Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Bare Bones...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 30, 2015 at 7:56am

The Belle II detector and the upgraded accelerator SuperKEKB make up Japan’s new B factory for studying flavor physics and CP violation. Following some delays, the accelerator is set to start up next January, and full data-taking will begin in 2018.

KEK

Citation: Phys. Today 68, 4, 18 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2743

Topics: Fukushima Daiichi, Economy, Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Power, Research, Quantum Mechanics

Unfortunately, scientific advances costs money, along with the political will and cultivated, collective public vision to pursue it. This relates to something we're all subject to, lab and person alike: the cost of energy consumption. The National Ignition Facility or Lockheed's Skunk Works, if either or both are successful, could alleviate some concerns about power consumption of laboratories in general, and all of us in particular. If electrical power - used for heating and cooling homes and laboratories; directly related to the cost at the grocery store (the cost of the fuel truck is transferred to us by increasing prices), and the reason for "wars and rumors of wars": fossil fuels, could be generated by other means, then the human costs of commercial consumption of products and service; post-conflict warrior attrition - via death, PTSD and traumatic brain injury - would greatly decrease. We can only hope it's not opposed as vigorously as solar and renewable energy has been so far.

Getting the green light to restart accelerators and other large scientific facilities in Japan took up to three years following the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in eastern Japan on 11 March 2011. (See Physics Today, November 2011, page 20, and November 2013, page 20.) Now tight budgets, bloated electricity prices, and a sprinkling of mishaps threaten to cripple science at the country’s world-class facilities.

Before the triple disaster, about 30% of Japan’s power came from 54 nuclear plants. Since then, as plants have come up for routine maintenance, they’ve been turned off, and none has been turned back on, although a few have been approved to do so. For a while the country had a shortage of electricity. Now, other sources, mainly fossil fuels, have been arranged, but the costs have skyrocketed: Officials at KEK, Japan’s accelerator research institute, and at RIKEN and other science facilities report that the price of electricity has gone up by 30% or more. Electricity is a big chunk of their total operating costs, so they have been forced to reduce running times.

Masanori Yamauchi, the new KEK director, notes that SuperKEKB, the B factory set to start up this year, will consume twice as much power as its predecessor. And the price per kilowatt-hour has nearly doubled. “It has a serious impact to the running schedule of the new accelerator,” he says. Studying quantum mechanical phenomena requires collecting large statistics, he adds. “The power bill problem in Japan is very unfortunate for our physics program.”

Under Japanese law certain programs are largely shielded from the rising electricity costs. Those spared are SPring-8, the synchrotron light source; materials and life sciences neutron studies at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC); and petascale computing in Kobe. Industry makes heavy use of them—about 20% in the case of SPring-8, for instance—whereas the affected facilities are used mainly by academic researchers.

Physics Today: Scientific facilities in Japan struggle on bare-bones schedules, Toni Feder

Manhattan...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 29, 2015 at 11:01am

Shiva. Image Source: Hiroshima Poetry, related to the embed below

Topics: Existentialism, Manhattan Project, Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Power

Having lived through the "duck-and-cover" drills of the sixties and seventies (for me at least), the fact we don't do them anymore doesn't reduce the existential danger. We have the unique position in species of intelligence on this Earth, a way - as Carl Sagan would have said - for the Cosmos to "know itself." We're also the only species that could take the other sentient ones on our globe into oblivion by myriad, maddening means. The drama isn't too accurate, and some of the characterizations aren't spot-on or accurate (like Oppenheimer as "jerk" - he wasn't in what I've read), but it should spark some interest in the project in general, and nuclear physics in particular.

Physics Buzz: This fall (2014), a new primetime drama appeared on the television network WGN America, featuring scientists at Los Alamos working tirelessly--desperately, even--to develop nuclear weapons during World War II, all while maintaining utmost secrecy. Manhattan draws on the rich underlying history of its namesake, the Manhattan Project, but steers clear of documentary tendencies. Whereas the premise of the show and several key figures are largely based on their real-life counterparts, the main cast is populated by fictional characters, whose personal and scientific struggles acquaint us with the broader themes of privacy, government surveillance, and trust. Today on the podcast, we discuss how Manhattan brings nuclear physics to primetime TV, and what’s gained or lost along the way.

It was a great scientific triumph, and we won the war. It had many spin-offs in peaceful space program (even as that was essentially the Cold War above our heads) and nuclear physics applications - fission initially, then hopefully fusion eventually - as well as the analysis of what is now known as Black Holes. I suspect however, it was also Dr. Oppenheimer's greatest regret:

The Long View...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 28, 2015 at 6:30am

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore, Civil Rights, Commentary

I really get the anger. I've penned it on the anniversary of the surrender of the South in the Civil War, and the needless death of Walter Scott. Dr. King once said: "a riot is the language of the unheard." That I think assumes you've tried - through legitimate means - to have your voice heard.

