Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Quantum Myths vs Facts...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 2, 2015 at 6:21am

Source: Claes Johnson on Mathematics and Science

Topics: Humor, Modern Physics, Physics and Pop Culture, Quantum Mechanics

Okay, the creative license of writers to invent their own "rules" in fiction gave us warp drive, automatic doors and cell phones. Two out of three's not bad.

There are times I cringe (as do a lot of physics, engineering and science types) when the writer has gone completely "off-the-range" on certain things that makes their plot work, just not the physics. The other thing that's like scratching a chalk board (an old-school metaphor in this age of dry erase boards and Power Point), is when pop psychology appropriates the language of quantum physics and totally misuses it to give credence to phenomena even THEY can't explain. Entanglement like "tesseract" gets used as a space filler - a gee whiz who-zits - when they don't have anything to say or a background to describe it. It's more likely statistical probability, blind luck or gas; Rolaids being a far better prescription.

Epoch Times is something I generally don't follow, but in this article, they do get some things right. I also list a Physics arXiv article below that goes even deeper into the subject.

Quantum physics is so fascinating that it appeals to a broader lay audience than a lot of other topics in science. It’s also so difficult to grasp and attempts to simplify it for a lay audience may open it to misunderstanding.

It is invoked to explain all sorts of strange, even paranormal, phenomena. Yet these explanations are often based on misconceptions about quantum physics. Quantum physics may indeed have the potential to explain such phenomena, since much remains to be discovered about it. But it is important to remain clear on what it does and does not actually claim at this point in its development.

1. No Indication That Entanglement Transfers Information (think "telepathy").
2. Consciousness Is Not Necessarily the Key to Collapsing the Wave-Function (Schrödinger’s cat, The Uncertainty Principle, the observer).
3. It Doesn't Only Describe the Subatomic Level (color, elasticity, black holes).
4. Speaking of a ‘Wave-Particle Duality’ Is Not Exactly Correct (see paper below).

Epoch Times: 4 Common Misconceptions About Quantum Physics, Tara MacIsaac
Physics arXiv: Quantum mechanics: Myths and facts, Hrvoje Nikolic
Theoretical Physics Division, Rudjer Boˇskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia

Doubled Battery Life...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 1, 2015 at 5:14pm

SiC-free graphene growth on Si NPs. (a) A low-magnification TEM image of Gr–Si NP. (b) A higher-magnification TEM image for the same Gr–Si NP from the white box in a. (Insets) The line profiles from the two red boxes indicate that the interlayer spacing between graphene layers is ~3.4 Å, in good agreement with that of typical graphene layers based on van der Waals interaction. (c) A high-magnification TEM image visualizing the origins (red arrows) from which individual graphene layers grow. (d) A schematic illustration showing the sliding process of the graphene coating layers that can buffer the volume expansion of Si. Credit: Nature Communications 6, Article number: 7393 doi:10.1038/ncomms8393

Topics: Batteries, Green Tech, Semiconductors, Materials Science, STEM

Currently, my laptop battery lasts about two hours straight out of the box. Over time and wear, that diminishes to having to use the power cord until a new one comes in; my Kindle and mobile phone has about six and eight hours charge respectively. I listed green tech. Longer battery life should translate to less finding their way to landfills.

(Phys.org)—A team of researches affiliated with Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology, along with colleagues from other institutions in Korea has found a way to greatly extend lithium-ion battery life. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the team describes their new technique and the results they achieved using it.

Consumers want their phone batteries to last longer—that is no secret, and battery life has been extended, but mostly due to improved efficiency of the electronics that depend on it. Researchers at phone companies and elsewhere have been working hard to find a way to get more power out of the same size battery but have to date, not made much progress. In this new effort, the researchers looked to silicon and graphene for a better battery.

Phys.org: Samsung develops lithium-ion battery with nearly double the life, Bob Yirka

Killing Schrödinger's Cat...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 30, 2015 at 7:05am

Topics: Einstein, Gravity, General Relativity, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger's Cat

If the cat in Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought-experiment behaved according to quantum theory, it would be able to exist in multiple states at once: both dead and alive. Physicists' common explanation for why we don’t see such quantum superpositions—in cats or any other aspect of the everyday world—is interference from the environment. As soon as a quantum object interacts with a stray particle or a passing field, it picks just one state, collapsing into our classical, everyday view.

But even if physicists could completely isolate a large object in a quantum superposition, according to researchers at the University of Vienna, it would still collapse into one state—on Earth's surface, at least. “Somewhere in interstellar space it could be that the cat has a chance to preserve quantum coherence, but on Earth, or near any planet, there's little hope of that,” says Igor Pikovski. The reason, he asserts, is gravity.

