Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Chairmen of the Board...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 14, 2016 at 8:39am

Image Source: Giant Magellan Telescope Organization

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Diversity in Science, Research

In the spirit of full disclosure, my apologies for missing this last month. I happened upon it at UT Austin's website looking for something else completely. A happy find!

Pasadena, CA – November 16, 2016 – The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) today announced the appointment of Walter E. Massey, PhD, and Taft Armandroff, PhD, to the positions of Board Chair and Vice Chair, respectively. Continuing their involvement in new leadership capacities, Massey and Armandroff will guide the GMTO Board, overseeing the construction of the 24.5 meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in the Chilean Andes and working to complete the partnership of universities, research institutions and private donors who will contribute to the construction and operation of the GMT.

Poised to be the first of a new generation of extremely large telescopes, the GMT will be the largest optical telescope in the world when it comes online in 2022. The project is a distinguished collaboration of US institutions and international partners from Australia, Brazil and Korea. The telescope will be constructed at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

“With his exceptional leadership and wisdom Dr. Massey will guide the GMTO Board with a steady hand as the telescope moves through the construction phase,” said Nobel Laureate Prof. Brian Schmidt, Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University. “Dr. Massey has an outstanding record of enabling breakthrough science through stewardship of major research facilities, including the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).”

Armandroff serves as the director of The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory and as a Professor in the Department of Astronomy. Prior to this, Armandroff was Director of the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii for eight years. During his leadership there, the two 10-meter Keck telescopes played a key role in many astronomical discoveries. Armandroff also worked as an astronomer and eventually Associate Director for 19 years at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, Ariz. After a successful year as GMTO Board Chair, he will be stepping into the Vice Chair position, where he will partner with Massey to lead the Board as it advances the GMT through construction.

McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin:
Walter E. Massey and Taft Armandroff Selected to Lead Giant Magellan Telescope Board of Directors

Open SESAME...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 13, 2016 at 2:09pm

Image Source: Symmetry Magazine, Credit: Noemi Caraban, SESAME

Topics: High Energy Physics, Theoretical Physics, Research

I guess one miracle is where it's located and WHO will be a part of it, proving at least in the science world we can all play together in the same sandlot.

Primer on synchrotrons here.

When fully operational, the facility in Allan, Jordan, called SESAME, will mark a major victory for science in the region and also for its international backers. Like CERN, SESAME was established under the auspices of UNESCO, but it is now an independent intergovernmental organization and aims to facilitate peace through scientific collaboration that might supersede political divisions. Countries and labs the world over have responded to that vision by contributing to SESAME’s design, instrumentation and construction.

SESAME, which stands for The Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, is a 133-meter circumference storage ring built to produce intense radiation ranging from infrared to X-rays, given off by electrons circling inside it at high energies. At the heart of SESAME are injector components from BESSY I, a Berlin-based synchrotron that was decommissioned in 1999, donated to SESAME and upgraded to support a completely new 2.5-GeV storage ring. With funding provided in part by the European Commission and construction led by CERN in collaboration with SESAME, the new ring is on par with most modern synchrotrons.

Over the past decade, SESAME has organized regular users meetings each year to discuss and develop proposed research plans. That community is now over 200 strong. The international facility hosts members from Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

Symmetry Magazine: SESAME to open in 2017, Troy Rummler

LIGO's Breakthrough...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 12, 2016 at 9:37am

Image Source: LIGO.Caltech.edu/detection

Topics: Einstein, General Relativity, Gravitational Waves, Research, Theoretical Physics

The Physics World 2016 Breakthrough of the Year goes to "the LIGO Scientific Collaboration for its revolutionary, first-ever direct observations of gravitational waves". Nine other achievements are highly commended and cover topics ranging from nuclear physics to material science and more.

Almost exactly 100 years after they were first postulated by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity, gravitational waves hit the headlines in 2016 as the US-based LIGO collaboration detected two separate gravitational-wave events using the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO). The first observation was made on 14 September 2015 and was announced in February this year. A second set of gravitational waves rolled through LIGO's detectors on 26 December 2015, and this so-called "Boxing Day event" was announced in June this year. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space–time, and these observations mark the end of a decades-long hunt for these interstellar undulations.

The measurements also herald the start of the era of gravitational-wave astronomy and multi-messenger astronomy, whereby gravitational-wave observations are combined with those made by optical and radio telescopes and other detectors observing the cosmos. Indeed, LIGO's twin detectors will soon be joined by a global network of gravitational-wave detectors.

