Afrofuturism on PBS
(The Good Part Starts at 16:30)
I thought you might like this: http://www.pbs.org/video/2365794059/
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| Mid Hudson March for Science, Poughkeepsie, New York |
I participated in the Mid Hudson March for Science Saturday, 22 April 2017 at 2:00 pm Eastern. The weather was overcast but not rainy at a comfortable 57 degrees, so it made a 0.6 mile march quite doable and pleasant.
I was a little concerned and jealous when I saw the marches in DC and NYC, the crowds featured by the news outlets in Times Square and the nation's capital were impressive and large. Poughkeepsie held its own quite impressive display of unity for science, reason and ultimately truth. I estimate we had 350 - 400 science enthusiasts, young and old - from toddlers to retired - and as diverse as a prism or rainbow. There was the sign "proud parents of a PhD in Chemistry"; the beautiful fraternal twins, one of them couldn't relax in his dual stroller out of the grasp of his mother. I had interesting side conversations in things ranging from the origin of the Internet, Moore's Law and the current policies that have everyone concerned. I saw a few irritated drivers as we gummed up traffic down Main Street. We had to stay on the sidewalk to the final destination along the Hudson River.
Every march needs a GREAT BAND with a driving beat to step forward, even for brief trek. Please note the creative signs displayed at the march.
A coed from Marist College remarked: "Last semester, I went to concerts. This semester, my life revolves around marches." I asked her and her friend - an African American and Asian - if they were registered to vote. They enthusiastically said yes, and pledged to vote in EVERY election. That, like science matters.
I felt overwhelmed, first at the brief memory of my deceased parents and their support of my science pursuits. Then something I used to experience when I jogged, similar to "runners high," as we got to the end of the march at the shore of the Hudson River at Wayas Park: there were several "science teach ins" and people that wore t-shirts that said "ask me about _____." I talked to a member of the Mid Hudson Astronomical Association (I'm on their meet up) and we talked shop about when and where they meet. Since my schedule had changed, I said I could meet them on their Wednesday night star gazing.
I talked to a man that had a t-shirt that said "ask me about Ebola." I found out he was not a medical doctor as I had surmised, but a historian. He was born in Sierra Leon, and was documenting how colonialism had affected his country in the way of infectious diseases (sounded similar to the book Germs, Guns an Steel by Jared Diamond). We had a pleasant conversation and a good exchange. I shook his hand as I moved to other exhibits.
I saw the STEM teach-in by IBM with the typical wafer samples and motherboards, and chuckled that the electronic snap kits I use to do the same thing they also brought (they had the 100 experiment kit, I have that, the 750 experiment and 3-D kits).
There were conservationists, botanists, possum skeletons and pelts for some reason, people in lab coats and 45 in effigy. I purposely didn't take a photo of it since he's quite ubiquitous and nauseating without my broadcasting.
I guess my high was the concern shown by a diverse community quite concerned with science and its pursuit of truth being warped to the desire of authoritarians that since Galileo have been threatened that the Scientific Method typically doesn't agree with their narrative. I felt my eyes weld; my chest warm as my blood rushed.
Though I went there by myself (my wife exhausted from a real estate exam), I at no time felt "alone."
March for Science web site.
New York Times: Scientists, Feeling Under Siege, March Against Trump PoliciesNicolas St. Fleur |
| J Robert Oppenheimer, Image Source: YouTube |
Topics: Einstein, Existentialism, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Oppenheimer, Politics
What I wouldn't give for "truthful hyperbole." The riff in "The Art of the Deal" that we now know was ghostwritten and probably like the life of the 45th president a blatant, pathological lie, it was at least a strategy towards an end: a clever tactic that bent the rules but did not break them or the administrative state. An armada is headed towards the Korean peninsula until its revealed it was actually in the Indian Ocean thousands of miles away. Two generals on his staff and his press secretary used the word "prudent," perhaps as a prayer that maybe in the long line of obfuscations, this was a legitimate act that wasn't born in indigestion, bad dreams and a tweeted warped imagination. What was alarming is the bluff or buffoonery could have ratcheted up tensions on the 38th parallel. 20+ million South Koreans, military bases and businesses like Hyundai and in the semiconductor industry were at the mercy of chance and blind luck if anything popped off. The closest military bases in South Korea or the pacific theater couldn't have responded in time to interdict catastrophe, only to help bury bodies in a conventional bombing aftermath. They're probably and rightly pissed with us.
