In this illustration, an infrared laser beam (orange) triggers atomic vibrations in a thin layer of iron selenide, which are then recorded by ultrafast X-ray laser pulses (white) to create an ultrafast movie. The motion of the selenium atoms (red) changes the energy of the electron orbitals of the iron atoms (blue). (Courtesy: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science, Solid State Physics, Superconductors
Two important breakthroughs in the understanding of iron-selenide superconductors have been made by two independent research groups. One team has shown that the electrons responsible for superconductivity in the material probably come from a specific atomic orbital. The other team, meanwhile, has measured the interaction between electrons and atomic vibrations in iron selenide, which is believed to be involved in its superconductivity.
The research could shed light on the mystery of why some materials based on iron selenide are superconductors at relatively high temperatures, which has puzzled physicists for more than a decade. While bulk iron selenide is a superconductor below 8.5K, this transition temperature can reach as high as 75K when an ultrathin trilayer of the material is grown on certain substrates.
Image Source: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST
Topics: Existentialism, Politics, Science, Research
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell
I've had similar posts as well as off line conversations about this theme. The unexpected caveat from the "Information Superhighway" has been the rise of know-nothings that feel search engines are a part of human DNA; that become *experts* on any subject with a few inquiries and clicks. It has extended quite contemporaneously to members of the clergy: some work in pulpits without a license to preach, ordination or degree from a divinity school. They just look and sound good, thus *anointed*, not credentialed.
From the article excerpt:
These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of lay people lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge.
This is more than a natural skepticism toward experts. I fear we are witnessing the death of the ideal of expertise itself, a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.
I sincerely hope to not be a part of the "blog-sodden" or contributing to the morass. I used the term Information Superhighway - as the Internet was once publicly coined - deliberately, as the concern was there would be a divide between the "haves" (those who could afford $2,500 to plop down on a home desktop computer) and the 'have-nots," i.e. the urban poor demarcated by economics, ethnicity and cultural differences.
Enter the cellular telephone, first initially called a "brick" as it was heavy, clunky and analog as in Michael Douglas in "Wall Street." The conversion from analog to digital, the merger of phone and autonomous pager (obviously, the work of the devil); the miniaturization of transistors following Moore's Law increasing speeds and features to share cat, dog, owl and most recently cute baby elephants chasing birds on phones dubbed "smart", their owners another matter.
This has so far given us an interesting social makeup of a society that thoroughly depends on science and technology*, and disdains the people most equipped to bring about new systems and designs. The intellectual student is still a "nerd," noses are still shoved into lockers (or, students stuffed in them), bullying of them is still ignored; cheerleaders and jocks worshiped as the in-crowd cool gods from Mt. Olympus.
We tweet our versions of reality (45 is particularly deft at this), we join social media groups that conform to our already dug in notions. Google driver-less cars will likely lead to more distracted humans and stupid pet videos shared before they disembark.
The causalities of such an accidental dystopia are rationality, reality, science and ultimately what in an Orwellian era of "alternate facts" seems malleable and dangerously fungible: truth.
Social changes only in the past half century finally broke down old barriers of race, class, and sex not only between Americans in general but also between uneducated citizens and elite experts in particular. A wider circle of debate meant more knowledge but more social friction. Universal education, the greater empowerment of women and minorities, the growth of a middle class, and increased social mobility all threw a minority of experts and the majority of citizens into direct contact, after nearly two centuries in which they rarely had to interact with each other.
And yet the result has not been a greater respect for knowledge, but the growth of an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.
* "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." Carl Sagan
So for a while now, I've been trying work on a prose novel. Slowly becoming disillusioned with the comic books industry, I figure it's a good time to continue the journey that I began in 08'. But I can't because honestly...I'm scared. Not of one thing in particular, but a number. Novel's seem extremely daunting, the sheer size and scope are frightening to me. I really don't even understand how people write novels? What drives you? What keeps you driven? What pushes all the fear and anxiety out of your heads? And do you have some of, whatever it is, I can borrow? Also what if my novel sucks? What if it's just not a good story? I'm writing this as a sort of confession and maybe a little therapy. I've been told to outline or to take it one chapter at a time. But ever time I sit down to write I feel like I'm facing a wall of water that is about to annihilate me. Anyone have any recommendations about how to get over that?
