Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Particles, Doctors and Art Sleuths...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 16, 2017 at 10:10am

A photographer takes a picture of the inside of a prototype of a drift tube of the new linear accelerator Linac 4, the newest accelerator acquisition since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is due to feed the CERN accelerator complex with particle beams of higher energy, during its inauguration at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, May 9, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Topics: Cancer, CERN, High Energy Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics

A new particle accelerator unveiled at CERN, the European physics research center, is expected to spawn portable accelerators that could help doctors treat cancer patients and experts analyze artwork.

CERN is gradually upgrading its hardware to get more data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), its 27-km (17-mile) circular accelerator that smashes protons together at almost the speed of light to probe basic questions about the universe.

Its latest upgrade, resembling a 90-metre oil pipeline hooked up to a life support machine, replaces the 39-year-old injector that produces the flow of particles for the LHC.

Standing by the new Linac 4 machine, which cost 93 million Swiss francs ($93 million) and took 10 years to build, project leader Maurizio Vretenar said CERN had miniaturized the technology and saw many potential uses.

"It's a brave new world of applications," he told Reuters in Linac 4's tunnel 12 meters under Geneva.

CERN has already built a version to treat tumors with particle beams and licensed the patent to ADAM, a CERN spin-off owned by Advanced Oncotherapy.

Another medical use is to create isotopes for diagnosing cancers. Since they decay rapidly, they normally have to be rushed to patients just in time to be used.

Reuters Science: New CERN particle accelerator may help both doctors and art sleuthsTom Miles

The Power of Comedy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 16, 2017 at 10:06am

Image Source: Poem Hunter

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics

This is not just the power of comedy, it is the arts in particular: acting, miming, music, painting, poetry, sculpture: during the <="" a="">, it is the arts that usually the first to rise up in opposition to tyranny. It is unique that science has left the labs and taken to the streets. STEM adds to it STEAM; we are all part of the nine muses.

The FCC is leading a faux investigation into the late night comedian Stephen Colbert using the bleeped "cock holster," yet apparently silent about the current resident of the country's seat of power using the phrase "grab 'em by the p----" in a Hollywood Access hot mic moment (they'll say he was a candidate then, and it didn't count). The bar for acceptable presidential behavior has obviously been substantially lowered.

Comics in particular, from court jesters, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have a knack to point out the absurd under the cover of levity. We laugh as we are informed, meanwhile the much maligned mainstream media is always in the hunt for Nielsen Ratings, in a precarious balancing act between financial viability and Constitutional duties.

Some, like Al Franken put down the shtick long enough to run for public office and become effective in the senate, perhaps replacing Ted Kennedy as its "lion."

Democratic republics are not like microwave popcorn: they don't just "work" when you set the timer and walk away. They require a vigilant citizenry and engagement in every election that occurs in your municipality. Otherwise, the horror vacui will be filled by dark money and not in line with the goals of the citizens of a republic.

Whether this one survives is not exactly a laughing matter.

Now, We Are Here...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 5, 2017 at 5:55am

Battle of Puebla - Wikipedia

Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Hispanic Americans, Latino Americans, Politics, Women in Science

If you do a search on the words "Cinco de Mayo" on the blog, this post as well as many others come up celebrating Hispanic/Latino Heritage and diversity. I re-post last year's entry as it was during the divisive campaign that as I say in this rendering, now "has us here" with the same xenophobia that is sweeping across Europe with Russian assistance, ushering in (as Chris Hedges writes) a Reign of Idiots.

Now...they have repealed the Affordable Care Act in the House (originally a republican idea), mostly as a reaction to their own pejorative "Obamacare," not caring that if it had a snowball's chance of passing the Senate, their own constituents will bear the brunt of losing healthcare coverage. As with the former president, it is image of brown people dancing in their heads as they take a "victory lap." Apparently being a woman, rape or domestic violence is a "preexisting condition." The definitions for dystopia and sadomasochism are more descriptive and accurate for what happened yesterday. Other nations have universal healthcare, some of them not exactly our friends. This is essentially a tax break poorly disguised as healthcare reform.

Today is Cinco de Mayo. Dreamers told to "rest easy" are being deported. Hispanic/Latino culture is appropriated and commercialized in the USA from foods, fashion and Mariachi Bands. Like other contributions from people of color: Jazz, Rock and Roll, Hip Hop; the BANJO - America is willing to appropriate their traditions, claiming them as their own, and disrespect the people that originated them.

November 6, 2018 is the date of US midterms. Silence or apathy is compliance.

Important link: Indivisible Guide. Last year's post past the asterisks.

Note: Blog vacation. Back in a week.

*****

The presumptive nominee of one of our major political parties used a xenophobic attack against Hispanics/Latinos - he called them drug dealers and rapists; he'll build a wall, and make Mexico pay for it; Muslims are barred at the border; African Americans have been injured and denigrated at his rallies; Women and LGBT have been insulted; Native Americans were burned by him in a bad casino deal. He's stirred the melting pot and bigots have bubbled out of the cauldron, the 2012 autopsy all but ignored. Someone commented to me that their father "didn't leave the Democratic Party in 1967; it left him." I bit my own tongue at the political dodge: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act may have had something to do with his father's exodus, as it did many others. The hashtag movement to oppose the rise of the presumptive nominee has fallen to dust.

It is befitting today I repost this reminder of our diversity. I make no predictions and take nothing for granted. 538 and a lot of pundits predicted demises that didn't materialize. All the models were based on typical political science rules in elective politics. He is not following the rules: he's wrestling, WWE style.

I was 18 in 1980. I could at that time, drink as well as vote; the drinking age was raised to 21 when I turned 21 three years later, so it didn't impact me as much as generations afterwards. I voted along the party lines of my parents, affected by a party that championed the '64 and '65 acts my sister put her life on the line in demonstration lines for. The "Gipper" posed at his first rally in Philadelphia, Mississippi near the site of three murdered Civil Rights workers. It was an understood "wink and nod" at a group of disgruntled, disappointed and bigoted voters soon known as "Reagan Democrats." Using the dark machinations of the "Southern Strategy," so clearly elucidated by Lee Atwater, you will eventually get what you want: take from "them" because "they" didn't earn anything, despite a holocaust born of a mass continental kidnapping, rape, hangings, cross burning, domestic terrorism in the form of poll taxes and other voter suppression, castrations and reparations deferred forever. You did it with subtle, verbal Jujitsu; not openly as now: Moochers...Welfare Queens...Takers...Thugs...Rapists...all with a distinct hue in the gradient of Melanin. This has been one long backlash to the "established order" since January 20, 2009, when things got so terrible for many that bought into the myth of their inherit superiority. The president's main sin is the destruction of a narrative as long as the republic.