The top 10 breakthroughs were chosen by a panel of four Physics World editors and reporters, and the criteria for judging included:

fundamental importance of research;
significant advance in knowledge;
strong connection between theory and experiment; and
general interest to all physicists.

Physics World:
LIGO's gravitational-wave discovery is Physics World 2016 Breakthrough of the Year

PreCrime...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 2, 2016 at 6:00am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Commentary, Politics, Science Fiction, Research

In the science fiction short story and 2002 film "Minority Report" (also a short-lived series with Megan Good), by the legendary Philip K. Dick, using psychics (you can get away with that in science fiction) as "PreCogs," they could apprehend citizens guilty of "PreCrime." In other words before you even THINK you're going to commit a crime, you are guilty before proven innocent. I guess civil liberties go out the window in 2054.

One part of this report gave me some pause:

With the advent of photography, a tiny fraction of 19th-century scientists believed they could develop methods of accurately identifying criminals by their facial features. While their hypotheses were eventually discredited, new artificial intelligence technology suggests their claims might’ve been valid after all.

Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China have resurrected this facial recognition tradition and built a neural network that can supposedly pick out criminals by simply looking at their faces.

To accomplish this, the researchers used an array of machine-vision algorithms to examine a series of facial juxtapositions between photos of criminals and non-criminals with the goal of finding out whether a neural network can reliably tell them apart.

As MIT Technology review explains, there are three defining facial features the neural network factored in to make its classifications:

[T]he curvature of upper lip which is on average 23 percent larger for criminals than for noncriminals; the distance between two inner corners of the eyes, which is 6 percent shorter; and the angle between two lines drawn from the tip of the nose to the corners of the mouth, which is 20 percent smaller.

I might have such an upper lip, as may many other ethnicities.

Artificial intelligence like its original biological intelligence model could be taught by condition and repetition: biased prejudice in service of the state.

The Next Web:
This scary artificial intelligence has learned how to pick out criminals by their faces
by Mix

One of two breaks in December, the second around Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa. See you for this one the 12th.

Diamonds Are Forever...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 1, 2016 at 7:17am

Image Source: Entrepreneur.com, a similar photo is also at the link below.

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Power

Well, not exactly forever, but at least past our lifetimes.

Scientists from the University of Bristol Cabot Institute are hitting two birds with one stone, thanks to their lab-made diamond that can generate electricity and is made from upcycled radioactive waste.

In nuclear power plants, radioactive uranium is split in a process called nuclear fission. When the atoms are split, heat is generated, and that heat then vaporizes water into steam that turns electricity-generating turbines.

A severe downside of this process is the creation of dangerous radioactive waste, which ultimately deposits in the graphite core that it is housed in. Today, this nuclear contamination is safely stored away until it stops being radioactive…and with a half-life of 5,730 years, that takes quite a while.

The scientists found a way to heat the radioactive graphite to release most of the radioactivity in a gaseous form. The gas is subjected to high temperature and low pressures that turn it into a man-made diamond.

Futurism:
Diamond Batteries Made of Nuclear Waste Can Generate Power For Thousands of Years
Author: Jess Vilvestre, Editor: Patrick Caughill

K2-3d...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 30, 2016 at 7:30am

A collage that summarizes the research
NAOJ

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, NASA, Space Exploration

Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo, and the Astrobiology Center have nailed down an important property of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet while it was in transit.

The team used the MuSCAT instrument on the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory’s 188-cm telescope to study the extrasolar planet, called K2-3d, discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft in 2015.

The extrasolar planet is about 150 light-years away, 1.5 times the size of Earth, and closely orbits its host star in about 45 days. K2-3d is particularly important to scientists because there’s a chance it may foster extraterrestrial life. Calculations show that the temperature of the host star and the closeness of the orbit make for a warm Earth-like climate with the possibility of liquid water on the surface.