His predecessor "wiretapped" him, and because he put his tweet in quotes it takes new meaning. Devin Nunes put himself squarely back on his dairy ranch and his political career in the golden crapper, getting the information from the White House to "reveal" it to the same and the media the next day. Correlate that to now the official log of visitors will in his bumbling aftermath not be revealed, so as to not know which staffer let the congressman in and the time stamp. Surprisingly, his midnight run has not been parodied by late night comedy as I've seen. It also explains 45's frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago: it is his country club, and as a guarantor of the privacy of members at $200,000.00 a year, no logs there are made, or will ever be published. A kingpin of the Mafia could visit or a Russian oligarch, and we would never know.
Andrea Mitchell, exasperated said this administration "flat out lies" as if beyond pathology, this chaos is a source of pleasure: a political pyromaniac that lights fires, denies responsibility while jerking off to the engulfing flames of a crumbling republic.
In geopolitics, it's dangerous. Being unpredictable, or thinking no one will ever challenge us because they think our president is insane is not a doctrine, not a strategy: it is pure insanity. This will embolden Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS/ISIL et al, not cow them. So far, the recent published opinions of ISIS that "the US is bankrupt and being run by an idiot" hasn't as yet resulted in a morning, mean-girl counter tweet storm.
Paul Mason, contributing to the Opinion Page of The Guardian (see Related links) summed it best:
"I don’t wish to alarm you, but right now the majority of the world’s nuclear warheads are in the hands of men for whom the idea of using them is becoming thinkable."
Those men are Vladimir Putin, Kim Jung Un and the 45th president, an "axis of grift, testosterone-driven, short-penis evil," thumping their chests like alpha apes, ignoring the ramifications of the effects of geopolitical gravity if we all plunge over this cliff. Nuclear war is thinkable to these men: megaton yield, radiation sickness, hunger, death, isotope half lives beyond human lifetimes for civilization to recover apparently is not. Trolls love to point out "science created the atomic bomb." Yes, it did. Werner Von Heisenberg was a scientist in the employ of the German Nazis working on the bomb. Father of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics, he likely would have been promptly executed for any misgivings had he not. Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist that almost single-handedly created the modern age during his "Annus Mirabilis," leading to this age of computers, solar panels, transistors, television, the Internet and GPS systems. He was also a Jewish immigrant fleeing Nazi Germany for his life, that wrote the US president on the danger of them getting the bomb first and what this posed, encouraging what became known as The Manhattan Project, a sin science has tried to atone for (since Oppenheimer famously quoted Hindu scripture) in publishing the report annually by the Union of Concerned Scientists about how close we are to extinction. The colloquial phrase is "if we didn't do it, we all might be speaking German." I say we - especially ethnic and social minorities - probably wouldn't be having this pleasant conversation if we hadn't. It doesn't excuse the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that most historians now say the Empire of the Sun was literally on its last legs, and a few months more of empty stomachs could have changed the minds of the most recalcitrant regimes. This genie has been out of its bottle for quite some time now. We hope each election our heads of state are levelheaded responsible actors, not someone who tweets reflexively the last thing seen on Fox News without thought or context, or from a White Genocide twitter account. Apparently from the recent US elections and the rise of xenophobia in Europe, fascism - what we fought WWII for and established in its wake NATO and trade agreements - is making a comeback.
Another name for Beelzebub is "the father of lies." Who knew he would be personified in a septuagenarian that could do so in 140 characters or less?
Related linksFusion:The Long, Lucrative Right-wing Grift Is Blowing Up in the World's FaceAlex PareeneReuters:North Korea warns of 'super-mighty preemptive strike' as U.S. plans next moveJu-min Park, SeoulThe Guardian:Nuclear war has become thinkable again - we need a reminder of what it meansPaul MasonThe Intercept:Top Democrats Are Wrong: Trump Supporters Were More Motivated by Racism Than Economic IssuesMehdi HasanThe New Yorker:Donald Trump, North Korea and the Case of the Phantom ArmadaAmy Davidson
https://burlywalter.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/first-blog-post/
Check out my debut Photo Graphic Novel. Dark/Light...Leave your feedback on my blog.
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| Credit: American Chemical Society |
I of course have several nerd shirts. One I bought from my company spells out "I play with chips" using elements of the Periodic Table. The list of elements conform with literally substances used in most electronic devices: Iodine (I53), Phosphorous (P15), Lanthanum (La57), Yttrium (Y39), Tungsten (W74), Iodine (I53), Thorium (Th90), Carbon (C6), Hydrogen (H1), Iodine (I53), Phosphorous (P15), Sulfur (S16). I believe it was contracted to at least my company, but a simple logo change on the left sleeve could disseminate it. I don't see it anywhere else on the Internet.
