Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

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

After Contact...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 10, 2015 at 6:42am

Topics: Alien Life, Existentialism, NASA, SETI, Space, Space Exploration

This is the most recent article I've seen on the subject, stemming from the pronouncements of a NASA scientist that within 20 - 30 years, we'll confirm the existence of alien life:

"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years," Nasa chief scientist Ellen Stofan said on Tuesday, during a panel discussion focusing on the space agency's search for habitable environments outside of Earth.

Now, the article only suggests within the solar system, things like oceans on frozen moons around Jupiter or Saturn; microbes on Mars. It wouldn't have to say anything, fly in a spaceship with death rays, or speak at all. The fact that it is beyond the clouds we've known to stipple ozone blue skies. That would be "extra-terrestrial"; that would be as shattering as an actual contact with advanced intelligence. It would expand the notion of where life is, what forms it would take: if it is ubiquitous in our own solar system, then it is probably in all likelihood everywhere there are favorable conditions for it.

Wikipedia: partial plot synopsis, "Contact" (1997 movie) by Carl Sagan:

The nations of the world fund the construction of the machine in Cape Canaveral at the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39. An international panel is assembled to choose a candidate to travel in the machine. Although Arroway is one of the top selections, Christian philosopher Palmer Joss, a panel member whom Arroway met in Puerto Rico and with whom she had a brief romantic encounter, brings attention to her lack of religious faith. As this differentiates her from most humans, the panel selects Drumlin as more representative. On the day the machine is tested, a religious fanatic destroys the machine in a suicide bombing, killing Drumlin and many others.

Truther: Noun- One who rejects the accepted explanation of the events of 9/11. Truthers generally believe the U.S. government committed the acts of terrorism against itself. Urban Dictionary

That definition morphed over time: from flat-Earthers (with their own web site); to birthers; from denial of the moon launch to vaccine truthers that endanger the human herd in America and climate change denial that will eventually endanger entire species, human or otherwise. What then is a microbe that metabolizes oxygen in similar fashion to that which we've observed? What is any reality that collectively we don't want to except, but the next inconvenient truth-cum-conspiracy-theory, blared over web sites and trolled on social media? It may not be as melodramatic as the Contact scene, but I've noticed zealots - religious and irreligious - that attack anything that doesn't conform to their preconceived notions of what's "right" with their thought processes and what's "wrong" with everyone outside of their particular group. Once you can "other" anyone as outsider, you can remove their humanity, justify their slaughter, either actual, or digital avatar: ET truther.

Knowledge is not just power: it is disruptive to power and regressive forces serving power determined to fight mightily in order to distort it, or destroy it.

Knowledge is power, and so is the darkness of ignorance.

Dark ages - once fully metastasized - have a way of lasting a long, long time.

"...Science is a reliable method for creating knowledge, and thus power...science constantly disrupts hierarchical power structures and vested interests in a long drive [by science] to give knowledge, and thus power, to the individual, and that process is also political." From "Fool Me Twice - Fighting the Assault on Science in America," Shawn Lawrence Otto

Quantum Error-Correcting Codes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 9, 2015 at 7:06am

The Rindler-wedge reconstruction - Source: Quantum Frontiers

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Geodesic, High Energy Physics, Quantum Gravity, Quantum Information, Quantum Mechanics

Note: The original title of the post in Quantum Frontiers by Dr. Beni Yoshida is: "Quantum gravity from quantum error-correcting codes?" I reduced it out of brevity for the URL auto-generated in Blogger. The rest of his brilliant insights are at the link below (same original title). The gist: quantum information theory could have applications in describing other usually disparate phenomena in things like high energy (particle) physics; black holes, wormholes, which are themselves extreme expressions of gravity on the large scale. There has been a search in physics for a "unified theory" since Einstein that describes both gravity (large scale) and quantum phenomena (small scale), thus quantum gravity. It's self-admitted by Dr. Yoshida in his enthusiam a long post, and an even longer paper (65 pages). Luckily, my printer prints on both sides. Offline, it's what I'll be reading this weekend...

The lessons we learned from the Ryu-Takayanagi formula, the firewall paradox and the ER=EPR conjecture have convinced us that quantum information theory can become a powerful tool to sharpen our understanding of various problems in high-energy physics. But, many of the concepts utilized so far rely on entanglement entropy and its generalizations, quantities developed by Von Neumann more than 60 years ago. We live in the 21st century. Why don’t we use more modern concepts, such as the theory of quantum error-correcting codes?