You seem to have a rich history of rioting: 1812; 1868. If you must get angry: why didn't you ask why the city of Baltimore hasn't fully recovered economically from the riots of 1968 when Dr. King was assassinated? I was five, but I remember that day well: Confederate flags, honking horns riding past my kindergarten, shouting very clearly "I'm glad that n-----r's gone!" Some memories don't leave you. They stay with you and shape your worldview. I remember well the anger from older teenagers that took to the streets in North Carolina, but specifically of note in Baltimore, Maryland. Why haven't you gotten angry with the jobs that have been shipped out of this country to save money on the highest expense of any company: salaries? Why haven't you gotten angry at the substitution of science courses with pseudoscience, that puts this country at a disadvantage globally in the competition for employment and high-paying jobs? Why haven't you gotten angry about the socially-engineered achievement gap that ensures a De Facto apartheid in this country? Why haven't you gotten angry for an increase in the minimum wage, or that some would rather there be NONE? And lastly, why if you're 18, not in at least a two-year college and registered to vote?

How many of you ACTUALLY knew Freddie Gray? Actually went to school with him, or his twin sister? Lived next to him? Attended his funeral? An 80% severed spine is an outrage, and in a sane world, should result in indictments. But the Baltimore Police Department Bill of Rights gives them 10 days before they have to speak to anyone. Hint: that's 10 days to get their story straight; they are suspended with pay. We're 50 years from the 1965 Voting Rights Act, for which the movie Selma dramatized. It's voting the 21st Century Poll Tax cum voter ID laws are trying to inhibit. It's voting, or lack thereof, that determines civilian oversight, and local laws: the Police and/or the Police Association can't come up with that kind of "right" whole cloth. The current law that will soon exist in Maryland is martial...your anger, though genuine, has no more power of resurrection anymore than the anarchy of terrorists will magically form mythical caliphates.

I was angry after Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, Rodney King, Travon Martin, Renisha McBride...trust me, I have decades of anger, high blood pressure, feelings of helplessness and sleepless nights over any and all of you. I have children I worry about as well; my lifespan shortens with every report - of yet another senseless death - that always goes national. You now have the Maryland National Guard deployed in your city to restore order. A CVS pharmacy and other businesses burned to the ground. Your grandmothers who had their prescriptions filled there have nowhere to go now. I don't know if indictments will immediately come down (or not), and neither do you. If it does go before a Grand Jury, it is secret by law, the jury of your "peers" will be active, registered voters who've followed this recent news, and possibly not look like you. The social media, political and propaganda machine has already labeled you "thugs." If you had a point, you may have already blown it away like chaff in the wind, and falling into negative stereotypes hasn't proved a good strategy in the long view.

I applaud the peaceful demonstrations; that doesn't mean you can't be angry, paste a placid grin on your faces while singing "we shall overcome." I'm sure Dr. King and a lot of young people who were your age back then bitten, beaten, hosed and jailed, and a lot of them killed had a few instances of being angry. The cameras caught the brutality of authorities against us, and soon turned world opinion against the violence perpetrated on innocent, law-abiding citizens. The cameras are catching your activities as well, it makes for a lot of views on YouTube and negative, stereotypical memes.

Yesterday was the first day of the first African American woman appointed Attorney General, Loretta Lynch (after a woefully sophomoric delay); yesterday was the birthday of Civil Rights activist Coretta Scott King. I'm sure her husband, Dr. King, my older sister who was one of those young people bitten, beaten, hosed and jailed, and a lot of them killed for Civil Rights, Voting Rights were angry - are angry, so you can do property damage, loot for your own benefit; express breathtaking episodes of pyromania and call it "protest."

Sorry for the post-Sunday rant. I'll do physics Wednesday.

3-D Proteins...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 27, 2015 at 7:06am

Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: 3-D Objects, Algorithm, Biology, Computer Science, Molecular Biology

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: One of the great challenges in molecular biology is to determine the three-dimensional structure of large biomolecules such as proteins. But this is a famously difficult and time-consuming task.

The standard technique is x-ray crystallography, which involves analyzing the x-ray diffraction pattern from a crystal of the molecule under investigation. That works well for molecules that form crystals easily.

But many proteins, perhaps most, do not form crystals easily. And even when they do, they often take on unnatural configurations that do not resemble their natural shape.

So finding another reliable way of determining the 3-D structure of large biomolecules would be a huge breakthrough. Today, Marcus Brubaker and a couple of pals at the University of Toronto in Canada say they have found a way to dramatically improve a 3-D imaging technique that has never quite matched the utility of x-ray crystallography.

The new technique is based on an imaging process called electron cryomicroscopy. This begins with a purified solution of the target molecule that is frozen into a thin film just a single molecule thick.

This film is then photographed using a process known as transmission electron microscopy—it is bombarded with electrons and those that pass through are recorded. Essentially, this produces two-dimensional “shadowgrams” of the molecules in the film. Researchers then pick out each shadowgram and use them to work out the three-dimensional structure of the target molecule.

Abstract

Discovering the 3D atomic structure of molecules such as proteins and viruses is a fundamental research problem in biology and medicine. Electron Cryomicroscopy (Cryo-EM) is a promising vision-based technique for structure estimation which attempts to reconstruct 3D structures from 2D images. This paper addresses the challenging problem of 3D reconstruction from 2D Cryo-EM images. A new framework for estimation is introduced which relies on modern stochastic optimization techniques to scale to large datasets. We also introduce a novel technique which reduces the cost of evaluating the objective function during optimization by over five orders or magnitude. The net result is an approach capable of estimating 3D molecular structure from large scale datasets in about a day on a single workstation.

