Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Two For One...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 7, 2016 at 7:03am

Image source: Space.com

Topics: Astronomy, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

On Friday (Jan. 8), the planet Venus will appear to pass close by Saturn, making this a rare opportunity to see two planets at the same time in a telescope's narrow field of view.

During the planetary encounter, Venus will appear to pass just 5 arc minutes north of Saturn. That means the distance between the two planets will appear to be a mere one-sixth of the diameter of the moon, small enough to fit in the eyepiece of a powerful telescope.

In a lifetime of observing the skies, I have seen such a close conjunction of two planets only two or three times. With the naked eye, even sharp-eyed observers will be hard pressed to separate the two points of light.

Space.com: Venus Shines Near Saturn in Dazzling Display This Weekend, Geoff Gaherty

Martian Concrete...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 6, 2016 at 7:12am

Figure 13 (paper): LDPM simulation typical crack propagation in (a) unconfined compression test and (b) splitting
(Brazilian) test

Topics: Civil Engineering, Mars, Materials Science, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: There is growing interest in the goal of sending humans to Mars. Various space agencies have begun to study the numerous problems such a mission would present, not least of which is protecting humans during the journey.

But once humans arrive on the red planet, they will require high quality buildings in which to live and work. They can take certain structures with them but this can only be a temporary solution. The first colonizers will quickly have to find a way to build structures using the planet’s own resources. But how?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Lin Wan and pals at Northwestern University. These guys have worked out how to make Martian concrete using materials that are widely available on Mars. And, crucially this concrete can be formed without using water, which will be a precious resource on the red planet.

The key material in a Martian construction boom will be sulphur, says the Northwestern team. The basic idea is to heat sulphur to about 240 °C so that it becomes liquid, mix it with Martian soil, which acts as an aggregate, and then let it cool. The sulphur solidifies, binding the aggregate and creating concrete. Voila—Martian concrete.

Physics arXiv:
A Novel Material for In Situ Construction on Mars: Experiments and Numerical Simulations
Lin Wan, Roman Wendner, Gianluca Cusatis

The Seventh Row...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 5, 2016 at 6:38am

Image source: Scientific American

Topics: Chemistry, Materiels Science, Periodic Table, Research, Science

Chemists and physicists have begun 2016 heavy with resolution—superheavy, in fact. Two days before 2015 came to end the guardians of the periodic table of the elements—the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry—announced that it was okay to add four new ones, filling out the seventh row. Atoms of each new element are packed with protons in their nuclei, giving the four atomic numbers of 113, 115, 117 and 118.

The permanent names of the new heavy foursome are as yet unknown. Right now they go by placeholders called ununtrium (113), ununpentium (115), ununseptium (117) and ununoctium (118).

Scientific American: 4 New Superheavy Elements Verified, Josh Fischman

Ig Nobel...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 4, 2016 at 7:01am

Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Women In Science

The Ig Nobel is an actual "thing." From their own description:

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, and then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

Every September, in a gala ceremony in Harvard's Sanders Theatre, 1100 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the new winners step forward to accept their Prizes. These are physically handed out by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel Laureates.

CEREMONY: The 26th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen on Thursday, September 22, 2016, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Tickets will go on sale in July.

It's mostly tongue-in-cheek obviously, but this article from Forbes caught my eye and reminded me of one I did in 2011 titled "Dark Matters" along the same vein.

The people I root for in the actual Nobel seem to never make it. Yet, in my and other's opinions, they're doing really great research and science that should be applauded, appreciated and lauded. Carl Sagan was so vilified when he was attempting to PROMOTE science via the original Cosmos - by other scientists - The Sagan Effect gives most caution and pause as to how much they'll enter the public sphere, if at all.

I've grown cynical, and not so sure that the Nobel Prize in its current format is the way to do so (I've given similar critique to the motion picture academy). It seems to me, the current format is contributing mostly to the old-boy system and "the big head."

The Nobel Prizes are not the final say in good science, and Nobel laureates are not necessarily the best scientists — much less the wisest human beings.