I put the links to the safety data sheets on them above because with usage there is the discarding, the throwing away in trashcans that end up in landfills that like radioactive elements and plastics, have VERY long shelf lives hazardous to human health. I'm sure cornstarch is probably a lot less harsh. The shirt is still a good conversation starter.
As consumers upgrade their gadgets at an increasing pace, the amount of electronic waste we generate continues to mount. To help combat this environmental problem, researchers have modified a degradable bioplastic derived from corn starch or other natural sources for use in more eco-friendly electronic components. They report their development in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Abstract
Nano metal–organic frameworks (ZIF-8) particles were synthesized, and poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/ZIF-8 nanocomposite films were prepared by solution-blending and film-casting methods. The addition of nano ZIF-8 particles improved the mechanical properties and had an impact on the crystallization of PLA. The electrical properties of the PLA/ZIF-8 nanocomposites were found to be dependent on the frequency and the ZIF-8 content. The prepared PLA/ZIF-8 films had good transparency even as the content of the nano ZIF-8 particles reached 3 wt %. Compared with 21.5% of pure PLA, the limited oxygen index value of the nanocomposite film containing 1 wt % ZIF-8 reached 26.0%. Therefore, it is proposed that the prepared nanocomposites can be used as the substrates and dielectric to make disposable electronics. The char residues after burning were studied in detail by scanning electron microscopy and Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies, and the flame retardant mechanism was also discussed.
Phys.org: Degradable electronic components created from cornstarchRelated LinkNational Center for Biotechnology Information: Environmental Health PerspectivesHazardous Waste: Electronics, Lead, and Landfills, Valerie J. Brown
![Just Create IT!!!: How to Create a Graphic Novel And Film/TV Show Thru Amazon by [Love, Chris]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51DGB6Uw9gL.jpg)
If you ever wanted to Create a graphic novel and/or a film/TV show then this book is for you? CreateSpace, a company under Amazon, has the tools for you to create your first of many graphic novels. Amazon Video Direct has the tools to Create an Instant Download of your project. Along with a DVD, you are ready to sell your work alongside major studios and publishers. Using my experiences of producing a graphic novel and film called "The Flying Bullet", I will simplify the process of making a Best Seller and/or Blockbuster. It's straight to the point and inspirational. When you are done reading the guide, you will have done something you always wanted to do. All you have to do is Just Create IT!!!
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| Image Source: Link below |
I've taught physics at the college level as well as high school. I've taught special needs students as well as students acquiring their HSE (high school equivalency, the replacement of the GED).
There's a nostalgia of the "good old days" that like all with the distance of time, we mis-remember things because as students, we typically didn't understand the pedagogy of the times. Our nostalgic recollections do have the absence of distracting technologies like the ubiquitous contronym, "smart phones."
I've found using a method called “mind mapping” a good warm up. For example, when teaching about “work,” I put the word on the board and asked my HSE class what it meant. What I got:
Now of course, the trick is to get the five in the class to Work = Force x Distance, Power = Work/Time and Simple Machines. That takes a certain amount of patience. One student I recall "didn't want to be there." The other four did good work, and we had a humorous back-and-forth on "The Flash" and what I've termed "cartoon physics." Since speed was their thing, I explained what it meant when The Flash made a sonic boom; that it had nothing to do with the speed of light and how VAST that difference actually is. As work goes, we were all "pumped" at the end of the hour.
Hence, the article in Physics Today grabbed me. To continue teaching and propagating an understanding of physics as well as science, we're going to be a little creative, answer questions on cartoon physics and steer them back on the rails... to their own futures.
Physics is the most exciting endeavor I can imagine. That is why I want to become a physicist and join what Richard Feynman called “the greatest adventure that the human mind has ever begun.”1 Now, after my second year of undergraduate studies in astrophysics at University College London (UCL), I want to comment on some of the vicissitudes I have experienced while being taught physics. The basic courses of my first two years were disappointing. They didn’t really give me the opportunity to join that greatest adventure. Most of my lecturers followed traditional teaching approaches based heavily on solving standard problems and learning by rote, with no hint of free inquiry or discussion. They seemed to be convinced that we would understand physics through that method. I was not enthusiastic.