The Priestess returns today and you are privy to a meeting of the Nobles of Palm as they commend the Valley Knight and his new allies the Aesir for the daring action against the Tenaree and the Red Spirit! Ghilda, Chief's Vife of Svengald takes in the spectacle and assesses her husband's place in this strange new land with stranger people. Clothing, food and customs are vastly different from what she knew in Aesirfjord, but the potential for reward in the coming attack on Sea City has the Chief's Vife's eye on things bigger than simply returning home. While plans are being made, Little Fish and the Aesir Witch Mjarga have an unexpected and important visitor. One who asks questions which prove difficult for both to answer...but they must if he is to reveal that which they need to know about the coming attack. All will find the 'battle' on the homefront can be precarious as on the frontlines in 'The Priestess: Stones, Conflict and Legacy' Part 1!
The Priestess Second Saga returns as the fledgling army organized by the Valley Knight prepares for the Tenaree attack on Sea City, the Prince of the Island Nations arrives with his fleet and to claim the hand of Princess Meru. Can the Valley Knight keep his word to his 'new' love that she will never lay eyes on the Prince and in doing so, still maintain the alliance between two countries with war imminent? Amid all the preparations the Aesir Witch Mjarga has a vision that will challenge even the Valley Knight's ability to motivate the remaining forces of Palm to stand fast and fight! The Red Spirit now revealed as a merciless Fire Goddess has licked her wounds from the unexpected challenge from the defenders of Palm. Her path to victory presents itself with a traitor and the powerful new weapons she's given the Tenaree horde at her command. The Priestess' life hangs in the balance as these forces move towards their climactic conflict. It will take the Valley Knight, his Godling son Little Fish along with the people of Palm and their new Aesir allies to stand firm against the coming tide. But can they when faced with such an implacable enemy? All will be revealed in 'The Priestess: Stones, Conflict and Legacy'
(a) Schematic depicting the experimental setup and different stages of the electrodeposition process. SEM images of (b) Ni nanoparticles (left image is a zoomed in image of the wire), (c) a Ni layer in tilt-view from the middle of the array. (d) Top-view SEM images show progressive Ni deposition over time with reductive deposition. Courtesy: Nano Letters DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b01950
Electrodeposition can be used to construct novel functional nanowire structures hitherto impossible. This is the new finding from researchers at Harvard University in the US who have deposited conformal layers of various materials onto high-aspect-ratio silicon and micro- and nanowire arrays of different diameters, pitch, aspect ratios, shapes, resistivity and orientation. The structures produced could find use in a wide range of technology applications in chemistry, physics and medicine as well as in energy conversion and storage, sensing and bioelectronics.
Being able to construct ever more complex nanostructures has allowed researchers to study many fundamental physics and chemistry phenomena, and to develop applications for use in a variety of different fields. For example, some 1D nanostructures can be used to manipulate light–matter interactions in novel sensing and light harvesting devices. Nanoelectronics devices based on 1D silicon nanowires can also be employed in bioelectronics and drug-delivery devices.
Further developing the architecture and compositions of such structures with metal-based and polymeric materials could lead to even more sophisticated applications. Electrodeposition could come into its own here since it has proved itself to be an efficient way to deposit films of different materials on flat materials. To date, however, it had never been used to modify nanowire structures with uniform shells or to prepare multiple coaxial shell layers.
The second book in the Elemental series, Return of A.G., will hit shelves and stores on July 26, 2017! It's been two years since the Elementals and Don defeated the evil android A.G. and put a stop to the Pru Empire's return. Now, De, M, Rod, Mo, and the new Elementals Jas, Lucas, Kiara, Jay, and Alex are all working together to keep their world safe. Their first order of business? Finding Samantha and Kevon Prudence, the two who made A.G. into a literal killing machine in the first place. The nine Elementals will have to travel to new locations and meet new people in order to outsmart the Prudence siblings and keep them from enacting their worst plan yet: bringing back A.G.