I make no predictions, but I give a sharp warning: Reagan was joked about in "Back To The Future" (Doc Brown: Who's president in 1985? Marty: Ronald Reagan. Doc Brown: The actor?), because as a B-Movie star, his only notable film was "Bedtime for Bonzo." Biff Tannen, the antagonist to Marty McFly's father - is based off the same real estate mogul, the Birther-in-Chief and reality TV star that is his party's presumptive nominee.

B-Movie actor...reality TV star... "What's past is prologue." William Shakespeare.

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

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

Teaching for Change: Book link here

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

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

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Genius...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 4, 2017 at 6:43am

Screen shot from the Genius series on Nat Geo: Einstein on Ars Technica

Topics: Einstein, History, Politics, Relativity, Theoretical Physics

I'm obviously a fan of Einstein for his stance on Civil Rights for African Americans, his views on women's rights, his friendship with Paul Robeson and his views that were decades ahead of his time on social issues that were just percolating in the political cauldron of the day. Above all, he shows the positive impact of an immigrant in our American "melting pot."

I often read biographies of the people we consider giants in science and engineering. What I find disarming and charming is the discovery they, like us, were quite flawed and human with their own eccentricities and foibles. It's easy to deify heroes with the distance of time.

Like most young people, the young Einstein was amorous and prolific in his couplings. He was also indifferent to the emotional impact many of his romantic betrayals had on his many partners, Elsa Einstein acknowledging as much in the first chapter of the Nat Geo series: Genius (ahem: he's sober shtoofing his secretary in one of the first scenes, right before a class. I don't know if that's actual history or hyperbole, but I've read he took off for weeks at a time in full knowledge - and disrespect - of his second spouse).

Excerpt of an interview with Ron Howard at SXSW (South by Southwest) by Ars Technica:

AUSTIN, Texas—Writer, director, and actor Ron Howard is very careful when considering his place in the geek-media universe. Over 20 years ago, his film Apollo 13 kicked off a trajectory of major science-and-heart storytelling, which recently crystallized as an ongoing series-development deal with National Geographic's TV channel.

Apollo 13 convinced Howard that audiences had more hunger for science stories than he'd assumed. "It surprised me pleasantly how interested people were in the science of it. The irony that there were virtually no computers then, and they had to use slide rules... I realized that none of these things were lost on the audience. In fact, it was very engaging. I learned that it wasn't just the adventure or the emotion. There was an intellectual component to what was entertaining and engaging the audiences." He then quoted Neil Degrasse Tyson to remind me that TV's CSI broke the dam open for an even wider audience given the series had major characters applying scientific thought, as opposed to "odd characters hidden away in a room somewhere with a lab coat on."

The pilot episode sees these distinct Einstein eras explored chronologically, and for older Einstein, that means facing the changing political climate in Germany and taking steps toward immigrating to the United States. (Rush, I should add, is absolutely masterful in his performance as the older Einstein, with snark, wit, and charm rolled together in a delightfully light German accent.) Howard insists that the entire sequence, which includes a rise of German nationalism and public hatred for immigrants and scientific thought, had already been locked down before the last American Presidential election concluded.

"It's suddenly politically prescient, which we were... aware of this as we were shooting," Howard says. "Of course, it's not just the United States. There's a call to conservative nationalism [worldwide]. Closing borders, blocking immigrants, imposing controls. That's been going on around the world for some years now—but one of the pressures, the surprises for me, in reading Walter's book, that we really depict episode after episode, are the times when institutional thinkers would impose a barrier to Einstein. And sometimes a threat. Imagine how close we came to not benefiting from his genius! That's shocking. If there's a cautionary element to this story, I hope it's that."

It's also a reminder of the maxim: “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” as Mark Twain is often reputed to have said. Quote investigator sites several possible sources other than the witty writer.

National Geographic: Genius

The Quantum Thermodynamic Revolution...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 3, 2017 at 8:15am

Ricardo Bessa for Quanta Magazine

Topics: Black Holes, Information, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics, Thermodynamics

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics 1st Law of Thermodynamics 2nd Law of Thermodynamics 3rd Law of Thermodynamics

Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea - Bernard of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne by their gigantic bigness. Source: Wikiquote, John of Salisbury.

In his 1824 book, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, the 28-year-old French engineer Sadi Carnot worked out a formula for how efficiently steam engines can convert heat — now known to be a random, diffuse kind of energy — into work, an orderly kind of energy that might push a piston or turn a wheel. To Carnot’s surprise, he discovered that a perfect engine’s efficiency depends only on the difference in temperature between the engine’s heat source (typically a fire) and its heat sink (typically the outside air). Work is a byproduct, Carnot realized, of heat naturally passing to a colder body from a warmer one.

Carnot died of cholera eight years later, before he could see his efficiency formula develop over the 19th century into the theory of thermodynamics: a set of universal laws dictating the interplay among temperature, heat, work, energy and entropy — a measure of energy’s incessant spreading from more- to less-energetic bodies. The laws of thermodynamics apply not only to steam engines but also to everything else: the sun, black holes, living beings and the entire universe. The theory is so simple and general that Albert Einstein deemed it likely to “never be overthrown.”

Yet since the beginning, thermodynamics has held a singularly strange status among the theories of nature.

“If physical theories were people, thermodynamics would be the village witch,” the physicist Lídia del Rio and co-authors wrote last year in Journal of Physics A. “The other theories find her somewhat odd, somehow different in nature from the rest, yet everyone comes to her for advice, and no one dares to contradict her.”

Quanta Magazine: The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution, Natalie Wolchover Related link

Physics arXiv: Quantum ThermodynamicsSai Vinjanampathy, Janet Anders

Quantum Sensing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 2, 2017 at 9:41am

An artistic rendition of the experimental setup for a quantum sensing experiment. The diamond quantum sensor is controlled by lasers. Graphene (a single layer of carbon atoms) sits atop the sensor. Red lines represent the path of the electrons as they move through the graphene. Credit: David A. Broadway/cqc2t.org

Topics: Graphene, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics

Graphene, a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, has a number of unique electronic properties, so it is ideal for fundamental studies in condensed matter physics and for making novel electronics and sensing devices. Researchers normally study the electron transport properties of graphene by measuring the material’s resistivity but this approach cannot make out variations in electronic properties caused by local structures, such as defects, which are very important in nanomaterials. Now, a team at the University of Melbourne in Australia has overcome this problem with their new technique based on quantum probes made from nitrogen-vacancy centres to image the flow of electric current in 2D nanomaterials like the carbon sheet - and has found that it is indeed disrupted by minute cracks and defects.