Physics Today: How to teach me physics: Tradition is not always a virtue, Ricardo Heras
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| Figure 1: Using the Pegasus facility at UCLA, Maxson and colleagues [1] have compressed electron pulses to below 10 fs in duration. In this facility, a relatively long electron pulse (green) produced by an electron source (not shown) enters a specially designed linear accelerator (copper, left), whose electromagnetic fields act to compress the pulse several meters downstream from the accelerator. Here, the pulse can be made so short (below 10 fs) that it would “outrun” all atomic motion in molecules (blue) and materials. In an electron diffraction or microscopy experiment with pulses like this, atoms are effectively frozen in place during an exposure (yellow). [Credit: APS/Alan Stonebraker] |
When you read the term “electron beam,” what comes to mind? If you are a physicist or have a background in physics, it may be the great J. J. Thomson—discoverer of the electron—followed by a vision of an old television or oscilloscope powered by cathode-ray tubes. Very twentieth-century stuff. If this is your view, a new study by Jared Maxson at the Pegasus radiation facility at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues [1] should help make clear how electron beams are one of the primary enablers of twenty-first-century science. Ultrashort electron-beam pulses—less than 10 fs long in this case—are enabling forms of atomic-level dynamic imaging that were previously restricted to the realm of thought experiments [2].
It is difficult to overemphasize the impact that electron beams have had on scientific developments over the last century, or the impact they are expected to have over the next century. While electron beams are currently out of favor in high-energy physics, because of the move from electron-positron colliders to hadron colliders at CERN, Fermilab, and other laboratories, they are central to other areas of science. For example, when we want to perform detailed examinations of the structure of molecules and materials, electron beams are at the forefront. Transmission electron microscopes and scanning electron microscopes are remarkably efficient instruments for generating and measuring an enormous range of signals that reveal the structure of materials. These signals come from both the elastic and inelastic interaction of electron beams with materials, and modern materials science is unthinkable without these instruments. When operated at cryogenic temperatures, these same instruments enable 3D reconstructions of proteins, viruses, organelles, and even whole cells [3]. Complementary work can also be performed using synchrotron light sources or free-electron lasers [4], which produce x-ray and infrared beams that are themselves generated from pulsed relativistic electron beams circulating in storage rings or linear accelerators. The size of the facilities that host these instruments, and the properties and limitations of the instruments as sources of x-ray and infrared radiation, are largely determined by the properties of such electron beams.
APS Physics Viewpoint: Electron Pulses Made Faster Than Atomic MotionsBradley Siwick, Department of Physics and Department of Chemistry, Center for the Physics of Materials, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 0B8, Canada
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| Image Source: Quora |
Info link: Double Data Rate, Wikipedia
The new, higher-speed DDR4 DRAM generation gained significant marketshare in 2016, representing 45% of total DRAM sales. Previously, DDR3 DRAM, including low-power versions used in tablets, smartphones, and notebook PCs, accounted for 84% of total DRAM sales in 2014 and 76% in 2015, but in 2016, DDR4 price premiums evaporated and prices fell to nearly the same ASP as DDR3 DRAMs. A growing number of microprocessors, like Intel’s newest 14nm x86 Core processors, now contain DDR4 controllers and interfaces. As a result, IC Insights expects DDR4 to become the dominant DRAM generation in 2017 with 58% marketshare versus 39% for DDR3.
The Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) officially launched the fourth generation of DDR in 2012. In 2014, DDR4 memories first began appearing on the market in DRAM modules for powerful servers and a small number of high-end desktop computers, which had souped-up motherboards or the “extreme” versions of Intel’s 22nm Haswell-E processors for high-performance gaming software and PC enthusiasts, but volume sales remained low until 2015, when data centers and Internet companies began loading up servers with the new-generation memories to increase performance and lower power consumption. In 2016, DDR4 memories quickly spread into more data center servers, mainframes, and high-end PCs, accounting for about 45% of total DRAM sales versus 20% in 2015. In 2017, DDR4 will move into more notebook PCs, high-end tablets, and smartphones and is expected to hold a 58% share of DRAM sales.
Solid State Technology:DDR4 set to account for largest share of DRAM market by architecture
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| Spock's comment that "Change is the essential process of all existence" remains one of the most memorable lines of dialogue ever uttered on Star Trek. - See more at: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield |
Topics: Diversity, Existentialism, Futurism, Martin Luther King, Politics, Star Trek
It is Good Friday in the United States and elsewhere around the world.