And like it or not, people listen to Nobel laureates when they speak, even when they are out of their areas of expertise. Sometimes the prize seems to go to the winners’ heads so much that they seem to lose it entirely. William Shockley, a co-discoverer of the transistor, and James Watson, who won the Nobel for discovering the structure of DNA, both used their reputations to promote very racist ideas. Most recently, Tim Hunt said some sexist and insulting things in front of a group of female Korean scientists — who had invited him to speak, no less.

One pointed excerpt by the author:

- Then there’s the bias toward European and American researchers, which is thankfully becoming less pronounced. However, historically it’s been a huge problem, and that’s not even including the antisemitism in the prize committee’s early years. No Nobel was given in 1921 to avoid awarding Albert Einstein. (He was grudgingly given the 1921 award the following year along with Niels Bohr’s 1922 prize, and even then antisemites fought his inclusion.) Racism in science is a very uncomfortable topic, but we need to face up to it, and the Nobel Prize hangs a lampshade on the extent we have yet to grapple with it.

Last year, we lauded Einstein for his contribution to the General Theory of Relativity; his coinciding birthday also as the nerdy "Pi day": 3/14/15, 9:25:53 am (3.141592553). This could all have been hidden and buried under a mound of antisemitism ignorance, not unlike the efforts in Texas to classify slaves as volunteer "workers," clearly in contradiction of their own publicly stated Articles of Secession, where variants of "slave" is mentioned over 20 times, as well as demonstrably faux denouncements of Africans.

I'm also inspired by Einstein's early stance on Civil Rights and friendship and activism with Paul Robeson. I think we unconsciously hold our Laureates to this standard, and are disappointed when they fall from Olympus; their Achilles heels quite evident.

We will fall as a nation and species under the weight of our own hubris.

Forbes: The Nobel Prize Is Bad And We Should Feel Bad, Matthew Francis

Backfire Effect...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 1, 2016 at 10:11am

From #P4TC post: ET and Prayer Cloths

Topics: Commentary, Philosophy, Politics, Research, Science, SETI, Space Exploration

As I've read, originally the "backfire effect" was applied to how professional women were treated in the workplace, negative to be sure. Lately, it's been applied to our political discourse - up is down; out is in; logic is illogical, and reason be damned.

Humans don't like being wrong, and facts only grind their heels into the cement foundation of their own biased certainty. No matter what, we retreat from reality to the comfortable; we reject data for the surety of our own preconceptions.

Becoming aliens

Neel V. Patel posited an interesting question in his post: "Will Humans Ever Build Starships?"

Think for a moment - if you're in the camp of aliens visiting our somehow special planet out of literally billions of others over several parsecs of options - what it would take?

1. First and foremost, as implied by the Drake Equation, such a civilization needs to survive its own hubris to travel, let alone communicate.

2. Crowd funding wouldn't do, this would be a global, expensive effort on any planet.

3. It would have to be a compelling reason: avoiding extinction, profit, water; to merely "seek out new life and new civilizations" alone wouldn't cut it.

4. Leaving whatever environment and life you've grown accustomed to as "home" for something likely utterly and completely different...alien. This would be a special breed of interstellar explorers indeed.

5. The unlikelihood of warp drive in the foreseeable future, such a 0.1-c trip would be one way in distance and time, else coming back to the home world, the astronauts would find via time dilation most of their former friends and family buried.

Lastly, the astronauts would have to have a means of evaluating new information, jettisoning old information once new data was known, in short steeped in the Scientific Method, something in our current climate of science denial/rejection we're not capable of just yet. A backfire effect even in low Earth orbit could prove suicidal to a crew, let alone a joint mission with a more senior intelligence.

If there are intelligent aliens out there, they are proving it...by ignoring us.

