Topics: Astrophysics, Cosmology, SETI, Space Exploration, Star Trek
Xenophobia is something we experience among ourselves from others with five fingers, five toes; slight differences in frames and shades of Melanin. We've never encountered - as far as we know - an intelligence beyond our world similar to us due to the laws of physics, chemistry and biology but distinctly: alien.
Whatever we as a species ascribe to as deity for example, MUST by design favor our particular human tribe. We create echo chambers to reinforce our own confirmation-bias about ourselves, in the modern vernacular "creating our own realities." Any news outside this special nurturing bubble is usually opposed with breathtaking, sometimes violent cognitive dissonance to maintain this special nurturing cocoon.
What exactly WILL we do when some species a little older, surviving its own M.A.D. ideology answers our calls in the dark? Our history - both current and documented - doesn't bode well towards a rational or civilized response.
The short-lived Star Trek: Enterprise seemed to be hitting its stride with the episodes Demons and Terra Prime before its cancellation; our current clamor for nationalism and purity makes them both quite prescient. Enterprise showed a humanity at the cusp of establishing a United Federation of Planets. They initially instead showed old prejudices, and our disdain for being put out of our self-appointed special place in the universe, post surviving Trek's fictional human extinction-level events of World War III and war with the Xindi. Before the imagined utopias of Kirk or Picard and the current xenophobia displayed among our own species, we likely still have some growing to do.
Abstract
We are at a stage in our evolution where we do not yet know if we will ever communicate with intelligent beings that have evolved on other planets, yet we are intelligent and curious enough to wonder about this. We find ourselves wondering about this at the very beginning of a long era in which stellar luminosity warms many planets, and by our best models, continues to provide equally good opportunities for intelligent life to evolve. By simple Bayesian reasoning, if, as we believe, intelligent life forms have the same propensity to evolve later on other planets as we had to evolve on ours, it follows that they will likely not pass through a similar wondering stage in their evolution. This suggests that the future holds some kind of interstellar communication that will serve to inform newly evolved intelligent life forms that they are not alone before they become curious.
Topics: Cosmology, History, Modern Physics, Richard Feynman
Horror vacui: "nature abhors a vacuum." (attributed to Aristotle)
Richard Feynman looked tired when he wandered into my office. It was the end of a long, exhausting day in Santa Barbara, sometime around 1982. Events had included a seminar that was also a performance, lunchtime grilling by eager postdocs, and lively discussions with senior researchers. The life of a celebrated physicist is always intense. But our visitor still wanted to talk physics. We had a couple of hours to fill before dinner.
I described to Feynman what I thought were exciting if speculative new ideas such as fractional spin and anyons. Feynman was unimpressed, saying: “Wilczek, you should work on something real.” (Anyons are real, but that’s a topic for another post.)
Looking to break the awkward silence that followed, I asked Feynman the most disturbing question in physics, then as now: “There’s something else I’ve been thinking a lot about: Why doesn’t empty space weigh anything?”
Feynman, normally as quick and lively as they come, went silent. It was the only time I’ve ever seen him look wistful. Finally he said dreamily, “I once thought I had that one figured out. It was beautiful.” And then, excited, he began an explanation that crescendoed in a near shout: “The reason space doesn’t weigh anything, I thought, is because there’s nothing there!”
Vacuum, in modern usage, is what you get when you remove everything that you can, whether practically or in principle. We say a region of space “realizes vacuum” if it is free of all the different kinds of particles and radiation we know about (including, for this purpose, dark matter — which we know about in a general way, though not in detail). Alternatively, vacuum is the state of minimum energy.
Intergalactic space is a good approximation to a vacuum.
Void, on the other hand, is a theoretical idealization. It means nothingness: space without independent properties, whose only role, we might say, is to keep everything from happening in the same place. Void gives particles addresses, nothing more.
Aristotle famously claimed that “Nature abhors a vacuum,” but I’m pretty sure a more correct translation would be “Nature abhors a void.” Isaac Newton appeared to agree when he wrote:
...that one Body may act upon another at a Distance thro’ a Vacuum, without the Mediation of any thing else, by and through which their Action and Force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity, that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.
But in Newton’s masterpiece, the Principia, the players are bodies that exert forces on one another. Space, the stage, is an empty receptacle. It has no life of its own. In Newtonian physics, vacuum is a void.