The Biblical name Moab means "of his father" in Hebrew, the apparent product of the illicit, incestual coitus between Lot and his two daughters during a drunken seduction by both of them to ensure the continuance of his lineage. Several double entendre examples emerge to mind, salacious, lascivious and darkly ironic: manliness, missiles and spermatozoa. We tend to cheer presidents when they lob missiles, even the draft-dodger ones. In one case to conceal a consensual sexual peccadillo; the other to deflect from an active FBI investigation (with one revealed FISA warrant) regarding collusion with a foreign power... to "win."
I re-posted "Last Battlefield," a poignant episode in the third season of the original Star Trek as its ratings declined, eventually going into syndication and rabid fandom for what would or perhaps always was called futurism, a world Roddenberry envisioned beyond the assassinations of a president (John F. Kennedy), his brother (Robert F. Kennedy) and sandwiched between them Civil Rights icons Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. A world where humankind's progeny lives and survives.
This is the third rendition in the age of "mother of all bombs" as a madman plans to up-the-ante in oneupmanship penis envy on the Korean peninsula, a megaton yield promised proportional to 16 Hiroshima's. It may be bluff; it may be bluster. World wars have started on less: WWI, WWII. There is a plan to preemptively strike North Korea to hamper any nuclear program it may have, and at whatever stage. The madman has a "big brother" in the formerly-known-as currency manipulator, China, that will under obligation of treaty challenge such a plan. The impact of escalation would first immediately be felt by South Korea, Japan; world markets and stability.
We also have in this nation, a leader that prevaricates like middle school children generate flatulence. The Air Force drilled us in war games incessantly, then on deployment to the actual exercise or theater, we learned to change on the fly. We derisively called it "rigid flexibility." For the 45th occupant of the Executive Mansion and holder of the nuclear codes, the best description should be "consistent inconsistency." He promised to be unpredictable on the campaign trail, this being the only thing approaching a "doctrine." We - the hapless electorate - follow as best we can with a mixture of angst, attention-deficit, PTSD and whiplash.
What is more frightening than a president that makes obfuscation an Olympic sport is our collective cultural arrogance that the Earth as we know it will always be, and unlike the dinosaur we will not go extinct.
The exception to us with respect to the dinosaurs is they did not know about the missile-meteor that generated the Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico... nor did they design it or tempt Apocalypse in 140 characters (or less).
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This was first posted in August of 2013, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. I can hope Star Trek's return in 2017 to CBS has as much cultural impact as this episode did with me at its time and timing.
The vitriol and violence of the 2016 presidential campaign I've seen at political rallies; the racism, misogyny, tribalism and xenophobia purposely designed appealing to our lesser angels will not solve any problems, nor have any substantive policy proposals been forwarded by this particular camp. Sometimes art is a reflection of life. In this case, I sincerely hope life does not imitate art.
* * * * *
One of the most powerful Trek episodes for me as a youth was "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Recall, the 60's weren't just "make love, not war": there was a lot of both. Vietnam overseas, protests of the war and Civil Rights/Voting Rights marches at home. Suspicions that any deviance from the John Birch Society authoritarian "norm" was judged subversive; communist, therefore necessarily purged and crushed from existence. Judging from the date of airings, its first showing came nine months after the sad assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
It also aired during the climate of the Cold War, a period many seemingly LONG to get back to (that madness), where the nuclear "plan" was called MAD: mutually assured destruction. We still possess that insane power, essentially holding humanity hostage; guns to our own heads.
Gene Roddenberry put an interracial, international crew together: Nyota Uhura (literally: "Freedom Star" in Kiswahili); Hikaru Sulu (for the Sulu sea, meant to represent all of Asia, but of fictional Japanese origin); Pavel Andreievich Chekov (a RUSKIE for crying out loud!). You could say in this fictional treatment, Bele and Lokai "stood their ground" until the end. Roddenberry, as I've commented before developed his own eschatology, yet positive and relevant that we might just survive our own hubris, essentially stemming from old tribal conflicts and current contemporary displays of breathtaking stupidity and arrogance.
This episode was a stark warning; the inevitable consequences of NOT...
Source: Wikipedia
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is the fifteenth episode of the third season of the original science fiction television show Star Trek. It was first broadcast on January 10, 1969, and repeated on August 12, 1969. It was written by Oliver Crawford, based on a story by Gene L. Coon (writing under his pen name "Lee Cronin") and directed by Jud Taylor. The script evolved from an outline by Barry Trivers for a possible first season episode called "A Portrait in Black and White". The script was accepted for the third season following budget cuts. The episode guest-stars Lou Antonio and Frank Gorshin, best known for his role as The Riddler in the Batman live-action television series. Contrary to popular rumor and articles, Gorshin was not Emmy nominated for this role.