Astronomy: An Earth-like extrasolar planet could harbor extraterrestrial life
Nicole Kiefert

Truth, Post-Truth...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 25, 2016 at 10:41am

Image Source: Capital Hill Blue

Topics: Commentary, Politics, Research, Science, SETI

In our national mythology, we attribute all-wisdom, all-knowledge and all-prescience to the Founding Fathers. However, certain things they could not have predicted: an electorate made up of the plurality of voluntarily registered voters and not just property owners, the freedom of slaves and their rights as citizens, including the vote; women having the right to vote, an African American president, the removal of what used to be referred to as "bungholery" at least in spirit from the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as public life; a credible female candidate of a national party and the Internet. Obviously crafting the First Amendment, they envisioned a free press and a public education system that would at least inform the citizenry. They had no concept of corporate conglomerates (or corporations), Nielsen Ratings, talk radio, created realities; the triangulation of church, state and echo chamber; social media or click-bait.

Post-Truth: ADJECTIVE

Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:

‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’

‘some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age’

Oxford Dictionary

NPR All Tech Considered:
We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned

Truth, Post-Truth by Reginald L. Goodwin on Scribd

Quantum Brain...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 24, 2016 at 8:30am

davidope for Quanta Magazine

Topics: Biology, Neuroscience, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

Note: With the exception of the historical links below, I don't have anything related to physics and Thanksgiving. Enjoy the food and links. Travel safe.

The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain — which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer.

As recently as 10 years ago, Fisher’s hypothesis would have been dismissed by many as nonsense. Physicists have been burned by this sort of thing before, most notably in 1989, when Roger Penrose proposed that mysterious protein structures called “microtubules” played a role in human consciousness by exploiting quantum effects. Few researchers believe such a hypothesis plausible. Patricia Churchland, a neurophilosopher at the University of California, San Diego, memorably opined that one might as well invoke “pixie dust in the synapses” to explain human cognition.

Quanta Magazine: A New Spin on the Quantum Brain, Jennifer Ouellette

Completely unrelated to anything but the day:

Manataka American Indian Council on Thanksgiving
What Really Happened at the First Thanksgiving? The Wampanoag Side of the Tale
Gale Tourey Toensing

Gravity on a Chip...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 23, 2016 at 7:00am

Diagram showing how a BEC (red dot) is created at the top of the chip. It then falls and is split into two BECs that take separate paths to the bottom of the chip. (Courtesy: S Abend/Phys. Rev. Lett.)

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Gravity, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology

A new sensor that measures the local acceleration due to gravity using a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultracold atoms has been made by physicists in Germany, the US and Canada. While the prototype device is not as accurate as commercial gravimeters, its makers say it could be made much smaller and much more accurate than existing devices.

Atoms can be used to measure the acceleration due to gravity by cooling a gas of them to near absolute zero and then dropping them along two different paths in an interferometer. The quantum interference that occurs when the paths converge at a detector provides a very good measure of gravity, with commercial atom interferometers able to measure the acceleration to within one part in 108. Such measurements are invaluable for geological exploration because the presence of certain minerals can be spotted by seeking tiny variations in gravity at the Earth's surface.

While these ultracold atom gravimeters are on a par with conventional absolute gravimeters based on macroscopic falling masses, their accuracy could be improved a lot by using a BEC. In a conventional atomic gravimeter, the ultracold atoms form a diffuse gas roughly a millimetre in size and a major cause of uncertainty is that the laser pulses used to control the atoms are not spatially uniform on that length scale. A BEC – formed by cooling a gas of atoms with integer spin until they condense into a single quantum state – reduces this uncertainty because it squeezes the atoms into a region that is about 100 times smaller.

Physics World: Gravity measured using a Bose–Einstein condensate on a chip
Hamish Johnston

Sino Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 22, 2016 at 7:26am

Phosphorene is a graphene-like material that is a hot research topic, according to a new study. (Courtesy: Robert Brook/Science Photo Library)

Topics: Dark Matter, Materials Science, Neutrinos, Research

China is performing "outstanding" research in a number of emerging scientific topics, putting the country's output on a par with the UK but still behind the US. That is the conclusion of a new study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the scientific data company Clarivate Analytics. The Research Fronts 2016 annual report identifies 100 "hot" and 80 "emerging" research areas based on citation analysis of papers published in 2015.

The research areas – divided in various fields of science – reflect global interest in specific topics that have resulted in "core" journal articles. These articles are defined by an algorithm that takes into account, among other things, the time of publication and how frequently an article is cited by other papers in the same area. In physics, for instance, the hottest research pursuits last year included the detection of dark matter and experiments that measure neutrino oscillations. Research into properties and applications of black phosphorus – a 2D material also called phosphorene because of its similarity to graphene – was also identified. The study of topological materials called Weyl semimetals was also named as a hot topic in physics.