Topics: Biology, Climate Change, Global Warming, Research
I recorded something on my DVR titled "Global Weirding," which I think is far more descriptive of the phenomena. "Warming" tends to imply extreme heat like the Sahara Desert ALL the time. It's more like what you've grown comfortable expecting...don't. Sensational blockbusters like "The Day After Tomorrow" don't help in our impatient point-and-click attention-deficit patience either. Instead of a sudden dystopian disaster, it should be thought of as a slow but steady train wreck.
Aerosol threats have been expected from our changing climate. This new threat is currently growing and concerning for many, like me that have relatives in harms way on the Gulf Coast and Florida. Thankfully, our stalwart, "science-friendly" representatives are on the case, tying battling related birth defects to eliminating abortion. Infants will be safely born on the Gulf Coast (as Latin America grapples with their own previous conservative views and legal prohibitions) sadly, with smaller heads and shortened lifespans. It is an oxymoron; a contradiction in terms and "values."
One of the top U.S. public health officials on Sunday warned that the mosquito-borne Zika virus could extend its reach across the U.S. Gulf Coast after officials last week confirmed it as active in the popular tourist destination of Miami Beach.
The possibility of transmission in Gulf States such as Louisiana and Texas will likely fuel concerns that the virus, which has been shown to cause the severe birth defect known as microcephaly, could spread across the continental United States, even though officials have played down such an outcome.
Concern has mounted since confirmation that Zika has expanded into a second region of the tourist hub of Miami-Dade County in Florida. Miami's Wynwood arts neighborhood last month became the site of the first locally transmitted cases of Zika in the continental United States.
"It would not be surprising we would see additional cases perhaps in other Gulf Coast states," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the allergy and infectious diseases unit of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said in an interview on Sunday morning with ABC News.
APS/Alan Stonebraker Distant partners. In this sketch, two cesium atoms in high Rydberg states form a weakly bound molecule about 1 micrometer across, comparable to the size of typical bacteria.
Topics: Atomic Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Computer, Rydberg Atom
Strongly bound diatomic molecules such as H2 or O2 are less than a nanometer across. Surprisingly, scientists have been able to create two-atom molecules more than a thousand times larger by using exotic atoms that attract one another only very weakly. Now, a pair of physicists have calculated what makes these “macrodimers” stable, and they have verified their predictions by creating micrometer-sized molecules containing two cesium atoms. The macrodimers could have applications in quantum computing.
Interest in these macromolecules stems from the challenges they pose to conventional understanding of molecules and bonds. More than a decade ago, physicists predicted that molecules with interatomic distances as large as 1 micrometer might be created by using a pair of atoms in so-called Rydberg states. These are atoms in which a single outer-shell electron has been excited to a high quantum state so that it orbits far away from the nucleus. Although Rydberg atoms are unstable, they can live as long as tens of microseconds, and experimenters have succeeded in creating macrodimers from them, confirming their existence indirectly by destroying them and detecting specific spectroscopic signatures [1].
(July 28, 2016) - In the same underground observatory in Japan where, 18 years ago, neutrinos were first seen oscillating from one “flavor” to another — a landmark discovery that earned two physicists the 2015 Nobel Prize — a tiny anomaly has begun to surface in the neutrinos’ oscillations that could herald an answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics: why matter dominates over antimatter in the universe.
The anomaly, detected by the T2K experiment, is not yet pronounced enough to be sure of, but it and the findings of two related experiments “are all pointing in the same direction,” said Hirohisa Tanaka of the University of Toronto, a member of the T2K team who presented the result to a packed audience in London earlier this month.
“A full proof will take more time,” said Werner Rodejohann, a neutrino specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg who was not involved in the experiments, “but my and many others’ feeling is that there is something real here.”
The long-standing puzzle to be solved is why we and everything we see is matter-made. More to the point, why does anything — matter or antimatter — exist at all? The reigning laws of particle physics, known as the Standard Model, treat matter and antimatter nearly equivalently, respecting (with one known exception) so-called charge-parity, or “CP,” symmetry: For every particle decay that produces, say, a negatively charged electron, the mirror-image decay yielding a positively charged antielectron occurs at the same rate. But this cannot be the whole story. If equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced during the Big Bang, equal amounts should have existed shortly thereafter. And since matter and antimatter annihilate upon contact, such a situation would have led to the wholesale destruction of both, resulting in an empty cosmos.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident": the rest is a contentious matter, for at the time the revered words were written, the rest of the sentence "all men were [not] created equal," Native Americans, women and my ancestors chief among them.
