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Gedanken...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 10, 2016 at 5:37am
Image Source: Pics About Space


Topics: Einstein, FTL, General Relativity, Star Trek


For the record: \\//_. Now that my "Trek creds" have been established...

Gedanken is a German word for "thought." It is often colloquially defined along with the word experiment, which is where a lot of the notions of Special and General Relativity took place in Einstein's mind; his innate ability to conceptualize a tough idea.

It is also by definition, an experiment that is impractical to carry out. Part of it being impractical is the incredible energies that would be needed to propel a star ship to even 0.10 c, or in Trek parlance: "impulse." An aircraft carrier is ~64,000 metric tons (I'm using it as my "Enterprise," which is supposed to be pretty big). That's 64,000,000 kilograms. Simply multiply it by 0.10 x 3.0 x 108 m/s2 this will give you the energy output in Joules: 1.92 x 1015. The PLANET in 2013 generated 5.67 x 1020 Joules.

Part of the constant research is that sometimes what you're looking for may not be found, but the techniques you use in any analysis may have an application in areas you may not have imagined. As such, it becomes a part of the research one can reference and build on, thereby increasing the overall knowledge of a subject area.

Abstract


Warp drives are very interesting configurations in general relativity: At least theoretically, they provide a way to travel at superluminal speeds, albeit at the cost of requiring exotic matter to exist as solutions of Einstein’s equations. However, even if one succeeded in providing the necessary exotic matter to build them, it would still be necessary to check whether they would survive to the switching on of quantum effects. Semiclassical corrections to warp-drive geometries have been analyzed only for eternal warp-drive bubbles traveling at fixed superluminal speeds. Here, we investigate the more realistic case in which a superluminal warp drive is created out of an initially flat spacetime. First of all we analyze the causal structure of eternal and dynamical warp-drive spacetimes. Then we pass to the analysis of the renormalized stress-energy tensor (RSET) of a quantum field in these geometries. While the behavior of the RSET in these geometries has close similarities to that in the geometries associated with gravitational collapse, it shows dramatic differences too. On one side, an observer located at the center of a superluminal warp-drive bubble would generically experience a thermal flux of Hawking particles. On the other side, such Hawking flux will be generically extremely high if the exotic matter supporting the warp drive has its origin in a quantum field satisfying some form of quantum inequalities. Most of all, we find that the RSET will exponentially grow in time close to, and on, the front wall of the superluminal bubble. Consequently, one is led to conclude that the warp-drive geometries are unstable against semiclassical backreaction.

Physics arXiv: Semiclassical instability of dynamical warp drives
Stefano Finazzi,1,∗ Stefano Liberati,1,† and Carlos Barcelo2

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Changeling...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 9, 2016 at 5:42am
Image courtesy of Ilsa van Meerbeek
The material is capable o both withstanding heavy loads or deforming under them as needed.


Topics: Materials Science, Metamaterials, Robotics


For all the discussion surrounding artificial intelligence and robots recently, the stiff, dull metal exterior of robots has only recently begun to evolve. While human-like robots, with silicon skin, can simulate emotions but robots with the shape-shifting ability of the Transformers have yet to hit the market. However, Prof. Robert Shepherd, mechanical and aerospace engineering, is developing a material that could soon bring that to reality.

Shepherd and his team at Organic Robotics Lab is working on a metal-rubber composite by harnessing the strength of a metallic alloy and the flexibility of a soft silicone foam. The material can withstanding heavy loads or deform under them upon command. The only requirement for switching between these properties is a change in temperature.