Six countries – China, France, Germany, Japan, UK and US – made the greatest contributions in the 180 research areas, according to the report. The US retained its leadership, with its researchers publishing core papers in 152 of the 180 areas, ranging from the hunt for dark matter to the health impact of electronic cigarettes. The UK, meanwhile, contributed core papers in 90 research topics, covering more areas than China's 68. However, China had top-cited papers among the core papers in 30 research areas, which is more than twice that of the UK. "China has a significant gap with the US, and fierce competition with the UK," the report says, adding it was likely that China would soon overtake the UK.

Physics World: China forges ahead in global research
Binglin Chen is a science writer based in Beijing

Exascale Computing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 21, 2016 at 7:32am

It takes increasingly powerful computing resources to perform more and more complex simulations of nuclear reactor fuel assemblies. This image shows the coolant-flow pressure distribution in a 217-pin wire-wrapped subassembly. (Image by Paul Fischer)

Topics: Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Research

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE's) Exascale Computing Project (ECP) today announced that it has selected four co-design centers as part of a 4-year $48 million funding award. The first year is funded at $12 million, and is to be allocated evenly among the four award recipients.

The ECP is responsible for the planning, execution and delivery of technologies necessary for a capable exascale ecosystem to support the nation’s exascale imperative, including software, applications, hardware and early testbed platforms.

Exascale refers to computing systems at least 50 times faster than the nation’s most powerful supercomputers in use today.

According to Doug Kothe, ECP Director of Application Development: “Co-design lies at the heart of the Exascale Computing Project. ECP co-design, an intimate interchange of the best that hardware technologies, software technologies and applications have to offer each other, will be a catalyst for delivery of exascale-enabling science and engineering solutions for the U.S.”

Argonne National Laboratory:
Exascale Computing Project announces $48 million to establish four exascale co-design centers
Brian Grabowski

Mirror, Mirror...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 18, 2016 at 10:20am

Leonard Nimoy (R.I.P.) as mirror universe Spock, "Mirror, Mirror," Star Trek, S2, E4

Topics: Holograms, Optical Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Star Trek

When you look in the mirror, the image you see looks a lot like you—not exactly the same, because when you raise your right hand, your mirror-self raises its left. What’s more, the mirror image is merely an assemblage of reflected light, without a physical body behind it. Despite these differences, you can see an important connection between you and your reflection.

This type of mirror relation is a familiar and powerful form of symmetry. We can say that a Valentine heart is symmetrical because the left side is a reflection of the right. But the symmetry of your mirror image is different and deeper. A heart is symmetrical because the left and right side happen to have a similar shape. The symmetry between you and your reflection is due to the laws of physics. The nature of light requires your reflection to be symmetrical to you. It is an example of a powerful and subtle type of symmetry known as duality.

The duality between particles and waves is a central part of quantum theory. Light is clearly a wave: It has a wavelength that determines its color, and light waves can interact with each other to produce things like lasers. Light is also clearly a particle: It interacts with atoms as discrete photons; a single photon can be deflected like a billiard ball. Particle-wave duality means that quantum objects like light have a symmetry between their particle and wave aspects. They are particles with wave properties and waves with particle properties. They are both, and they are neither. The power of quantum theory is that you don’t need to distinguish between particles and waves. They are simply quantum objects with a duality between their particle and wave natures.

Does that mean that the universe is a hologram? Not quite. It means there is a duality...

Nautilus: What It Means to Live in a Holographic Cosmos
Brian Koberlein is an astrophysicist and physics professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Strange Numbers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 17, 2016 at 6:19am

Xiaolin Zeng for Quanta Magazine
Particle collisions are somehow linked to mathematical “motives."

Topics: Large Hadron Collider, LHC, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Richard Feynman, Research

An unexpected connection has emerged between the results of physics experiments and an important, seemingly unrelated set of numbers in pure mathematics.

At the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, physicists shoot protons around a 17-mile track and smash them together at nearly the speed of light. It’s one of the most finely tuned scientific experiments in the world, but when trying to make sense of the quantum debris, physicists begin with a strikingly simple tool called a Feynman diagram that’s not that different from how a child would depict the situation.