In this episode, the Enterprise picks up two survivors of a war-torn planet, who are still committed to destroying each other aboard the ship.
Amazon link
Once the Ariannus mission is completed, Bele takes control of the Enterprise again, but this time he deactivates the auto-destruct in the process and sends the ship to Cheron. Once there, the two aliens find the planet's population completely wiped out by a global war fueled by insane racial hatred. Both Lokai and Bele stare silently at the destruction on the monitor and realize they are the only ones left of their race (or, as they see it, their "races").Instead of calling a truce, the two beings begin to blame each other for the destruction of the planet and a brawl ensues. As the two aliens fight, their innate powers radiate, cloaking them with an energy aura that threatens to damage the ship. With no other choice, Kirk sadly allows the two aliens to chase each other down to their obliterated world to decide their own fates, consumed by their now self-perpetuating mutual hate. Forlorn, Lt. Uhura asks if their hate is all they ever had. Kirk ruefully says no...but it is all they have left.
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."
"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
"The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., BrainyQuote.com
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"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.""A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."
"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
"The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., BrainyQuote.com
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| Igor Balla for Quanta Magazine |
Imagine a set of many lines as in a dream. The lines intersect at a point and radiate outward. There’s something perfect about the way they’re spaced that you can’t quite put your finger on. You start counting them, but before you can finish you wake up with a question hanging on the fringe of your mind: Just how many were there?
For at least 70 years, mathematicians have been trying to answer a question like that one. The sets of lines they’re interested in share a basic feature: Any two lines from the set intersect to form the same angle. Such sets of lines are called “equiangular.” Mathematicians want to know just how big those sets can get as you move past the 3-D space of our everyday experience and into higher dimensions.
Equiangular lines are much more than a curiosity — they’re an almost elemental way to think about geometry. Maximal constructions of equiangular lines often align perfectly with the vertices of highly symmetric shapes, which make them a way to discover the existence of those shapes in the first place. In addition, radiating equiangular lines would pass through the surface of a surrounding sphere at equidistant points. This property makes the lines important for so-called spherical codes, which have important applications in applied mathematics and computer science.
Last spring a team of mathematicians found the maximum number of equiangular lines possible in any dimension, given certain conditions. They proved that that number is much smaller than previous best estimates. Benny Sudakov, a professor of mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and one of the lead authors, credits the breakthrough to the wide range of mathematical techniques he and his coauthors were able to apply to the problem.
“It’s like when you’re cooking something, we suddenly found we had the right ingredients,” said Sudakov.
Quanta Magazine: A New Path to Equal-Angle Lines, Kevin Hartnett
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| Figure 1: Scheme of the setup used by Jennewein and co-workers [1]. A pump laser generates a three-photon entangled state through a cascade of frequency conversion processes in a nonlinear crystal. The oscillations in the rate of three-photon coincidence measured by the detectors provide the signature of genuine three-photon interference. |
Quantum interference effects lie at the heart of technologies that promise radically new capabilities for sensors, secure communications, and computing. Most existing experiments and applications rely on one photon interfering with itself, or two photons interfering with each other. However, the interference of a larger number of particles leads to a richer variety of phenomena, and may enable more sophisticated applications. Now, two independent groups, the first led by Thomas Jennewein at the University of Waterloo, in Canada [1], the second by Ian Walmsley at the University of Oxford, in the UK [2], have been able to isolate and observe, for the first time, “genuine” interference between three photons, that is, an effect deriving from the quantum interference of three photons that does not originate from two-photon or single-photon interference. The two studies provide new tools for controlling multiphoton interference, which may help researchers design new fundamental tests of quantum mechanics, quantum-communication protocols, and powerful quantum simulators.
The quintessential example of multiphoton quantum interference is the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, first observed in 1987. In an HOM experiment [3], two independent photons coming from different directions impinge on a 50:50 beam splitter. If the two incoming photons are distinguishable, the outgoing photons will split equally between the two exit ports of the splitter. However, if the two photons are identical and arrive simultaneously, the quantum-mechanical wave functions will interfere, and the two photons will always exit through the same port, even though each of them has an equal probability of exiting through both ports.