Cornell Daily Sun:
Cornell Researchers Create New Material Capable of Shifting States, Arnav Ghosh

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Nano, Gold and Cancer...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 6, 2016 at 6:38am
Illustration of receptor–mediated endocytosis.3 Image Credit: Illustration courtesy of Professor Emeritus Danton H. O’Day, Department of Biology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada


Topics: Biology, Cancer, Nanotechnology


Cancer is an inherently difficult illness to treat. Sometimes residual cancer cells remain even after removing tumors; sometimes parts of a tumor cannot be removed because of the way the cancer cells attach to a vital organ. A way to detect and kill cancer cells in vivo has been sought after for a long time, and some lines of research are finally showing great promise. The latest? Having cancer cells envelop dozens of nanoparticles that then are used to obliterate the cancer cell from the inside, leaving healthy cells untouched!1

The Gist of It

Essentially, nanoparticle therapy works by getting about a hundred gold nanoparticles clustered into a cancer cell, then blasting the area with an infrared laser pulse. Energy imparted by the laser causes the fluid around the cluster to reach temperatures high enough to vaporize the fluid, which causes a rapid expansion and collapse. This results in the obliteration of the cancer cell, but healthy cells are not affected because they don’t incorporate enough gold particles to cause damage. As the high temperatures remain confined within the nanobubble formed around the cluster, nearby cells are unharmed by the process.

How Do You Get Something Inside a Cell?

Cells can incorporate foreign objects in a number of ways, but the method that this research utilizes is called receptor-mediated endocytosis. In this process, the foreign object attaches itself to a point on the outside of the cell called a receptor, which is embedded in the cell’s outer membrane. Receptors have active ends on either side of the cell membrane, each of which attaches to certain molecules; the exterior side is selective for certain particles that the cell needs, while the interior end attaches to the proteins and signaling molecules that regulate cellular processes based on what’s happening outside the cell. The cell uses this method, for example, when it ingests a cholesterol molecule; the molecule binds to a receptor at the cell membrane, leading proteins to attach to the interior end of the receptor, thickening the cell membrane. A pit forms that then envelops the bound molecules into the cell.

Physics Central: Using Gold Nanoparticles to Kill Cancer,H. M. Doss

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A Chat About Writing (a "how to" primer)

Posted by Bill McCormick on May 5, 2016 at 7:02pm

When people ask me for advice on writing I tell them to go buy Stephen King's book "On Writing" and leave me alone. When that doesn't work, I tell them this; Writing is a craft. As with any craft you need to know, and understand, all the nuances. So go write a press release, a technical paper, a sample legal brief, a newspaper article, a short film script, something out of your genre. Do the last one more than once in different genres. Make sure you format your work to the specifications of each industry (there are free sample templates all over the internet) and, no matter what, write every day.

Believe it or not, I take my own advice. This has led to me having a political horror story coming out in a couple of months and working on comic books. As a writer I would strongly suggest any writer interested in fantasy or sci-fi write for a comic book. The skill set is wildly different from anything else. In a film, or play, script you can leave settings to the director's imagination. The same applies to fiction in general, just substitute "reader" for "director." You can not do that in a comic. The artist needs to know exactly what the hell you want. You'll also learn why comics are done in pencil first. Things that seemed like great ideas when written can, easily, look like you suffer from brain damage.

Trust me on this one. I damaged my brain a lot when I first tried to do it.

Anyway, this year, for you comic fans, watch for the mature rated Legends Parallel and His 7 Valkeries and then watch for the kids' books Clarity Girl and Jax & Claus.

Yes, I wrote a Christmas story.

No, really. It's cute too.

Still, buy King's book. It's the most useful guide I've ever read.

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5th of May...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 5, 2016 at 5:00am
Battle of Puebla - Wikipedia


Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Politics, Women in Science


The presumptive nominee of one of our major political parties used a xenophobic attack against Hispanics/Latinos - he called them drug dealers and rapists; he'll build a wall, and make Mexico pay for it; Muslims are barred at the border; African Americans have been injured and denigrated at his rallies; Women and LGBT have been insulted; Native Americans were burned by him in a bad casino deal. He's stirred the melting pot and bigots have bubbled out of the cauldron, the 2012 autopsy all but ignored. Someone commented to me that their father "didn't leave the Democratic Party in 1967; it left him." I bit my own tongue at the political dodge: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act may have had something to do with his father's exodus, as it did many others. The hashtag movement to oppose the rise of the presumptive nominee has fallen to dust.

It is befitting today I repost this reminder of our diversity. I make no predictions and take nothing for granted. 538 and a lot of pundits predicted demises that didn't materialize. All the models were based on typical political science rules in elective politics. He is not following the rules: he's wrestling, WWE style.