Feynman diagrams were devised by Richard Feynman in the 1940s. They feature lines representing elementary particles that converge at a vertex (which represents a collision) and then diverge from there to represent the pieces that emerge from the crash. Those lines either shoot off alone or converge again. The chain of collisions can be as long as a physicist dares to consider.

To that schematic physicists then add numbers, for the mass, momentum and direction of the particles involved. Then they begin a laborious accounting procedure — integrate these, add that, square this. The final result is a single number, called a Feynman probability, which quantifies the chance that the particle collision will play out as sketched.

“In some sense Feynman invented this diagram to encode complicated math as a bookkeeping device,” said Sergei Gukov, a theoretical physicist and mathematician at the California Institute of Technology.

Quanta Magazine: Strange Numbers Found in Particle Collisions

Naked SMBH...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 16, 2016 at 6:33am

Artist's conception of how the "nearly naked" supermassive black hole originated.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF.

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology

Astronomers using the super-sharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have found the shredded remains of a galaxy that passed through a larger galaxy, leaving only the smaller galaxy's nearly-naked supermassive black hole to emerge and speed away at more than 2,000 miles per second.

The galaxies are part of a cluster of galaxies more than 2 billion light-years from Earth. The close encounter, millions of years ago, stripped the smaller galaxy of nearly all its stars and gas. What remains is its black hole and a small galactic remnant only about 3,000 light-years across. For comparison, our Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years across.

The discovery was made as part of a program to detect supermassive black holes, millions or billions of times more massive than the Sun, that are not at the centers of galaxies. Supermassive black holes reside at the centers of most galaxies. Large galaxies are thought to grow by devouring smaller companions. In such cases, the black holes of both are expected to orbit each other, eventually merging.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory:
Close Galactic Encounter Leaves "Nearly Naked" Supermassive Black Hole
Dave Finley, Public Information Officer

Single Atom Magnifier...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 15, 2016 at 7:00am

Artist's impression of nanophotonics. Courtesy: NanoPhotonics Cambridge/Bart deNijs.

Topics: Nanotechnology, Optics, Picocavity

Researchers in the UK and Spain have succeeded in confining light to a volume smaller than the size of a single atom for the first time – a feat that seemed completely impossible even just a few years ago. The “picocavity”, which can be thought of as the world’s smallest magnifying glass, could be used to study how light and matter interact at tiny scales and even to observe individual chemical bonds forming and breaking between atoms. The cavity might also be used to make new optomechanical data storage devices in which information can be written and read by light and stored in the form of molecular vibrations.

For a long time, scientists thought that visible light could not be focused to less than half its wavelength – the so-called diffraction limit. In recent years, however, they have learnt how to use nanostructured metals like gold and silver that support surface plasmons (oscillations of electrons at the metal surface) to confine optical fields to much smaller than their wavelength.

Now, a team led by Jeremy Baumberg at Cambridge University in the UK has used highly conductive gold nanoparticles to make the world’s tiniest optical cavity. This cavity is so small that only a single atom can fit in it. “We will never do any better than this!” says Baumberg.

Nanotechweb: Picocavity confines light to smallest volume ever, Belle Dumé

Plasmas Without Solenoids...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 14, 2016 at 7:11am

Left: Plasmoid formation in simulation of NSTX plasma during startup without solenoid. Right: Fast-camera image of NSTX plasma shows two discrete plasmoid-like structures. Credit: NSTX

Topics: Applied Physics, Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, Research

The tokamak is an experimental chamber that holds a gas of energetic charged particles, plasma, for developing energy production from nuclear fusion. Most large tokamaks create the plasma with solenoids—large magnetic coils that wind down the center of the vessels and inject the current that starts the plasma and completes the magnetic field that holds the superhot gas in place. But future tokamaks must do without solenoids, which run in short pulses rather than for weeks or months at a time as commercial fusion power plants will have to do.

Recent computer simulations have suggested a novel method for launching the plasma without using solenoids. The simulation modeling shows the formation of distinct, current carrying magnetic structures called plasmoids that can initiate the plasma and complete the complex magnetic field.

Everything starts with magnetic field lines, or loops, that rise through an opening in the floor of the tokamak. As the field lines are electrically forced to expand into the vessel, a thin layer, or sheet, of electrical current can form. Through a process called magnetic reconnection, the sheet can break and form a series of ring-shaped plasmoids that are the magnetic equivalent to the bubble rings created by dolphins.