Cinema-goers who saw the film Interstellar are already familiar with the basic principle behind the Vienna team’s work. Einstein’s theory of general relativity states that an extremely massive object causes clocks near it to run more slowly because its strong gravitational field stretches the fabric of space-time (which is why a character in the film aged only an hour near a black hole, while seven years passed on Earth). On a subtler scale, a molecule placed nearer the Earth’s surface experiences a slightly slower clock than one placed slightly further away.

Because of gravity’s effect on space-time, Pikovski’s team realised that variance in a molecule’s position will also influence its internal energy—the vibrations of particles within the molecule, which evolve over time. If a molecule were put in a quantum superposition of two places, the correlation between position and internal energy would soon cause the duality to 'decohere' to the molecule taking just one path, they suggest. “In most situations decoherence is due to something external; here it’s as though the internal jiggling is interacting with the motion of the molecule itself,” adds Pikovski.

Scientific American: Gravity Kills Schrödinger's Cat, Elizabeth Gibney and Nature magazine

Hype Material...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 29, 2015 at 6:43am

Fig 1. Graphene and its descendants: top left: graphene; top right: graphite = stacked graphene; bottom left: nanotube=rolled graphene; bottom right: fullerene=wrapped graphene (adapted from ref.[1]).2
National University of Singapore

Topics: Graphene, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, STEM

Though the article tends to reset expectations, I think there is still a lot of good research to do with graphene in the foreseeable future. The statement of being "decades" out shouldn't discourage anyone. There's room for a few more scientists; a few more Nobel's that are either currently in grad school, in kindergarten or might not have even been born yet. We just have to have the foresight to build the education infrastructure to develop the young people that will do it in this country or elsewhere (likely Singapore). Somewhat irritatingly, the microwave and the Internet have given us a sense of instantaneous expectations in research and especially politics. May we never get to the point where we can walk up to a 3-D printer (the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle pretty much kills all hope of a replicator) and say: Tea, Earl Grey: Hot. Instead of the Star Trek post-apocalyptic utopia, we may be insufferable to the point of obsessive compulsive, if - like our conundrums with our mobile devices and microwaves - such a device quits working...

The wonder material. It’s just one atom thick but 200 times stronger than steel; extremely conductive but see-through and flexible. Graphene has shot to fame since its discovery in 2004 by UK-based researchers Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for which the University of Manchester pair were awarded the 2010 Nobel prize in physics.

We’ve heard the facts. We’ve read about how graphene could push the boundaries of today’s technology in almost unlimited ways. We’ve even pictured an elephant balanced on a pencil. But looking past the headlines, it’s clear that a lot of the most exciting areas of graphene science are still in the early stages. It will be years, decades perhaps, before we see the first graphene-enhanced smartphones, aeroplanes or bulletproof vests. But beyond these pie-in-the-sky promises, the underlying research is gathering pace.

Scientific American: Graphene: Looking beyond the Hype, Emma Stoye and ChemistryWorld

To Explain the World...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 28, 2015 at 6:51am

Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, NSBP, Steven Weinberg, Theoretical Physics, World Science Festival

The above is not the cover of "To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science." I downloaded that to my Kindle. This is just an autographed copy of one of his earlier famous books I'm proud to own. I'm equally proud to have met him.

As I've said, I met Dr. Weinberg at an NSBP conference in Austin, Texas in 2011. I meant to attend the World Science Festival in New York and hear this lecture personally. I alas, had a mandatory training related to work (it was good, though I went kicking and because it was good, not quite screaming towards the end of it). So accept my own consolation prize with the embed below. Consolation prize #2: I joined the World Science Festival as my "Father's Day" present to myself. I'll hopefully attend - barring anything else put on my schedule - next year.

Amazon.com:
To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, Dr. Steven Weinberg

Gooeyness and Robots...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 27, 2015 at 1:01pm

To restore their ability to survive in the ocean, the amputated jellyfish larvae simply rearranged their remaining arms instead of growing new ones.

Courtesy of Michael Abrams/Ty Basinger

Topics: Biology, Humor, Jellyfish, Robotics, Self-Healing

Am I the only one who thinks this reminds me of the shape-shifting T-1000 in the old Terminator II: Judgment Day?

For many sea creatures, regrowing a lost limb is routine. But when a young jellyfish loses a tentacle or two to the jaws of a sea turtle, for example, it rearranges its remaining limbs to ensure it can still eat and swim properly, according to a new study published June 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery should excite marine enthusiasts and roboteers alike, the authors say, because the jellyfish’s strategy for self-repair may teach investigators how to build robots that can heal themselves. “It’s another example of nature having solved a problem that we engineers have been trying to figure out for a long time,” says John Dabiri, a biophysicist at Stanford University who had discussed the project with the study investigators but was not involved with the research.