I was 18 in 1980. I could at that time, drink as well as vote; the drinking age was raised to 21 when I turned 21 three years later, so it didn't impact me as much as generations afterwards. I voted along the party lines of my parents, affected by a party that championed the '64 and '65 acts my sister put her life on the line in demonstration lines for. The "Gipper" posed at his first rally in Philadelphia, Mississippi near the site of three murdered Civil Rights workers. It was an understood "wink and nod" at a group of disgruntled, disappointed and bigoted voters soon known as "Reagan Democrats." Using the dark machinations of the "Southern Strategy," so clearly elucidated by Lee Atwater, you will eventually get what you want: take from "them" because "they" didn't earn anything, despite a holocaust born of a mass continental kidnapping, rape, hangings, cross burning, domestic terrorism in the form of poll taxes and other voter suppression, castrations and reparations deferred forever. You did it with subtle, verbal Jujitsu; not openly as now: Moochers...Welfare Queens...Takers...Thugs...Rapists...all with a distinct hue in the gradient of Melanin. This has been one long backlash to the "established order" since January 20, 2009, when things got so terrible for many that bought into the myth of their inherit superiority. The president's main sin is the destruction of a narrative as long as the republic.



I make no predictions, but I give a sharp warning: Reagan was joked about in "Back To The Future" (Doc Brown: Who's president in 1985? Marty: Ronald Reagan. Doc Brown: The actor?), because as a B-Movie star, his only notable film was "Bedtime for Bonzo." Biff Tannen, the antagonist to Marty McFly's father - is based off the same real estate mogul, the Birther-in-Chief and reality TV star that is his party's presumptive nominee.



B-Movie actor...reality TV star... "What's past is prologue." William Shakespeare.

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for "fifth of May") is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated nationwide in the United States and regionally in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla, where the holiday is called El Dia de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla). The date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride, and to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War. In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. Contrary to widespread popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is actually celebrated on September 16. (Wikipedia)



The National Society of Hispanic Physicists has a recognition page of Hispanic Americans in Physics - Past, Present and Future. Similar to what I posted during the month of February, my intention is to give the same attention to Hispanic Scientists and Engineers during the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month.
Teaching for Change: Book link here

Almost 10 years before "Brown vs. Board of Education," Sylvia Mendez and her parents helped end school segregation in California. An American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage who spoke and wrote perfect English, Mendez was denied enrollment to a "Whites only" school. Her parents took action by organizing the Hispanic community and filing a lawsuit in federal district court. Their success eventually brought an end to the era of segregated education in California.


Praise for "Separate is Never Equal" by Duncan Tonatiuh
STARRED REVIEWS
"Tonatiuh masterfully combines text and folk-inspired art to add an important piece to the mosaic of U.S. civil rights history."
--"Kirkus Reviews," starred review
"Younger children will be outraged by the injustice of the Mendez family story but pleased by its successful resolution. Older children will understand the importance of the 1947 ruling that desegregated California schools, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education seven years later."
--"School Library Journal," starred review
"Tonatiuh ("Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote") offers an illuminating account of a family's hard-fought legal battle to desegregate California schools in the years before "Brown" v. "Board of Education.""
--"Publishers Weekly"
"Pura Belpre Award-winning Tonatiuh makes excellent use of picture-book storytelling to bring attention to the 1947 California ruling against public-school segregation."
--"Booklist"



 Happy Cinco de Mayo!

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Walter Kohn...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 4, 2016 at 4:40am
Image Source: NobelPrize.org 


Topics: Chemistry, Computational Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Density Function Theory*, Nobel Prize, Quantum Mechanics


“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”

― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

LOS ANGELES (JTA) –Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn, who fled Nazi-ruled Austria one month before the start of World War II, has died.

Kohn died on April 19 at his home in Santa Barbara. He was 93.

Kohn received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with British-born scientist John Pople. His research, which spanned the fields of physics and chemistry, applied quantum mechanics and advanced mathematics to explain complex chemical reactions.