Physics arXiv:
Building Proteins in a Day: Efficient 3D Molecular Reconstruction
Marcus A. Brubaker, Ali Punjani, David J. Fleet

NExSS...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 26, 2015 at 6:43am

Image Source

Topics: Aliens, Astrophysics, Biology, Exoplanets, Heliophysics, NASA, SETI

L’infini est infiniment infini: "The infinite is infinitely infinite."

The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or “NExSS”, hopes to better understand the various components of an exoplanet, as well as how the planet stars and neighbor planets interact to support life.

“This interdisciplinary endeavor connects top research teams and provides a synthesized approach in the search for planets with the greatest potential for signs of life,” says Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science. “The hunt for exoplanets is not only a priority for astronomers, it’s of keen interest to planetary and climate scientists as well.”

NExSS will tap into the collective expertise from each of the science communities supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate:

-Earth scientists develop a systems science approach by studying our home planet.

-Planetary scientists apply systems science to a wide variety of worlds within our solar system.

-Heliophysicists add another layer to this systems science approach, looking in detail at how the Sun interacts with orbiting planets.

-Astrophysicists provide data on the exoplanets and host stars for the application of this systems science framework.

NExSS will bring together these prominent research communities in an unprecedented collaboration, to share their perspectives, research results, and approaches in the pursuit of one of humanity’s deepest questions: Are we alone?

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

― Arthur C. Clarke

I posited a thought experiment, the post title inspired by the last two words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's quote above.

Honestly, I saw this on my Facebook news feed and shared it. I then looked for the official NASA write up I italicize above.

I am prepared to review the data once its published, read also the papers and look at the presentations if they find things like (I'm assuming), spectrographic analysis of alien atmospheres and evidence of water; the telltale wobble of planets orbiting distant suns. I am looking forward to how this exploration will have application to our own planet. On that, I am hopeful.

I am also sadly, bracing for the kind of backlash that claimed Giordano Bruno*, though a bit of license was taken in presenting his story in the Cosmos reboot. I am prepared for the denialist, the conspiracy theorist; the flat earthers cum universe birthers. As I've gotten older, the hope of an expanding enlightenment has been snuffed by present darkness authoritarians that want others to grope in their caves; rammed down our collective throats.

* In 1584 Giordano wrote a thesis entitled "On the Infinite Universe and Worlds." Bruno argued that if a person believes it logical that even one other world likely exists, that it reasonably follows that all other worlds exist.

NASA: NASA’s NExSS Coalition to Lead Search for Life on Distant Worlds

Evolution of Television...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 25, 2015 at 6:19am

Image Source - Starts at Sixty: How the Jetson's Predicted the Future

Topics: Consumer Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Humor, Technology

The first television I remember my family owning was black and white, and so largely was society's views of social interaction, equality, etc. It used cathode ray tube technology, and as I recall looking in with my father, a lot of vacuum tubes - if they blew, you had to replace them - precursors to integrated circuits now, their usage in the space program fostered by NASA's need to reduce launch payload size into space (tubes are also quite heavy). They are not extinct, and do still have their specialized uses. We needed "rabbit ear" antennas to receive a radio frequency (RF) signal on the television; a large antenna connected by an analog cable usually on the roof. To attenuate a signal properly for my parents, sometimes I had to hold the ears and stand - absolutely still - next to the set while Walter Cronkite delivered after the sound of teletype actual NEWS completely devoid of theme songs, bombast and "infotainment," because as voiced by his signature line: "that's the way it was." I was also the resident channel surfer, AKA the analog remote control and sometimes dishwasher. Absolutely NO ONE looked at television during a lightning storm (and, really shouldn't now), but surge and electrical fire during the age of fuses was a far more prevalent danger back then before better power distribution schemes and GFCI. There was ABC, CBS, NBC and maybe a few local UHF channels if you were lucky. Television played the Pledge of Allegiance, and went OFF at midnight to a pattern, or static snow.

However, it was Saturday morning cartoons where I saw my first flat screen. Jane, Judy, Elroy, George, Rosie the robot maid and Astro the dog: The Jetsons got a lot of things right about the future - as the link below the picture above attests. There's a lot going on in that image: a video chat with a doctor (we call Skype, among others now); a hint of 3-D technology - the doctor "leaning out" of the screen - and nanotechnology (though I'm dubious on the article's claim: Secret Squirrel did the same trick, after all). And since I'm not too far from my sixth decade, I'm very fortunate to find out it won't be over for me. Sadly though, with the advent of 24-hour news closely followed by hundreds (thousands?) of 24-hour cable channels with appropriate-age cartoon channels, I've noticed a casualty of this advance in technology: one of the very mediums that probably started a lot of future designers, engineers and scientists dreaming up how to bring about what was artists' imaginations to pass...

...Saturday morning cartoons! May they rest in peace (and syndication).