Scientific American:
Jellyfish "Gooeyness" Could Be a Model for Self-Healing Robots, Sabrina Imbler

Entropy and Meaning...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 26, 2015 at 6:00am

Source: Facebook meme

Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Philosophy, Thermodynamics

"Man - a being in search of meaning." Plato

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics - The "zeroth law" states that if two systems are at the same time in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. [1]

First Law of Thermodynamics - Is the application of the conservation of energy principle to heat and thermodynamic processes: The change in internal energy of a system is equal to the heat added to the system minus the work done by the system. [1]

Second Law of Thermodynamics - In any cyclic process the entropy will either increase or remain the same. Since entropy gives information about the evolution of an isolated system with time, it is said to give us the direction of "time's arrow" . If snapshots of a system at two different times shows one state which is more disordered, then it could be implied that this state came later in time. For an isolated system, the natural course of events takes the system to a more disordered (higher entropy) state. [1]

Third Law of Thermodynamics - Is essentially a statement about the ability to create an absolute temperature scale, for which absolute zero is the point at which the internal energy of a solid is precisely 0.

Various sources show the following three potential formulations of the third law of thermodynamics:

1. It is impossible to reduce any system to absolute zero in a finite series of operations.

2. The entropy of a perfect crystal of an element in its most stable form tends to zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero.

3. As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. [2]

Sources:
1. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/heacon.html#heacon
2. http://physics.about.com/od/thermodynamics/a/lawthermo_5.htm

There are admittedly other parts of the 2nd Law I don't focus on purposely: heat transfer and refrigerators. It will become apparent [hopefully] in a moment.

Thermodynamics is the science of "energy and its transformations," usually applied to systems. As I've alluded to in previous posts, the system in question is modern civilization itself. It's just an observation, not a doomsday prophecy. I see common cause-kissing cousins in Al Qaeda, ISIL/ISIS and Dylann Roof, hence the meme from Facebook above.

We tend to fight Entropy in various ways personally: diet, exercise, vitamins. It doesn't keep us from dying, but theoretically it preserves us; prolongs our stay on the planet.

A society can fight Entropy through education, as in the case of what should be called forevermore the Roof massacre, the less-educated tend to be more prejudiced and have less of a nuanced view of the world. It's typically "us versus them," as he stated an hour after his clandestine attendance at a bible study and his rampage began. Would he have been so angry, would he have sought the web sites of racist lunatics had he finished high school? Perhaps learned a trade or finished at least a college degree? His focus on debunked mythologies about African Americans purposely causing - in his twisted logic - genetic annihilation through miscegenation could have been alleviated by education. That would have resulted in stable finances, self-esteem that usually leads to better wardrobe selection, cologne, charm and if fortunate: coitus. He could have relieved his problems; his libido and nine innocent souls would still be with us.

The violence we're seeing in the news is tribal and primitive, born of ignorance and a sense of entitlement that is pathological. Isla Vista in Santa Barbara last year; a torrent of violence on black bodies since Trayvon Martin - shot, choked and beaten; churches set aflame appear to have made a "comeback" - to now a pastor and state senator and his members gunned down in their own house of worship. As these primitive instincts express themselves so violently, we as a nation are approaching Entropy as regressive types struggle in an ever-changing world that frightens them and their perceived loss of meaning, purpose and "specialness" in it. Unfortunately, "times arrow" has no reset button, and nation states not careful nor renewing itself with education of its citizenry, can drift inexorably from order...to chaos. It is at this juncture of our current history, ignorance - in the spirit of Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" - is NOT nor ever has been: bliss.

Optical Tweezers and Nanojets...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 25, 2015 at 7:36am

Artistic rendering of a lithography by photonic nanojets from an optically trapped microsphere. Courtesy: A A R Neves

Topics: Biology, MEMS, Nanotechnology, Optical Tweezers

Traditional optical tweezers, which have been around for decades, are one of the most important modern-day tools in biology, physics and chemistry. They work by trapping micron-scale objects near the focus of a laser beam. The technique allows objects to be picked up and moved to another place using just light.

Being able to control the position of individual molecules in this way is critical in medical research, for example, when manipulating viruses or large proteins. And being able to accurately place tiny objects, such as carbon nanotubes or nanowires, for instance, in a given structure or array will be important for fabricating nanomachines such as molecular motors and other devices in the future.

Nanojets are relatively new structures and are typically formed under the “shadow” of an illuminated dielectric cylinder or microsphere. The microsphere acts as a focusing lens and the nanojets form thanks to the constructive interference between the incoming and scattered light fields.

The nanojets created by Antonio Alvaro Ranha Neves of the Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas at the UFABC are a little more complex since they rely on highly focused incident light beams (in contrast to the plane waves generally used to form such jets). Neves used two collinear and co-propagating beams to create his nanojets and positioned one trap in a particular direction with respect to the other. It is the precise positioning of these two beams in this way that allows the nanojets to be switched on and off at will, he explains When they are switched on, they exert a trapping force on the microsphere, holding it approximately midway between the focuses of both beams.