“Our technique is non-invasive, offers high sub-micron spatial resolution and works under ambient conditions,” explains lead author of the new study Jean-Philippe Tetienne. “It could be used to study electron transport in any atomically-thin materials and structures, which are especially vulnerable to imperfections like defects. This is important because it will allow us to see how electric currents are affected by these imperfections and so ultimately help us improve the reliability and performance of existing and emerging technologies.”

The new technique is based on a quantum sensing platform that consists of a diamond chip engineered with an array of atomic defects, known as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres. These centres, which form when a nitrogen impurity finds itself next to a missing carbon atom in the diamond lattice, are essentially tiny magnets and can be used as sensors for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the nanoscale. This is because the spin of an electron associated with the NV is relatively insensitive to its environment thanks to the fact that diamond does not have a net nuclear spin.

Nanotechweb: NV-quantum probes measure electron flow in graphene, Belle Dumé

Sisyphus Cooling...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 1, 2017 at 6:48am

Figure 1: Doyle and colleagues [2] have cooled SrOH molecules using Sisyphus cooling. In this type of cooling, the SrOH molecules are made to climb a potential energy hill, only to be transported back to the bottom, much like their Greek eponym who was doomed to roll a boulder up a hill over and over again. The energy lost in climbing the hill cools the SrOH molecules to ultracold temperatures. Show less

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Laser, Modern Physics, Nobel Prize, Quantum Mechanics

Only because of the illustration and the myth, but the process of laser cooling is quite sound, as the article describes below.

Physicists considering a foray into the study of molecules are often warned that “a diatomic molecule is one atom too many!” [1]. Now John Doyle and colleagues [2] at Harvard University have thrown this caution to the wind and tackled laser cooling of a triatomic molecule with success, opening the door to the study of ultracold polyatomic molecules.

The technique of laser cooling [3], which uses the scattering of laser photons and the concomitant momentum transfer to bring atoms to a near halt, has revolutionized atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics. Laser cooling and an important variant known as Sisyphus cooling [4] underpin three Nobel prizes in physics—for magneto-optical trapping (1997), Bose-Einstein condensation (2001), and the manipulation of individual quantum systems (2012)—and are crucial to a host of quantum-assisted technologies and fundamental physics measurements.

Since photons carry very little momentum and therefore reduce an atom’s velocity by just a small amount, a prerequisite for effective laser cooling is the ability to scatter thousands of photons. Thus laser cooling has predominantly been used only to cool simple atoms, whose electronic structure dictates that after a photon is absorbed, spontaneous emission places the atomic electron back into its original state, allowing the process to repeat nearly ad infinitum.

Spurred on by the possibility of another revolution in AMO physics when ultracold molecules become available [5], a brave group of researchers recently began work to achieve laser cooling of diatomic molecules, guided by a new proposal for how to deal with their complex structure [6]. Diatomic molecules, or “diatoms,” are challenging targets for laser cooling as their electronic structure is complicated by their rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom. When a diatom absorbs a photon from the laser, spontaneous emission can place it in any of a multitude of these rotational and vibrational states, whose transition frequencies no longer match that of the cooling laser. These so-called dark states are the bane of laser cooling, bringing the cooling process to a stop. Nonetheless, by carefully choosing molecules with unique properties—for example, those which contain an optically active electron that does not strongly participate in the molecular bonding—laser cooling of molecules has been successful, and it has culminated in the demonstration of magneto-optical trapping of SrF molecules [7].

APS Viewpoint: A Diatomic Molecule is One Atom too FewPaul Hamilton, Eric Hudson, University of California, Los Angeles

This Sandbox...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 28, 2017 at 9:30am

Image Source: Public Domain Pictures

Topics: Commentary, Climate Change, Existentialism, Politics

As Michael Lewis has written, “It’s more than a little nuts for a man who has a billion dollars to devote his life to making another billion, but that’s what some of our most exalted citizens do, over and over again.”

Greed begins in the neurochemistry of the brain. What fuels our greed is a hormone neurotransmitter in the brain called dopamine. The higher the dopamine levels in the brain, the more pleasure we experience. Cocaine, for example, directly increases dopamine levels.

By using magnetic resonance imaging studies, the Harvard researcher Hans Breiter and his colleagues have found that the craving for money activates the same regions of the brain as the craving for cocaine, or sex, or any other instant and intense pleasure.

Excerpts from the article "Dope, Dopes, and Dopamine: The Problem With Money," by Tony Schwartz, Harvard Business Review.

After reading Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," the one line that stuck with me after finishing the book was from his 'rich dad':

"Money is just an idea."

This idea probably started when humankind went from a simple barter system - I'll give you this, if you give me that. It evolved into representing wealth by precious minerals that seemed to occupy one or many mountains; a particular swath of land. Perhaps that is where the designation of sacred grounds (set apart) came about. Thus Asgard, Heaven, Olympus, Nirvana, Valhalla - paved with precious stones, streets of gold and anatomically perfect beings who live forever. This would be quickly approximated by royalty and the wealthy with gourmet chefs, excellent healthcare and massage therapists.

Economies were begun on this "idea," and the idea fueled the quest for more stuff, be it rubles, rubies; silver, gold, platinum; women or slaves.

Wars have been fought over this "idea," as instead of "I'll give you this, if you give me that" an inventory of sorts takes place and the statement becomes:

THEY have that (gold, silver, platinum, etc.) and we want it.

WE have more stones/arrows/catapults/mortars/guns/bombs - so, let's take it!

It's simplistic, but essentially the goal of colonizers and conquest. The only thing that changes is whether it's in the name of a deity, a particular form of government or the expansion of empire, i.e. the motivating factor to sell the population that will be fighting the wars to get the booty, bounty, cheddar; precious stuff.

You also have to give some detestable attributes to those designated as "they" or "them": black, brown, evil, mud people, red, reprobate, soul-less, terrorist, violent, ugly, yellow.

You MUST have ascribed to yourselves noble attributes akin to the gods: beauty, good, pious, pure, snow, white: your women as property are "flowers of womanhood" and any violation of her pedestal - real, or falsely perceived - met with violent retribution.