Bubble Pen Lithography...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 31, 2015 at 10:38am

Schematic illustration of the pattern-writing process using an optically controlled microbubble on a plasmonic substrate and the logo of “UT-AUSTIN” written with 60 nm polystyrene beads. Courtesy: M Yogeesh

Topics: Biology, Carbon Nanotubes, Medical Physics, Nanotechnology, Photonics, Semiconductor Technology

A new “bubble-pen” lithography technique can be used to pattern colloidal and biological particles on solid-state substrates according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. The technique, which works by using laser-controlled microbubbles to create the patterns, will find a wide range of applications in microelectronics, nanophotonics and nanomedicine.

Photolithography is one of the main techniques available today to make micro- and nano-scale components for semiconductor devices. However, the problem is that these methods have inherent disadvantages. “Far-field" optical lithography, for example, is limited by the so-called diffraction limit of light, which means that it is extremely difficult to create features smaller than several hundred nanometres across. Techniques based on "near-field" scanning optical microscopy can overcome the diffraction limit by bringing the light source very near to the surface, but they are low-throughput and can only scan small areas at a time. Electron-beam lithography, although able to produce much smaller features, is also limited by the choice of working materials and substrates that can survive exposure to an electron beam.

The new bubble-pen lithography technique invented by Yuebing Zheng's team in collaboration with Deji Akinwande's and Andrew Dunn's groups in Texas uses a single low-power laser beam to generate a microbubble at the interface of a colloidal suspension of nanoparticles and a plasmonic substrate containing a network of metallic nanoparticles that interact strongly with light via localized surface plasmons (collective oscillations of electrons on a metal's surface). These metal particles act as efficient optical nanoantennas and can focus light to wavelengths dramatically below the diffraction limit. The microbubble produced captures and immobilizes the colloidal particles on the substrate and by directing the laser beam to move the bubble, the researchers can create different patterns from the colloidal particles with varying sizes and architectures.

Nanotechweb: Bubble-pen lithography patterns nanodevices, Belle Dumé

Sufficient Verification...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 30, 2015 at 7:30am

Satellite imagery facilities at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards department. The IAEA will use imagery purchased from commercial satellite operators as part of its regime for verifying Iran’s compliance with the recent agreement to limit its nuclear activities.

DEAN CALMA/IAEA

Citation: Phys. Today 68, 12, 26 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3014

Topics: Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Power, Politics

The International Atomic Energy Agency will use the latest surveillance technologies to ensure compliance.

As early as the end of this month, Iran says it will complete actions to dramatically scale back its nuclear program. Once those steps are completed and verified, the world’s declared nuclear weapons states and Germany, collectively known as the P5+1, are to begin lifting the crippling economic sanctions that were imposed on Iran beginning in 2006.

Experts are confident the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is sound. In a statement released in August, 77 nonproliferation specialists wrote, “The JCPOA is effectively verifiable. The agreement will put in place a multi-layered monitoring regime across Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain, including centrifuge manufacturing sites for 20 years, uranium mining and milling for 25 years, and continuous monitoring of a larger number of nuclear and nuclear-related sites.”

...3...2...1... counting down to the blowhards.

Fear is a lucrative business, and the Internet allows some to sound fairly legit with a URL and a few techno tricks in Dreamweaver. Playing footsies with Armageddon is an insane venture, with only one unpleasant end.

There is a general disdain for expertise and facts in an era where the louder one continues bloviating, the more likely you are to be taken at face value. Our media is more concerned with ratings than journalism; the ideals of "holding power accountable" sacrificed on the Baal altar of Nielsen.

I unfortunately, have used Isaac Asimov a lot lately.

Also sadly, our political establishment in collusion with the business of war, where "peace on Earth and good will to all men" must be counter to the business model. After all, profits go up in this country after every mass shooting, navel-gazing, hand-wringing nothing; the arsenal at ISIS/ISIL's disposal didn't just "drop out of the sky."

I wish the effort well as anyone sane should. "Duck and cover" should be a quaint part of our history of the previous century...not rediscovered.

Physics Today: Experts say Iran nuclear agreement is sufficiently verifiable
David Kramer

Sunset...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 30, 2015 at 7:28am

Light-based technologies wowed the crowds at Lightfest in Birmingham, UK, a celebration of light in science, art, technology and culture held in conjunction with IYL 2015. Visit Physics World Showcase: Light to see a video of the event and other light-themed videos.

Topics: Lasers, Optical Physics, Optics

The International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015) will soon draw to a close, in a year that has seen thousands of events celebrating the science and applications of light in more than a 100 countries worldwide. Officially launched in January at the headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, IYL 2015 has involved more than 100 partners from 85 countries – including the Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World.

A range of international and national events have been held, touching on light in everything from archaeology and communications to medicine and the arts. The Light: Beyond the Bulb project, for example, has put the science of light into public settings around the world, such as parks, metro-stations, airports and libraries, while the Study after Sunset initiative promoted the use of solar-powered light-emitting-diode (LED) lanterns in parts of the world where there is little or no reliable source of light after dark. The iSPEX-EU campaign has used "citizen science" to measure air pollution with smartphones; while children, teachers, scientists and artists from more than 25 countries came together to write the "SkyLight" science opera.

Physics World: International Year of Light Draws to a Close, Michael Banks
#P4TC: International Year of Light

RAM Matrix...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 28, 2015 at 2:41pm

Scientists are only beginning to advance memory-enhancing technology research, but even in this early stage, there are questions that deserve consideration. (Illustration credit: Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock)

Topics: Biology, Science Fiction, STEM

I immediately thought of "Neo: I know Kung Fu!"... "Morpheus: Show me!" I was disabused of the notion after reading through the article.

I secondarily thought of the hand-wringing on what was-then referred to as the "information superhighway" AKA the Internet. At the time, you needed the ability to access it on a personal computer - not a laptop, but a desktop or tower, which at the time cost far more than it does now. Example: my old 486 was $2,500 with my wife's EMPLOYEE discount! Our laptop cost less than $400 now. Also, "apps" on cell phones were nonexistent, and you certainly couldn't surf the Internet on them. They were mostly analogue walkie-talkies with dial tone and horrendous service charges, not that that's gotten any better.

Humans are distinctly unique in Earthbound species: we define somethings as valuable and almost immediately craft barriers - real and artificial - to its access to further drive its value and profits. (Elephants and herds of buffalo at watering holes are far more democratic.) Also, as the article alludes, it is a mixed blessing in some memories that we've learned through pain aversion to block out completely. Perfect recall could be that and a curse.

Even if intelligence could be enhanced by an implant, I could see the backlash and the caveat emptor arising from the expert and provocateur alike. I am reminded of two quotes I thought apropos:

"There is no great genius without some touch of madness."

Aristotle

"Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence."

Edgar Allan Poe

`

In fall, DARPA announced a major success in its Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program. Researchers implanted targeted electrical arrays in the brains of a few dozen volunteers — specifically in brain areas involved in memory.

The researchers found a way to read out neural “key codes” associated with specific memories, and then fed those codes back into the volunteers’ brains as they tried to recall lists of items or directions to places. While the results are still preliminary, DARPA claims that the RAM technique has already achieved “promising results” in improving memory retrieval.

Intriguing as this implant is, it’s only the latest in an ongoing series of neurological techniques and gizmos designed to boost and sharpen memory. The effects and implications of these systems raise questions that are worth consideration.

Discover Magazine: 3 Implications of Memory-Boosting Devices, Ben Thomas

Yotta Years...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 18, 2015 at 7:27am

The Borexino detector comprises 300 tonnes of an organic liquid that is viewed by 2212 photomultipliers. The Borexino detector has not seen evidence for electron decay (Courtesy: Borexino Collaboration)

Topics: Chemistry, Electron Configuration, Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics, Theoretical Physics

Yotta is the largest decimal unit prefix in the metric system, denoting a factor of 10²⁴ or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. It has the unit symbol Y. The prefix name is derived from the Ancient Greek οκτώ (októ), meaning "eight", because it is equal to 1000⁸. Wikipedia

The best measurement yet of the lifetime of the electron suggests that a particle present today will probably still be around in 66,000 yottayears (6.6 × 10²⁸ yr), which is about five-quintillion times the current age of the universe. That is the conclusion of physicists working on the Borexino experiment in Italy, who have been searching for evidence that the electron decays to a photon and a neutrino; a process that would violate the conservation of electrical charge and point towards undiscovered physics beyond the Standard Model.

The electron is the least-massive carrier of negative electrical charge known to physicists. If it were to decay, energy conservation means that the process would involve the production of lower-mass particles such as neutrinos. But all particles with masses lower than the electron have no electrical charge, and therefore the electron's charge must "vanish" during any hypothetical decay process. This violates "charge conservation", which is a principle that is part of the Standard Model of particle physics. As a result, the electron is considered a fundamental particle that will never decay. However, the Standard Model does not adequately explain all aspects of physics, and therefore the discovery of electron decay could help physicists to develop a new and improved model of nature.

Physics World: Electron lifetime is at least 66,000 yottayears, Hamish Johnston

Higgs Kin...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 17, 2015 at 6:58am

Feynman Diagrams Depicting Possible Formations of the Higgs Boson. Image Credit: scienceblogs.com, astrobites

Topics: CERN, Higgs Boson, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics

Nature

The two experiments that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 have sensed an intriguing if very preliminary whiff of a possible new elementary particle. Both collaborations announced their observations on 15 December, as they released their first significant results since completing a major upgrade earlier this year.

The results largely matched a rumour that has circulated on social media and blogs for several days: that both the CMS and ATLAS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland, have seen in the debris of proton-proton collisions an unexpected excess of pairs of photons carrying around 750 giga electronvolts (GeV) of energy combined. This could be a tell-tale sign of a new particle — also a boson, but not necessarily similar to the Higgs — decaying into two photons of equal mass. It would be about four times more massive than the next heaviest particle discovered so far, the top quark, and six times more massive than the Higgs. [1]

New York Times Science

Does the Higgs boson have a cousin?

Two teams of physicists working independently at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, reported on Tuesday that they had seen traces of what could be a new fundamental particle of nature.

One possibility, out of a gaggle of wild and not-so-wild ideas springing to life as the day went on, is that the particle — assuming it is real — is a heavier version of the Higgs boson, a particle that explains why other particles have mass. Another is that it is a graviton, the supposed quantum carrier of gravity, whose discovery could imply the existence of extra dimensions of space-time. [2]

1. LHC sees hint of boson heavier than Higgs, Davide Castelvecchi
2. Physicists in Europe Find Tantalizing Hints of a Mysterious New Particle, Dennis Overbye

Man From U.N.C.L.E...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 16, 2015 at 7:16am

Image Source: Reuters Science

Topics: Humor, International Space Station, Space, Space Exploration

Showing my age again, but it was a good show and great movie.

A Soyuz spacecraft successfully delivered a Russian, an American and a Briton to the International Space Station on Tuesday after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The otherwise smooth journey ended with a slightly delayed docking at 1733 GMT as Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko aborted the automatic procedure and manually guided the spacecraft towards the station.

Alongside Malenchenko, a veteran of long-duration space flights who is on his fourth space mission, were NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and Briton Tim Peake, both former Apache military helicopter pilots.

Peake, 43, a former army major who is on a six-month mission for the European Space Agency (ESA), became the first astronaut representing the British government and wearing a Union Jack flag on his arm. The first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, who travelled on a Soviet spacecraft for eight days in 1991.

Reuters Science: Spacecraft carrying Russian, American, Briton docks with space station

Logical Fallacies...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 15, 2015 at 7:00am

Image Source: Link Below

Topics: Logic, Politics, Science, Research

I find it hard to watch political debates...and I mean either party. Largely, if you've ever attended a high school debate, seen one or participated in one, you KNOW what we're getting is a 90-minute-for-ratings performance; "last man/woman on the island" - patently and pathetically a reality show. The League of Women Voters are still around, but not central to our presidential elections as they used to be. One of my contentions is our education encourages conformity, not inquiry; blind obedience, not questioning. Instead of future citizens, we have created over-tested, Pavlovian dogs.