Nanotechweb: Optical tweezers produce “nanojets”, Belle Dumé

80 Percent Improvement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 24, 2015 at 5:35pm

The MIT researchers' prototype for a chip measuring 3 millimeters by 3 millimeters. The magnified detail shows the chip's main control circuitry, including the startup electronics; the controller that determines whether to charge the battery, power a device, or both; and the array of switches that control current flow to an external inductor coil. This active area measures just 2.2 millimeters by 1.1 millimeters.

Topics: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Internet of Things, Semiconductor Technology

The latest buzz in the information technology industry regards "the Internet of things"—the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil-engineering structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock would have their own embedded sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks.

Realizing that vision, however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes—or, even better, that can extract energy from the environment to recharge.

Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it, even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.

Moreover, the researchers' chip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.

Phys.org:
Ultralow-power circuit improves efficiency of energy harvesting to more than 80 percent, Larry Hardesty

Charleston...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 23, 2015 at 6:56am

Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Charleston, History, Human Rights

I was in Charleston, South Carolina for my oldest son's graduation from Army Basic Training. My wife and I took a horse and buggy tour of Charleston, past the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, its history and high steeple. The memories of being burned down and the parishioners worshiping in secret; Dr. Martin Luther King and Corretta Scott King leading from its steps marches to facilitate the world we currently have - not perfect, but better supposedly than the one we had.

Dylann Storm Roof ended that blithe innocence with the blood of nine innocent members spilled on the floor during...bible study.

The coward did not pick a certified street gang - Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings - and go out in a martyred blase of glory. Surely, he would have started the "race war" in his manifesto; surely he would have spurred others to his cause. They would make room on Mount Rushmore for his gaunt young face. He would be immortal...and dead.

More than one article appears on the subject with its own official hash tag: #TakeItDown. Standard bearers of the GOP like Mitt Romney and state representatives are now calling for its removal from the South Carolina capital, something along with an African American president, I thought I'd never see. Rev. Clementa Pinckney - the pastor and state senator of Mother Emanuel now lies in state...beneath that flag. Mr. Roof was enamored with that, along with the ensigns of Apartheid South Africa and equally repugnant Rhodesia.

The confederate flag has been first above the capital of South Carolina since 1961; made law in 1962, so as long as I've been on the planet. 1961 was the 100th anniversary of the Civil War's beginnings. It's first appearance was in 1954, which Lee Atwater succinctly described in the "Southern Strategy." This has been done with a wink-and-a-nod; covered with platitudes like "tradition"; "heritage"; "way of life"; "Christian values" ignoring the domestic terrorism and outright encouragement of genocide by fire, explosions, gunshot and lynchings...now gunfire in a church. Yet another moment of eulogy over shootings like Newtown that should not happen...that not just children's lives matter, but #BlackLivesMatter. They matter in Chicago and Newtown; they matter in country municipalities and cities...they matter in churches that traditionally, have bible study on Wednesday nights, and I assume synagogues and mosques have similar times of cultural unity either weekly or annually - Ramadan and Yom Kippur comes to mind.

Dylann published a manifesto on the Internet. He gunned down nine innocent American souls. Falsely, it was spread through social media early on Roof was treated to a Burger King meal after his arrest; Freddie Gray in Maryland [definitely] a broken back. Freddie (18) was made by the media to look like a "thug"; Dylann (21), predictably as a confused "kid."

I'll likely tune into or DVR what the president has to say yet again. He looks like he's getting tired of it; I'M getting tired of it. He is one year and four days older than I, yet the gray hair and cracked skin makes him look ninety. As a country, we're an international embarrassment and likely, our lower mortality with respect to the rest of the industrialized world is a self-inflicted wound made by constantly playing...Russian roulette. I am particularly tired of talking about this, yet again. Our "normal" is national psychosis; E pluribus unum to warring tribes.

Dilation and Superposition...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 23, 2015 at 6:52am

Illustration of a molecule in the presence of gravitational time dilation. The molecule is in a quantum superposition of being in several places at the same time, but time dilation destroys this quantum phenomenon. (Courtesy: Igor Pikovski, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Topics: Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger Wave Equation, Superposition

Why do we not see everyday objects in quantum superpositions? The answer to that long-standing question may partly lie with gravity. So says a group of physicists in Austria, which has shown theoretically that a feature of Einstein's general relativity, known as time dilation, can render quantum states classical. The researchers say that even the Earth's puny gravitational field may be strong enough for the effect to be measurable in a laboratory within a few years.

Our daily experience suggests that there exists a fundamental boundary between the quantum and classical worlds. One way that physicists explain the transition between the two, is to say that quantum superposition states simply break down when a system exceeds a certain size or level of complexity – its wavefunction is said to "collapse" and the system becomes "decoherent."