In a recent paper with Daniel Harlow, Fernando Pastawski and John Preskill, we have proposed a toy model of the AdS/CFT correspondence based on quantum error-correcting codes. Fernando has already written how this research project started after a fateful visit by Daniel to Caltech and John’s remarkable prediction in 1999. In this post, I hope to write an introduction which may serve as a reader’s guide to our paper, explaining why I’m so fascinated by the beauty of the toy model.

Quantum Frontiers: Quantum gravity from quantum error-correcting codes? Dr. Beni Yoshida

Terraforming Earth...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 8, 2015 at 7:27am

What Mars might look like after centuries of terraformation. Image: NASA/ZME Science

Topics: Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Cosmic Connection, Earth, Ecology, Space Exploration, Terraforming

(Okay, somewhat "down-to-Earth"): The first time I read the concept of terraforming ("Earth-shaping") was in the book by Carl Sagan, "The Cosmic Connection" (see chapter 22: "Terraforming the Planets"). In it, he recounted a proposal he made in 1961 to seed algae in Venus' atmosphere to over a period of time cool it enough for human habitation. Biophysicist Robert Haynes coined the "neologism Ecopoiesis, forming the word from the Greek οἶκος, oikos, 'house', and ποίησις, poiesis, 'production'".There was apparently a symposium hosted by NASA in 1979; a book originally printed in 1984: "The Greening of Mars" (ref: Wikipedia). It has a long history in scientific and science fiction thought. Terraforming the planets only makes sense as they are far closer than exoplanets, and we don't have to contest a planet's resources with its inhabitants since as far as we can tell, there aren't any.

Zeroth thought: "Earth-shaping Earth" is redundant and silly. First thought of a geoengineering solution is it requires nothing of the polluters that got us here in the first place. No slight at all to the researchers, just that if you create a fat pill, no one's going to change their diets or continue exercising for increased health: it's the global equivalent of a couch potato, or a public ever more nonchalant about a pending global crisis that we'll "snap our fingers" and fix. Second thought: creating "life forms that clean" could have unintended consequences, as the authors of the Technology Review write up below alludes to. Third: note the photo of Mars above. That's a projection of centuries, not a few months before the first space RVs and suburban settlements. From the aspect of a society that has become entirely too push-button and "hit the reset" oriented, it seems it would be better on our own planet to mitigate anthropogenic climate disruption (a more apt descriptor) with policy and societal change in behaviors. Giving an engineering solution to this important issue without backing legislation or political will is similar in pouring gasoline simultaneously as the fire department attempts to put out a raging blaze.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The inexorable rise of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the steady increase in global temperatures raise the frightening prospect of significant change in Earth’s climate. Indeed, the evidence seems clear that our climate is altering rapidly.

So scientists and politicians the world over are looking for ways to halt or reverse these changes, a task that is fraught with difficulties in a world hooked on fossil fuels. One option increasingly discussed is terraforming—deliberately altering the environment in a way that cools the planet, perhaps by absorbing carbon dioxide or reflecting sunlight.

To have an impact, these kinds of plans changes must have a global reach require engineering projects of previously unimaginable scale. That’s set bioengineers thinking that there might be an alternative option.

Instead of creating global engineering projects, why not create life forms that do a similar job instead. The big advantage of this approach is that organisms grow naturally and can spread across huge areas of the planet by the ordinary mechanisms of life. Thus the process of terraforming the landscape would occur with minimal human input. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. The big fear is that these approach could have unexpected and unintended consequences for the planet. One nightmare scenario is that the organisms might unintentionally trigger feedback mechanisms that accelerate global warming rather than mitigate it. So an important question is how to prevent this scenario.

Physics arXiv: Synthetic circuit designs for Earth terraformation
Ricard Solé, Salva Duran-Nebreda, Raul Montañez

Space.com:
Shell-Worlds: How Humanity Could Terraform Small Planets (Infographic), Karl Tate

Virtual Reality...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 7, 2015 at 6:36am

AltspaceVR users can do things like play chess on a virtual chessboard, shown here in a virtual outdoor garden. Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Virtual Reality, STEM

Or should we say a baby step to the Holodeck (even Microsoft's version)? Sorry: since Sunday's post, I've been in a Trekkie mood (and yes, that's old-school, even though Gene coined for a distant cousin, the Trekkies vs. Trekkers debate rages on). I will come down to Earth tomorrow. Until then, LLAP...\\//_

We know what social networks are like on the Web and in apps, but what will they be like in virtual reality? While Facebook, the owner of Oculus VR, is surely pondering this behind the scenes, a startup called AltspaceVR is already offering a few clues about how we may connect with each other in a simulated world.