Phys.org: Launching fusion reactions without a central magnet, or solenoid

Van Bullock...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 11, 2016 at 7:27am

Image Source: Unapologetically American

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Politics, Veterans Day

To my fellow veterans: happy Veteran's Day. I salute your Giri (Japanese): duty, obligation, honor to this nation.

Van Bullock (R.I.P.) was my ninth grade Social Studies Teacher. He was a short, stocky man with an impressive bearing and presence, white-haired mop hairdo kind of like Moe Howard of the Three Stooges in wire progressive lenses. It was 1976, our country's Bicentennial year, 8 years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy as the country tried mightily to build bridges in the place of previous De Jure and De Facto walls. Mr. Bullock's teaching technique was using stenciled notes he passed out to all of us, particularly me and Ve Pauling and lecturing with the fire of a camp meeting preacher. (Ve is my fraternity brother in Kappa Alpha Psi; he and I realized at A&T's homecoming - GHOE last month that we've known each other since the fifth grade, attending middle school, high school and college together.) It was pre-Cable Service; pre-24-hour entertainment and news; pre-Internet. It was three years before the first rap song - King Tim the III, Personality Jock, and the first rap album - The Sugar Hill Gang burst on the scene my junior year. Fashion for me centered around acne, Afros and Bell Bottoms. The distractions in class might have been an unannounced fart, a pretty girl next to you or a view outside the classroom window.

Van Bullock would lecture and captivate a crowd of 25 fourteen-year-old teens from view and girls that HAD the notes in front of us: we still took notes in the margins, on the back of each stenciled page. Tests were open book, open note and challenging: he expected great detail and essay answers. The name of the class was Social Studies, but what he was teaching was lessons of citizenship: Civics.

Civics (n): the study of the rights and duties of citizens and of how government works. Meridian-Webster online

Mr. Bullock was teaching Civics because he had the freedom to do so. He was not held to the standard of preparing students for a high-stakes standardized test because no such machination existed from the testing industrial complex. He did not have the pressure of "teaching to the test" with the wink-and-nod from Principal and Superintendent stating the party line that you were not to, knowing full well your end-of-year evaluation depended on how a teenager who's frontal lobe could misfire on the very DAY of that high-stakes exam, put his head down and take a nap...>_<

Van Bullock was teaching all of us, in a forced-bused integrated class in East Winston the rudimentary fundamentals of citizenship. Though forced, it exposed us beyond our cultures and expanded our tolerance, friendships and spheres of influence. We were learning - side-by-side - together. We looked different, we lived on different sides of town and if we attended worship centers probably had different perspectives on that as well. We could all agree that learning those building blocks to take on the responsibilities of the adulthood and the world we were all growing up into was important. We had classroom debates; mock elections: history came alive in that man's room! We learned (hopefully putting a few at ease), to make, change or ABOLISH a Constitutional Amendment it takes a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress (67 senators; 292 house members) and 3/4 of the states - 38 in our case - to ratify it in their legislatures. I tried to capture and emulate that magic every time I taught physics and math at Manor High School. Sometimes I was successful; sometimes I wasn't.

I assumed wrongly that this would always be the focus of our nation's education enterprise, preparing citizens for ownership of our federal republic.

I am sadly aware Mr. Bullock, quite clearly that it is not.

Supersolids...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 10, 2016 at 7:00am

Electron snapshot: the probable position of the remaining helium electron after photoionization. (Courtesy: M Ossiander/ TUM, M Schultze/ MPQ)

Topics: Applied Physics, Bose-Einstein Condensate, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science

Fresh evidence for a new state of matter called a supersolid has been put forth by two independent teams of physicists. Supersolidity has been a controversial concept whereby some atoms in a solid material are able to form a superfluid at very low temperatures – allowing them to flow ghost-like through the solid without any resistance. While initial observations of supersolidity in solid helium-4 in the 2000s have since been explained in terms of more mundane physics, some physicists believe that supersolids should exist – at least in principle. Now, Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and Tilman Esslinger and colleagues of ETH Zürich in Switzerland have created supersolid analogues using ultracold atoms. Both systems comprise Bose–Einstein condensates (BEC), which are already superfluids. The teams used different optical techniques to make the atoms arrange themselves into crystalline structures of high and low density resembling a solid. They then showed that the atoms can flow freely through such crystals, while the regions of high and low density do not move. While these experiments involve dilute gases, rather than actual solids, both studies show that the supersolid state of matter is possible. Both experiments are described in preprints on arXiv.