An alternative explanation, in which quantum mechanics holds sway at all scales, posits that interactions with the environment bring different elements of an object's wavefunction out of phase, such that they no longer interfere with one another. Larger objects are subject to this decoherence more quickly than smaller ones because they have more constituent particles and, therefore, more complex wavefunctions.

Physics World: Does time dilation destroy quantum superposition?
Edwin Cartlidge, science writer in Rome

Near Absolute Zero...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 12, 2015 at 6:00am

MIT researchers have successfully cooled a gas of sodium potassium (NaK) molecules to a temperature of 500 nanokelvin. In this artist's illustration, the NaK molecule is represented with frozen spheres of ice merged together: the smaller sphere on the left represents a sodium atom, and the larger sphere on the right is a potassium atom.

Illustration: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT

Topics: Materials Science, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductivity

The air around us is a chaotic superhighway of molecules whizzing through space and constantly colliding with each other at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Such erratic molecular behavior is normal at ambient temperatures.

But scientists have long suspected that if temperatures were to plunge to near absolute zero, molecules would come to a screeching halt, ceasing their individual chaotic motion and behaving as one collective body. This more orderly molecular behavior would begin to form very strange, exotic states of matter — states that have never been observed in the physical world.

Now experimental physicists at MIT have successfully cooled molecules in a gas of sodium potassium (NaK) to a temperature of 500 nanokelvins — just a hair above absolute zero, and over a million times colder than interstellar space. The researchers found that the ultracold molecules were relatively long-lived and stable, resisting reactive collisions with other molecules. The molecules also exhibited very strong dipole moments — strong imbalances in electric charge within molecules that mediate magnet-like forces between molecules over large distances.

MIT News: MIT team creates ultracold molecules, Jennifer Chu

Note: OOTO for a week or so. Happy Father's Day next week! Back on the 23rd.

MOOC and Sesame Street...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 11, 2015 at 6:22am

Image source: link below

Topics: Economy, Education, Humor, Jobs, Science, STEM

Admittedly, my first education wasn't Sesame Street, it was "Green Eggs and Ham," which got me in considerable trouble when I admitted the "Dick and Jane" reading stories in the first grade were "dumb." (Well...they were.) Despite that fact, half of my first day in the first grade was spent in the principal's office.

I was six going on seven when my parents parked me in front of the television. I was hooked with the life-sized animated characters that would become known as "Muppets." Along with Schoolhouse Rock and the original charter of The Learning Channel, we enjoyed passive learning, a democratized, continuous education that transcends neighborhoods, demographics and social barriers. With a foundation of reading and simple numbers, the strength of Sesame Street was both making education fun and instilling a sense of wonder, the foundation of scientific exploration. For competitiveness in global economies and the narrowing of the wealth gap, we need more of this (and LESS "reality TV").

For 46 years now, "Sesame Street" has created television programming aimed at preparing young children for school both academically and socially.

According to a new study, it worked.

Children who lived in areas where "Sesame Street" was easy to view when it premiered were less likely to have been held back in school by 9th grade than children who lived in areas where reception was spotty or non-existent. Boys, black children, and children living in economically disadvantaged areas saw particularly strong effects.

How this carried over into educational attainment and the job market is unclear, according to the researchers. But, "for a television show that kids watch for an hour a day to have an impact that persists for 10 years or so, that's remarkable," said Phillip B. Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. He co-authored the paper with Melissa S. Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland in College Park. (Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, was a Maryland graduate.)

The researchers consider "Sesame Street" to be the first "massive open online course," an education course made available for free to a large group of people. Of course, in the early days of "Sesame Street," people were not receiving the program over the Internet. But the basic tenet of transmitting educational material outside of the traditional classroom remains is the same, the researchers said. Early Childhood Education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame Street was published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Education Week:

'Sesame Street' Boosted School Readiness for Young Children, Study Says,
Christina Samuels

Event Horizon Telescope...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 10, 2015 at 6:40am

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope sits atop the plateau of Chajnantor in the Chilean Andes, more than 5,100 metres high. To the left of APEX is the central region of the Milky Way, where the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* lurks. Image credit: ESO/Babak Tafreshi (twanight.org)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Atomic Clock, Black Holes, Einstein, Radio Telescope, Research

Astronomers building an Earth-size virtual telescope capable of photographing the event horizon of the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way have extended their instrument to the bottom of the Earth — the South Pole — thanks to recent efforts by a team of astronomers with participation of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany.

Last December, an international team of astronomers flew to the Southern Hemisphere: German, Chilean and Korean scientists led by Alan Roy of the MPIfR, traveled to Atacama, Chile, and American scientists led by Dan Marrone of the University of Arizona flew to the South Pole to arrange the telescopes into the largest virtual telescope ever built — the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT. By combining telescopes across the Earth, the EHT will take the first detailed pictures of black holes.

“The goals of the EHT are to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, understand how black holes eat and generate relativistic outflows, and to prove the existence of the event horizon, or ‘edge,’ of a black hole,” says Dan Marrone.