The book may not be coming out until 7/26, but you can reserve your copy TODAY by preordering the print or digital book here! Don't miss out on your chance to dig into the Elemental series!
Hey BSFS....got a great deal going on here!!! Two books (pdf) for only ONE DOLLAR PER BOOK!!! Have a personal goal to meet by this Friday....so whether or not you decide to get a copy yourself......or just share this blog, I would be grateful. And for an extra bonus, if you purchase both books and share this post, I will draw a black and white headshot of your OC!!!
Read more…
Using laboratory experiments, first place awardee, Del Mar College, Texas, demonstrated that their product, EnteroSword, could offer another solution to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Here, team member Daniel Nasr Azadani, demonstrates how EnteroSword fights antibiotic resistant bacteria. Credit: NSF/Bill Petros Photography
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) co-sponsors the annual event, which fosters students' interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers by asking them to offer creative solutions to real-world problems.
This year, CCIC had students propose solutions to issues focusing on three themes: Maker to Manufacturer, Energy and Environment and Security Technologies.
"Our role as an agency is to fund trailblazers with curiosity-driven ideas," said NSF acting Chief Operating Officer Joan Ferrini-Mundy at a Wednesday Capitol Hill reception, where students showcased their projects. "We know that community colleges are rich resources for the skilled technical workforce and provide an environment where bright new ideas can thrive."
A four-judge panel selected first place awardee Del Mar College for their proposed solution to a problem that affects about 2 million people each year in the United States: the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their project, called "Slowing Antibiotic Resistance with EnteroSword," promotes the use of tailor-made viruses that only infect and kill bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotic treatments.
Red Rocks Community College received second place for their project, "Cyber Lab Learning Environment," which demonstrates how students can learn without fear in the safety of student-created cyber labs and develop real-world skills in response to real-world challenges. With print and digital materials, the cyber lab provides a real-world environment for advanced learning.
Six different images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been magnified by a cosmic effect called gravitational lensing. The images were taken in infrared light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Color has been added to highlight details in the galaxies. Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Lowenthal (Smith College)
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Gravitational Lensing, NASA, Space
A glittering jackpot of ultrabright galaxies bursting with star formation has been revealed in a series of stunning images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The galaxies captured in these images sparkle like jewels of cosmic light. These massive collections of stars are each as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way in the infrared range, or 10 trillion to 100 trillion times the brightness of the sun. They are also forming about 10,000 new stars each year, according to a statement from NASA. (By comparison, it is estimated that fewer than 10 stars form in the Milky Way each year.)
Viewers may also notice strange shapes, including rings and arcs of light. Those are mostly the result of a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, in which a foreground galaxy acts as a lens, warping and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy.
This lensing has magnified the light from these very distant galaxies, giving scientists the opportunity to study in them in much finer detail than would be otherwise possible.
Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Electric Vehicles, Electrical Engineering, Jobs, Nicola Tesla
The Old
University of Illinois student Steve Ward and Fermilab senior technician Jeff Larson developed twin Tesla coils capable of emitting 12 feet (4 meters) of sparks. Credit: Fermilab
Among his numerous innovations, Nikola Tesla dreamed of creating a way to supply power to the world without stringing wires across the globe. The inventor came close to accomplishing this when his "mad scientist" experiments with electricity led to his creation of the Tesla coil.
The first system that could wirelessly transmit electricity, the Tesla coil was a truly revolutionary invention. Early radio antennas and telegraphy used the invention, but variations of the coil can also do things that are just plain cool — like shoot lightning bolts, send electric currents through the body and create electron winds. [1]
The New
Stanford scientists have created a device that wirelessly transmits electricity to a movable disc. The technology could some day be used to charge moving electric vehicles and personal devices. Credit: Sid Assawaworrarit/Stanford University
If electric cars could recharge while driving down a highway, it would virtually eliminate concerns about their range and lower their cost, perhaps making electricity the standard fuel for vehicles.
Now Stanford University scientists have overcome a major hurdle to such a future by wirelessly transmitting electricity to a nearby moving object. Their results are published in the June 15 edition of Nature.