Institute of Physics: Flat Screen Displays (PDF); Television (History)
The Royal Society:
Flat-panel electronic displays: a triumph of physics, chemistry and engineering, Cyril Hilsum

Post script: I will be moving to new apartments for this reason, apparently legal, but unfortunate nonetheless. I have a few posts "in the hopper" that can auto-post, but because I will be packing, I may take a blog-break if the boxes prove overwhelming. I'll let you know how it goes.

Giant Leap...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 24, 2015 at 7:50am

International Space Station - Facts and Figures Page

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

Growing up in the Apollo era, spaceflight and space exploration were "big deals" that stopped traffic, ensued water cooler conversations and dominated - at least in nerd culture - deep thoughts regarding where we were heading. It wasn't until the Space Shuttle Program that spaceflight became humdrum; routine. We'd pause when Challenger or Columbia tragedies dominated the news cycle, briefly reflect, give heartfelt condolences and go back to our technology-centered lives. My sincere hope is going forward we don't lose our need to explore and sense of wonder, nor suppress it with fear, propaganda, empty talking points and arrogant convictions. My optimism is many of our future leaders - in high school and college now - get to experience the "overlook effect" and maybe this cooperation will become a little more widespread, and sanguinely for out continuance, quite routine.

Since 1998, humanity’s had a permanent presence in space with the International Space Station. The ISS, which circles the Earth once every 90 minutes, is a model of global cooperation: A joint cooperation among five national space agencies, crewed by astronauts from more than 15 countries. Take an inside look at the daily life and science that goes on inside the space station whizzing by at more than 200 miles above our heads.
World Science Festival Staff

Radio Electron...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 23, 2015 at 6:28am

An electron in a magnetic field will turn circles and emit radiation. Adrian Cho - Science Mag

Topics: Cyclotron, Electromagnetism, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Radiation

Physicists have long known that charged particles like electrons will spiral in a magnetic field and give off radiation. But nobody had ever detected the radio waves emanating from a single whirling electron—until now. The striking new technique researchers used to do it might someday help particle physicists answer a question that has vexed them for decades: How much does a ghostly particle called the neutrino weigh?

"This is a great achievement on its own, and we're really looking forward to seeing this technology develop over time," says Guido Drexlin, an astroparticle physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany who was not involved in the work.

To understand the experiment, suppose an electron flies horizontally through a vertical magnetic field. It will experience a sideways force that is proportional to both its velocity and the strength of the field. That constant sideways shove will cause the electron to run in circles (see diagram). But that turning will also cause the electron to radiate electromagnetic waves, much as a wet dishcloth will fling off drops of water if you whirl it above your head. Of course, the radiation will sap the electron's energy, so that it will gradually spiral inward.

This effect has been understood for a century. It's used to generate x-ray beams by sending electrons racing around circular particle accelerators known as synchrotrons. Such radiation also emanates from swirling particles in interstellar space. Now, 27 physicists with Project 8, an experiment based at the University of Washington, Seattle, have detected radiation from a single electron. "I thought surely somebody must have done this," says Brent VanDevender, a nuclear physicist and team member from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. "I looked and looked and looked in the literature and couldn't find anything."

Science Mag: Physicists detect radio waves from a single electron, Adrian Cho

Current From Noise...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 22, 2015 at 6:54am

In this electron micrograph of the energy-harvesting device, the lower quantum dot is the red blob at the top of the red triangle. The upper quantum dot is the blue blob at the tip of the blue triangle. The image shows an area that is about 2 μm wide. (Courtesy: F Hartmann et al.)

Topics: Coupled Quantum Dots, Electronics, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics

Two quantum dots have been used to generate an electrical current from voltage noise. The device was created by physicists in Germany, who say that it could lead to the development of systems that convert waste heat into useful energy.

Electronic devices generate large amounts of excess heat that must be dissipated. Instead of simply discarding this energy, using it to do useful work could revolutionize the electronics industry, and make it possible to create more efficient devices. Indeed, for more than a decade, physicists have been thinking up ways to convert this heat into electrical currents that can do work, such as power electronic devices.

Now, Lukas Worschech and colleagues at the University of Würzburg in Germany have verified experimentally that random voltage fluctuations can be rectified to drive a direct current. The experiment uses voltage noise to mimic the hot and cold spots of waste heat, and is therefore not a direct demonstration of waste heat being converted into work. However, team member Fabian Hartmann explains that it shows that small voltage fluctuations can drive a current: "A device derived from our sample might be able to provide the necessary power to drive autonomous and self-powered systems."

Physics World: Physicists generate electrical currents from noise,
Katherine Kornei

Shades of Sith...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 21, 2015 at 6:18am

This Hubble Space Telescope image of four colliding galaxies in the Abell 3827 cluster shows the telltale signature of gravitational lensing--the bending of light's path by matter--in the form of blue arcs. The image suggests that dark matter in the cluster may interact with itself through some "dark force."

Credit: ESO

Topics: Astrophysics, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Gravitational Lensing, Humor

Title note: with Episode VII coming out Christmas, I couldn't resist!

After decades of studying dark matter scientists have repeatedly found evidence of what it cannot be but very few signs of what it is. That might have just changed. A study of four colliding galaxies for the first time suggests that the dark matter in them may be interacting with itself through some unknown force other than gravity that has no effect on ordinary matter. The finding could be a significant clue as to what comprises the invisible stuff that is thought to contribute 24 percent of the universe.

“This result, if confirmed, could upend our understanding of dark matter,” says physicist Don Lincoln of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, who was not involved in the research. So-called “self-interacting dark matter” has been suggested for some time but it has generally been considered unorthodox. The simplest model of dark matter portrays it as a single particle—one that happens to interact with others of its kind and normal matter very little or not at all. Physicists favor the most basic explanations that fit the bill and add extra complications only when necessary, so this scenario tends to be the most popular. For dark matter to interact with itself requires not only dark matter particles but also a dark force to govern their interactions and dark boson particles to carry this force. This more complex picture mirrors our understanding of normal matter particles, which interact through force-carrying particles. For example, protons interact through the electromagnetic force, which is carried by particles called photons (particles of light).

Scientific American:
Dark Matter May Feel a “Dark Force” That the Rest of the Universe Does Not,
Clara Moskowitz

OSIRIS-REx...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 20, 2015 at 7:14am

NASA's spacecraft to an asteroid – the OSIRIS-REx mission — is being readied for a 2016 liftoff. Gary Napier, Lockheed Martin spokesman (left) and reporter Leonard David (right) stand in front of spacecraft build-up on April 6, 2015 as technicians work on the probe for launch next year. Credit: Leonard David

Topics: Asteroids, Bennu, Clean Room, NASA, Space Exploration, STEM

Ahem: in a lot of STEM fields that are "stimulating" (pun intended), you'll find yourselves in apparel like this, affectionately known as "bunny suits." You can find a brief history of the clean room here and here.

DENVER, Colorado – A fact-filled and incredible day at Lockheed Martin on April 6, visiting ultra-clean room facilities in which NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is coming together for a September 2016 liftoff.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) probe is headed for asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich body that could hold clues to the origin of the solar system and host organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth.

The spacecraft will collect and return samples of the asteroid, returning the specimens gathered back to Earth for detailed analysis.

Lofted spaceward next year, the probe will reach asteroid Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

In protective garb, this reporter saw assembly, test and launch operations (ATLO) phase technicians hard at work in a critical stage of the program.

Over the next several months, spacecraft handlers will install on the OSIRIS-REx structure its many subsystems, including avionics, power, telecomm, mechanisms, thermal systems, and guidance, navigation and control.

The Bennu is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the sun, creation, and rebirth. It may have been the inspiration for the phoenix in Greek mythology. Wikipedia

Space.com:
A Reporter's View: NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Taking Shape, Leonard David

The Unraveling...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 19, 2015 at 9:13am

Image Source: Unraveling Fire II Boy - Art on Fire

Topics: Domestic Terrorism, Oklahoma Bombing, Timothy McVeigh, Xenophobia

According to this online calendar, today was Wednesday 20 years ago.

I remember the boys were with me (my wife was working) and I was off with them, making PB&J sandwiches for lunch. They were 12 and 2 then. The news of the Oklahoma City Bombing sickened me and horrified my oldest son. He wept over the thought some as young as his brother had died; I wept over both of them, and about the world that was coming. [1]

I remember the helplessness I felt when the wreckage of the Alfred P. Murrah building was broadcast on all stations across the world. We were a few months from the midterms and Newton Gingrich's "Contract With (or, some would say on) America." We were a year from the Internet using something we all take for granted now - search engines, first on home pages like AOL and Yahoo; then the very title of it becoming both a noun and verb: Bing and Google. Star Trek Voyager, Boy Meets World, Seinfeld, Friends and X-Files were our national obsessions. We were six years from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Peace Dividend we've never managed to cash in on.

The seeds of our unraveling/detachment from reality can be found here. As a nation, we've always been prone to fabricating "tall tales," but with the Internet it has made the loudmouth an expert, whether they completed a college degree, or have a wit of evident expertise in anything. The prerequisite seems to be willing to shout "fire" in crowded theaters or the public commons; babble incoherently and be misconstrued as "passionate" instead of insane. When the initial suspects were announced, every authority began looking for [initially] Arabic men; "false flag" became the excuse Du jour for everything we could not initially explain, then and now. Perhaps looking on this quick leap to accusation and judgment inspired a former US-backed Mujaheddin warrior we'd come to know infamously as Osama Bin Laden. Since they didn't care about vilification or leaps of illogical speculations, they literally had "nothing to lose."

Ominously, McVeigh was executed after waving further appeals June 11, 2001, three months to the DAY on the World Trade Center attacks of 9-11. [2]

"And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army." Rev 19:19 ESV

This has sadly been used by forces that would overthrow our democratic republic and establish a dangerous form of theocracy known as dominionism. (Note: all forms of theocratic governance are antithetical to democratic republican ideals.) Whether this is perceived as a literal or figurative event, perhaps it is a realization that peace isn't in our human natures. We have made cartoons and superheros of WWII and the "greatest generation," not having cultural memory of how hard life was here and on the war front, whitewashing what would become the Civil Rights movement as internal struggle from collective memory. "Here be dragons," and if none available, our determined imaginations will manufacture some in our need to slay them.