Astronomy Now: Planet-sized telescope gives a sharp view into black holes
Research site: Event Horizon Telescope

Human Computation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 9, 2015 at 8:36pm

Image Source; Tecnology Review

Topics: Collaboration, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Humor, Internet, Research

The romance is the singular genius making some great breakthrough from shear effort and endowment with god-like intelligence that the rest of us mere mortals cannot possibly possess. In academia and industry, there's a lot of collaboration; cross-functional teams; cross-training, etc. Even the most monumental breakthrough that's affecting your life and mine right now - the transistor - was a collaborative effort that earned the Nobel Prize. Humans do a lot of collaboration; it's in our natures and we tend to do it with like-minded people (hence, Internet and other social networks). Sir Isaac Newton - the founder of physics - stated: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants," in a letter to Robert Hooke (Hooke's Law), though it was a metaphor originally attributed to John of Salisbury, meaning benifitting and building on the work of others before you. (Wikipedia)

There is a romanticism I think that originates with the oft-told story of the original "Eureka moment" (a dubious claim, probably more tall-tale than fact), along with Newton's apple and Einstein being, well...Einstein. So much so, my youngest son text messaged his older brother and me a picture of the latest album cover by the rapper Gucci Mane, seen here, knowing full well I'd laugh as he did: "I guess Gucci Mane is calling himself the Einstein of trapology...lol."

As I said, I laughed - literally "out loud"! I just sincerely hope Mr. Mane's lawyers have properly contacted the estate of Professor Einstein and likely Princeton University for the image rights...when you're making money WITH it, that's kinda important!

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The wisdom of the crowd has become so powerful and so accessible via the Internet that it has become a resource in its own right. Various services now tap into this rich supply of human cognition, such as Wikipedia, Duolingo, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

So important is this resource that scientists have given it a name; they call it human computation. And a rapidly emerging and increasingly important question is how best to exploit it.

Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to a group of computer scientists, crowdsourcing pioneers, and visionaries who have created a roadmap for research into human computation. The team, led by Pietro Michelucci at the Human Computation Institute, point out that human computation systems have been hugely successful at tackling complex problems from identifying spiral galaxies to organizing disaster relief.

But their potential is even greater still, provided that human cognition can be efficiently harnessed on a global scale. Last year, they met to discuss these issues and have now published the results of their debate.

Physics arXiv: A U.S. Research Roadmap for Human Computation
Pietro Michelucci, Lea Shanley, Janis Dickinson, Haym Hirsh

Computational Imagination...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 8, 2015 at 9:05pm

Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Computer Science, Image Processing, Politics, STEM

This article grabbed me with excitement and I'll admit, kind of disturbed me as well. The very busy image above in the paper is Figure 13 for reference. I scanned the article for things like "AI"; "Artificial Intelligence" and found nothing, but 48 and 49 in the paper itself does reference two other papers in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, for the true believers in Skynet (it's a nerd joke - really!). However, this could be a milestone in image processing, and with the ubiquitous usage of cell phone videos as witness to malfeasance - police or criminal - this could be very important. The technology for facial recognition could be impacted by this advance, then I got concerned again since civil liberties were up for debate with the recent expiration of the Patriot Act and its replacement by the Freedom Act. With technology we walk a tightrope, thinning inexorably to dental floss.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Imagine an oak tree in a field of wheat, silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky on a dreamy sunny afternoon. The chances are that most people reading this sentence can easily picture a bucolic scene in their mind’s eye. This ability to read a description of a scene and then imagine it has always been uniquely human. But this precious skill may no longer be ours alone.

Anyone thinking that these kinds of imaginings are far beyond the ability of today’s computing machines will be surprised by the work of Hiroharu Kato and Tatsuya Harada at the University of Tokyo in Japan.

Today, these guys unveil a machine that can translate a description of an object into an image. In other words, their computer can conjure an image of an external object not otherwise present. That’s a pretty good definition of imagination—in this case of the computational variety.

For sure, these computer imaginings are simple, sometimes confusing and often nonsensical. But the fact they are possible at all represents a significant step forward for computational creativity.

Physics arXiv: Image Reconstruction from Bag-of-Visual-Words
Hiroharu Kato, Tatsuya Harada

A New Dark Ages...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 7, 2015 at 8:04am

Image Source: CBC Radio link below

Topics: Commentary, Climate Change, Democracy, History, Politics, Science, STEM

"History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history."

Clarence Darrow

The post title is very stark, but not a subject I haven't commented on before. My concern is, this one as far as existential humanity, may be our last.