"In addition to advancing the wireless charging of vehicles and personal devices like cellphones, our new technology may untether robotics in manufacturing, which also are on the move," said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the study. "We still need to significantly increase the amount of electricity being transferred to charge electric cars, but we may not need to push the distance too much more."
The group built on existing technology developed in 2007 at MIT for transmitting electricity wirelessly over a distance of a few feet to a stationary object. In the new work, the team transmitted electricity wirelessly to a moving LED lightbulb. That demonstration only involved a 1-milliwatt charge, whereas electric cars often require tens of kilowatts to operate. The team is now working on greatly increasing the amount of electricity that can be transferred, and tweaking the system to extend the transfer distance and improve efficiency. [2]
Topics: Commentary, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Science Fiction
Marvel has only had a trailer out for its Black Panther film for one weekend and already the backlash has been severe.
The poster features Chadwick Boseman posing in costume as the titular Black Panther, the king of a fictional African nation, seated on his throne and looking powerful.
However, several critics compared it to a famous picture of Huey P. Newton, who was the co-founder of the Panther Party, a figure who in the 1960s was seen as extreme and “militant.” In the picture, Newton was holding a gun and spear, and while Boseman is not posing with any weapons, many are saying that the pose and even the chair are similar. [1]
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Will #LukeCageTooBlack be the next hashtag? Probably not. But following the release of Netflix’s latest Marvel series, Luke Cage, many viewers are complaining about the show being “racist.”
Many fans jumped on Twitter to protest Marvel’s audacity to represent minorities throughout the 13-episode series. “Lack of white people in Luke Cage makes me uncomfortable. This show is racist, how is this on Netflix,” one person tweeted. Another questioned why the black people on the show were speaking about being an African-American. “Im not racist but :/ why is luke cage so political :/ why do they talk about being black all the time :/ where are the white characters.” [2]
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Last week, the World Science Fiction society named N.K. Jemisin the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, perhaps the highest honor for science-fiction and fantasy novels. Her winning work, The Fifth Season, has also been nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award, and it joins Jemisin’s collection of feted novels in the speculative fiction super-genre. Even among the titans of black science-fiction and fantasy writers, including the greats Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, Jemisin’s achievement is singular in the 60-plus years of the Hugos.
The Fifth Season is a stunning piece of speculative-fiction work, and it accomplishes the one thing that is so difficult in a field dominated by tropes: innovation, in spades. A rich tale of earth-moving superhumans set in a dystopian world of regular disasters, The Fifth Season manages to incorporate the deep internal cosmologies, mythologies, and complex magic systems that genre readers have come to expect, in a framework that also asks thoroughly modern questions about oppression, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Its characters are a slate of people of different colors and motivations who don’t often appear in a field still dominated by white men and their protagonist avatars. The Fifth Season’s sequel, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate, continues its dive into magic, science, and the depths of humanity.
Just a year ago, the idea of a novel as deliberately outside the science-fiction norm as The Fifth Season winning the Hugo Award seemed unlikely. In 2013, a small group of science-fiction writers and commentators launched the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies” campaigns to exploit the Hugo nomination system and place dozens of books and stories of their own choosing up for awards. Those campaigns arose as a reaction to perceived “politicization” of the genre—often code for it becoming more diverse and exploring more themes of social justice, race, and gender—and became a space for some science-fiction and fantasy communities to rail against “heavy handed message fic.” Led by people like the “alt-right” commentator Vox Day, the movements reached fever pitch in the 2015 Hugo Award cycle, and Jemisin herself was often caught up in the intense arguments about the future of the genre. [3]
I have been literally waiting for this movie my entire life. I have been reading it, fantasizing about T'Challa and the fantastic technologies he commanded - no more fanciful than warp drive, but the character development from Jack Kirby to Ta-Nehisi Coates (ironically the comic he was authoring has been canceled and the Dora Milaje spin off has been also) drove the stories forward, so as in any fiction, I suspended belief and read on. I find it amazing you can say it's the #1 comic in sales and then cancel the series after two issues for...sales. I posted about it in 2015 [4], and to quote from it something I saw about the comic fiction that wraps everything said above neatly:
“Wakanda is a small country in Africa notable for never having been conquered in its entire history. When you consider the history of the region, the fact that the French, the English, the Belgians or any number of Christian or Islamic invaders were never able to defeat them in battle…well it’s unprecedented.”