It was lastly, also the world of black helicopters, "jack-booted thugs" in black camouflage; "New World Order" - first in an address by President George Herbert Walker Bush, then neurosis by conspiracy theorists that would by steady osmosis - find its way into the mainstream. It was two years to the day from the Waco, Texas standoff between the ATF and the Branch Davidians and one day from Adolf Hitler's birthday (also used by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in their violent attack on Columbine High School in Colorado. In Timothy McVeigh's conspiracy-here-be-dragons literature found at the scene, a guide written sadly by a physics apostate: The Turner Diaries. William Luther Pierce may have earned a PhD in physics, but that did not inoculate him from irrational stances and daft thoughts. His lineage in the Confederacy; his alliance with the John Birch Society (founded by the patriarch of the Koch brothers), his anti-Semitic/anti-gay worldview were the seeds that filled his ink before he put pen to paper; before the Internet was a commercial entity. Hate does not require low IQ's or high tech: simple xenophobia and smoke signals will do. It is a legacy we're still inheriting, like dandelion seeds in the wind.

1. Today: 20 years later, TODAY looks back at the Oklahoma City bombing
2. History.com: Oklahoma City Bombing

Age of Einstein...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 18, 2015 at 7:30am

Image Source: Biography.com

Topics: Einstein, Special Relativity, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, Spacetime

It was Einstein that entered the term "warp" into our lexicon before the notion was popularized on the original Star Trek. That warp was gravity from the mass of objects like planets, suns; wormholes and black holes. It has lived on in the discovery of the intermediate vector boson ("W" and Z⁰particle), theorized by Dr's Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, meaning his was the "shoulder of [a] giant" these men stood on when they made their discovery. The foundation of the Higgs Boson were courses in special and general relativity as well as quantum mechanics, the root of all things micro and nano electronic. In a way, he's achieved immortality.

The link below is a PDF that goes through a primer of the physics at the high school level, which is appropriate. The more we understand about the physics that is all around us, the less we are frightened by, or put off by it. As we increase our intellectual acumen in STEM fields, is it too much to request such a self-study of those who wish to be our leaders, and possibly possess the nuclear codes?

This brief book is for the inquisitive reader who wishes to gain an understanding of the immortal work of Einstein, the greatest scientist since Newton. The concepts that form the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity are discussed at a level suitable for Seniors in High School. Special Relativity deals with measurements of space, time and motion in inertial frames of reference (see chapter 4). An introduction to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, a theory of space, time, and motion in the presence of gravity, is given at a popular level. A more formal account of Special Relativity, that requires a higher level of understanding of Mathematics, is given in an Appendix.

Historians in the future will, no doubt, choose a phrase that best characterizes the 20th-century. Several possible phrases, such as “the Atomic Age”, “the Space Age” and “the Information Age”, come to mind. I believe that a strong case will be made for the phrase “the Age of Einstein”; no other person in the 20th-century advanced our understanding of the physical universe in such a dramatic way. He introduced many original concepts, each one of a profound nature. His discovery of the universal equivalence of energy and mass has had, and continues to have, far-reaching consequences not only in Science and Technology but also in fields as diverse as World Politics, Economics, and Philosophy.

Free Physics Book: The Age of Einstein
Frank W. K. Firk
Professor Emeritus of Physics
Yale University

Tomorrow: The Unraveling

YuMi...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 17, 2015 at 6:49am

Image Source: ABB Robotics (link below)

Topics: Economy, Futurism, Jobs, Robotics, STEM

We are somewhere on the Kardashev Scale muscling our way from type 0 to type 1, slowly and steadily against a resisting, authoritarian and fearful tide. The future is here. However, to continue its advance will require training young people unabashedly in STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - the bedrock of advancement, economic prosperity, employment, equality and progress. STEM employees eventually retire, and need able replacements in their fields. Regressing, falling back to comforting dogma and superstitions heralds the dark ages. Irreplaceable artifacts from antiquity are being trashed by such forces in Mosul; similar ones here would have us too dumb to continue this important work. Robots at a minimum will need designers to dream them, and human hands to repair them.

The new era of robotic co-workers is here. YuMi is the result of years of research and development, making collaboration between humans and robots a reality, but it is also much more.

ABB has developed a collaborative, dual arm, small parts assembly robot solution that includes flexible hands, parts feeding systems, camera-based part location and state-of-the-art robot control. YuMi is a vision of the future. YuMi will change the way we think about assembly automation. YuMi is “you and me”, working together to create endless possibilities.

ABB Robotics: YuMi

Quantum Octave...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 16, 2015 at 6:34am

Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Hilbert Space, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Superposition

Curiouser and curiouser! Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: One of the features of 20th century art is its increasing level of abstraction from cubism and surrealism in the early years to abstract expressionism and mathematical photography later. So an interesting question is what further abstractions can we look forward to in the 21st century?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Karl Svozil, a theoretical physicist at the University of Technology in Vienna and his pal Volkmar Putz. These guys have mapped out a way of representing music using the strange features of quantum theory. The resulting art is the quantum equivalent of music and demonstrates many of the bizarre properties of the quantum world.

Svozil and Putz begin by discussing just how it might be possible to represent a note or octave of notes in quantum form and by developing the mathematical tools for handling quantum music.