APS Physics Viewpoint: Photonic Hat TrickRobert Sewell, The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss, 3, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), SpainApril 10, 2017• Physics 10, 38
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| More than 950 researchers from 30 countries have joined DUNE. Collaborators are developing new technologies for DUNE’s particle detectors, giant instruments that will help capture the notoriously elusive neutrino. |
Collaborators are developing new technologies for DUNE’s two particle detectors, giant instruments that will help capture the experiment’s notoriously elusive quarry, the neutrino. With DUNE, which is expected to be up and running in the mid-2020s, scientists plan to get a better grip on the neutrino’s subtleties to settle the question of, for instance, why there’s more matter than antimatter in our universe — in other words, how the stars planets and life as we know it were able to form. Also on the DUNE agenda are studies that could bolster certain theories of the unification of all fundamental forces and, with the help of neutrinos born in supernovae, provide a look into the birth of a black hole.
It’s a tall order that will take a global village to fill, and researchers worldwide are currently building or signing up to build the experiment, taking advantage of DUNE’s broad scientific and geographic scope.
“We’re a country that does a lot of theoretical physics but not a lot of experimental physics, because it’s not so cheap to have a particle physics experiment here,” said Brazilian DUNE collaborator Ana Amelia Machado, a collaborating scientist at the University of Campinas and a professor at the Federal University of ABC in the ABC region of Brazil. “So we participate in big collaborations like DUNE, which is attractive because it brings together theorists and experimentalists.”
Machado is currently working on a device named Arapuca, which she describes as a photon catcher that could detect particle phenomena that DUNE is interested in, such as supernova neutrino interactions. She’s also working to connect more Latin American universities with DUNE, such as the University Antonio Nariño.
On the opposite side of the world, scientists and engineers from India are working on upgrading the high-intensity proton accelerator at Fermilab, which will provide the world’s most intense neutrino beam to the DUNE experiment. Building on the past collaborations with other Fermilab experiments, the Indian scientists are also proposing to build the near detector for the DUNE experiment. Not only are India’s contributions important for DUNE’s success, they’re also potential seeds for India’s own future particle physics programs.
Fermilab: The Global Reach of DUNE, Leah Hesla#P4TC: ProtoDUNE, March 15, 2017
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| Illustration of a gas of 500,000 atoms in an optical trap. (Courtesy: Onur Hosten) |
Bell correlations – a hallmark of an entangled quantum system – have been spotted in an ensemble of 500,000 rubidium-87 atoms. The atoms were prepared in spin-squeezed states by physicists at Stanford University in the US and the correlations measured to a whopping statistical significance of 124σ.
In quantum mechanics, entangled particles have much stronger correlations than are allowed in classical physics – a property that can be exploited in quantum technologies including cryptography. In 1964 the physicist John Bell famously calculated an upper limit on how strong these correlations could be if they were caused by classical physics alone – what has become known as Bell's inequality. Correlations stronger than this limit, Bell reasoned, could occur only if the particles are entangled.
In this latest work, Onur Hosten, Mark Kasevich and colleagues have measured these strong Bell correlations in an ensemble of 500,000 cold rubidium-87 atoms that are trapped by laser light. The atoms are put into an entangled state using a process called spin squeezing. The uncertainty principle dictates that the uncertainty in a measurement of the z-component of the total spin of the system multiplied by the uncertainty in the y-component must be larger than a certain value. Reducing (or squeezing) the uncertainty of the z-component increases the uncertainty of x-component, putting the system into a spin-squeezed state.
Physics World: Bell correlations measured in 500,000 atoms, Hamish Johnston Related LinkScience Mag: Bell correlations in a Bose-Einstein condensateRoman Schmied1,*, Jean-Daniel Bancal2,4,*, Baptiste Allard1,*, Matteo Fadel1, Valerio Scarani2,3, Philipp Treutlein1,†, Nicolas Sangouard4,†
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| My t-shirt. You can order at Teezily.com/science-wetheppl (I get no commission). |
I almost don't want to post anything about climate change because of trolls, but one cannot pick when a battle will begin. I like what Scientific American said (I apologize I couldn't find it for this post), that instead of talking about the heating of the globe, we should be discussing replacing those coalminers' jobs that aren't coming back and instead think of new avenues of employment; future instead of past jobs.
I wore a t-shirt, purchased for The March for Science (April 22): "We The People want evidence based SCIENCE," along with its associated symbols. That got me into a spirited conversation with a gentleman that obviously had deep religious convictions. I didn't think a shirt would spark a back-and-forth weeks before the march.
Some of the things I pointed out:
- A 6,000-year-old universe limits Deity ("How do scientists know how old the universe is?"). An ~ 13.6 billion year universe is far more expansive, and does show the limit of our technology - that's as far as our telescopes can see. I connected this to my next point.