Too black...too militant...not enough "diversity," and like Kamala Harris asking ANYTHING as part of her job in the Senate: too "uppity."
The stress that African Americans go through literally shortens our lifespans at the genetic level. That "mask" is a hard taskmaster that exacts a price. Living in a system and society so exquisitely designed for you to frankly...fail, you create stories about yourself. John Henry was a steal-driving man. Automation and mechanization caused John to have a massive coronary in the myth, itself a metaphor in modern times for the replacement of mining jobs by robots.
The "Mask" makes shucking-and-jiving a necessary skill; step-in-fetch a disguise that roils beneath the surface of phony smiles. We anesthetize ourselves with religion, fraternities and sororities, drugs and alcohol; sometimes all of the above.
We are always celebrating "firsts": first black astronaut, first black astronaut from a historically black college and university; first black president.
Do I ask for your forgiveness when the trailer was met with exclamations like "dope"; "I'm hyped"; "tears of joy." Do I NEED your forgiveness?
True story: I never followed "Friends" or "Seinfeld." I've seen it in syndication...at the gym when someone else had it on. I heard a lot of water cooler conversations and saw the lament when the series were canceled. I didn't watch them because the cultural references were as relevant to me as "Leave It To Beaver." Did it halt the shows from having fans? Did I not watch "white shows?" Hell, I watched "Cheers" and even visited the bar back in '85. I also watched "A Family Affair"; "That Girl"; "My Three Sons"; "Rat Patrol"; "The Six Million Dollar Man" occasionally the cavalcade of non-cultural-themed shows was interrupted by "Julia"; "The Jefferson's" "Good Times" and the hope we'd all survive our own hubris "Star Trek." My watching, or lack of watching meant nothing to either shows' popularity or length of their runs.
After a while, you get tired of masks and grinning and shucking and jiving and making everyone from sad to mad puppies "comfortable" as your own telomeres shorten.
“Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It's obvious from Luke Cage to Black Panther to NK Jemisin to Kamala Harris, straightened backs are a perceived threat to the social order. A social order inherently dependent on the debasement of others should be challenged artistically, politically and professionally (Guion S. Bluford and Ronald E McNair earned PhDs in the STEM fields of Aerospace Engineering and Laser Physics respectively). For that I offer no apology.
I joked with a college friend in a call to California that the rabid pound-puppy-trolls would come out in full-force by the time the movie premiered February 16, 2018. He laughed when I said "I'm wearing a dashiki and war paint." Who knew the venomous snowflakes would pounce 24 hours after our conversation?
"The Three Brothers" is inspired by a folktale from a small African village. Help us bring that story to a screen near you.
The adventures of "The Three Brothers" entertain and educate. Our characters are 18, 15 and 12 and a half. They come from a culture where magic is an everyday reality and technology is an increasing part of life.
Since elementary school, I've wanted to see more animated African stories on TV and in theaters. And I don't mean talking animals. You may think this is obvious, but civilized people populate Africa. They are flesh and blood, serious and funny, laborer and professional just like you and me. So why does the dark and primitive stereotype persist in America? Because too few people have invested the time, energy and money needed to produce films and TV shows that reflect the many African cultures.
Folklore is vital and varied. Parables, riddles, legends, and folktales define cultures and help young people learn right from wrong, their place in the environment and how to solve problems.
Sincerely,
Robert Penn, Creator of "The Three Brothers" and the development team at 3 Degrees Films
P.S.