AltspaceVR is building social virtual environments, ranging from a Japanese-style garden to an amphitheater to a dark, sleek lounge. The hope is that headset-wearing users will hang out together in these places in the form of avatars that display real body language thanks to motion sensors, and do things like watching movies, playing games, or shopping together using a shared virtual Web browser. AltspaceVR also hopes developers will use the software development kit it’s building to bring all kinds of applications—a giant chess game, for instance, or a 3-D model viewer—to its social, virtual world.

Virtual-reality technologies aren’t yet consumer ready, but they’re coming. Oculus VR, Sony, HTC, and others are working on headsets; and the HTC Vive is planned for release late this year. Devices aimed at developers are already on the market—one example is the Gear VR, a $199 virtual-reality headset developed by Oculus VR and Samsung that uses a Samsung smartphone as the display.

AltspaceVR is among a growing number of companies trying to figure out what, exactly, we’ll do with these devices when they get here. Facebook, which owns Oculus VR, said in March that virtual reality gaming will be coming this year, while Philip Rosedale, the creator of the online virtual world Second Life, is building a virtual-reality universe called High Fidelity (see “The Quest to Put More Reality in Virtual Reality”).

Technology Review: A Startup’s Plans for a New Social Reality, Rachel Metz

Force Field...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 6, 2015 at 7:01am

Image Source: CNN.com

Topics: Boeing, Force Field, Lasers, Plasma Physics, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars

I saw this late last month, and thought: "hmm". The plasma is atmospheric, so at this point if it does work (see Wired's caveat emptor below), "raising shields" has to be below a Clarke Orbit. We may or may not achieve the exact effect of writers' imaginations. Certain things we take for granted - automatic doors (via optical electronics), cellular telephones, radio frequency remote control, rocketry - used to be the stuff of science fiction writer's dreams. Along with warp drive, we may have to wait for the science to disprove it, or manifest it.

(CNN) Raise shields!

Boeing has been granted a patent for a force field-like defense system, leading excited sci-fi fans to herald the advent of something previously seen only in the realms of "Star Wars" or "Star Trek."

Filed in 2012, the USPTO has granted the aerospace giant a patent for a "method and system for shockwave attenuation via electromagnetic arc."

On first look, it seems that they're onto something similar to "Star Wars'" deflector shields. The patent describes a system that would detect the shockwave from a nearby explosion and create an area of ionized air -- a plasma field -- between the oncoming blast and the vehicle it was protecting.

The method works, says the patent, "by heating a selected region of the first fluid medium rapidly to create a second, transient medium that intercepts the shockwave and attenuates its energy density before it reaches a protected asset."

By creating a temporary, superheated parcel of air with a laser, microwave or electrical arc, researchers believe that the shockwave would, in theory -- it hasn't been determined how far along Boeing's research into this has got -- dissipate once it hit the plasma field, leaving whatever was on the other side unaffected, or for the blast to at least be mitigated.

Wired: That Boeing Force Field? It Probably Won't Ever Work. Rhett Allain

Phoenix...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 5, 2015 at 10:25am

Star Trek "First Contact": The Phoenix

Topics: Dark Humor, Doomsday Clock, Star Trek, Nuclear Power, Treatment

So, Star Trek is definitely not "my baby," I am not a screenwriter; member of SAG nor am I remotely related to Gene Roddenberry. I'm having some tongue-in-cheek fan fun, and hopefully if CBS/Paramount decides to use it, they'll at least give me a byline, but...probably not.

* * * * *

Note: The following follows no known treatment format I'm aware of. Just that with the passing of Leonard Nimoy and the 50th anniversary of the Original Series next year, it got me thinking of some unresolved important things in the Trek timeline I wouldn't mind seeing on television. The strength of Star Trek has always been a positive view of the future; its only flaw other than fantastic, Heisenberg and Relativity-defying technologies (I think) are the missing baby steps taken to societal maturity and tolerance of diversity.

Nerdist reports of two possible new Trek series in the works. Judging from the write ups, one is a re-re-boot of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu and Scottie; the other a darker version of the Trek universe in the future when the Federation, like most empires, is bloated, over-extended and falls from galactic grace. I wouldn't mind either, really. I would delight if both story lines were brought to the flat screen and set my DVR accordingly.

However, as I found in the post “Farpoint,” there is a part of the faux human history that is being avoided, perhaps purposely, perhaps because no one has a treatment or script idea centered on it, or we’re just too close to the subject matter: World War III and its aftermath.

