They have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.

It's a bind scientists frequently find themselves in, because by their nature, scientists like to share their results. At the same time, they're cautious because no one likes to make a big announcement and then have to say "never mind."

The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission, says during my visit last week to his office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That's where data from SAM first arrive on Earth. "The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down," says Grotzinger.

Physics arXiv

The equations of general relativity are smooth, even at the tiniest scales. But in the early 1960s, the American physicist John Wheeler pointed out that in quantum mechanics, ordinary properties of spacetime, such as position, momentum and so on, have an uncertainty associated with them. That implies that spacetme must be uncertain as well. Wheeler famously described it as "quantum foam".

Physicists would dearly love to study this foam but there's a problem. Spacetime only becomes foam-like on the tiniest scale, at so-called Planck lengths of 10^-35metres or so.

Probing that distance is obviously difficult. One way to do it is by accelerating particles to huge energies, which allows physicists to determine their position accurately, thereby probing very small volumes of space.

But the energies required are around 10¹⁹GeV, many orders of magnitude higher than today's particle accelerators. There's no likelihood of reaching this energy on Earth in the foreseeable future so physicists are more or less resigned to the idea that they’ll never get their hands on quantum foam.

They may change today thanks to a fascinating idea from Jacob Bekenstein, a physicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Bekenstein says he has worked out a way to measure the structure of spacetime on the Planck scale using a simple experiment involving little more than a block of glass and a laser.

In essence, the experiment is straightforward. Bekenstein's goal is to move the block by a distance that is about equal to the Planck length. His method is simple: zap the block with a single photon.

The photon carries a small amount of moment and consequently pushes the block as it enters the glass, giving it some momentum. As the photon leaves the block, the block comes to rest.

So the result of the photon's passage is that it moves the block a small distance.

Bekenstein's idea is that if this distance is smaller than the Planck length, then the block cannot move and the photon cannot pass through it.

So the experiment involves measuring the number of photons that pass through the block. If the number is fewer than predicted by classical optics, then that proves the existence of quantum foam.

In empty space, light always travels at 300,000,000 meters per second. In a material such as glass, it travels slower. The ratio of light's speed in the vacuum to its speed in a material defines the material's "index of refraction," which is typically greater than one. However, scientists have begun to manipulate the interactions of light and matter to tune the index of refraction in weird ways, such as making it negative, which leads to an unusual bending of light.

So how does an everywhere-at-once light wave not violate relativity? Light has two speeds, Engheta explains. The "phase velocity" describes how fast waves of a given wavelength move, and the "group velocity" describes how fast the light conveys energy or information. Only the group velocity must stay below the speed of light in a vacuum, Engheta says, and inside the waveguide, it does.

At least, not without some clever thinking. One idea is to entangle a pair of photons, hang on to one and send the other across a distance so vast that gravity is significant, in other words, far enough for the gravitational curvature of space to come into play.

AIST: Millimeter-wave Oscillation by Ferromagnetic Nanocontact Device

From Urban Dictionary, "The Truth":

A superlative. The greatest or most positive form it is possible for a person or thing to be.

And that's the part of the definition I'm comfortable referencing (the originals from Shaq's description of Paul Pierce's performance - superlativewould be an understatement).

This election has been about the question: what is truth?

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Climate change is likely to be worse than many computer models have projected, according to a new analysis.

The work, published yesterday in Science, finds evidence that Earth's climate is more sensitive to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than some earlier studies had suggested.

If the new results are correct, that means warming will come on faster, and be more intense, than many current predictions. Moreover, the impacts of that warming, including sea level rise, drought, floods and other extreme weather, could hit earlier and harder than many models project, said study co-author John Fasullo, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Related link: Allergies from Pollen Projected to Intensify with Climate Change

Computer models are just that: models, kind of like the mock up the architect builds to show you how the final project might look, but you can't livethere. They can accurately predict outcomes within a few percentage points of accuracy. For example, as superlative as Nate Silver's predictions have been (his book has rocketed up the NY Times Best Seller's Listing), his model predicted Ohio would be the deciding factor. It was not. Colorado tipped the president to 272 electoral votes. His model as with anything of a predictive nature is in the high 90 percentile in accuracy.

Stochastic Modeling is used heavily by the finance and insurance industries and your meteorologist. The Monte Carlo Method was most famously used by the Manhattan Project to model the nuclear bomb (yes, I slipped the physics in there, didn't I?).

Earlier I posted a video from a physics teacher in Oregon, Greg Craven that went viral on You Tube. He said it was the most frightening video anyone would see. It resulted in a published book "What's The Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate."

I've recreated the decision matrix he used above. It's called a Punnett Square, developed by Reginald C. Punnett (easy name at least for meto remember). In science, it's initial use was the description of parent/child relationships and mapping certain genetic traits passed down.

You could argue that Greg's use wasn't the initial intended function, and should be questioned. That's fair. However, the Punnett Square is also used to teach Algebra to Ninth Graders (I know - I've done it): it's an especially good method for visualizing FOIL (first-outer-inner-last) without all the arrows. You can also argue that was not its intended original purpose, yet it works.

Greg is a high school science teacher. He admits he's not a climate scientist. However, his motivation is no income (though he's probably made some), but his daughters and handing them a planet that is livable for them and any future grandchildren.

What is truth?

For Greg, his kids, my kids and yours: we'd better hold our leaders accountable to find out.

I (and my sinuses at least) are for the lower-left quadrant, by-the-way, avoiding the lower-right.

Tomorrow has been decided today. Reason and rationality won. The dreams of our forefathers have been validated.

The following essays will explain: