Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

US Asylum...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 3, 2015 at 7:00am

Previously unpublished poem by Carl Sandburg

Topics: Commentary, Politics, Sandy Hook

A departure from physics and society...for a moment.

The physics of bullets has now killed more people with the San Bernardino shooting than we have days in the year. Another one happened simultaneously in Georgia - one woman died, but still someone's one. A third one at a Target. San Bernardino is second only to Sandy Hook, and once we got over that as I've said, "it was a wrap!"*

The NRA (not responsible anytime) will respond with their usual: crickets, hunkered down under their moist rock until our news feeding frenzy blows over. This will "not be a time" to discuss a change in laws or even keeping statistics to study. We're afraid of Syrian refugees, yet the armed, short-phallic members of the NRA and their lobby have INSURED terrorists can legally purchase firearms. Black Friday when Mr. Dear shot up Planned Parenthood in Colorado, there was a massive purchase of guns. Perhaps the ones used yesterday in California. Anyone that hasn't committed a crime can pass a background check that doesn't ask if you're on Valium or Xanax.

We have 20X the gun rate murders than any similarly developed nation. An Australian baseball player lost his life in Texas...here on SCHOLARSHIP to bored teens!

There is no doubt about it: we are the United Sanitarium Asylum. We're not "states" except the state of mental illness, paranoia, misogyny, racism, sexism; xenophobia. Conspiracy carnival barkers will howl at the moon. Counting down until Alex Jones invariably calls this a "false flag operation." He'll sell a lot of hurriedly produced DVDs (we didn't have to wait long). Flaccid, feckless, impotent lawmakers not worthy of the oath they took to "protect and defend" The Constitution against all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC will simultaneously Tweet their "thoughts and prayers" and call for less gun-free zones as their financiers/benefactors have scripted them to say. They'll otherwise do NOTHING since their gated neighborhoods have tactical guards armed-to-the-teeth to protect them and their families. Yours and mine are cannon fodder.

I think...we need a fence. Not just a Trump fence on the Texas-Mexico border, but across the Northern Canadian border.

We need a UN naval blockade on the East Coast and as far out as Hawaii and as north as Alaska.

We need to broadcast a travel advisory to the planet:

DANGER! The USA is hazardous to your health. A worldwide quarantine is ordered. Travel to America AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Lastly, we need to offer Visas to the sane of us that just want out.

Time, their own arsenals and Darwin will take care of the idiots left!

*#P4TC: Fait Accompli...

Cynicism...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 2, 2015 at 7:07am

Haze from coal and other fossil fuels dims the sky in Changchun, China. WANG ZHE - IMAGINECHINA
Image Source: Science Mag Link Below

Topics: Climate Change, Economy, Global Warming, Green Energy, Jobs, STEM

Our record-hated congress spent the early part of November putting legislation in place to block any climate actions currently being decided by the rest of the planet in Paris, France. They've had a blithe record of "do-nothing" for quite some time now. It's the political equivalent of cutting one's index finger off to cause a heart attack in an opponent. Voodoo without the economics...

Here's my cynicism, if I think purely of myself:

- I'll likely not be alive when the United States becomes a majority-minority (read: non-white) nation. Neither will the people who spend their addled time on Xanax in chat rooms and conspiracy provocateur meetings that consume salted potato chips and BTUs in naval gazing. We'll all be dust.

- I definitely won't be alive in the year 2100 when the climate you-know-what quite literally "hits the fan."

So, why should I care?

I honestly think this is the meditation of deniers. They won't be here. None of us will.

Here's the growth formula: N = N₀ * e^rt.

Humans, animals and bacteria are remarkable in their similar modeling.

Let N₀ = 7 billion; r (growth rate) = 0.01; t = 35 years, I get: 9,933.472,840.15. Round up to 10 billion in the year 2050.

Eighty-five years from now you get 16,377,527,963.48 in 2100. More than double; the planet doesn't get any bigger. That's a lot of mouths to feed; a lot of carbon dioxide exhaled; less trees and more poop to dispose of (methane is another greenhouse gas).

I don't care. Really I can't. I won't be here. That's three generations from now.

China's air will be just as ducky as it was today if not more so. The current haze prematurely kills 350,000 to 500,000 persons, and I'm sure by 2050 they will "improve" on those numbers.

The Dodo is no longer here. Neither are a lot of other species. Neither will eventually be any of us...maybe all of us.

Eventually the weather will be too extreme to have predictable planting seasons, agriculture for better or worse being the bedrock of modern civilization. Swaths of the planet will not be able to feed themselves. You may be able to "trim the fat" (which I suspect a lot will not have in the bodily sense), or "reduce the herd." Weapons manufacturers will do what they do in poor countries with the resources to buy their wares to invade even poorer countries; "Peace on Earth" obviously not in the business model. There will be liberty, freedom and sectarian conflicts. Mansions in gated communities will have to become fortresses with ye olden moats and maybe a few crocodiles to keep out the riffraff, or as the Statue of Liberty currently describes "the huddled masses," yearning in this instance to eat anything...or, anyone. They could all 1 and 99% take a whiff of the thick, rancid air.

But hey! Join me. We'll be atomized and this struggle will be for our great grandchildren. They could discover "warp drive"...or have a warped end.

MIT Technology Review
Wealthy Investors Target Dramatic Increase in Clean-Energy Funding, Richard Martin
Why Solar Power Could Hit a Ceiling, Mike Orcutt

#P4TC: Ragnarok...

Science Mag: Choosing a climate future in Paris, Eli Kintisch

Qubits @ Room...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 1, 2015 at 7:28am

Physicists create many entangled states of electrons ("e") and nuclei ("n") in the industrially important semiconductor silicon carbide, all at ambient conditions. (Courtesy: Paul Klimov, University of Chicago)

Topics: Entanglement, Semiconductor Technology, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

The quantum entanglement of a large ensemble of spins in a semiconductor has been carried out at room temperature for the first time, by researchers in the US. The team entangled more than 10,000 copies of two-qubit entangled states in a commercial silicon-carbide (SiC) wafer at ambient conditions. SiC is widely used in electronics, so this latest achievement could be an important step towards the creation of sophisticated quantum devices that harness entanglement.

Entanglement is a purely quantum-mechanical phenomenon that allows two or more particles to have a much closer relationship than is allowed by classical physics, no matter how far apart they may be. The states of entangled particles are inextricably linked such that any change made to one particle instantly influences the state of the other. Entangled particles are seen as a key component of quantum computers, but for entanglement to be truly utilized in practical applications, researchers must be able to entangle quantum bits (qubits) at room temperature and preserve the entangled state.

Physics World: Physicists entangle qubits in a semiconductor at room temperature
Tushna Commissariat

Luddites...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 30, 2015 at 7:13am

Image Source: Smithsonian.com. Ludd, drawn here in 1812, was the fictitious leader of numerous real protests. (Granger Collection, New York)

Topics: Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Economy, Jobs, Politics, Research, STEM

Researching the term Luddite was quite revealing. Ned Lud (or Ludd/Ludham) appears to have been a fiction concocted to coincide with the legend Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest and the "righteousness" of the protesters' cause ¹. First of all, they weren't so opposed to technology as most have defined them over time. Their opposition to the technology of the stocking frame appeared to be what is angering swaths of humanity now: increased productivity that has not been - especially lately - proportional to increased wages or employment.

Thus everyone is taken aback at the impotence of self-governance, which is the hallmark of democratic republics. We do not salute a king, we essentially elect our leaders to do the will of the people who sent them to office, leaders often swayed more by the uber class that invest in their election campaigns; less by their "neighbors" they haven't lived next to in quite some time.

Free trade: most of them have been bandied as cause De Jure by some politicians and ignored by others. "Bring the jobs back" seems a simple solution that begs two questions: 1. Even if the jobs came back, would Americans line up and apply for them? 2. What if our modern "stocking frame" of convenient technology and mobile apps doesn't allow the previous jobs to come back?

I receive as member of the American Physics Society its newsletter. In the print issue of Inside the Beltway I read ², Michael S. Lubell posits the question: "Does Science Bear Any Responsibility for Today’s Political Discontent?" He points out through science there's been an increase in productivity that up until recent history tracked well with wages and jobs. However, from the article:

A new Economic Policy Institute report provides a possible clue. Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel, the report’s authors, took a hard look at the impact of productivity, defined as economic output per unit input (e.g., labor and capital); on a typical worker’s compensation. What they detail is profoundly disturbing.

Bivens and Mishel trace the history of productivity and compensation from 1948 to the present. During the first 25 years, hourly compensation fairly tracked gains in productivity, rising 91.3 percent during that period while productivity, driven in large part by technological advances, rose 96.7 percent. But from 1973 through 2014, while productivity continued to soar, rising another 72.2 percent, compensation grew by a paltry 9.2 percent.

In short, during those four decades, the average worker stopped benefiting from science and technology’s largess. But corporations did not: their profits rose dramatically, and their stock prices soared. Between the beginning of 1973 and the end of 2014, for example, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, adjusted for inflation, rose 216 percent.

I do have concerns. Again from APS, the latest new report in the under-representation of African Americans in the Physical Sciences ³. There's concern with women ⁴ being in a fluctuating but representative small number. Both and other groups has to do with exposure and family income: if your parents are in STEM, you're more likely to follow them; in most cases, you are more likely to run experiments in your room if you can afford them and your neighborhood environment feels safe to do so.

We've gone from "Rosie the Riveter" to "Rosie the Robot Maintainer"; "Rosie the IT expert." We've gone from "I'm not college material," and that person joining a manufacturing firm and earning a living though out a lifetime to raise a family to that option no longer existing. The moribund testing industrial complex is only stressing out teachers and students alike at the K-12 levels, and is not preparing those students for more rigorous collegiate-level work, merely maintaining the inequality status quo ^5,6,7. We have an opportunity to construct a future based on alternative energy solutions that could - generate a new level of employment that the nation could educate and prepare a future workforce to fulfill. Such gainful employment would relieve a host of - not ALL - social pressures that are in essence a competition for resources and an artificial, socially inequitable sequester/squandering of the same. We could lead on climate emissions reduction and reduce in-kind, stresses that are currently plaguing our society; that may have built a grievous foundation to the two spectacular attacks in Paris this calendar year, where current climate talks are happening this week.

What essentially are we going to do with swaths of humanity not prepared for the jobs of the future...or now? Why aren't our elected representatives answering these substantive questions beyond soundbites, sloganeering and talking points or any science-based questions to "inherit the wind" of nuclear codes to possible species extinction?

Perhaps we need to ask them.

1. Smithsonian Institution: What the Luddites Really Fought Against, Richard Conniff

APS News Links
2. Does Science Bear Any Responsibility for Today’s Political Discontent? Michael S. Lubell
3. Underrepresentation of African Americans Persists in Physical Sciences, Emily Conover
4. Women in Physics Statistics
5. Fighting the Gender Gap:Standardized Tests Are Poor Indicators of Ability in Physics
6. Session L5. COM & CSWP: GRE/SAT Predictors of Graduate/Undergradute Performance for Women and Minorities.
7. Abstract: H12.00002 : Allocation of Wealth and Emergence of Inequality

SpaceX Crewed Mission...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 27, 2015 at 8:49am

SpaceX is modifying Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to adapt it to the needs of the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which are slated to lift off from the historic pad in the near future. Credit: SpaceX

Topics: International Space Station, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

It's official: SpaceX will fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station a few years from now.

California-based SpaceX has secured its first astronaut taxi order under its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with NASA, agency officials announced Friday (Nov. 20).

"It's really exciting to see SpaceX and Boeing with hardware in flow for their first crew rotation missions," Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. "It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from U.S. companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its life span."

Space.com: NASA Orders 1st Crewed Mission from SpaceX, Mike Wall

Cyborg Roses...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 26, 2015 at 9:24am

Researchers in Sweden have used roses to create a number of basic electronic devices. (Courtesy: Eliot Gomez/Linköping University)

Topics: Bioengineering, Biology, Electrical Engineering, Photosynthesis

I have to admit: this would have been a better post around Valentine's Day! Enjoy your turkey, pheasant, Cornish hen (in my case) or vegan meal.

Researchers in Sweden have created electronic circuits and devices that are integrated within living plant material. The team introduced a conductive polymer into the vascular system of plants, which allowed the researchers to create the key components of an electrical circuit. They were also able to demonstrate transistor modulation, digital logic function and elements of a digital display. Plant-integrated electronics could enable us to monitor and regulate plant physiology and harvest energy from photosynthesis, the team says.

Organic electronic materials are polymers and molecules that can conduct and process both electronic and ionic signals. They can be shaped into almost any form and used to build devices that can convert electronic signals into chemical processes, and vice versa. The resulting electrochemical devices can then be used to regulate and monitor biological and chemical processes. Such technologies are currently being exploited in various medical settings, such as drug delivery, regenerative medicine, neuronal interconnects, and diagnostics.

Physics World: Cyborg roses become transistors and logic gates, Michael Allen

Finding Field Equations...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 25, 2015 at 7:21am

Figure 1. Albert Einstein (1879–1955), in this 1916 photograph, poses in his study at Wittelsbacherstraße 13 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. (Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.)
Citation: Phys. Today 68, 11, 30 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2979

Topics: Einstein, History, General Relativity, Research

In his later years, Einstein often claimed that he had obtained the field equations of general relativity by choosing the mathematically most natural candidate. His writings during the period in which he developed general relativity tell a different story.

This month marks the centenary of the Einstein field equations, the capstone on the general theory of relativity and the highlight of Albert Einstein’s scientific career.¹ The equations, which relate spacetime curvature to the energy and momentum of matter, made their first appearance in a four-page paper submitted on 25 November 1915 to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and reprinted in TheCollected Papers of Albert Einstein (CPAE),² volume 6, document 21. How did Einstein, shown in figure 1, arrive at those equations? He later insisted that the gravitational equations “could only be found by a purely formal principle (general covariance).”³ Such statements mainly served to justify his strategy in the search for a unified field theory during the second half of his career. As a description of how he found the field equations of general relativity, they are highly misleading.

The 25 November paper was the last in a series of short communications submitted to the Berlin Academy on four consecutive Thursdays that month (CPAE 6; 21, 22, 24, 25). In the first paper, Einstein replaced the field equations that he had published in 1913 with equations that retain their form under a much broader class of coordinate transformations (see figure 2). In the second, a highly speculative hypothesis he adopted about the nature of matter allowed him to change those equations to equations that are generally covariant—that is, retain their form under arbitrary coordinate transformations. In the fourth, he achieved the same end by changing the field equations of the first paper in a different and more convincing way, as shown in figure 3. In the third, based on the field equations of the second paper but unaffected by the modification of the fourth, he accounted for the 43 seconds of arc per century missing in the Newtonian account of the perihelion motion of Mercury.

Physics Today: Arch and scaffold: How Einstein found his field equations
Michel Janssen and Jürgen Renn

Alpha Centauri Dreams...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 24, 2015 at 6:16pm

Image Source: NASA - Imagine The Universe!

Topics: Exoplanets, NASA, Planets, Planetary Science, Space Exploration, Research

Physics Database: The famous alpha Centauri system — one of our nearest neighbors in space — happens to be one of the best targets for exoplanet search. In this talk Michael Endl, a research scientist at the University of Texas, will review past and current planet search efforts that targeted the alpha Centauri system. In addition, he will focus on his team’s program, an intensive multi-year observing campaign carried out at Mt John University Observatory in New Zealand. As always, for more high quality videos check out the links below.

Post title derived from the excellent site Centauri-Dreams.org

Neighbors...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 23, 2015 at 7:30am

Image source: MIT News

Topics: Exoplanets, NASA, Planets, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

It's a scant 39 light years away, but even if we developed a propulsion system to get us there in a human lifetime, the inhospitable weather would make me select another destination. Good candidate for LONG distance study...

Scientists have discovered a new exoplanet that, in the language of “Star Wars,” would be the polar opposite of frigid Hoth, and even more inhospitable than the deserts of Tatooine. But instead of residing in a galaxy far, far away, this new world is, galactically speaking, practically next door.

The new planet, named GJ 1132b, is Earth-sized and rocky, orbiting a small star located a mere 39 light-years from Earth, making it the closest Earth-sized exoplanet yet discovered. Astrophysicists from MIT and elsewhere have published these findings today in the journal Nature.

Based on their measurements, the scientists have determined that the planet is a roasting 500 degrees Fahrenheit, and is likely tidally locked, meaning that it has a permanent day and night side, presenting the same face to its star, much like our moon is locked to the Earth.

MIT News: New exoplanet in our neighborhood, Jennifer Chu

Sole Power...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 20, 2015 at 7:54am

Image GIF source: MIT Technology Review

Topics: Economy, Jobs, Materials Science, Metamaterials, STEM

Considering the obesity rate in the country and the FitBit craze, this could be a win-win for all of us.

Children have been harnessing energy from their steps ever since 1992, when L.A. Gear introduced sneakers that light up. For most adults, however, the ambient energy created by the simple act of walking is forever lost. Considering that the average person takes around 216 million steps in a lifetime, it’s a significant waste.

Inventor Laurence Kemball-Cook hopes to harness the lost energy at two points of contact: the shoe and the floor. In 2009, Kemball-Cook founded Pavegen, a company whose floor tiles can capture the power of footsteps. The technology uses compression to skim a tiny fraction of the energy created when a human steps on the tile. It’s been installed in more than 100 projects around the world, including a football stadium in Rio de Janeiro and a terminal in Heathrow Airport. The energy is stored in batteries inside the tiles, where it can then be used to power lighting, advertisements, and way-finding solutions, which guide people through an environment via directional arrows.

Now Kemball-Cook and his R&D team have turned their attention to the shoe itself, hoping to apply the same principles used in the tiles as a way to harness personal energy. “The idea is that the energy source would be readily available to the shoe wearer,” explains Kemball-Cook, who has been in discussions with major footwear manufacturers such as Nike and Reebok about ways the technology could be incorporated into consumer products. “You could walk from work and charge your phone en route instead of waiting to use a charger at home. Runners could charge their music players during a jog.”

MIT Technology Review: The Quest to Make Your Shoe a Power Source, Simon Parkin

MAGLEV @ Home...

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

Image Source: BBC - Leeds - K-T Picture Galleries

Topics: Materials Science, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology, Superconductivity

I might do this at home, but I think this is already a neat demo done for many a high school or even college introductory physics class.

I disagree on one point in the video: we do use superconducting magnets specifically for levitation in the semiconductor industry in a few of our processes that require it. There are also several bullet trains that use this feature of super-cooled metal, thereby inducing superconductivity. You are welcome to invent other uses. Source: Scientific American, How to Do Quantum Magnetic Levitation at Home, November 17, 2015

Musing Crichton...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 18, 2015 at 10:51am

Star Trek Wiki Memory Alpha: Nanite

Topics: Diversity in Science, Nanotechnology, Philosophy, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Women in Science

From Physics Database:

Dr. Amanda Barnard is an Office of the Chief Executive (OCE) Science leader, and head of the Virtual Nanoscience Laboratory at CSIRO. She received her PhD in 2003, followed by a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory (USA), and the prestigious senior research position as Violette & Samuel Glasstone Fellow at the University of Oxford (UK) with an Extraordinary Research Fellowship at The Queen’s College.

In this talk Dr Amanda Barnard will take us through the latest advances in nanotechnology and answer the fantastic question: ‘Are nanoparticles alive?’ In the world of science fiction, nanotechnology is often shown as swarms of micro-machines that act without the need for human supervision. Much like their biological counterparts, these imagined devices even sometimes possess their own intelligence. The imagination of science fiction writers has taken this high tech fantasy beyond the reality. But scientists have imagination too, and increasingly they are taking nanomaterials to remarkable places with properties that sound stranger than fiction.

Wearable Biosensors...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 17, 2015 at 7:31pm

A conformally contacted device on an artificial eye for glucose sensing in tears. Courtesy: YS Rim

Topics: Materials Science, Optical Physics, Semiconductor Technology, Nanotechnology, Thin Films

Okay, I have to admit: the bionic eye freaked me out. I'm trying to get used to it...

Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed ultrathin, flexible, metal oxide semiconducting thin films for use in wearable or implantable biosensors. The devices, which are made using a straightforward printing technique, could be used as sensors in non-invasive health monitoring applications like smart contact lenses that monitor a person’s glucose levels, for example.

Nanotechweb: Metal oxide thin films make wearable biosensors

Power To Pluto...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 16, 2015 at 10:31am

Image Source: Wired

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Humor, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

This was a rather tongue-in-cheek article, I say that because all solutions point to the company web site and the products it produces or allegedly can produce. It does raise the issue of interplanetary and interstellar travel: charging your cell phone for selfies is kinda low on the scale of concerns once you fly beyond the "Goldilocks Zone" we currently inhabit. Like "The Martian," you're probably going to have to subsist on a lot of veggies even if you didn't like them as a kid since a burger and fries would be well...several billion miles away!

Imagine this. You have just parked your private space ship on Pluto, intrigued by all the recent NASA photos of the not-a-planet small wannabe-could-be-planet, and you realize your cell phone is on its last legs. Power-wise, that is. Not because you skipped the last two upgrades.

What to do? For sure, here on Pluto, a zillion miles away from the sun, rigging up some sort of solar screen recharger thing is out of the question. Not that you can't do that and not because it wouldn't work (eventually) but because you need power fast. There are Pluto selfies to take and tweets to be tweeted.

Mouser Electronics: Portable Power: Especially Useful on Pluto, Arden Henderson

Knowing Knowledge...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 13, 2015 at 8:59pm

Image Source: Scientific American, Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy, Shaun Lawrence Otto, October 16, 2012, see "trinity of three greatest men" link below.

Topics: Commentary, Science, SETI, STEM, Research

Science: 1 a : an area of knowledge that is an object of study b : something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like a science c : any of the natural sciences (as biology, physics, or chemistry) Middle English science "the state of knowing, knowledge," from early French science (same meaning), from Latin scientia (same meaning)

Recently, there's been buzz on the Internet about a so-called mega structure (i.e. a Dyson Sphere) seen 1,500 light years away around its star. Related somewhat, astrophysicist Sara Seager thinks she can detect life on exoplanets by examining the spectrum of sodium (see BBC link below).

The quintessential question is - for any science discipline, from astronomy, biology, climate science and physics: how do scientists "know"?

They know first by sheer practice and enthusiasm. Everyone in STEM can recount the very instance that made such an impression on them that they decided to pursue a path to search the unknown - that labeled them "nerd"; weird and steeled their resolves against the tide of conformity. They studied all subjects with equal vigor, but particularly the science subjects. It formed a culture and a value system. Nerd went from epithet to web sites, social media forums; blerds, blogs and t-shirts.

They know by observation, forming hypothesis, doing experiments; rigorously defending and refuting positions...it sounds a lot like democracy, or at least how Thomas Jefferson envisioned it on the foundation of his "trinity of three greatest men." If knowing knowledge is thesis, then it's antithesis is prideful, unknowing ignorance.

Scientists and engineers will know knowledge, test it, debate it; refute it. They will confirm an ancient civilization that existed in our past...or, not. They have consensus on climate change, not conspiracy. I'm sure they would rather be wrong. They have a vested interest beyond an elaborate Ponzi scheme: their families. Some legacies have far more value than money.

Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.

Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Skeptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan

“I would rather have questions I can’t answer, than answers I can’t question.” Richard Feynman

BBC Future: If alien life exists on exoplanets, how would we know?
Mouser Electronics: The Truth Is Still Out There. And We’re Still Looking, Barry Manz

Hacking Photosynthesis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 12, 2015 at 7:05am

Image Source: Teacher's Guide to Photosynthesis

Topics: Alternative Energy, Biology, Green Energy, Photosynthesis

See previous post this year Mimicking Nature. I derived the title of the post from a supporting link to the article below suggesting that scientist had "hacked photosynthesis" and I thought it catchy. The fact that Argonne National Laboratory, Australian researchers (see link in the article) and now Florida State University have achieved this is exciting. What will be interesting are the moneyed interests that will ally against this advancement and sadly, throw lobbyists and dollars towards our elected officials to delay or squash it totally. Our economy is tied to commerce, but in essence this would be like [paraphrased] "living in the canopy, and burning down the forest." *

* Source: "Predator Nation," Charles H. Ferguson, chapter 1: "Where We Are Now."

Image Source: Biology Notes for IGCSE

It’s one of the holy grails of scientific research: discovering a way of replicating the natural process of photosynthesis, such that light could be easily converted into energy for other purposes, just like a plant does. And now researchers in the US have discovered an artificial material that lets them mimic this system to create a clean, sustainable source of power.

Researchers at Florida State University have discovered a method of using manganese oxide – also known as birnessite – to capture sunlight and then use that solar energy to create an oxidation reaction, breaking down water (H2O) into hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O2). Oxidation occurs during photosynthesis, and by replicating this part of the natural process, we might be able to produce energy in new ways via a simple, practical mechanism.

Science Alert:
New artificial material mimics photosynthesis to create clean, self-sustaining energy source
Peter Dockrill

Wright Mons...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 11, 2015 at 5:48pm

An overhead view of Wright Mons, one of two potential cryovolcanoes on Pluto.

NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Topics: NASA, Planets, Planetary Science, Space, Space Exploration

Two icy volcanoes may lurk near Pluto’s south pole, images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft suggest.

The images show two mountains roughly circular in shape and with deep depressions in their centers. One, Wright Mons, is 3 to 5 kilometres high, while the other, Piccard Mons, is up to 6 kilometres high.

They resemble icy volcanoes, known as cryovolcanoes, on Neptune’s moon Triton and other frozen worlds. Flowing ice, rather than hot lava, fuels cryovolcanoes.

“We’re not yet ready to announce we have found volcanic constructs at Pluto, but these sure look suspicious and we’re looking at them very closely,” says Jeff Moore, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who heads the New Horizons geology team. Moore spoke on November 9 at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

Scientific American:
Ice Volcanoes Could Be on Pluto, Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine

Tomato, to-MA-to...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 10, 2015 at 8:05pm

©iStock.com

Topics: High Energy Physics, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics

What’s the difference between matter and antimatter? Sometimes nothing, a new study finds.

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) discovered that antimatter protons, called antiprotons, act just like their ordinary-matter cousins when they are close enough to interact via the so-called strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together into atomic nuclei.

Antimatter is essentially the opposite of matter, in which the subatomic particles (protons and electrons) of antimatter have charges opposite to those of ordinary matter. In an ordinary block of stuff, for instance, the protons are positively charged, and the electrons carry negative charges. In antimatter, the antiprotons are negatively charged, while the antielectrons (called positrons) are positively charged. When antimatter and matter touch, they annihilate each other and produce energy in the form of gamma radiation.

Scientific American:
Antimatter Protons Stick Together Just Like Normal Particles
Jesse Emspak and LiveScience

Beauty...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 9, 2015 at 7:29pm

Image Source: NIST

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Lasers, Materials Science, Metamaterials, Quantum Mechanics

Physicists at JILA have made their "quantum crystal" of ultracold molecules more valuable than ever by packing about five times more molecules into it. The denser crystal will help scientists unlock the secrets of magnets and other, more exotic materials.