His studies also formed the basis for the creation of innovative materials custom designed for medicines and for advances in electronics.

In the fall of 1939, Kohn left his native Vienna on one of the last transports of children to England, where he was interned as an “enemy alien.” The following year he was shipped to Canada, where he subsequently joined the Canadian army as an infantryman.

His parents, Salomon and Gittel Kohn, died in Auschwitz.

* Density functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (principally the ground state) of many-body systems, in particular atoms, molecules, and the condensed phases. Using this theory, the properties of a many-electron system can be determined by using functionals, i.e. functions of another function, which in this case is the spatially dependent electron density. Hence the name density functional theory comes from the use of functionals of the electron density. DFT is among the most popular and versatile methods available in condensed-matter physics, computational physics, and computational chemistry. Wikipedia

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Walter Kohn, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, dies at 93

"Walter Kohn - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 4 May 2016. < http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1998/kohn-facts.html >

"Walter Kohn - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 4 May 2016. < http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1998/kohn-bio.html >

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AlN and Qbits...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 3, 2016 at 5:19am
This graphic illustrates an engineered nitrogen vacancy in aluminum nitride.

Topics: Computer Science, Entanglement, Materials Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger’s cat, Solid State Physics

I included a short primer on Aluminum Nitride if you're interested (which, I'm guessing if you're reading something this nerdy, you kinda are). If you're viewing this on a laptop, pad or a mobile phone, I'm 99.99999999% sure your devices chips were manufactured with AlN. If you go to the link below, the article gives a succinct description of quantum entanglement (when atoms due to their proximity to each other cannot be described as a single unit), and superposition - famously illustrated by the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, which is the whole POINT of a quantum computer: it could be "1"; "0" or both at the same time, called a superposition of states. Thankfully, a lot of smart brains are tasked with what shape our tech lives post-Silicon will take, with which we will promptly share more cute cat videos in a kind of weird, digital Freudian slip.

Smiley

Quantum computers have the potential to break common cryptography techniques, search huge datasets and simulate quantum systems in a fraction of the time it would take today’s computers. But before this can happen, engineers need to be able to harness the properties of quantum bits or qubits.

Currently, one of the leading methods for creating qubits in materials involves exploiting the structural atomic defects in diamond. But several researchers at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory believe that if an analogue defect could be engineered into a less expensive material, the cost of manufacturing quantum technologies could be significantly reduced. Using supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), which is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), these researchers have identified a possible candidate in aluminum nitride. Their findings were published in Nature Scientific Reports.

NERSC: Could Aluminum Nitride Produce Quantum Bits? Linda Vu
Seo, H. et al. Design of defect spins in piezoelectric aluminum nitride for solid-state hybrid quantum technologies. Sci. Rep. 6, 20803; doi: 10.1038/srep20803 (2016).

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Wars and Water...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 2, 2016 at 6:26am
Global droughts, April 27, 2016. From the Global Drought Information System.


Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases


This is an often-correlated topic, even the Pentagon has warned Congress about it. Clausewitz said: "war is the extension of politics by other means," but it's also essentially a contest for resources, and it always has been. I recall my senior year my AFROTC instructor saying the primary duty of the officer was "the management of violence." That sounds kind of dark, but it's essentially the gist of it, despite your service branch or specialty. This article in Science Blogs caught my eye, as it tracks droughts across the globe in places where poverty, desperation and terrorism go hand-in-hand. Part of the responsibility of our elected officials should be the management of violence to keep it at a minimum (kind of a practical "fighting them over there" to borrow the jingoism), not sophomoric stunts with snowballs on the senate chamber floor.

Again, we have no solar sails, star ships nor extra habitable planets close by to escape to.

Populations around the world face many severe water challenges, from scarcity to contamination, from political or violent conflict to economic disruption. As populations and economies grow, peak water pressures on existing renewable water resources also tend to grow up to the point that natural scarcity begins to constrain the options of water planners and managers. At this point, the effects of natural fluctuations in water availability in the form of extreme weather events become even more potentially disruptive than normal. In particular, droughts begin to bite deeply into human well-being.