The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.

Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.

Excerpts from BBC Future - How Western Civilisation Could Collapse, Rachel Nuwer

The ecological strains are myriad: air pollution, acid rain, climate change, dumping toxins in potable water (see Flint, Michigan). We're permanently in a Caste System that requires "Brahmins (priestly people), the Kshatriyas (also called Rajanyas, who were rulers, administrators and warriors), the Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, tradesmen and farmers), and Shudras (labouring classes)." Lastly the pariahs or "untouchables" provide the base for the hierarchal system, and apparently the untouchables are there for all time: they must know and never get out of their place. (emphasis mine). Source: Wikipedia. Such rebellion by the untouchables is usually met with violent repression, and no one in the top tiers of the Caste System are interested in things like equality or hierarchy mobility.

This sandbox has the measurable dimensions of density, mass, volume elevation and depression (valleys, canyons). It has an advanced age that has allowed five previous extinctions. A lot of the yellow trucks, machines and devices on it are like the trucks in the stock photo showing their wear. Living beings before humans have breathed and passed on in this sandbox's long history.

The strain and the stratification is over this "idea" that is being hoarded by the obnoxious kids in this sandbox. We've all seen them at the beach. Their mothers (and quite a few of their fathers) in particular are enablers to what amounts to the keen behaviors of a sociopath. Their castles must be "the biggest and the best"; the shiny shells found on the seashore the currency of their "kingdoms." They must have MORE. Their narcissism is far beyond Maslow's five basic needs, on steroids - or an elicit drug. The builders of smaller sandcastles are seen as weak, puny, ugly, evil: other. The narcissists cloister around one another building moats, draw bridges, catapults and exclusive sandcastle enclaves, only for the "best" kids. Their bullying is excused, explained and defended by their enablers. Eventually, the snot-nosed sociopaths move on due to boredom, a new shiny toy or goes home near twilight and bedtime.

Inevitably as will happen with the passage of time, ocean waves roll in with the rising tide, and Entropy washes the king's sandcastles and bauble away... making both extinct.

Perfection itself is imperfection.

Vladimir Horowitz

Related link

The Crisis of Western Civ, David Brooks, The New York Times

Kamikaze...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 27, 2017 at 6:20am

A still from a short animated film depicting Cassini’s passage between the cloudtops of Saturn and the giant planet’s innermost rings. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Topics: Astrophysics, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

Definition: "suicide flier," 1945, Japanese, literally "divine wind," from kami "god, providence, divine" (see kami) + kaze "wind." Originally the name given in folklore to a typhoon which saved Japan from Mongol invasion by wrecking Kublai Khan's fleet (August 1281). Dictionary.com

Running low on fuel, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun the final — and most daring — phase of its epic mission to Saturn.

After using a final flyby of the moon Titan on Friday to boost its speed, Cassini was flung by the moon's gravity to a trajectory that sent it diving through the 1,200-mile (1,930 kilometers) gap between the planet's upper atmosphere and innermost rings, NASA officials said.

Cassini completed the first crossing of the ring plane at about 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT, or 0900 GMT) Wednesday, the space agency said in a statement.

This final journey will end Sept. 15 when the spacecraft burns up in Saturn's crushing atmosphere. There is no turning back now; Cassini is on a "ballistic trajectory," and its fate is sealed, NASA scientists have said. The Grand Finale has been designed to prevent the spacecraft from contaminating the potentially habitable Saturnian moons.

September 15 would be Mildred Dean Goodwin's 92 birthday if she were still here. I'll be sure to commemorate it. I think this would make her smile.

Scientific American:NASA's Cassini Mission Conducts Daring Dive through Saturn's Rings, Ian O'Neill

Life As We Know It...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 26, 2017 at 7:16am

Artist’s impression of the super-Earth exoplanet LHS 1140b. Credit: ESO

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Space Exploration

"LHS 1140B": We have to talk about naming conventions.o_0'

IN BRIEF

Scientists have located an exoplanet that's the best candidate for life as we know it. They believe it may prove to be an even more important target for the future characterization of planets in the habitable zone than Proxima b or TRAPPIST-1.

Only a few decades ago, the thought of any alien planets existing in the reaches of space were just hypothetical ideas. Now, we know of thousands of such planets – and today, scientists may have discovered the best candidate yet for alien life.

That candidate is an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth—what the international team of astronomers who discovered it have deemed a “super-Earth.” Using ESO’s HARPS instrument and a range of telescopes around the world, the astronomers located the exoplanet orbiting the dim star – LHS 1140 – within its habitable zone. This world passes in front of its parent stars as it orbits, has likely retained most of its atmosphere, and is a little larger and much more massive than the Earth. In short, super-Earth LHS 1140b is among the most exciting known subjects for atmospheric studies.

Futurism:Scientists Just Discovered an Alien Planet That’s The Best Candidate for Life As We Know It

Qubiits Entanglement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 25, 2017 at 7:20am

This photograph of the quantum device has components highlighted in false colour. The superconducting qubits are numbered 1–10 and the central bus resonator is labelled "B". The red and blue structures are control lines for the individual qubits. (Courtesy: Chao Song et al/ arXiv: 1703.10302)

Topics: Entanglement, Modern Physics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

A group of physicists in China has taken the lead in the race to couple together increasing numbers of superconducting qubits. The researchers have shown that they can entangle 10 qubits connected to one another via a central resonator – so beating the previous record by one qubit – and say that their result paves the way to quantum simulators that can calculate the behaviour of small molecules and other quantum-mechanical systems much more efficiently than even the most powerful conventional computers.

Superconducting circuits create qubits by superimposing two electrical currents, and hold the promise of being able to fabricate many qubits on a single chip through the exploitation of silicon-based manufacturing technology. In the latest work, a multi-institutional group led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, built a circuit consisting of 10 qubits, each half a millimetre across and made from slivers of aluminium laid on to a sapphire substrate. The qubits, which act as non-linear LC oscillators, are arranged in a circle around a component known as a bus resonator.

Initially, the qubits are put into a superposition state of two oscillating currents with different amplitudes by supplying each of them with a very low-energy microwave pulse. To avoid interference at this stage, each qubit is set to a different oscillation frequency. However, for the qubits to interact with one another, they need to have the same frequency. This is where the bus comes in. It allows qubits to transfer energy from one another, but does not absorb any of that energy itself.