I've been a member of Black Science Fiction Society for several years. This is my first blog post. It announces a project that I've been working on since 2007 when I made my first of two trips to a remote section of Sierra Leone, West Africa. A traditional storyteller told me a riddle, which he left unanswered. He requested that I write it down and make it my own. I did that, initially in prose and later as a screenplay. Around 2011, I met Lightning Yumeku, an animation producer, for unrelated reasons. Subsequent to the completion of the other project, Lightning, who is also American but legally changed his name, asked if he could read some of my work. I shared “The Three Brothers” screenplay with him. After reading it, he suggested that I develop it as a family-oriented 30-minute animated series. I developed the primary characters - including the titular brothers Bala, Mamoun and Saiya Mansaray, and the villain Sumaro, who lives in two worlds, as well as secondary characters such as Mr. and Mrs. Mansaray, the chief and elders of their village, and the classmates of Mamoun and Saiya who are still in school. I also prepared a springboard for 72-episodes. In 2015, I entered into a development deal with 3 Degrees Films, the animation company Lightning founded. Last year, Lightning brought on a character designer and a background designer. They've done amazing work! As a result of our development meetings, I've added 4 episodes to the front end of the springboard. That is the four-part miniseries that will introduce the characters, their world, their main challenges and set the young men on the paths they’ll follow throughout the series.
About thirty years ago I started my journey into creating a fantasy world, one that was culturally inclusive, for a global audience. Now, I have the honor of seeing it come to life at Stranger Comics, working with incredible artists, and telling stories that hopefully reflect not only our reader, but also our stories. One such tale is NIOBE: She is Life. I wrote with Amandla Stenberg (Hunger Games, Everything Everything) and Ashley A. Woods did the beautiful art. Darrell May on layouts. With covers by Hyoung (The Last of Us) to Jae Lee (The Dark Tower) on the sequel She is Death. Sheldon Mitchell (The Darkness) does the interiors on the sequel and they are all incredible.
She is Life is a beauty and the beast love story threaded with murder and mystery that leads to all out war, about a young girl who has returned to her ancestors to find her faith. But she finds more than what she bargained for in the coming of age tale.
"With a world divided, who do you turn to?"
This first volume became the first ever nationally distributed comic with a black female author, artist, and hero in the history of comics and I am so happy to share the story and world with you. In the sequel, She is Death, Niobe becomes a badass bounty hunter, tracking down human traffickers and traders. If you get a chance, please check Niobe out as we are 2 weeks away from finishing a kickstarter campaign. We have already smashed through our target, so now it is just free goodies with stretch goals.
Also as ADD ONS, you can grab the DUSU Path of the Ancient hardcover (a tale of Niobe's tribe) and the Niobe Pathfinder module, among other things.
FILE PHOTO: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097, a Seyfert galaxy. NASA/ESA/Hubble/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Topics: Astrophysics, Einstein, General Relativity, Gravitational Lensing
The first observation of gravitational microlensing by a star other than the Sun has been reported by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope. Predicted by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his general theory of relativity, gravitational microlensing involves the gravitational field of a star bending light coming from a more distant star. It was first observed during a total eclipse in 1919 by looking for deflections in the positions of stars in parts of the sky next to the Sun. Now, Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US and an international team have measured the gravitational lensing of a background star by a white dwarf star called Stein 2051 B. Because the background star is not lined-up perfectly with Earth and Stein 2051 B, a combination of gravitational lensing and Earth's motion around the Sun causes the background star to appear to trace out a loop around Stein 2051 B. Sahu and colleagues mapped its position at five different times in 2013-14 and used this information to calculate the mass of Stein 2051 B. It turns out that astronomers have puzzled over the mass of the white dwarf for over 100 years. It is part of a binary system and the motion of its distant companion suggests that Stein 2051 B has a smaller mass than most white dwarfs, implying that it might have an exotic composition. This recent work, however, suggests that the star has a mass expected for a white dwarf of its radius. The observations will be described in and upcoming paper in Science. [1]
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronomers have found a new application for Albert Einstein's century-old theory of relativity - using it to directly measure the size of a star beyond the sun.
In research published on Wednesday, scientists said they used the Hubble Space Telescope to plot minute changes in the path of light coming from a distant background star as it passed by a relatively close target star, known as Stein 2051B.
Researchers applied Einstein's findings to measure how Stein 2051B's gravity warped the background star's light, a phenomenon the physicist predicted more than 100 years ago and a direct means to assess its mass. The technique could be applied to other stars.
"It was like measuring the motion of a little firefly in front of a light bulb from 1,500 miles away," astronomer Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said at a news conference.