It's no wonder freshman classes at great or "lesser" colleges (an undignified dog whistle) aren't showing up with the scholastic and critical thinking skills that would make their matriculation enjoyable, and a democratic republic possible.

In frustration, I've listed the following logical fallacies. I frankly get more from the after-action social media commentary than I ever will from the "performances."

When they debate THIS, I'll tune in. When it's finally important to those running to possess the nuclear codes, we all should.

Source: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Secure Quantum Teleportation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 14, 2015 at 7:24am

Image Source: sakkmesterke/Shutterstock.com

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

Although, "precise requirements" seems oxymoronic in a Heisenberg Uncertainty sense!

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated the precise requirements for secure quantum teleportation – and it involves a phenomenon known 'quantum steering', first proposed by Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger.

Before you get too excited, no, this doesn't mean we can now teleport humans like they do on Star Trek (sorry). Instead, this research will allow people to use quantum entanglement to send information across large distances without anyone else being able to eavesdrop. Which is almost as cool, because this is how we'll form the un-hackable communication networks of the future.

Science Alert:
Scientists have figured out what we need to achieve secure quantum teleportation
Fiona MacDonald

The Great Filter...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 11, 2015 at 7:37am

Image Source: Week in Weird, Chris Silva

Topics: Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, Entropy, Space Exploration, SETI

There seems to be a strong inclination for Eschatology, or literally the study of "end things." A great deal of ink is devoted to it in books, blogs and Internet memes.

The Apostle Paul - the sub after Judas - et al believed they would see the end of things in their own lifetimes. The Jehovah's Witnesses' founder Charles Taze Russell devoted a great deal of thought to the subject. Millerites - derived from former Baptist preacher William Miller set a date for the end-of-the-age as October 22, 1844. This became known as the "Great Disappointment." Even Jesus hedged his bets in ancient tradition (seems to have been more a matter of business than romance), and there's an ever-growing list of predictions that (spoiler alert) weren't quite accurate.

Filters do a tremendous work, especially in fermentation. For anyone with inkjet printers, Subtractive Color Mixing employs the primary colors cyan, magenta and yellow. You can even do a lab on it.

The Great Filter is a post I saw on Facebook from io9 that looks at the Fermi Paradox and tries to answer it with the likely possibility that evolved intelligence is its own Entropy as I've stated in previous posts. We may well be past that, and capable of becoming a space faring species with a lot of real estate to explore.

It's an admittedly positive spin. In light of the current xenophobia and the delicate balance of income inequality, strained resources; domestic and international terrorism, it is my hope we all are past the filter and get to an advanced level of maturity...quickly.

io9:
The Great Filter theory suggests humans have already conquered the threat of extinction
George Dvorsky

Seeing The Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 10, 2015 at 7:45am

Drawing illustrates how tiny changes in wavy images scattered from lines in a grid-like array can be reconstructed when paired with advanced optical and computational techniques. Lines are 15 nanometers wide, 30 times smaller than the wavelength used to “see” them. The pattern depicts estimated uncertainties in the experimental data. Coloring corresponds to the magnitude of the variance for specific data points.

Topics: Carbon Nanotubes, Consumer Electronics, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers are seeing the light, but in an altogether different way. And how they are doing it just might be the semiconductor industry's ticket for extending its use of optical microscopes to measure computer chip features that are approaching 10 nanometers, tiny fractions of the wavelength of light.

Using a novel microscope that combines standard through-the-lens viewing with a technique called scatterfield imaging, the NIST team accurately measured patterned features on a silicon wafer that were 30 times smaller than the wavelength of light (450 nanometers) used to examine them. They report* that measurements of the etched lines—as thin as 16 nanometers wide—on the SEMATECH-fabricated wafer were accurate to one nanometer. With the technique, they spotted variations in feature dimensions amounting to differences of a few atoms.