Physics World: Ten superconducting qubits entangled by physicists in ChinaEdwin Cartlidge

March for Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 24, 2017 at 6:35am

Mid Hudson March for Science, Poughkeepsie, New York

Topics: Education, Politics, Research, Science, STEM

I participated in the Mid Hudson March for Science Saturday, 22 April 2017 at 2:00 pm Eastern. The weather was overcast but not rainy at a comfortable 57 degrees, so it made a 0.6 mile march quite doable and pleasant.

I was a little concerned and jealous when I saw the marches in DC and NYC, the crowds featured by the news outlets in Times Square and the nation's capital were impressive and large. Poughkeepsie held its own quite impressive display of unity for science, reason and ultimately truth. I estimate we had 350 - 400 science enthusiasts, young and old - from toddlers to retired - and as diverse as a prism or rainbow. There was the sign "proud parents of a PhD in Chemistry"; the beautiful fraternal twins, one of them couldn't relax in his dual stroller out of the grasp of his mother. I had interesting side conversations in things ranging from the origin of the Internet, Moore's Law and the current policies that have everyone concerned. I saw a few irritated drivers as we gummed up traffic down Main Street. We had to stay on the sidewalk to the final destination along the Hudson River.

Poughkeepsie March for Science Slide Show

Every march needs a GREAT BAND with a driving beat to step forward, even for brief trek. Please note the creative signs displayed at the march.

A coed from Marist College remarked: "Last semester, I went to concerts. This semester, my life revolves around marches." I asked her and her friend - an African American and Asian - if they were registered to vote. They enthusiastically said yes, and pledged to vote in EVERY election. That, like science matters.

I felt overwhelmed, first at the brief memory of my deceased parents and their support of my science pursuits. Then something I used to experience when I jogged, similar to "runners high," as we got to the end of the march at the shore of the Hudson River at Wayas Park: there were several "science teach ins" and people that wore t-shirts that said "ask me about _____." I talked to a member of the Mid Hudson Astronomical Association (I'm on their meet up) and we talked shop about when and where they meet. Since my schedule had changed, I said I could meet them on their Wednesday night star gazing.

I talked to a man that had a t-shirt that said "ask me about Ebola." I found out he was not a medical doctor as I had surmised, but a historian. He was born in Sierra Leon, and was documenting how colonialism had affected his country in the way of infectious diseases (sounded similar to the book Germs, Guns an Steel by Jared Diamond). We had a pleasant conversation and a good exchange. I shook his hand as I moved to other exhibits.

I saw the STEM teach-in by IBM with the typical wafer samples and motherboards, and chuckled that the electronic snap kits I use to do the same thing they also brought (they had the 100 experiment kit, I have that, the 750 experiment and 3-D kits).

There were conservationists, botanists, possum skeletons and pelts for some reason, people in lab coats and 45 in effigy. I purposely didn't take a photo of it since he's quite ubiquitous and nauseating without my broadcasting.

I guess my high was the concern shown by a diverse community quite concerned with science and its pursuit of truth being warped to the desire of authoritarians that since Galileo have been threatened that the Scientific Method typically doesn't agree with their narrative. I felt my eyes weld; my chest warm as my blood rushed.

Though I went there by myself (my wife exhausted from a real estate exam), I at no time felt "alone."

March for Science web site.

New York Times: Scientists, Feeling Under Siege, March Against Trump PoliciesNicolas St. Fleur

Twisted Hyperbole...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 21, 2017 at 7:06am

J Robert Oppenheimer, Image Source: YouTube

Topics: Einstein, Existentialism, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Oppenheimer, Politics

What I wouldn't give for "truthful hyperbole." The riff in "The Art of the Deal" that we now know was ghostwritten and probably like the life of the 45th president a blatant, pathological lie, it was at least a strategy towards an end: a clever tactic that bent the rules but did not break them or the administrative state. An armada is headed towards the Korean peninsula until its revealed it was actually in the Indian Ocean thousands of miles away. Two generals on his staff and his press secretary used the word "prudent," perhaps as a prayer that maybe in the long line of obfuscations, this was a legitimate act that wasn't born in indigestion, bad dreams and a tweeted warped imagination. What was alarming is the bluff or buffoonery could have ratcheted up tensions on the 38th parallel. 20+ million South Koreans, military bases and businesses like Hyundai and in the semiconductor industry were at the mercy of chance and blind luck if anything popped off. The closest military bases in South Korea or the pacific theater couldn't have responded in time to interdict catastrophe, only to help bury bodies in a conventional bombing aftermath. They're probably and rightly pissed with us.

His predecessor "wiretapped" him, and because he put his tweet in quotes it takes new meaning. Devin Nunes put himself squarely back on his dairy ranch and his political career in the golden crapper, getting the information from the White House to "reveal" it to the same and the media the next day. Correlate that to now the official log of visitors will in his bumbling aftermath not be revealed, so as to not know which staffer let the congressman in and the time stamp. Surprisingly, his midnight run has not been parodied by late night comedy as I've seen. It also explains 45's frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago: it is his country club, and as a guarantor of the privacy of members at $200,000.00 a year, no logs there are made, or will ever be published. A kingpin of the Mafia could visit or a Russian oligarch, and we would never know.

Andrea Mitchell, exasperated said this administration "flat out lies" as if beyond pathology, this chaos is a source of pleasure: a political pyromaniac that lights fires, denies responsibility while jerking off to the engulfing flames of a crumbling republic.

In geopolitics, it's dangerous. Being unpredictable, or thinking no one will ever challenge us because they think our president is insane is not a doctrine, not a strategy: it is pure insanity. This will embolden Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS/ISIL et al, not cow them. So far, the recent published opinions of ISIS that "the US is bankrupt and being run by an idiot" hasn't as yet resulted in a morning, mean-girl counter tweet storm.

Paul Mason, contributing to the Opinion Page of The Guardian (see Related links) summed it best:

"I don’t wish to alarm you, but right now the majority of the world’s nuclear warheads are in the hands of men for whom the idea of using them is becoming thinkable."