It's hard not to look at Al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, The Tea Party, Right-Wing Evangelicals, Quiverfull, The Westboro Baptist Church and not see similarities: they are all primarily authoritarian, and afraid. Like celebrity chimps they are loud, demonstrative, craving and gaining attention; disrespectful of diversity and boundaries and in some extreme cases deadly. They are afraid of the changes in society and a sense of lost control. This is evidenced on social media and our forms of entertainment. Some high profile recent falls from grace - The Duggars as a part of Quiverfull, a recent example - have logged disappointing performances regarding religious orders in the public sphere in the eyes of more skeptical youth, that are fleeing the pews. The fearful thus gravitate to those who seem to have "the answers": simple, comforting and confirming their own hard-ingrained beliefs.

Fear: evidence may or may not agree with ancient texts, followers of which are operating in the realm of faith as well as culture. It can be a positive characteristic that unifies. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

There is something inherently wrong when the louder primates force their cognitive dissonance on everyone else. Texas pushed through books last year that identify Moses as a Founding Father in defiance of sense and actual history. The problem being other states are now making their textbook purchases essentially based on land mass. CREATIONISM IS NOT SCIENCE, and I will continue saying that not because it's my opinion: it is simply fact. This lunacy is destructive and self-defeating to our survival as a nation. It's a matter of knowing what is real and reality and what is not; what to be concerned about to make rational decisions or not. We cannot make decisions on climate change, alternative energy solutions, infrastructure renewal because it goes against a dogma - a conservative-free market-libertarian ideology. Fun fact: Ayn Rand did not like libertarians. Demonstrably, or should I say not so: not a single circuit design; not a single Nobel laureate; not a single invention or industry innovation that has impacted the lives of millions or billions of people has come out of this faux sacred naval-gazing! I think it would be rude for anyone to interrupt a Imam, Priest or Rabbi to "correct the science" in a sermon based on ancient texts, but no such courtesy is reciprocated to the scientific community. It is the height of incongruity to fear and loathe science and technology, while relying on it for commerce, entertainment and diatribes. It is highly unrealistic to believe a nation at the forefront of technological advances can stay there forever on this path into willed ignorance. Knowledge is democratizing and ubiquitous, and science will be performed here, or somewhere else. The flow of currency and GDP will be clear evidence of this folly. It was the reason for the decline of Rome: we are its modern doppelganger.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

Karl Marx

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience."

George Bernard Shaw

An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. It should be noted, that when Jefferson speaks of "science," he is often referring to knowledge or learning in general.

Thomas Jefferson on Politics and Government

CBC Radio: Science Under Siege, Paul Kennedy

Hafu..

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 6, 2015 at 9:34am

Ariana Miyamoto - Miss Japan 2015, image source @ link below

Topics: Beauty, Commentary, Civil Rights, Human Dignity, Human Rights

The American enterprise has been emulated since "Exceptionalism" became a neologism in our lexicon. We may have also exported some of our evils.

Perhaps the indigenous population of the Japanese nation don't quite realize they are an amalgamation of several migrating tribes of humanity: Chinese, Korean, Southeast Asian (see link). I'm speculating, I really don't know. Masutatsu Oyama - the founder of Kyokushin Karate - was born Choi Young-Eui in Gimje, South Korea during the Japanese occupation. Wikipedia One of his books - Mastering Karate - traced martial arts to the African continent. We are ALL from the African continent, all aspects and hues of humanity started there as the tropics near the equator was the best incubator for "man-thinking": homo sapiens; tools and opposable thumbs; weapons for defense and offense Going from tree dwellers to hunter-gatherers, we settled in villages with agriculture. City-states emerged, fueled by architecture, writing and trade. Eventually, some of us migrated eastward and northward, probably driven by curiosity, deficit attention spans; greed and power. Over time, our outward appearance due to ultraviolet radiation and Melanin, changed with respect to our environments.

Over time, we thinking men created our own mythologies about our unique tribes. Our deities generally looked like us; our culture and jurisprudence fashioned on not getting struck by their wrath. Slowly, verifiable evidence measured higher than dogma as far as survival. The Scientific Method was born.

Perhaps there are no relatives of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, or at least nowadays in minimal numbers. Perhaps there is no cultural memory of the indignities paid to people like George Takei (Mr. Sulu of Star Trek), when his entire Japanese-American family was interned during World War II for the crime of being Japanese. Or maybe, that's the point here.

Mythologies are self-deluding, and become echo chambers and fill in gaps that actual histories could occupy. One begins to believe the "internal press" about one's culture; one's people...one's exceptionalism.

Ariana Miyamoto is exceptionally beautiful. The fact her parentage is Japanese and African American is irrelevant to that reality. "Hafu" is the Japanese neologism for half-Japanese, similar to light-skinned or Mulatto in the United States. As I said, we've inadvertently exported our sins and dirty laundry.

Beyond tribalism, we should become true cosmopolitans - residents of the Earth and by extension the universe - and part of the tribe called human.