The crystal is actually a gas of particles trapped in 3-D formation by laser beams. The trap, called an optical lattice, has wells—local regions of low energy—like an egg carton made of light. The researchers maneuvered a single molecule into each well, successfully filling about 25 percent of the crystal. The structure has an advantage over a real crystal, as it is made of scientifically interesting molecules that normally would not crystallize.

Described in the Nov. 6, 2015, issue of Science,* the JILA crystal is useful for studying correlations among the molecules' "spins," or rotations, a quantum behavior related to magnetism. The denser crystal will enable scientists to study and model complex effects such as how spin correlations or entanglement—a quantum link between the properties of separated particles—spread through a large system. Scientists might use these effects, for example, to make novel materials for electronics or other applications.

NIST:
It’s a Beauty: JILA’s Quantum Crystal is Now More Valuable, Laura Ost

Sacred Cows...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 6, 2015 at 7:32am

From "The Demon Haunted World"; more at Good Reads

Topics: #Commentary, Carl Sagan, Philosophy, Research

This is a very good article about the duality humans express, such as: we really LIKE our tech; we just hate what the science behind the tech points to...or, points away from.

Galileo was branded a heretic by the church for daring to say the Earth revolved around the sun, versus the now understood accepted observation. There's still a Flat Earth Society, and people who long for "the good old days," that coincide with their youth and for many, an understood; un-breached and unquestioned social status and strata. It explains - at least to me - why we can be vulnerable to pseudoscience and the flimflam artist: s/he tells us what we wish to hear about a world we wish to bend to our wills.

There would have to be some wholesale, necessary-for-survival shift as a species from intuition to a rational, logic-based viewpoint. As sophisticated as we like to think of ourselves, we're really primitives by nature; tribal at heart, bending the world to our own view of right and wrong to bow at the altars of our sacred cows...

For over three decades, researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and science education have been studying the dynamics of conceptual change. They have been characterizing what we intuitively know about different domains, how that knowledge differs from scientific knowledge, and how that knowledge changes with instruction, either formal instruction in the classroom or informal instruction at home or elsewhere (e.g., museums, libraries, parks). While different researchers have analyzed conceptual change in different ways, most would agree that conceptual change requires a basic restructuring of one’s intuitive knowledge. That restructuring could involve collapsing distinctions that are no longer meaningful on a scientific conception of the domain (e.g., collapsing the distinction between objects in motion and objects at rest), introducing new distinctions that are scientifically meaningful (e.g., making a distinction between weight and mass), or moving an entity from one mental category to another (e.g., shifting the entity air from the category empty space to the category matter). Accumulating new facts and new experiences is not sufficient to bring about conceptual change; one must instead reorganize the very nature of one’s understanding.

Because conceptual change requires knowledge restructuring, it has long been assumed that, once the restructuring was complete, one’s initial conceptions of the domain would no longer be accessible. Restructuring one’s knowledge was assumed to erase previously held intuitions in the same way that remodeling one’s house erases previously navigated floor plans. A growing body of research, however, suggests that conceptual change does not produce this result. Rather, conceptual change appears to produce dual modes of understanding: a new scientific understanding of the domain and an older, more intuitive understanding of the domain that coexists with, but is not replaced by, the scientific understanding. Put differently, adults with extensive science education appear to harbor intuitions that they had explicitly rejected many years prior—intuitions like “whales are fish,” “coats produce heat,” “the wind is alive,” “air has no weight,” “heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects,” and “the sun revolves around the earth.” In some cases, these intuitions had previously been documented only among preschool-aged children, but, with the application of new methodologies, they are now being documented among scientifically literate adults as well.

Skeptic.com:
SCIENCE V. INTUITION: Why is it Difficult for Scientific Knowledge to Take Root?
Andrew Shtulman