Those men are Vladimir Putin, Kim Jung Un and the 45th president, an "axis of grift, testosterone-driven, short-penis evil," thumping their chests like alpha apes, ignoring the ramifications of the effects of geopolitical gravity if we all plunge over this cliff. Nuclear war is thinkable to these men: megaton yield, radiation sickness, hunger, death, isotope half lives beyond human lifetimes for civilization to recover apparently is not. Trolls love to point out "science created the atomic bomb." Yes, it did. Werner Von Heisenberg was a scientist in the employ of the German Nazis working on the bomb. Father of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics, he likely would have been promptly executed for any misgivings had he not. Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist that almost single-handedly created the modern age during his "Annus Mirabilis," leading to this age of computers, solar panels, transistors, television, the Internet and GPS systems. He was also a Jewish immigrant fleeing Nazi Germany for his life, that wrote the US president on the danger of them getting the bomb first and what this posed, encouraging what became known as The Manhattan Project, a sin science has tried to atone for (since Oppenheimer famously quoted Hindu scripture) in publishing the report annually by the Union of Concerned Scientists about how close we are to extinction. The colloquial phrase is "if we didn't do it, we all might be speaking German." I say we - especially ethnic and social minorities - probably wouldn't be having this pleasant conversation if we hadn't. It doesn't excuse the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that most historians now say the Empire of the Sun was literally on its last legs, and a few months more of empty stomachs could have changed the minds of the most recalcitrant regimes. This genie has been out of its bottle for quite some time now. We hope each election our heads of state are levelheaded responsible actors, not someone who tweets reflexively the last thing seen on Fox News without thought or context, or from a White Genocide twitter account. Apparently from the recent US elections and the rise of xenophobia in Europe, fascism - what we fought WWII for and established in its wake NATO and trade agreements - is making a comeback.

Another name for Beelzebub is "the father of lies." Who knew he would be personified in a septuagenarian that could do so in 140 characters or less?

Components and Cornstarch...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 20, 2017 at 6:26am

Credit: American Chemical Society

Topics: Chemistry, Green Tech, Electronics, Nanotechnology

I of course have several nerd shirts. One I bought from my company spells out "I play with chips" using elements of the Periodic Table. The list of elements conform with literally substances used in most electronic devices: Iodine (I⁵³), Phosphorous (P¹⁵), Lanthanum (La⁵⁷), Yttrium (Y³⁹), Tungsten (W⁷⁴), Iodine (I⁵³), Thorium (Th⁹⁰), Carbon (C⁶), Hydrogen (H¹), Iodine (I⁵³), Phosphorous (P¹⁵), Sulfur (S¹⁶). I believe it was contracted to at least my company, but a simple logo change on the left sleeve could disseminate it. I don't see it anywhere else on the Internet.

I put the links to the safety data sheets on them above because with usage there is the discarding, the throwing away in trashcans that end up in landfills that like radioactive elements and plastics, have VERY long shelf lives hazardous to human health. I'm sure cornstarch is probably a lot less harsh. The shirt is still a good conversation starter.

As consumers upgrade their gadgets at an increasing pace, the amount of electronic waste we generate continues to mount. To help combat this environmental problem, researchers have modified a degradable bioplastic derived from corn starch or other natural sources for use in more eco-friendly electronic components. They report their development in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

Abstract

Nano metal–organic frameworks (ZIF-8) particles were synthesized, and poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/ZIF-8 nanocomposite films were prepared by solution-blending and film-casting methods. The addition of nano ZIF-8 particles improved the mechanical properties and had an impact on the crystallization of PLA. The electrical properties of the PLA/ZIF-8 nanocomposites were found to be dependent on the frequency and the ZIF-8 content. The prepared PLA/ZIF-8 films had good transparency even as the content of the nano ZIF-8 particles reached 3 wt %. Compared with 21.5% of pure PLA, the limited oxygen index value of the nanocomposite film containing 1 wt % ZIF-8 reached 26.0%. Therefore, it is proposed that the prepared nanocomposites can be used as the substrates and dielectric to make disposable electronics. The char residues after burning were studied in detail by scanning electron microscopy and Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies, and the flame retardant mechanism was also discussed.

Phys.org: Degradable electronic components created from cornstarch

Teaching Physics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 19, 2017 at 7:02am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Economy, Education, Jobs, STEM

I've taught physics at the college level as well as high school. I've taught special needs students as well as students acquiring their HSE (high school equivalency, the replacement of the GED).

There's a nostalgia of the "good old days" that like all with the distance of time, we mis-remember things because as students, we typically didn't understand the pedagogy of the times. Our nostalgic recollections do have the absence of distracting technologies like the ubiquitous contronym, "smart phones."

I've found using a method called “mind mapping” a good warm up. For example, when teaching about “work,” I put the word on the board and asked my HSE class what it meant. What I got:

Now of course, the trick is to get the five in the class to Work = Force x Distance, Power = Work/Time and Simple Machines. That takes a certain amount of patience. One student I recall "didn't want to be there." The other four did good work, and we had a humorous back-and-forth on "The Flash" and what I've termed "cartoon physics." Since speed was their thing, I explained what it meant when The Flash made a sonic boom; that it had nothing to do with the speed of light and how VAST that difference actually is. As work goes, we were all "pumped" at the end of the hour.

Hence, the article in Physics Today grabbed me. To continue teaching and propagating an understanding of physics as well as science, we're going to be a little creative, answer questions on cartoon physics and steer them back on the rails... to their own futures.

Physics is the most exciting endeavor I can imagine. That is why I want to become a physicist and join what Richard Feynman called “the greatest adventure that the human mind has ever begun.”¹ Now, after my second year of undergraduate studies in astrophysics at University College London (UCL), I want to comment on some of the vicissitudes I have experienced while being taught physics. The basic courses of my first two years were disappointing. They didn’t really give me the opportunity to join that greatest adventure. Most of my lecturers followed traditional teaching approaches based heavily on solving standard problems and learning by rote, with no hint of free inquiry or discussion. They seemed to be convinced that we would understand physics through that method. I was not enthusiastic.

Physics Today: How to teach me physics: Tradition is not always a virtue, Ricardo Heras

Electron Beams...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 18, 2017 at 6:23am

Figure 1: Using the Pegasus facility at UCLA, Maxson and colleagues [1] have compressed electron pulses to below 10 fs in duration. In this facility, a relatively long electron pulse (green) produced by an electron source (not shown) enters a specially designed linear accelerator (copper, left), whose electromagnetic fields act to compress the pulse several meters downstream from the accelerator. Here, the pulse can be made so short (below 10 fs) that it would “outrun” all atomic motion in molecules (blue) and materials. In an electron diffraction or microscopy experiment with pulses like this, atoms are effectively frozen in place during an exposure (yellow). [Credit: APS/Alan Stonebraker]

Topics: Electromagnetism, High Energy Physics, Modern Physics, Particle Physics

When you read the term “electron beam,” what comes to mind? If you are a physicist or have a background in physics, it may be the great J. J. Thomson—discoverer of the electron—followed by a vision of an old television or oscilloscope powered by cathode-ray tubes. Very twentieth-century stuff. If this is your view, a new study by Jared Maxson at the Pegasus radiation facility at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues [1] should help make clear how electron beams are one of the primary enablers of twenty-first-century science. Ultrashort electron-beam pulses—less than 10 fs long in this case—are enabling forms of atomic-level dynamic imaging that were previously restricted to the realm of thought experiments [2].