The research was presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday and also published in this week's issue of the journal Science. [2]
BOSTON—At last weekend’s annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Boston, Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society. Sternberg, who has studied intelligence and intelligence testing for decades, is well known for his “triarchic theory of intelligence,” which identifies three kinds of smarts: the analytic type reflected in IQ scores; practical intelligence, which is more relevant for real-life problem solving; and creativity. Sternberg offered his views in a lecture associated with receiving a William James Fellow Award from the APS for his lifetime contributions to psychology. He explained his concerns to Scientific American.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
In your talk, you said that IQ tests and college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT are essentially selecting and rewarding “smart fools”—people who have a certain kind of intelligence but not the kind that can help our society make progress against our biggest challenges. What are these tests getting wrong?
Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE—what I call the alphabet tests—are reasonably good measures of academic kinds of knowledge, plus general intelligence and related skills. They are highly correlated with IQ tests and they predict a lot of things in life: academic performance to some extent, salary, level of job you will reach to a minor extent—but they are very limited. What I suggested in my talk today is that they may actually be hurting us. Our overemphasis on narrow academic skills—the kinds that get you high grades in school—can be a bad thing for several reasons. You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place.
What evidence do you see of this harm?
IQ rose 30 points in the 20th century around the world, and in the U.S. that increase is continuing. That’s huge; that’s two standard deviations, which is like the difference between an average IQ of 100 and a gifted IQ of 130. We should be happy about this but the question I ask is: If you look at the problems we have in the world today—climate change, income disparities in this country that probably rival or exceed those of the gilded age, pollution, violence, a political situation that many of us never could have imaged—one wonders, what about all those IQ points? Why aren't they helping?
What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place.
Do we know how to cultivate wisdom?
Yes we do. A whole bunch of my colleagues and I study wisdom. Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.
You know, it’s easy to think of smart people but it’s really hard to think of wise people. I think a reason is that we don’t try to develop wisdom in our schools. And we don’t test for it, so there’s no incentive for schools to pay attention.
A zoom in on the Josephson junctions. Two layers of niobium are visible in the image, with the upper film colored blue and the lower film colored red. Josephson junctions are formed in the circular pits (they look a bit like an element of a muffin tin) where the two layers overlap (green). Credit: K. Lehnert/NIST/JILA
Topics: Black Holes, Dark Matter, General Relativity
Here’s a surprising fact: We don’t know what makes up 80 percent of the matter in the universe. I don’t mean that the matter is made of atoms, and we just don’t know which kind of atoms. What I mean is that four-fifths of the universe appears to be made of something that isn’t atoms at all, or more to the point, it’s not made from any of the fundamental particles that we know of.
Why do we think that this mystery matter exists? The short answer is that Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, has painted us into a corner. When we look through telescopes at stars and galaxies moving through the universe, something we can’t see is causing their motion to bend in a particular way. Einstein’s theory of gravity tells how much of this invisible mass—physicists call it “dark matter”—there must be to bend the trajectory of things we can see.
Faced with a situation like this, we make guesses (hypotheses) that we hope explain our strange observations. A good hypothesis should both be consistent with every known fact and have other detectable consequences. If we look for these other consequences and don’t find them, we discard or revise our hypothesis.
Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself working on an experiment designed to look for the consequences of a hypothetical dark matter particle known as the axion. This was surprising because physicists, like those in all professions, divide themselves up into distinct sub-fields. Predictably there are rivalries between, and stereotypes associated with, different cultures that build up around the subfields—the rough equivalent of engineering versus sales in the corporate world.
An artist's rendering of the newly named Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Topics: Astrophysics, Heliophysics, NASA, Research, Solar Flares
It's a mission that's been in the works for nearly 60 years. NASA says it will launch a spacecraft in 2018 to "touch the sun," sending it closer to the star's surface than ever before.
The spacecraft is small – its instruments would fit into a refrigerator — but it's built to withstand temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while maintaining room temperature inside the probe.
"Even though the sun is so close to us, there's actually a lot about it we don't understand," says heat shield lead engineer Betsy Congdon from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Scientists are hoping the data gathered might solve some of the big mysteries about the sun.