They begin by thinking of the seven notes in a quantum octave as independent events whose probabilities add up to one. In this scenario, quantum music can be represented by a mathematical structure known as a seven-dimensional Hilbert space.

A pure quantum musical state would then be made up of a linear combination of the seven notes with a specific probability associated with each. And a quantum melody would be the evolution of such a state over time.

An audience listening to such a melody would have a bizarre experience. In the classical world, every member of the audience hears the same sequence of notes. But when a quantum musical state is observed, it can collapse into any one of the notes that make it up. The note that is formed is entirely random but the probability that it occurs depends on the precise linear makeup of the state.

And since this process is random for all observer, the resulting note will not be the same for each member of the audience.

Abstract:

We consider ways of conceptualizing, rendering and perceiving quantum music, and quantum art in general. Thereby we give particular emphasis to its non-classical aspects, such as coherent superposition and entanglement.

Physics arXiv: Quantum music
Volkmar Putz, Karl Svozil

Alien Minds...

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

Image Source: Popular Mechanics

Topics: AI, Aliens, Astrophysics, Existentialism, Exoplanets, Philosophy, SETI

From the write-up in Popular Mechanics last year:

University of Connecticut philosophy professor Susan Schneider certainly thinks so. In her new paper "Alien Minds," she proposes that by the time civilizations are able to communicate by radio, they're a few short steps away from developing artificial intelligence. One they reached that level of advancement, they may have opted to upgrade their biology to something that's a biomechanical hybrid or something entirely synthetic. There could be a whole mess of Borg out there, in other words. [1]

Okay, even in a quote from Dr. Paul Davies at the beginning of the paper: "I think it very likely – in fact, inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon... If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is very likely to be post-biological in nature..." [2]

I initially saw this on my Facebook feed from a good friend, and shared it. Then, like an overly "curious cat," I looked up the paper and read it. Ouch.

The link to Dr. Schneider's paper is given below. All our fanciful notions of aliens has always been something before the singularity; developed in similar gravity; Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere mixture (similar pressure); something familiar: something like us, that perhaps through panspermia seeded its variants throughout the cosmos. Let's just say her premise is quite sobering, in that ET may not be interested in conquering, communicating with nor destroying us: in this sense, it is likely a technology we cannot fathom ultimately disregarding anthropological beings as insignificant. Presumably, the post-hominid AI's purged some of our most deleterious traits in their antiquity: biology the equivalent of fossils, or an interstellar museum exhibit.

1. Why Superintelligent Machines Are Probably the Dominant Lifeforms in the Universe, John Wenz
2. Chapter 12: Alien Minds, Susan Schneider, PhD

Life Not As We Know It...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 14, 2015 at 7:49am

Image Source: Screen Rant - Prometheus

Topics: Astrobiology, Astrophysics, Aliens, Exobiology, Exoplanets, Humor, NASA, SETI, Space Exploration

A wild card search on the term "alien" can bring up some frightening images by some who have an exceptional amount of time on their hands. (The bug-eyed human-alien hybrids I saw would take some explaining...that's not the mail man's kid. I'll leave that disturbing search to anyone interested.) However, it's somewhat chauvinistic to assume all alien life is going to have five fingers and toes; an appreciation for the electromagnetic spectrum (visible light) or enjoy sounds, music, poetry and art as we do. They may be all together different in ways we've yet to imagine - in fiction or in research, a shock to our self-definition of intelligence and place in the universe. A similar shock to our system as when Galileo peered through a telescope and introduced heliocentric theory into our thinking. It will be a cultural paradigm shift - that I hope - we absorb gracefully. I sadly have my doubts.

Spacetime Atoms...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 13, 2015 at 8:30am

Image Source: Polyhistornaut

Topics: Diversity in Science, Theoretical Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Women in Science

Dr. Dowker asks the question "Do we need a physics of passage?" in the introduction to her paper (provided below). I saw her on an episode of "Through The Wormhole" and became intrigued by a million trillion trillionth of a second, and frankly teacups "always breaking." It was quite comforting to think everyone I've ever loved and once lived is comfortably not only in the past: but in their own definite, separate place. They exist there - ever there, and in my vivid, loving memories.

Abstract

The view that the passage of time is physical finds expression in the classical sequential growth models of Rideout and Sorkin in which a discrete spacetime grows by the partially ordered accretion of new spacetime atoms.

Physics arXiv: The birth of spacetime atoms as the passage of time* Professor Fay Dowker, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London

Appomattox...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 12, 2015 at 10:30am

NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE

Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Dred Scott, Walter Scott

Thursday, 9 April was the Sesquicentennial, the 150 year anniversary of the South's official surrender to the North in the person of Generals Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. On the same date in 1947, Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, making him the first African American to play in major league baseball; the first professional athlete of color in any sport at the time. He walked through a door first opened by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games, invalidating Hitler's theories of Aryan athletic superiority.

Yesterday, Walter Scott was buried...murdered in the heart of the Confederacy, for a broken tail light.

Cliven Bundy - that $1.1 million dollar, artful, tax-dodging welfare queen, who actually through armed militia threatened US officials with armed insurrection - is still free.