It is difficult to overemphasize the impact that electron beams have had on scientific developments over the last century, or the impact they are expected to have over the next century. While electron beams are currently out of favor in high-energy physics, because of the move from electron-positron colliders to hadron colliders at CERN, Fermilab, and other laboratories, they are central to other areas of science. For example, when we want to perform detailed examinations of the structure of molecules and materials, electron beams are at the forefront. Transmission electron microscopes and scanning electron microscopes are remarkably efficient instruments for generating and measuring an enormous range of signals that reveal the structure of materials. These signals come from both the elastic and inelastic interaction of electron beams with materials, and modern materials science is unthinkable without these instruments. When operated at cryogenic temperatures, these same instruments enable 3D reconstructions of proteins, viruses, organelles, and even whole cells [3]. Complementary work can also be performed using synchrotron light sources or free-electron lasers [4], which produce x-ray and infrared beams that are themselves generated from pulsed relativistic electron beams circulating in storage rings or linear accelerators. The size of the facilities that host these instruments, and the properties and limitations of the instruments as sources of x-ray and infrared radiation, are largely determined by the properties of such electron beams.

APS Physics Viewpoint: Electron Pulses Made Faster Than Atomic MotionsBradley Siwick, Department of Physics and Department of Chemistry, Center for the Physics of Materials, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 0B8, Canada

DDR...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 17, 2017 at 5:31am

Image Source: Quora

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Semiconductor Technology

Info link: Double Data Rate, Wikipedia

The new, higher-speed DDR4 DRAM generation gained significant marketshare in 2016, representing 45% of total DRAM sales. Previously, DDR3 DRAM, including low-power versions used in tablets, smartphones, and notebook PCs, accounted for 84% of total DRAM sales in 2014 and 76% in 2015, but in 2016, DDR4 price premiums evaporated and prices fell to nearly the same ASP as DDR3 DRAMs. A growing number of microprocessors, like Intel’s newest 14nm x86 Core processors, now contain DDR4 controllers and interfaces. As a result, IC Insights expects DDR4 to become the dominant DRAM generation in 2017 with 58% marketshare versus 39% for DDR3.

The Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) officially launched the fourth generation of DDR in 2012. In 2014, DDR4 memories first began appearing on the market in DRAM modules for powerful servers and a small number of high-end desktop computers, which had souped-up motherboards or the “extreme” versions of Intel’s 22nm Haswell-E processors for high-performance gaming software and PC enthusiasts, but volume sales remained low until 2015, when data centers and Internet companies began loading up servers with the new-generation memories to increase performance and lower power consumption. In 2016, DDR4 memories quickly spread into more data center servers, mainframes, and high-end PCs, accounting for about 45% of total DRAM sales versus 20% in 2015. In 2017, DDR4 will move into more notebook PCs, high-end tablets, and smartphones and is expected to hold a 58% share of DRAM sales.

Solid State Technology:DDR4 set to account for largest share of DRAM market by architecture

Requiem for Moab...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 14, 2017 at 7:00am

Spock's comment that "Change is the essential process of all existence" remains one of the most memorable lines of dialogue ever uttered on Star Trek. - See more at: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

Topics: Diversity, Existentialism, Futurism, Martin Luther King, Politics, Star Trek

It is Good Friday in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

The Biblical name Moab means "of his father" in Hebrew, the apparent product of the illicit, incestual coitus between Lot and his two daughters during a drunken seduction by both of them to ensure the continuance of his lineage. Several double entendre examples emerge to mind, salacious, lascivious and darkly ironic: manliness, missiles and spermatozoa. We tend to cheer presidents when they lob missiles, even the draft-dodger ones. In one case to conceal a consensual sexual peccadillo; the other to deflect from an active FBI investigation (with one revealed FISA warrant) regarding collusion with a foreign power... to "win."

I re-posted "Last Battlefield," a poignant episode in the third season of the original Star Trek as its ratings declined, eventually going into syndication and rabid fandom for what would or perhaps always was called futurism, a world Roddenberry envisioned beyond the assassinations of a president (John F. Kennedy), his brother (Robert F. Kennedy) and sandwiched between them Civil Rights icons Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. A world where humankind's progeny lives and survives.

This is the third rendition in the age of "mother of all bombs" as a madman plans to up-the-ante in oneupmanship penis envy on the Korean peninsula, a megaton yield promised proportional to 16 Hiroshima's. It may be bluff; it may be bluster. World wars have started on less: WWI, WWII. There is a plan to preemptively strike North Korea to hamper any nuclear program it may have, and at whatever stage. The madman has a "big brother" in the formerly-known-as currency manipulator, China, that will under obligation of treaty challenge such a plan. The impact of escalation would first immediately be felt by South Korea, Japan; world markets and stability.

We also have in this nation, a leader that prevaricates like middle school children generate flatulence. The Air Force drilled us in war games incessantly, then on deployment to the actual exercise or theater, we learned to change on the fly. We derisively called it "rigid flexibility." For the 45th occupant of the Executive Mansion and holder of the nuclear codes, the best description should be "consistent inconsistency." He promised to be unpredictable on the campaign trail, this being the only thing approaching a "doctrine." We - the hapless electorate - follow as best we can with a mixture of angst, attention-deficit, PTSD and whiplash.

What is more frightening than a president that makes obfuscation an Olympic sport is our collective cultural arrogance that the Earth as we know it will always be, and unlike the dinosaur we will not go extinct.

The exception to us with respect to the dinosaurs is they did not know about the missile-meteor that generated the Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico... nor did they design it or tempt Apocalypse in 140 characters (or less).

* * * * *

This was first posted in August of 2013, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. I can hope Star Trek's return in 2017 to CBS has as much cultural impact as this episode did with me at its time and timing.

The vitriol and violence of the 2016 presidential campaign I've seen at political rallies; the racism, misogyny, tribalism and xenophobia purposely designed appealing to our lesser angels will not solve any problems, nor have any substantive policy proposals been forwarded by this particular camp. Sometimes art is a reflection of life. In this case, I sincerely hope life does not imitate art.