"Self-evident": this is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father and scientist. It was an edit from Thomas Jefferson's original "sacred and undeniable," a reflection of the scientific revolution at the time, homage to Sir Isaac Newton and "the analytic empiricism of Franklin's close friend David Hume." The American experiment, though far then and now from perfect, would be based not on divine right or dynastic succession, but reason, facts and currently bereft in the public sphere: logic.
It is incredible that Scientific American would take such a stance, but it has to be taken. There are elements of our society that promote "creating their own reality"; the backlash to the Cosmos reboot; Creationism versus Evolutionary Biology; the Flat Earth Society; Young Earth Creationism with more dangerous, unscientific thought on the horizon for exploitation by cynical politicians or the latest flimflam artist.
This year's election is unique as one political party has nominated such a flimflam artist as its candidate, that has made no bones about his hostility to science: "climate change is a plot by the Chinese against American manufacturing." As the New York Daily News opined on his loose 2nd amendment comments: "this isn't funny anymore."
This is an assault on fact versus fantasy, science versus psychobabble; sanity versus insanity. Flimflam's persona non grata interviewed on Alex Jones - the KING of conspiracy provocateurs - as a casual search of YouTube on his rant compilations attests, many right wing pundits have, as he's complained - mainstreamed his views in the public sphere without crediting him, only nourishing a faux ecosystem around Mr. Flimflam. FF sometimes quotes him verbatim, which Jones says admirably is "surreal."
What is surreal is that as a nation, we've crossed the Rubicon. What started as a political tactic to - as Barry Goldwater said "hunt where the ducks are," getting votes from a disgruntled south that couldn't take the changes the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Fair Housing Act (1968) ushered in, the Dixiecrat ducks came: John Birch Society cum Southern Strategy cum Reagan Welfare Queens cum Faux News cum Birther Movement cum Alt-Right Movement mainstreamed in an echo chamber. Like a cult, they created their own realities. When Bob Jones University's policy against miscegenation (interracial dating) no longer worked selling themselves as a Christian institution, they found a suitable substitute in abortion opposition. The GOP's platform opposing gay rights - despite the American Psychiatric Association's removing it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - is evidenced by its insistence on the quackery of "reparative therapy."
What is surreal is our measure and substantiation of information as citizenry, and how we make decisions as a republic respecting reality, facts, data, evidence, REAL THINGS: what truths are self-evident, or quackery we'll follow over a cliff.
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." Rod Serling, Season One Intro.
“If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
—Richard Feynman
Four years ago in these pages, writer Shawn Otto warned our readers of the danger of a growing antiscience current in American politics. “By turning public opinion away from the antiauthoritarian principles of the nation's founders,” Otto wrote, “the new science denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced before.”
Otto wrote those words in the heat of a presidential election race that now seems quaint by comparison to the one the nation now finds itself in. As if to prove his point, one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality.
Americans have long prided themselves on their ability to see the world for what it is, as opposed to what someone says it is or what most people happen to believe. In one of the most powerful lines in American literature, Huck Finn says: “It warn't so. I tried it.” A respect for evidence is not just a part of the national character. It goes to the heart of the country's particular brand of democratic government. When the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, scientist and inventor, wrote arguably the most important line in the Declaration of Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident”—they were asserting the fledgling nation's grounding in the primacy of reason based on evidence.
In addition to my youngest son's 24th birthday this Sunday, Astronomy gives a guide to a total eclipse that will be seen clearly in Kentucky next year when he turns 25 (and his insurance rates drop like a STONE). Tomorrow, it's an "almost Eclipse" according to Time and Date. Next year it will be the first total eclipse in 38 years. Since we're in different states, it's quite a coincidence to coincide with his birthday. I hope we both get to see it.
From "25 facts you should know about the August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse" (you can get to it at the link below):
1. This will be the first total solar eclipse in the continental U.S. in 38 years. The last one occurred February 26, 1979. Unfortunately, not many people saw it because it clipped just five states in the Northwest and the weather for the most part was bleak. Before that one, you have to go back to March 7, 1970.
