte Fernwirkung" and march away gruffly. You're literally making yourself a "ghost" and avoiding empty philosophical debates. Practice your German and say it with emphasis on the syllables. They'll roll their eyes and think you're speaking Klingon...inform them later. Qapla'! Smiley

Physics arXiv:
A new introductory quantum mechanics curriculum
Optimization of Simulations for a New Introductory Quantum Mechanics Curriculum

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Nano Space Explorers...

Artist concept of tiny CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster system - CAT. Image: Ben Longmier - University of Michigan

Researchers plan to launch a tiny spacecraft to Earth orbit and beyond within the next 18 months, in a key test of new propulsion technology that could help cut the cost of planetary exploration by a factor of 1,000.

The scientists and engineers are developing a new plasma propulsion system designed for ultrasmall CubeSats. If all goes well, they say, it may be possible to launch a life-detection mission to Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa or other intriguing worlds for as little as $1 million in the not-too-distant future.

"We want to enable new missions that right now cost about $1 billion, or maybe $500 million — to go, for example, explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn," said project leader Ben Longmier, a plasma physicist and assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

To get the ball rolling, Longmier and his team launched a crowdfunding campaign on the website Kickstarter Thursday (July 4). They hope to raise a minimum of $200,000 by Aug. 5, which should be enough to loft the miniature thruster on its maiden space voyage.

Scientific American: New Space Engine Could Turn Tiny CubeSat into Interplanetary Explorers

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Eugen Merzbacher...


April 9, 1921 - June 6, 2013

Chapel Hill
Eugen Merzbacher, prominent theoretical atomic and nuclear physicist, former chair of the Physics Department at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-founder of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, died June 6 (Thursday) at UNC Memorial Hospital from complications following surgery. He was 92.

 

Born in Berlin, Germany, he moved with his family to Turkey in 1935, where they remained throughout World War II. It was there that Eugen obtained an undergraduate degree in physics at Istanbul University. In 1947, he immigrated to the United States, and by 1950 had earned his doctorate in physics at Harvard University. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen a short time later.


Trolling about the Internet, I came upon this rather late...unfortunate. Please forgive my negligence. The passing of great minds gives one pause.

Dr. Merzbacher was obviously an immigrant, and one that contributed mightily to this nation and our understanding of Quantum Mechanics and consequentially, the universe (with no small exaggeration). I studied quantum from a slightly older text I still own and cherish with all its highlights, margin notes and "dog ears." Strange how commodified our conversation has become, the only example of immigrants' impact as a group is the mention of one of the two founders of "Google."

 

Professor Merzbacher left a legacy behind him in the form of a text now in its third edition, introducing undergraduate and graduate students in physics to the subject so impactful on our modern era. It is a testiment, of what "good things [used to] come out of NC" (my home state) before its recent lurch into backwardness.


APS link: Eugen Merzbacher

A link to the third edition here; an embed/link of the second below:

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Dimple BEC...

The dimple trap in action - PW

The first Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) to be cooled using just lasers has been made by a team in Austria. The process is much simpler, faster and more efficient than previous methods, which involve an extra stage of evaporative cooling. The scientists hope that their breakthrough will lead to more widespread use of BECs in various areas of physics, including atomic clocks and atom lasers.

 

A BEC is a dense cluster of atoms cooled so close to absolute zero that all of the atoms are in a single quantum state and can therefore be described by the same wavefunction. The first pure BEC was made in 1995 by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA in Boulder, Colorado. Since then, BECs have been used – or proposed for use – to create atom circuits, rotation sensors, atom lasers and other novel devices.

 

Making a BEC traditionally involves the two-step cooling of a cloud of atoms contained in a magnetic trap. The first step is laser cooling. It involves choosing an electronic transition of the atom to be cooled and irradiating the atom cloud with laser light of an energy slightly below this transition. For the most energetic atoms trying to climb out of the trap, the laser light is blue-shifted to the transition frequency. These atoms can therefore absorb a photon, which pushes them back. It also promotes the atoms into the excited state. When the atom decays back to the ground state, it emits a photon of a higher energy than the one it absorbed. The overall effect is that the gas cools and becomes denser.

 

Physics World: Laser-cooled Bose-Einstein condensate is a first

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Bench Warmers...

Credit: Unidentified Appellation

bench warmer is the last thing any high school or college athlete ever wants to be. The person that "shows up"; always there; parents in the audience steaming because their kid didn't get any play on the court or field. Resentful when time is finally granted, they typically become a self-fulfilling prophesy of disaster, and promptly sat back down to sulk the rest of the game/season.

We can't afford that now, nor could we ever.

Our technological innovation is screaming past us literally at light speed. We're demanding faster, cheaper, more apps meaning smaller physical features in Silicon: FinFETs, Carbon Nanotubes - pushing towards and beyond the Moore's Law limit - needing less humans to design or manufacture it. Or at least, less of them in the USA. We need a real debate on these issues; not delay/stalling tactics that in a real game bore to tears, and everyone in the crowd goes home (accept the frustrated parents). No wonder congressional approval is slightly above snail sweat. Getting ye old standardized test scores up - "teaching to the test" ("we don't do that") is insane when all the other industrialized nations whipping our collective assets (as we sit on them) aren't doing it quite that way.

Socially, technologically we can't be bench warmers. As we go, so does the world. If the issue is employment hovering at 7 - 7.5% here, it's only exacerbated in other countries trying to "follow our lead." The season I used metaphorically is our current condition globally, our definitions of "unemployment" and none for "under-employment," or what "full employment" looks like going forward; our continuance of a moribund stratification and unequal social and educational system straight from 1953; our collective shoulder-shrug that other countries are coming on the academic court and running the boards on us.

And for the countries that are imitating us, they too, can't afford bench warmers...

Patrick Mylund Nielson: Our Technological Adolescence
OECD: Indicators 2012
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