* * * * *

One of the most powerful Trek episodes for me as a youth was "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Recall, the 60's weren't just "make love, not war": there was a lot of both. Vietnam overseas, protests of the war and Civil Rights/Voting Rights marches at home. Suspicions that any deviance from the John Birch Society authoritarian "norm" was judged subversive; communist, therefore necessarily purged and crushed from existence. Judging from the date of airings, its first showing came nine months after the sad assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

It also aired during the climate of the Cold War, a period many seemingly LONG to get back to (that madness), where the nuclear "plan" was called MAD: mutually assured destruction. We still possess that insane power, essentially holding humanity hostage; guns to our own heads.

Gene Roddenberry put an interracial, international crew together: Nyota Uhura (literally: "Freedom Star" in Kiswahili); Hikaru Sulu (for the Sulu sea, meant to represent all of Asia, but of fictional Japanese origin); Pavel Andreievich Chekov (a RUSKIE for crying out loud!). You could say in this fictional treatment, Bele and Lokai "stood their ground" until the end. Roddenberry, as I've commented before developed his own eschatology, yet positive and relevant that we might just survive our own hubris, essentially stemming from old tribal conflicts and current contemporary displays of breathtaking stupidity and arrogance.

This episode was a stark warning; the inevitable consequences of NOT...

Source: Wikipedia

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is the fifteenth episode of the third season of the original science fiction television show Star Trek. It was first broadcast on January 10, 1969, and repeated on August 12, 1969. It was written by Oliver Crawford, based on a story by Gene L. Coon (writing under his pen name "Lee Cronin") and directed by Jud Taylor. The script evolved from an outline by Barry Trivers for a possible first season episode called "A Portrait in Black and White". The script was accepted for the third season following budget cuts. The episode guest-stars Lou Antonio and Frank Gorshin, best known for his role as The Riddler in the Batman live-action television series. Contrary to popular rumor and articles, Gorshin was not Emmy nominated for this role.

In this episode, the Enterprise picks up two survivors of a war-torn planet, who are still committed to destroying each other aboard the ship.

Amazon link

Once the Ariannus mission is completed, Bele takes control of the Enterprise again, but this time he deactivates the auto-destruct in the process and sends the ship to Cheron. Once there, the two aliens find the planet's population completely wiped out by a global war fueled by insane racial hatred. Both Lokai and Bele stare silently at the destruction on the monitor and realize they are the only ones left of their race (or, as they see it, their "races").

Instead of calling a truce, the two beings begin to blame each other for the destruction of the planet and a brawl ensues. As the two aliens fight, their innate powers radiate, cloaking them with an energy aura that threatens to damage the ship. With no other choice, Kirk sadly allows the two aliens to chase each other down to their obliterated world to decide their own fates, consumed by their now self-perpetuating mutual hate. Forlorn, Lt. Uhura asks if their hate is all they ever had. Kirk ruefully says no...but it is all they have left.

* * * * *

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

"The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., BrainyQuote.com

Equiangular Geometry...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 13, 2017 at 6:18am

Igor Balla for Quanta Magazine

Topics: Geometry, Mathematics, STEM, Research

Imagine a set of many lines as in a dream. The lines intersect at a point and radiate outward. There’s something perfect about the way they’re spaced that you can’t quite put your finger on. You start counting them, but before you can finish you wake up with a question hanging on the fringe of your mind: Just how many were there?

For at least 70 years, mathematicians have been trying to answer a question like that one. The sets of lines they’re interested in share a basic feature: Any two lines from the set intersect to form the same angle. Such sets of lines are called “equiangular.” Mathematicians want to know just how big those sets can get as you move past the 3-D space of our everyday experience and into higher dimensions.

Equiangular lines are much more than a curiosity — they’re an almost elemental way to think about geometry. Maximal constructions of equiangular lines often align perfectly with the vertices of highly symmetric shapes, which make them a way to discover the existence of those shapes in the first place. In addition, radiating equiangular lines would pass through the surface of a surrounding sphere at equidistant points. This property makes the lines important for so-called spherical codes, which have important applications in applied mathematics and computer science.

Last spring a team of mathematicians found the maximum number of equiangular lines possible in any dimension, given certain conditions. They proved that that number is much smaller than previous best estimates. Benny Sudakov, a professor of mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and one of the lead authors, credits the breakthrough to the wide range of mathematical techniques he and his coauthors were able to apply to the problem.

“It’s like when you’re cooking something, we suddenly found we had the right ingredients,” said Sudakov.

Quanta Magazine: A New Path to Equal-Angle Lines, Kevin Hartnett

Abracadabra...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 12, 2017 at 5:51am

Figure 1: Scheme of the setup used by Jennewein and co-workers [1]. A pump laser generates a three-photon entangled state through a cascade of frequency conversion processes in a nonlinear crystal. The oscillations in the rate of three-photon coincidence measured by the detectors provide the signature of genuine three-photon interference.

Topics: Applied Physics, Optical Physics, Photonics, Quantum Mechanics

Quantum interference effects lie at the heart of technologies that promise radically new capabilities for sensors, secure communications, and computing. Most existing experiments and applications rely on one photon interfering with itself, or two photons interfering with each other. However, the interference of a larger number of particles leads to a richer variety of phenomena, and may enable more sophisticated applications. Now, two independent groups, the first led by Thomas Jennewein at the University of Waterloo, in Canada [1], the second by Ian Walmsley at the University of Oxford, in the UK [2], have been able to isolate and observe, for the first time, “genuine” interference between three photons, that is, an effect deriving from the quantum interference of three photons that does not originate from two-photon or single-photon interference. The two studies provide new tools for controlling multiphoton interference, which may help researchers design new fundamental tests of quantum mechanics, quantum-communication protocols, and powerful quantum simulators.

The quintessential example of multiphoton quantum interference is the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, first observed in 1987. In an HOM experiment [3], two independent photons coming from different directions impinge on a 50:50 beam splitter. If the two incoming photons are distinguishable, the outgoing photons will split equally between the two exit ports of the splitter. However, if the two photons are identical and arrive simultaneously, the quantum-mechanical wave functions will interfere, and the two photons will always exit through the same port, even though each of them has an equal probability of exiting through both ports.

APS Physics Viewpoint: Photonic Hat TrickRobert Sewell, The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss, 3, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), SpainApril 10, 2017• Physics 10, 38