2. A solar eclipse is a lineup of the Sun, the Moon, and Earth. The Moon, directly between the Sun and Earth, casts a shadow on our planet. If you’re in the dark part of that shadow (the umbra), you’ll see a total eclipse. If you’re in the light part (the penumbra), you’ll see a partial eclipse.
3. A solar eclipse happens at New Moon. The Moon has to be between the Sun and Earth for a solar eclipse to occur. The only lunar phase when that happens is New Moon.
Topics: Materials Science, Metamaterials, Science, Research
Fans of Superman surely recall how the Man of Steel used immense heat and pressure generated by his bare hands to form a diamond out of a lump of coal.
The tribologists — scientists who study friction, wear, and lubrication — and computational materials scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory will probably never be mistaken for superheroes. However, they recently applied the same principles and discovered a revolutionary diamond-like film of their own that is generated by the heat and pressure of an automotive engine.
The discovery of this ultra-durable, self-lubricating tribofilm — a film that forms between moving surfaces — was first reported yesterday in the journal Nature. It could have profound implications for the efficiency and durability of future engines and other moving metal parts that can be made to develop self-healing, diamond-like carbon (DLC) tribofilms.
"This is a very unique discovery, and one that was a little unexpected," said Ali Erdemir, the Argonne Distinguished Fellow who leads the team. "We have developed many types of diamond-like carbon coatings of our own, but we've never found one that generates itself by breaking down the molecules of the lubricating oil and can actually regenerate the tribofilm as it is worn away."
Molecular geometry of plastic deformation. Subplot (a): snapshots of the deformation mechanisms, pure CF, for increasing strain. Fibrillar yield is characterized by intermolecular slip (see the circles highlighting a local area of repeated molecular slip). Slip leads to the formation of regions with lower material density. Subplot (b): snapshots of the deformation mechanisms, mineralized collagen fibrils, for increasing strain. Slip initiates at the interface between hydroxyapatite particles and tropocollagen molecules. Slip reduces the density, leading to the formation of nanoscale voids. Courtesy of Nanotechnology
Nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes, are often added to polymers and composites to enhance their strength. The extreme mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes suggest an obvious rationale behind this approach. However, as Markus Buehler and Isabelle Su at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US highlight in their recent topical review, the behaviour that renders nanomaterials soft or strong can be far from trivial, often involving interactions on a range of scales from macrostructures to nanostructures and – in the case of biostructures – the amino acids and proteins they are built from.
Bone is a classic example of excellent natural material engineering. It primarily consists of tropocollagen fibrils – which would be too soft to support the weight of the skeleton under its daily loads – and hydroxyapatite, a stiff but fragile material prone to fracture. However, the alliance of these two imperfect candidates is an extremely tough, lightweight and robust material.
Based on a simple molecular model of mineralized collagen fibrils, Buehler showed that, as might be expected, the stiffness of mineralized fibrils lies somewhere between the two extremes of the component materials, with as more recent studies reveal, the mineral components bearing up to four times the stress of the collagen fibrils. However, in addition his 2007 study pointed out that the mineralization increases the energy dissipation during deformation. As he explains in his report, “The fibrillar toughening mechanism increases the resistance to fracture by forming large local yield regions around crack-like defects, a mechanism that protects the integrity of the entire structure by allowing for localized failure.”
Caveat emptor: I did notice one comment on the article at the main site referencing "Laplace Pressure" as a source explaining how quasicrystal structures become pliable at the nanoscale. The link (I've provided) is to a Wikipedia page. In blogging, one can play kind of "fast and loose" with reference links if trying to make a point as in an essay, but I wouldn't in general use an open source page with the subtitle "A Free Encyclopedia that everyone can edit" referring to a science article. Out of curiosity, I did look it up on Scholarpedia: "the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia, where knowledge is curated by communities of experts." The search term Laplace Pressure came up with four links that did not seem to relate to a nanoscale phenomena.
When shrunk to the nanoscale, quasicrystals become plastic. That is the finding of an international team of researchers, which says that its results could potentially widen the material's applications. Quasicrystals – materials in which the atoms show long-range order but have no finite, periodically repeated unit cell – have fascinated materials scientists ever since their Nobel-prize-winning discovery in 1984. Their practical use, however, has been limited by their brittleness.