Physics World: Have supersolids been seen at last? Hamish Johnston

Atomtronics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 9, 2016 at 5:30am

[Credit: C. Suplee/NIST]

Topics: Atomic Physics, Bose-Einstein Condensate, Diversity in Science, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology, Women in Science

Gretchen Campbell describes the new and emerging field of atomtronics, which seeks to make circuit-like devices with extremely cold atoms.

When Gretchen Campbell entered graduate school in 2001, Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) were still a novelty. Today, says Campbell, an atomic physicist at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), researchers have moved beyond exploring the properties of these extremely cold collections of atoms, which behave like giant quantum waves. Instead, they’re using BECs as tools to study other kinds of physics. In Campbell’s field of atomtronics, for example, scientists are manipulating BECs with light to engineer systems that mimic transistors and other circuit components, or function as entirely new devices. The group she leads at the JQI has fabricated and studied a tiny ring of BEC intercepted in one spot by laser light that acts as a barrier for the atoms. Rotating this spot around the ring causes the system to behave like a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID, a sensitive detector of magnetic fields. Campbell, who initially wanted to be a vet, spoke with Physics about what attracted her to atomic physics and the many experiments that she’d like to try with ring-shaped BECs.

Image Source: Improved Isotope Enrichment, #P4TC

How do you describe atomtronics to someone outside of physics?

One of the properties of ultracold atoms is that they behave as a superfluid. People have proposed that it’s possible that we could use this superfluid behavior to create circuits, in which the atoms take the place of electrons. There have been some proposals to create analogs of conventional electronics. Others say, hey, let’s take advantage of the qualities of ultracold atoms that are distinct from electrons and see if we can make new types of devices and sensors.

What are these distinct qualities?

Since BECs behave as a superfluid, this means that if we create currents in our atomtronic circuits, they will persist, in much the same way that a superconducting current will persist in a loop of superconducting wire. Now, with BECs you have coherence, which you wouldn’t have in, say, a conventional electronic system. We also have the advantage that we can control the internal states of the atoms.

Image Source: NASA Cold Atom Laboratory, International Space Station

I take it there aren’t any practical atomtronics devices in existence yet?

Yeah, not at all.

If you had to guess, what do you think the first one might be?

I don’t really know. We’ve demonstrated a proof-of-principle rotation sensor: In our ring-shaped device, the current of the BEC will change when the rotating laser spot reaches a critical rotation rate. The rate associated with this transition will shift if the BEC itself experiences a rotational acceleration, so measuring the shift allows us to measure rotation. But because our device is so small—the rings are only 100 micrometers—it’s perhaps best suited for measuring changes in acceleration on a very small length scale. One always hopes that down the road there will be a practical application, but right now I’d say atomtronics is completely driven by fundamental physics.

APS Physics: Things You Can Do with a Loop of Cold Atoms, Jessica Thomas

Lasers and Anti-Lasers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 8, 2016 at 7:52am

Schematics above show light input (green) entering opposite ends of a single device. When the phase of light input 1 is faster than that of input 2 (left panel), the gain medium dominates, resulting in coherent amplification of the light, or a lasing mode. When the phase of light input 1 is slower than input 2 (right panel), the loss medium dominates, leading to coherent absorption of the input light beams, or an anti-lasing mode. Credit: Zi Jing Wong/UC Berkeley

Topics: Laser, Modern Physics, Optical Physics

Bringing opposing forces together in one place is as challenging as you would imagine it to be, but researchers in the field of optical science have done just that.

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have for the first time created a single device that acts as both a laser and an anti-laser, and they demonstrated these two opposite functions at a frequency within the telecommunications band.

Their findings, reported in a paper to be published Monday, Nov. 7, in the journal Nature Photonics, lay the groundwork for developing a new type of integrated device with the flexibility to operate as a laser, an amplifier, a modulator, and an absorber or detector.

"In a single optical cavity we achieved both coherent light amplification and absorption at the same frequency, a counterintuitive phenomenon because these two states fundamentally contradict each other," said study principal investigator Xiang Zhang, senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division. "This is important for high-speed modulation of light pulses in optical communication."

Phys.org:
Lasers + anti-lasers: Marriage opens door to development of single device with exceptional range of optical capabilities