The beauty contest winner making Japan look at itself
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC News, Tokyo

Cartoon Physics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 5, 2015 at 6:37am

Image Source: Amazon.com

Topics: Comic Books, Physics Humor, Physics and Pop Culture

Comic books are our modern mythology. We await with baited breath the donnybrook also known as Batman v Superman, though we don't yet know why the "Super Friends" start their inevitable bromance with a grudge match. Avengers: Age of Ultron answered who else was "worthy" enough - Vision - to lift Thor's hammer - forged in the heart of a dying star, which kind of suggests a Brown Dwarf or White Dwarf, meaning nothing in the universe worthy or not should be able to lift a teaspoon of Mjolnir (except apparently, a nail on the wall of Dr. Jane Foster's apartment in "Dark World" - seriously, look again). Technically, Vision came to life from it, so a one-armed curl shouldn't be past his AI abilities. Of course, there are others who lift "the smasher" - including the Hulk, who heretofore couldn't no matter how mad he got!

Currently in vogue on television are series like Agents of Shield (with the exception of enhanced humans and demigods, pretty terrestrial in its physics); Arrow (essentially, Batman with a bow); Gotham (that is so dark, it's a wonder Bruce Wayne or Jim Gordon WANT to stay there); and of course the breakout hit, the societal, self double entrendre: The Flash.

The series ended (spoiler alert) with a lot of cockeyed physics, like running at twice the speed of sound, colliding with a single proton in an accelerator and opening a wormhole so his nemesis - The Reverse Flash (a really pissed-off psychopath that comes back to create The Flash to KILL him - ahem: keep up), so he could go home. Home in this case, the 25th Century, bypassing Kirk and Picard's paltry epochs by two centuries where they apparently have time travel, but no cows for hamburgers, if Rev is to be "believed." The cliffhanger was Barry doing the heroes sacrifice of running into a black hole opening above Central City - that in real world physics would have killed most of the population with its radiation and ground the Earth into hamburger meat, Flash included. Ray Bradbury would be proud of the echo from his "A Sound of Thunder," an apocryphal foundation for time travel stories since its inception.

Of course, it's all hokey fun. Doing a serious and somewhat tongue-in-cheek search on the actual physics of superluminal (i.e. faster than light speed travel) resulted an interesting paper and related article [1, 3]; some humorous posts [2, 4], also tongue-in-cheek funny. Humor is always a good hook for STEM lectures and teenagers.

I enjoy the shows just like anyone else. For any story line to sell its audience, there is the usual suspension of belief in the verisimilitude of the fictional world and its "laws of cartoon physics." Alas, poor Yorick - our laws are binding. Even the Batman - my favorite, since he was for me the most believable - can't escape the laws we're subject to on a daily basis - like all of us mere mortals subject to Entropy, he wears out too. Life without magic is kind of a drag, but there's still much wonder in reality.

For any of these shows, I become that kid on 25th and Cleveland Avenue in Winston-Salem, NC that used to enjoy a nerdy Saturday with my best friend - trading and reading comic books, something sadly I don't think kids do much of anymore. I'm trying not to be the sour physics guy pointing out every impossibility in a movie or TV series - as I've gotten older, I'm better in large groups at keeping my mouth shut.

1. Physics arXiv: How superluminal motion can lead to backward time travel
Robert J. Nemiro and David M. Russelly
2. Geek: Quantum physics just solved one of the great paradoxes of time travel, Graham Templeton
3. Scientific American: Time Travel Simulation Resolves “Grandfather Paradox”, Lee Billings
4. PBS News Hour: Spider-Math and Bat-Physics: Science in a Superhero World, Rebecca Jacobson

Alice's Wonderland...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 4, 2015 at 9:06pm

Image Source: ESA Rosetta Blog

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Comets, Rosetta, Spectrograph

A close-up of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by NASA's ultraviolet instrument surprised scientists by revealing that electrons close to the comet's surface—not photons from the Sun as had been believed—cause the rapid breakup of water and carbon dioxide molecules spewing from the surface.

Since last August, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has orbited within a hundred miles of the comet in this historic mission. The spectrograph onboard, named Alice, specializes in the far-ultraviolet wavelength band and was developed by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). Alice examines light the comet is emitting to understand the chemistry of the comet's atmosphere, or coma. A spectrograph is a tool astronomers use to split light into its various colors. Scientists can identify the chemical composition of gases by examining their light spectrum. Alice is the first such far-ultraviolet spectrograph to operate at a comet.

NASA's Alice ultraviolet (UV) spectrograph, seen here during construction, is aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. Credit: Southwest Research Institute

"The discovery we're reporting is quite unexpected," said Alice instrument Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, an associate vice president in SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division. "It shows us the value of going to comets to observe them up close, since this discovery simply could not have been made from Earth or Earth's orbit with any existing or planned observatory. And, it is fundamentally transforming our knowledge of comets.

Phys.org: Alice instrument's ultraviolet close-up provides a surprising discovery about comet's atmosphere