Conventional crystals plastically deform through dislocations in their lattice that can allow individual unit cells to swap places relatively easily. This makes some crystals, such as pure metals like copper and gold, highly ductile. In quasicrystals, however, there are no unit cells, so it takes more energy to move dislocations. "Normally, the dislocations in quasicrystals are quite mobile at high temperatures," says materials-scientist Yu Zou of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. "However, below 500 °C, the dislocations are not that mobile, so this can make the quasicrystal very brittle."
An illustration of Prospector-1, a mission that will visit a near Earth asteroid to look for water ice. Credit: Deep Space Industries
Topics: Asteroids, Economy, Jobs, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, STEM
LOGAN, Utah — Deep Space Industries plans to launch a small satellite by the end of the decade to survey a near Earth asteroid, the next major step in the company's long-term ambitions to mine asteroids for resources.
The company, based in Mountain View, California, announced its Prospector-1 mission Aug. 9. The 50-kilogram satellite is designed to visit an asteroid and look for deposits of water ice that could, in the future, be mined and used as propellant by other spacecraft.
"This is intended to be a very low cost first commercial mission to an asteroid," said Grant Bonin, chief engineer of Deep Space Industries, in a presentation about Prospector-1 Aug. 9 during the 30th Annual Conference on Small Satellites at Utah State University here.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale and NASA/JPL-Caltech and NASA/STScI
Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, Science Fiction, Theoretical Physics
The next-to-last related topic may seem unrelated: one of the Marvel Comics I recall reading was "Origin of Galactus," nee Galan who in the rebirth of the previous universe became the devouring planet eater that the Fantastic Four would battle and enslave his herald The Silver Surfer. This wouldn't be possible without someone reading the scientific papers of the day, so this idea is not new. It doesn't have to be true, proven or compelling to exist as an effective plot device.
What most non-fans of comics never appreciated is the amount of research the writers did to create their stories. I recall for instance passing a history test on Norse Mythology solely on the info I'd gleaned from Thor comics, albeit the original Norse god was describe as red-haired, needing a power belt and gloves to lift Mjölnir, having a goat-drawn chariot; three wives and children. Probably too much to put on the big screen.
Did the universe start with a bang or a bounce—or something else entirely? The question of our origins is one of the thorniest in physics, with few answers and lots of speculation and strong feelings. The most popular theory by far is inflation, the notion that the cosmos blew up in size in the first few fractions of a second after it was born in a bang. But an underdog idea posits that the birth of this universe was not actually the beginning—that an earlier version of spacetime had existed and contracted toward a “big crunch,” then flipped and started expanding into what we see today. Now a new study suggesting a twist on this “bounce” scenario has supporters excited and inflation proponents newly inflamed over a “rival” they say they have repeatedly disproved, only to have it keep bouncing back.
Inflation has many admirers because the rapid expansion it posits seems to explain numerous features of the universe, such as the fact that it appears relatively flat (as opposed to curved, on large scales) and roughly uniform in all directions (there is roughly the same amount of stuff everywhere, again on large scales). Both conditions result when regions of space that ended up very far away initially started out close together and in contact with one another. Yet the latest versions of the theory seem to suggest—even require—that inflation created not just our universe but an infinite landscape of universes in which every possible type of universe with every possible set of physical laws and characteristics formed somewhere. Some scientists like this implication because it could explain why our particular universe, with its seemingly random yet perfectly calibrated-to-life conditions, exists—if every type of cosmos is out there, it is no wonder that ours is, too. But other physicists find the multiverse idea repulsive, in part because if the theory predicts that every possibility will come to pass, it does not uniquely foretell a universe like the one we have.
“Big bounce” theories also predict a flat and uniform cosmos, thanks to smoothing-out effects on space that can take place during the contraction. But the sticking point of the bounce idea has long been the transition between shrinking and expanding, which seemed to require the much-hated idea of a “singularity”—a time when the universe was a single point of infinite density—seen by many as a mathematically meaningless proposition that indicates a theory has gone off the rails. Now physicists say they have found a way to calculate the bounce without encountering any singularities. “We found we could describe the quantum evolution of the universe exactly,” says study co-author Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario. “We found that the universe passes smoothly through the singularity and out the other side. That was our hope, but we’d never really accomplished this before.” He and Steffen Gielen of Imperial College London published their calculations last month in Physical Review Letters.