This has been a bad few years for people exposed to droughts around the world. Even normally occurring droughts have begun to be made more severe by rising global temperatures and climate changes. A particularly severe El Niño has played an important role: droughts are typically more widespread and severe than normal during El Niño years. Indeed, precipitation variability on land is strongly controlled by the characteristics of El Niño events.

Science Blogs: Global Droughts: A Bad Year, Peter Gleick

Related links:

The Water Wars, Cameron Stracher
War and Water, Rhett B. Larson
Water and War, Steven Lonergan
Why global water shortages pose threat of terror and war, Suzanne Goldenberg

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The Flying Bullet Blog #1: The Adventure Begins

Posted by Christopher Love on April 28, 2016 at 5:16pm

The Flying Bullet Blog #1: The Adventure Begins

My name is Christopher Love and I am the creator of the Flying Bullet. 
The concept of the photo novel came about due to my love for the old black and white sci-fi serials and films of 40s, 50s and 60s like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, King of the Rocket Men and Son of Ingagi. 
WHAT IF!!! there was a black and white photo novel starring an African American hero.  I imagine the hero would be based on real African American heroes of that era.  The Tuskegee Airmen were heroes of the highest caliber who fought discrimination and the right to defend a country that didn't always defend them.
So now I have my hero, LT Curt Masters, a Tuskegee Airman, who is kidnapped by a UFO and goes on the high octane sci-fi adventure  and exploring what it is to be a man and a human being.  The photo novel will be presented in Black and White to keep with its inspirational roots. 
This photo novel is a 100% classic science fiction story. I took the rich history of african americans and combined it with the science fiction genre. The story deals with the struggles of african americans to be counted as full citizens of the United States in defense of their country during WWII. Curt Master soons discovers that the planet Earth is entangled in a bigger intergalactic struggle.
Writer and artist John Byrne created a photonovel for a Star Trek story. He used still footage of the Star Trek tv show to tell a new tale.
I decided to create the story by shooting actual scenes via my cell phone and adding it to the photonovel layout. I am using a platform called Comic Life 3. It's a program that let's you create a comic book.
The photonovel will be available paperback, ebook and something more



.PREVIEW OF PAGE 24




PREVIEW OF PAGE 25




PREVIEW OF PAGE 26


The photo novel and ebook will be released on December 01 2016. Please help me by spreading the word and coming back for more updates.

-Chris Love
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Chief Injudiciousness...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 29, 2016 at 6:35am
Photos at top show students at Chicago State University (CSU), a minority serving institution on Chicago's South Side, engaged in active learning environments that have been shown to aid diverse groups of students develop a deep understanding of physics. In top photo Ebony Spells, Angela Moore, and Sharif Onihale work on a physics lab experiment.


Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Politics, STEM, Women in Science


I’m not sure if putting it in The Back Page section of the APS newsletter was a smooth move politically, but I’m grateful for the lucidity and clarity of Dr. Chandralekha Singh’s arguments affirming the need for diversity in our national STEM competitiveness, and the utterly vapid statement by one with the title “Chief Justice.”

Not that I've heard a lot from Chief Justices, but I don't recall Rehnquist saying something so demonstrably out-of-touch with the rest of the country; his mind is in the 1950's behind a white picket fence. The Chief Injustice is a microcosm of a privileged mindset that hasn't quite grasped we're in a global competitive environment, and more than his culture needs to row in the collective national boat.

Sadly, due to financial stresses, this valuable asset will likely close this year. When such actions - intentional or unintentional - take place, "lifting yourselves up by your own bootstraps" is about as asinine as starting a sprint chained to the starting block six seconds after the gun fires the race. For want of "nostalgic," anachronistic prejudices of the mid 20th Century, we're setting ourselves up to be a banana republic in the 21st.

On December 9, 2015, Chief Justice Roberts asked the question "What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?" during the discussion of a case on affirmative action at the university level. It appears that he chose a physics class because he felt that this discipline definitely does not need diverse perspectives. As a female physicist who has been teaching at the University of Pittsburgh for two decades, I feel that the Chief Justice’s question suggests a lack of familiarity with urgent issues in education that must be addressed to maintain U.S. competitiveness.