Dred Scott - the man for whom the Supreme Court's most daft decision was the match spark for the Civil War (and apparently, the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as candidate to the-then radical/progressive republican party) - said in the opinion of Chief Justice Taft:

"In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." [1]

Hauntingly, Dred Scott is buried just miles outside of Ferguson, Missouri.

From a similar, thoughtful article in The Atlantic: "It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God,” wrote James Baldwin in 1956 as the Civil Rights Movement took hold in America; “it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men." [2]

Since the election and reelection of President Obama, it's apparent we've never stopped fighting the Civil War. As publicly directed towards him, there is an obvious visceral disdain for the part of the American electorate that he, by existing embodies. There has been since his two terms an increase in highly motivated hate groups; hate crimes; the escalation in murders (example by this recent affront), luckily caught on a citizen's smart phone. Some would say the president has encouraged this. However, I posit that it's not his encouragement, it is his presence in the Presidential Mansion - renamed The White House after a visit to President Theodore Roosevelt by Booker T. Washington, and the national backlash it ensued [3] - that is so offensive to those that don't want their place in the social hierarchy disturbed (wanting "their country back"). From Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner and now Walter Scott: the Facebook meme below sums up the anger and frustration felt by citizens of this country. [4] It means we can never relax, never just "be." Even our genetic telomere lengths are shorter due to this stress.

Over time, the Civil War became the subject of great romanticization and sentimentalism in cultural memory. For veteran soldiers on both sides, reconciliation required time and the pressure of political imperatives imposed by the larger society on them and on the conflict’s memory. In the wake of this war, Americans faced a profound and all but impossible challenge of achieving two deeply contradictory goals—healing and justice. Healing took generations in many families, if it ever came at all. Justice was fiercely contested. It was not the same proposition for the freedmen and their children as it was for white Southerners, in the wake of their military, economic and psychological defeat. And in America, as much as it sometimes astonishes foreigners, the defeated in this civil war eventually came to control large elements of the event’s meaning, legacies, and policy implications, a reality wracked with irony and driven by the nation’s persistent racism. [2]

Walter Scott sprinted from the scene of a traffic stop, possibly thinking he was to be served for neglected child support payments. That is not worthy of an execution. He was shot in the back with the same regard as cattle at a slaughter shop; killing a mad dog fleeing. Considering that I am a US citizen that trained in a STEM field, an armed forces veteran (as Walter Scott); a MAN: I, nor my sons (the oldest also a veteran) should feel like this in our own country:

The "United" States of America: You cannot be united if you still support the slavery historically-generated "states rights" in everything from voting rights for African Americans; criminalizing a woman's right to choose, to same-sex marriage. The Ku Klux Klan; the John Birch Society; the Tea Party are the typical regressive reactionary responses to any fairness; any progress from the "lesser classes" that should "know their places." [5] We are becoming a byword; an oxymoron. The global economy we encouraged we're falling woefully behind. Technologically backpedaling, we are contesting Darwin and "Creation Science"; anti-vaccination activists to actual scientists; the Jesuit 6,000 year estimate to actual red shift measurement of the age of the universe; climate disruption that the Pentagon sees as an existential threat snowball poo-pooed as pseudo-controversy: our competition abroad has no equivalent analog - our inanity is being ignored for good reason. Like ancient Rome, we're bloated and over-extended; intensely tribal and superstitious; pseudo-scientific; withering from within. We are now a de facto Oligarchy, the only thing we're lacking is the final, deafening crash on the heaps of feudalism and anachronism. We could avoid it by an evolution in thought and policy; a new Appomattox that reinvigorates the republic, and takes this country forward: our viability as a nation is really in the long run, what matters for us all.

"We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. This Day in Quotes: March 6, 1857, The Dred Scott Case
2. The Atlantic: The Civil War Isn't Over, David W. Blight
3. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas A. Blackmon
4.

5. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, Corey Rubin

Slowing Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 11, 2015 at 11:30am

The future: Using simple glass fibres, a world wide web of quantum information can be created. Credit: TU Wien

Topics: Internet, Speed of Light, Quantum Internet, Quantum Mechanics

Light is an extremely useful tool for quantum communication, but it has one major disadvantage: it usually travels at the speed of light and cannot be kept in place. A team of scientists at the Vienna University of Technology has now demonstrated that this problem can be solved - not only in strange, unusual quantum systems, but in the glass fiber networks we are already using today.

By coupling atoms to glass fibers light was slowed down to a speed of 180 km/h. The team even managed to bring the light to a complete stop and to retrieve it again later. This technology is an important prerequisite for a future glassfiber-based quantum-internet, in which quantum information can be teleported over great distances.

In a vacuum, the speed of light is always the same - approximately 300 million meters per second. When light is sent through a medium such as glass or water, it is slowed down a little bit due to its interaction with the material. "In our system, this effect is extreme, because we are creating an exceedingly strong interaction between light and matter", says Professor Arno Rauschenbeutel (TU Wien / Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology). "The speed of light in our glass fiber is only 180 kilometers per hour. Any express train can top that."

Phys.org: Glass fiber that brings light to a standstill

Tomorrow: Appomattox