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Politics, Research
The clearest modern example of Climate Change and forced displacement was illustrated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I've blogged about my personal experience with it when living in Texas. Irene and Sandy are a part of our recent history and collective fading memories. A notably schizophrenic winter season in the northeast that can swing from harsh bitter cold to mild Indian Summer has not swayed our political leaders in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry. Sadly in the US, what may cause an action may be something more resembling the plot of a dystopian novel; more martial than civil. At that point we'd be trying to hold together what's left of the republic.
Scientific research can inform policies aimed at addressing the needs of communities displaced by climate change, something that is already happening in the United States and around the world, according to experts at a 25-26 July meeting of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition.
Research provides vital tools to identify and shape response plans to mitigate, and, in some cases, prevent, the effects of climate change on impacted communities and the human rights of local people, said participating speakers. Since 2009, the Coalition has brought together scientific and engineering organizations that recognize a role for scientists and engineers in addressing human rights issues.
The focus of the July meeting held at AAAS headquarters was on the human rights implications of climate change, including a session on the role of scientific evidence in addressing the effects of climate change.
Climate change is expected to displace and prompt the resettlement of many communities around the the world, particularly those most vulnerable to sea level rise and weather events spurred by climate change, said Michael Cernea of the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement.
Topics: Moon, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight
I'm quite sure this is not what Frank Sinatra ("in other words") was focused on, but its apropos for the post. As excited as I am in a return to the moon, commercialization leads to inevitably waste. If no one "owns" the moon ("in other words"): who is responsible for cleaning it of the eventual human spoilage? When is the moon "polluted" (is it now with remnants of the Apollo missions)? Lastly, will a return to the moon put to rest the conspiracy provocateurs that say we never went, or give their tales a new spin through cognitive dissonance? I think I just answered my last question.
August 4, 2016 – Who owns the Moon? According to the Outer Space Treaty ratified by members of the United Nations in 1967, no one nation or individual. A further agreement in 1979 signed or agreed to by 16 nations governs activities on the Moon including its exploration and use.
Article 4 of that agreement states the “use of the moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development.”
In Article 11 it further states “the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind.”
It goes on further to state “neither the surface nor the subsurface of the moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity” and that “placement of personnel, space vehicles, equipment, facilities, stations and installations on or below the surface of the moon….shall not create a right of ownership over the surface or subsurface of the moon.”
It should be noted that the United States, Russia and China, the world’s most significant space-faring nations, are not signatories to the 1979 United Nations agreement on the Moon. The only nation of consequence in space that is a signatory is India. The lunar agreement governs all other major celestial bodies with the exception of those that come in contact with our Earth. So meteors and meteorites are fair game wherever they land.
In 2015 the United States government enacted the Commercial Space Act which governs commercial exploitation of space resources. The act gives Americans the right to exploit asteroid and other space resources including the Moon. The justification for the act was expressed by the sponsor of the bill, congressman Kevin McCarthy, who states “this bill will unite law with innovation, allowing the next generation of pioneers to experiment, learn and succeed without being constrained by premature regulatory action.” In other words, outer space is open for business to any American with the means to exploit its potential wealth.
Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead
With the legislation to justify the action in place the American government on the basis of a domestic law is forging ahead and given permission to a U.S. private company to send a robotic lunar lander to the Moon in 2017.
Moon Express, a California company, applied to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on April 8, 2016 for flight plan approval to go to the Moon and land on it. They have been okayed by the agency to proceed.
Topics: Existentialism, Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Power
The fear of entrusting "the nuclear codes" has always been casually thrown about without much understanding of the stakes.
There's a cartoon understanding of the power of nuclear weapons, even on science-friendly shows like Star Trek. The 22nd, 23rd and 24th Centuries are pristine, clean and pollution free. Human lifespan extended by almost one-hundred years, and the Third World War was fought in their fictional timeline of the 21st Century with a remarkable lack of radiation, fallout or uninhabitable areas of the globe.
We of course, in the real world, entered the nuclear age in World War II with the Enola Gay dropping the first of its kind weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war ended with this savagery, and we were briefly the dominate and only nuclear power.
That of course changed rapidly. Our previous wartime allies - then the Soviet Union - developed their own weapons, which ushered in what became known as The Cold War and along with it spy statecraft. Popular franchises like Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 movies, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the original Jason Bourne novels by Robert Ludlum capitalized on our collective cultural angst with Armageddon.