"Historically, we would ignore this scattered light because it did not yield sufficient resolution," explains Richard Silver, the physicist who initiated NIST's scatterfield imaging effort. "Now we know it contains helpful information that provides signatures telling us something about where the light came from."

With scatterfield imaging, Silver and colleagues methodically illuminate a sample with polarized light from different angles. From this collection of scattered light—nothing more than a sea of wiggly lines to the untrained eye—the NIST team can extract characteristics of the bounced lightwaves that, together, reveal the geometry of features on the specimen.

NIST: Measuring Nanoscale Features with Fractions of Light, Mark Bello

Comeback Kid...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 9, 2015 at 7:23am

Scientists have now turned their attention to what would be needed after 2030 to meet a 2 C goal: an energy system transformation that emits less carbon. For this, all technology options need to be on the table, including nuclear, the scientists said.

Topics: Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Green Tech, Nuclear Power

I post this with uneasiness: having grown up in the era of "duck and cover" in all its feckless utility. Remembering instances of crisis like Chernobyl (proud I can still SPELL it) and Three Mile Island. There's that whole thing about the waste produced, half-life; where/in WHOSE neighborhoods will you STORE such waste? And the latest zeitgeist, terrorism - currently Christian and Muslim - both aberrant extremist cases that take extraordinary means to make their "points" while managing to be poor representatives of their particular faiths. Hopefully updated safety and security protocols reflecting the times and technology are also being considered. The most positive aspect are jobs that reviving the industry would invariably generate. Education could start preparing a 21st Century workforce instead of testing ouut students like lab rats. My preference, as I'm assuming is Green Peace mentioned in the article is solar, wind and nuclear fusion, all on par as equally clean; all likely as aggressively opposed by fossil fuel interests. I would embrace this then as an interim step that could only see defeat in moneyed interests and their lobbyist - case-in-point, terrorists on no-fly list still with the ability to purchase firearms after San Bernardino. Our national cognitive dissonance is quite breathtaking.

In contrast to last week's Cynicism post, I do want to leave a viable planet after I'm gone. As part of the human species, I think we're unique and special; all witness to the Cosmos and its wonders; such than cannot be appreciated or studied...in our absence.

James Hansen, former NASA climate scientist, and three other prominent climate scientists are calling for an enlarged focus on nuclear energy in the ongoing Paris climate negotiations.

"Nuclear, especially next-generation nuclear, has tremendous potential to be part of the solution to climate change," Hansen said during a panel discussion yesterday. "The dangers of fossil fuels are staring us in the face. So for us to say we won't use all the tools [such as nuclear energy] to solve the problem is crazy."

He was joined by Tom Wigley, a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide; Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science; and Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Their stance clashes with those of environmental groups such as Greenpeace that advocate against nuclear energy.

As nations have proposed emissions curbs in Paris up to 2030, scientists have computed that there is a 1-in-2 chance that their collective ambition would raise temperatures in 2100 by between 2.7 to 3.7 degrees Celsius. Nations would like to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, and stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million (ppm).

There is 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere at present.

Scientific American: Nuclear Power Must Make a Comeback for Climate's Sake
Gayathri Vaidyanathan, ClimateWire

AI and LHC...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 8, 2015 at 7:13am

A section of the LHC.
alpinethread/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Higgs Boson, High Energy Physics, LHC, Particle Physics

Driven by an eagerness to make discoveries and the knowledge that they will be hit with unmanageable volumes of data in ten years’ time, physicists who work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland, are enlisting the help of AI experts.

On November 9-13, leading lights from both communities attended a workshop—the first of its kind—at which they discussed how advanced AI techniques could speed discoveries at the LHC. Particle physicists have “realized that they cannot do it alone”, says Cécile Germain, a computer scientist at the University of Paris South in Orsay, who spoke at the workshop at CERN, the particle-physics lab that hosts the LHC.

Computer scientists are responding in droves. Last year, Germain helped to organize a competition to write programs that could ‘discover’ traces of the Higgs boson in a set of simulated data; it attracted submissions from more than 1,700 teams.