- I reviewed with him the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, discovered accidentally by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1964, resulting in the pair achieving the Nobel Prize in 1978. This is evidence of an expansion and colloquially coined as "The Big Bang."
- In 1979, the Nobel in Physics was won by Abdus Salam, Sheldon Lee Glashow, Steven Weinberg "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current." I've had the luck to meet Dr. Weinberg at a conference in Austin, Texas, and have a personal autographed copy of "The First Three Minutes," two of my life's greatest thrills. I mentioned them because Abdus Salam (deceased) was a devote Muslim; I'm betting Dr. Weinberg is at least an agnostic.
- I continued the discussion with the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment that measured the speed of light by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley at what was then Case School of Applied Science (now Case-Western Reserve). Before that, scientist thought of light as being carried along by the "luminiferous ether" (since waves were their thing back then). This led to the Nobel Prize in 1907. I believe - and, I told the gent - Michelson was a practicing Christian. They were the "shoulders of giants" opined by Sir Isaac Newton and the foundation for the Special Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein.
- That led to a discussion of The Scientific Method and Theory (versus the colloquialism "in theory"). Scientific theory has to be proven in experiment, or discarded. I explained that was the unifier in the scientific enterprise: Agnostics, Atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims et al are welcome to the table of inquiry as long as one forms a null hypothesis; an aleph null hypothesis and after experiment and evaluation able to prove it, replicate it in controlled conditions elsewhere and stand up to peer review (and if it doesn't), be willing to throw it out like "luminiferous ether".
I'm kind of a "ringer" for discussions like this. Yeah, everything I said was a mouthful, but when people ask questions out of a sincere desire to KNOW, I answer as best I can. What I don't know, I try to point them in the right direction. Our encounter ended amicably and respectfully. I'm pretty sure we both enjoyed it.
There is a "disdain for expertise," and that phrase can lead to a plethora of search engine results. The current, rampant anti-intellectualism is as American-born as Eugenics, perverted by the Nazis and mentioned by the Executive Mansion's current resident in his bigoted, misogynistic, nationalistic, xenophobic campaign ("good genes," even included in a 90-second rambling mash). The disdain is exacerbated by technology, information "at our fingertips" has made us all experts on areas and subjects we have no passion to study or excel in, the equivalent to watching a few videos online and calling oneself a martial arts master.
To have a disdain for expertise, you must have a disdain for education and learning; The Scientific Method must be assaulted as probing could reveal inconvenient truths that could result in apostasy; heresy. Authoritarians in particular are famous for not liking anything that diverges from their carefully crafted narratives. If remote mind control weren't in the realm of science fiction, they would have nations of automatons.
From an article in New Scientist by Brian Owens:
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a future in which its hands will be tied on making many policies if a new bill becomes law.
Last week the US House of Representatives passed a bill, the HONEST Act, that would prevent the EPA from basing any of its regulations on science that is not publicly accessible – not just journal articles themselves, but all of the underlying data, models and computer code.
“The HONEST Act requires EPA to base new regulations on sound science that is publicly available, and not hidden from the American people,” said Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chair of the House science committee, who sponsored the bill, in a statement. “The days of ‘trust me’ science are over.”
“Allowing EPA’s data to be independently reviewed promotes sound science that will restore confidence in the EPA decision-making process,” said Smith.
While this may sound like a laudable move towards increased transparency, it would actually hobble the agency’s ability to develop good, science-based public health regulations, says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy.
“It’s couched in terms of transparency, but is actually one of several actions intended to bring regulations to a halt,” he says.
The reboot of COSMOS enjoyed high ratings and I'll assume high sales of DVDs (I bought the set), but only one season. There was a tremendous push back online from authoritarians that were threatened by information that countered their narrative.
There is a comforting narcissism in willful ignorance, but it is lethal to constitutional republics. The fall of Rome was a slow decline: military overreach, economic stagnation and an empire too massive and extensive to reasonably manage.
We are in a quicksand, and in the nature of the medium, we will discover our folly neck-deep and unable to extricate ourselves from its steady pull. Perhaps a few more t-shirt conversations - before and after the march with respectful dialog as my surprise encounter - might help and throw a lifeline to the republic.
Related links:The Chronicle of Higher EducationThe Academic Home of Trumpism, Jon BaskinThe IntellectualistRepublican Disdain for Expertise is One of the Party's Defining PrinciplesWashington MonthlyDisdain for expertise, Steve Benen