The creation of nuclear weapons is likely one of physics, and by extension science's most regrettable sins. It is often pointed to as example of its usage for evil; fuel for the disdain of acquiring knowledge, encouraging inquiry, trusting facts and reality. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer put this regret in words, poignantly quoting the Bhagavad Gita:
What Dr. Oppenheimer described was an atomic weapon only, not to dismiss the destructiveness of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man." To further escalate the possibility of a human extinction-level event self-imposed, the Teller-Ulam design increased the megaton yield to unimaginable, dystopian levels.
All present nuclear weapon designs require the splitting of heavy elements like uranium and plutonium. The energy released in this fission process is many millions of times greater, pound for pound, than the most energetic chemical reactions. The smaller nuclear weapon, in the low-kiloton range, may rely solely on the energy released by the fission process, as did the first bombs which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The larger yield nuclear weapons derive a substantial part of their explosive force from the fusion of heavy forms of hydrogen--deuterium and tritium. Since there is virtually no limitation on the volume of fusion materials in a weapon, and the materials are less costly than fissionable materials, the fusion, "thermonuclear," or "hydrogen" bomb brought a radical increase in the explosive power of weapons. However, the fission process is still necessary to achieve the high temperatures and pressures needed to trigger the hydrogen fusion reactions. Thus, all nuclear detonations produce radioactive fragments of heavy elements fission, with the larger bursts producing an additional radiation component from the fusion process.
The nuclear fragments of heavy-element fission which are of greatest concern are those radioactive atoms (also called radionuclides) which decay by emitting energetic electrons or gamma particles. (See "Radioactivity" note.) An important characteristic here is the rate of decay. This is measured in terms of "half-life"--the time required for one-half of the original substance to decay--which ranges from days to thousands of years for the bomb-produced radionuclides of principal interest. (See "Nuclear Half-Life" note.) Another factor which is critical in determining the hazard of radionuclides is the chemistry of the atoms. This determines whether they will be taken up by the body through respiration or the food cycle and incorporated into tissue. If this occurs, the risk of biological damage from the destructive ionizing radiation (see "Radioactivity" note) is multiplied.
Probably the most serious threat is cesium-137, a gamma emitter with a half-life of 30 years. It is a major source of radiation in nuclear fallout, and since it parallels potassium chemistry, it is readily taken into the blood of animals and men and may be incorporated into tissue. Other hazards are strontium-90, an electron emitter with a half-life of 28 years, and iodine-131 with a half-life of only 8 days. Strontium-90 follows calcium chemistry, so that it is readily incorporated into the bones and teeth, particularly of young children who have received milk from cows consuming contaminated forage. Iodine-131 is a similar threat to infants and children because of its concentration in the thyroid gland. In addition, there is plutonium-239, frequently used in nuclear explosives. A bone-seeker like strontium-90, it may also become lodged in the lungs, where its intense local radiation can cause cancer or other damage.
Plutonium-239 decays through emission of an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and has a half-life of 24,000 years. To the extent that hydrogen fusion contributes to the explosive force of a weapon, two other radionuclides will be released: tritium (hydrogen-3), an electron emitter with a half-life of 12 years, and carbon-14, an electron emitter with a half-life of 5,730 years. Both are taken up through the food cycle and readily incorporated in organic matter.
It is sobering any presidential candidate would openly speculate using nuclear weapons as a FIRST option. The knife edge philosophy of M.A.D.: Mutually Assured Destruction requires sober minds that will use diplomacy first and not salivate for the unthinkable, goaded by a mean-girl tweet. It is breathtaking "conscientious stupidity"*; a modern-day know-nothingness, an arrogant pride in ignorance: it is cartoon physics.
Half-life for the continuation of the human species...is no life at all.
* "Nothing in the world more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Brain Activity Patterns Reveal Distinct Stages of Thinking That Can Be Used To Improve How Students Learn Mathematical Concepts
A new Carnegie Mellon University neuroimaging study reveals the mental stages people go through as they are solving challenging math problems.
Published in Psychological Science, researchers combined two analytical strategies to use functional MRI (fMRI) to identify patterns of brain activity that aligned with four distinct stages of problem-solving.
"How students were solving these kinds of problems was a total mystery to us until we applied these techniques," said John Anderson, the R.K. Mellon University Professor of Psychology and Computer Science and lead researcher on the study. "Now, when students are sitting there thinking hard, we can tell what they are thinking each second."