From Farpoint: "Nuclear war would be a fool's errand - whether as in Federation we established colonies on off worlds, the conflagration would leave swaths of Earth clearly uninhabitable for thousands of years. Corpses would have no care who actually "won" such an insane engagement. The Trek universe eludes to the discontinued existence of Washington, Moscow and other global capitals, hence the location of the fictional United Federation of Planets in San Francisco." We should see this in a dramatic new Trek series; ponder the term "Mutually Assured Destruction" (M.A.D.), and that we still have an active doomsday clock. Disturbingly, from the press release by the Bureau of Atomic Scientists, we are now 3 minutes to midnight.

Star Trek: Deep Space 9 suggested in a two-part episode rampant inequality in the 21st Century (how prescient), to the point in the United States at least, the uber 1% build “sanctuary cities” for the poor to be warehoused in to eventually die (DS9: “Past Tense” Part I and Part II).

I've always fancied a "Star Trek: Phoenix," as in rising from the ashes of destruction and building something quite different, more democratic and less stratified than our current society and its inequality that is now epidemic - - and reinforced by modern-day cults: commercial, personality, religious types; news pundits and politicians, our own fairy tale beliefs of society and our place and mobility in it. It also happens to have been the name of the first warp ship built by Dr. Zephram Cochrane a lot of fans would remember. Plus, with the exception of the novel Federation, Zephram is almost an afterthought with no back story, that I think would be quite interesting to watch.

For example, even though humanity was in a barbaric state at the end of "Star Trek: First Contact," can you imagine a few of our current loons accepting a pointy eared, bowl-haircut, and green skinned alien with a “live long and prosper” salute? Civilization collapsed on itself; not a single cell phone tower would be up; no malls; the Internet and million player online games in a complete shambles and unresponsive. I could see loud zealots and teenagers in neurosis. I’d expect riots up to the point the Vulcans showed us how to replicate a T-bone steak! Also, as Copernicus and Galileo did with the Heliocentric (correct) view of the solar system, the idea we’re not only not alone in the universe, but there are these intelligent "other" beings that don’t share our cultures; our history; our prejudices; our religions: that would be upsetting and faction-creating. For the sake of moving the story along in Trek, a few billion people suddenly stopped being cruel to each other and started getting along in a fitful flight of magical thinking. In light of current events I see on the evening news, it would light initially an existential powder keg. As a case-in-point, the indictment against Galileo (as of this 2013 post) is STILL in effect!

“Phoenix” would have the feel I appreciated from “Enterprise” (a show that ended too soon), this would be before even a glimmer of a thought of a “Prime Directive.” After a flirt with the sixth extinction event on Earth, this time self-caused, the former United States was apparently fighting an Eastern Coalition that warred with them frequently. Colonel Green - another barely a-mention in the Original Star Trek or Enterprise - used genocide after the war to purify humanity from the ravages of radiation poisoning. The scary part is I could see some political demagogue thinking this quite "rational," and gathering a following in authoritarian fashion. He had been influenced – as I said in Farpoint – by the Optimum Movement, itself an outgrowth of Khan Noonien Singh and his sister and brother genetic supermen. It could be gritty, grimy, and dangerous even involve the current vogue: Zombies of a kind, with a biological explanation. It wouldn't need much high tech technology as we’d be trying to recover what we lost and discover new designs and paradigms. It would be like after any terrible disaster – Earth as “Survivor Island” – as humanity clawed its way up from barbarity and created a new civilization, one less stratified; more fair and just and above all, rational and sane.

Sir Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Denise Crosby, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner – doing cameos in a two-episode pilot, leading to a confrontation where traditionalists fighting change want to return to the “old ways” – that ahem, plunged humanity back into the dark ages. I could see either Stewart or Frakes shouting “no more!” after an emotional soliloquy about not going back to the previous ignorance and fears, selling the scene. Star Trek, like any great science fiction/fantasy story asks the question through its characters (e.g. Data, Picard, Worf) over again we never tire of: “what does it mean to be ‘human’?” It's a prequel, but for example, I watch Gotham with the full knowledge of how the Batman mythical universe will eventually flesh itself out, villains and all. It's just fun watching the creativity of writers building the bricks of it to its logical conclusion: cape and cowl in one instance; warp drive and aliens in another.

"Phoenix" would then be a story not of warp drives and miracle materializing technologies: but the miracle we survived our own hubris at all to venture forward to the stars. Its impact could be quite powerful as a mirror to ourselves in light of current events; a way to start conversations without partially following the famous dictum of Carl von Clausewitz: "War is merely a continuation of politics"— or "of policy"—"by other means." A few enthusiastic cheerleaders drop the important prepositional phrase at the statement's end.