Scientific American: Artificial Intelligence Called In to Tackle LHC Data Deluge
Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine

FRBs...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 7, 2015 at 7:19am

This artist's impression of a fast radio burst (FRB) reaching Earth illustrates the telltale smearing of radio waves that indicates the FRB's long journey through deep space. The colors represent different radio wavelengths, with longer (red) wavelengths arriving after shorter (blue) ones. This effect occurs when radio waves travel through plasma-rich regions of interstellar and intergalactic space.

Credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium

Topics: Astrophysics, Radio Astronomy, Research, Space Exploration

What shines brighter than the Sun, appears for only a split second and lights up Earth’s skies thousands of times each day?

If you’re stumped, don’t worry—experts are too. For nearly a decade, astrophysicists have been struggling to explain perplexing millisecond chirps of radio waves pinging through the heavens. Now, several new studies are bringing researchers closer to solving the mystery by narrowing the search for the radio flashes’ origins to youthful stellar outbursts in distant galaxies.

Dubbed “fast radio bursts,” or FRBs, the first of these bright, brief events was announced in 2007 by the West Virginia University astrophysicist Duncan Lorimer and colleagues, based on data from the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The radio signal that streamed into the Parkes dish was curiously smeared out, with its high-frequency waves arriving a fraction of a second earlier than its low-frequency counterparts—an effect attributed to scattering by diffuse plasmas that fill interstellar and intergalactic space. The more smeared a radio signal is, the more plasma it has passed through, and the farther it has presumably traveled through space. Analyzing the smear, Lorimer and his collaborators made a rough estimate that the burst could’ve come from up to a few billion light-years away. If they were in fact coming from so far away, and if more could be found, FRBs offered a way for astronomers to better measure vast cosmological distances and to probe deeper into the dark spaces between stars and galaxies. The search was on.

Scientific American: Fast Radio Bursts Mystify Experts—for Now, Lee Billings

Orbital WALL-E...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 4, 2015 at 7:23am

Image Source: Figure 3 Debris engine, see link below

Topics: Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Space, Space Junk, Taikonaut

I am always glad when good science is proposed and achieved. This is mostly a thorough application of Kepler and Newtonian physics as well as engineering rocketry. I give the poignant observation with some exception, this is happening LESS in the country of my birth, currently known for carnival barkers and xenophobes as presidential front runners, and some of my fellow citizens thinking "The Flintstones" instead of a parody of "The Honeymooners" was a documentary.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: At 16:56 UTC on August 29, 2009, an Iridium communications satellite suddenly fell silent. In the hours that followed, the U.S. Space Surveillance Network reported that it was tracking two large clouds of debris—one from the Iridium and another from a defunct Russian military satellite called Cosmos 2251.

The debris was the result of a high-speed collision, the first time this is known to have happened between orbiting satellites. The impact created over 1,000 fragments greater than 10 centimeters in size and a much larger number of smaller pieces. This debris spread out around the planet in a deadly cloud.

Space debris is a pressing problem for Earth-orbiting spacecraft, and it could get significantly worse. When the density of space debris reaches a certain threshold, analysts predict that the fragmentation caused by collisions will trigger a runaway chain reaction that will fill the skies with ever increasing numbers of fragments. By some estimates that process could already be underway.

An obvious solution is to find a way to remove this debris. One option is to zap the larger pieces with a laser, vaporizing them in parts and causing the leftovers to deorbit. However, smaller pieces of debris cannot be dealt with in this way because they are difficult to locate and track.

Another option is send up a spacecraft capable of mopping up debris with a net or some other capture process. But these missions are severely limited by the amount of fuel they can carry.

Today, Lei Lan and pals from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, propose a different solution. Their idea is to build an engine that converts space debris into propellant and so can maneuver itself almost indefinitely as it mops up the junk.

Physics arXiv: Debris Engine: A Potential Thruster for Space Debris Removal
Lei Lan, Jingyang Li, Hexi Baoyin

#P4TC WALL-E mentions:
Predicted, but still kind of gross when you think of it...
NASA Going Green...