Burkard Hillebrands of the University of Kaiserslautern and colleagues say they have detected the first ever supercurrent at room temperature, but certain peers are sceptical of the results and say the claims are premature. (Courtesy: iStock/Johan Swanepoel)
A room-temperature "supercurrent" has been identified in a Bose–Einstein condensate of quasiparticles called magnons. That's the finding of an international team of researchers, which says the work opens the door to using magnons in information processing. Other researchers, however, believe the claim is premature, arguing that less-novel explanations have not been ruled out.
The term "supercurrent" describes the resistance-free current of charged particles in superconductors. It also describes the viscosity-free current of particles in superfluid helium. The common denominator of these systems is that they can be described as Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) – collections of bosons, such as Cooper pairs or Helium-4, that can be described by a single wavefunction.
Quantum computing has been envisioned for decades, but is a difficult task to accomplish. Now, one research group is crowdsourcing human ingenuity to solve the problem—by turning it into a game.
Any computer system requires operations that result in a change in a physical system that leaves that system in a certain physical state. Two important requirements of a physical computing system are the ability to reproduce a physical state, and how long the created state lasts. These two quantities are known as fidelity and lifetime, respectively.
For a quantum computer, the degree of fidelity (how well the physical state can be reproduced) usually must be greater than 99.9%, depending on the physical system. The requirement is based on the ability to correct any errors that occur in the physical system so a build up of error does not occur. The requirement that executing an operation must occur faster than the lifetime of the quantum state, or what is typically called the quantum decoherence time, is difficult—if you try to execute an operation too quickly, you lose fidelity. Optimizing these two conditions has led scientists to rely on computer programs—algorithms—to try out many initial states and conditions. The algorithms are good, but there are an extremely large number of possibilities to try.
Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, General Relativity, Gravitational Waves, Spacetime
On 11 February 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and its sister collaboration, Virgo, announced their earthshaking observation of Albert Einstein’s ripples in spacetime. LIGO had seen the death dance of a pair of massive black holes. As the behemoths circled each other faster and faster, the frequency and amplitude of the spacetime waves they produced grew into a crescendo as the black holes became one. Then the new doubly massive black hole began to ring softer and softer like a quieting bell. The escalating chirp and ringdown is also a metaphor for public information flow about the discovery. It could have unfolded differently.
When scientists make a discovery, they must choose how to disseminate it. A big decision they must make is whether to reveal the results before or after peer review. Reveal before peer review—sometimes even before the paper is written—and the community can use the results right away, but there is an increased risk that problems will be found in a very public way. Reveal after peer review, and the chance of such problems decreases, but there is more time for a competitor to announce first or for rumors to leak. At Physical Review Letters (PRL), where I am an editor, we allow authors to choose when they want to reveal their results. The LIGO collaborators chose to wait.
Just before LIGO’s experimental run began in September 2015, the team held a vote on which journal they would pick if they made a discovery. They picked PRL. Five days after the vote, LIGO’s detectors seemed to hear the universe sing out for the first time.
An artist’s rendition of the JUICE spacecraft. (Credit: ESA)
Topics: Astrophysics, Planetary Science, Space Exploration, Spaceflight
Juno (JUpiter Near-polar Orbiter) is the sixth spacecraft to study Jupiter (give or take a few gravity assists), but will be the second to fall into orbit around the gas giant following the Galileo probe in 1995.
It is part of NASA’s New Frontiers space exploration program that specializes in researching the celestial bodies of the solar system. Juno was launched on August 5th, 2011 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and intended to be placed in a polar orbit around Jupiter to study the planet’s composition, magnetic and gravity fields, and the polar magnetosphere. Even though Juno’s scientific mission only lasts for a year, many more spacecraft are headed Jupiter’s way.
The next upcoming Jupiter mission following Juno is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first large-class mission in its Cosmic Vision program, the JUICE (JUpiter ICy moon Explorer). It is planned for launch in 2022 from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana and will arrive at Jupiter in 2030. JUICE will then monitor Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto, three of the four Galilean moons, as well as Jupiter for three and a half years. As all three of these worlds are believed to possess significant bodies of water beneath their surfaces, and the JUICE Mission will explore their habitability in depth.
On December 9th, 2015, ESA and Airbus Defence & Space signed a contract signifying that Airbus would be building the spacecraft at their base in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The scientific instruments on JUICE will be built by scientific and engineering teams from all over Europe, with some participation from the United States and Japan.