The question first implies that it is the perspective of the minority student that is the critical feature rather than the presence of the minority student in the physics class. We need to attract minority students to disciplines that need their talents. Currently, approximately 20 percent of undergraduate and Ph.D. students in physics programs across the U.S. are females, which is significantly lower than the percentage in many European and Asian countries. What is perhaps more alarming is that only about 9 percent of physics undergraduate degrees and 6 percent of Ph.D. degrees are awarded to students from underrepresented races and ethnicities.

APS Physics: In the Matter of Minority Physics Students v. Chief Justice Roberts
By Chandralekha Singh

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EuPRAXIA...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 28, 2016 at 6:37am
Artist's impression of how electrons (blue sphere) are accelerated by a large electric-field gradient (cerise waves) created by an intense laser pulse. (Courtesy: Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science)


Topics: High Energy Physics, Laser, Particle Physics, Plasma Physics


In the era of xenophobic flight to suburbs, they termed the cities "doughnuts," meaning they were empty of value, like doughnut holes; the suburbs sweeter and of more worth.

It's not that good science is not being done here in the US: it's no longer what we're known for primarily. Now, it's creation museums, conspiracy provocateurs; reality TV stars running for president. We are becoming a doughnut hole nation.

Accelerator physicists in five European countries are developing plans for the world's first high-energy laser plasma accelerator facility for use by science and industry. If built, the facility will deliver high-quality beams of electrons with energies up to 5 GeV. The EuPRAXIA consortium includes researchers at 16 institutes in the European Union (EU), including the DESY lab in Germany, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, the French national research council and the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK. EuPRAXIA also has 18 associate partners worldwide, including the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in the US, RIKEN in Japan and CERN in Switzerland.

The idea of laser plasma acceleration has been around for more than 30 years, and in 2014 physicists using the LBNL's Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator managed to accelerate electrons to energies as high as 4.2 GeV. The process involves firing very intense laser pulses into a gas to create a plasma. As a pulse travels through the gas, it rips electrons away from the positive nuclei, therefore creating a huge electric-field gradient in its wake. This gradient can be thousands of times greater than that found in conventional particle accelerators – and therefore can accelerate electrons to high energies over much shorter distances than conventional facilities.

Physics World: Consortium sets out to build European laser plasma accelerator
Hamish Johnston

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Legend Parallels Teaser #2

Posted by Bill McCormick on April 26, 2016 at 3:24pm

Legends Parallel Teaser II from Bill McCormick on Vimeo.

LEGENDS PARALLEL is a, single story, comic book which spans twelve issues. It tells the tale of five Earths, each very different from the others, and the one woman who wants to control them all.

A man, his mom, and her lover have to save the worlds. No one said this shit would be easy.

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Hawking Radiation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 27, 2016 at 4:29am
Image Source: Universe Today
Hawking radiation near an event horizon. Credit: NAU.


Topics: Black Holes, Cosmology, Einstein, General Relativity, Phonons


IN BRIEF



Scientists may have found signs that phonons, the very small packets of energy that make up sound waves, were leaking out of sonic black holes, just as Hawking’s equations predicted.

SURVIVING A BLACK HOLE


Some 42 years ago, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that not everything that comes in contact with a black hole succumbs to its unfathomable nothingness. Tiny particles of light (photons) are sometimes ejected back out, robbing the black hole of an infinitesimal amount of energy, and this gradual loss of mass over time means every black hole eventually evaporates out of existence.

Known as Hawking radiation, these escaping particles help us make sense of one of the greatest enigmas in the known Universe, but after more than four decades, no one’s been able to actually prove they exist, and Hawking’s proposal remained firmly in hypothesis territory.

But all that could be about to change, with two independent groups of researchers reporting that they’ve found evidence to back up Hawking’s claims, and it could see one of the greatest living physicists finally win a Nobel Prize.

Futurism:
Physicists Made a ‘Black Hole’ in a Lab That May Finally Prove Hawking Radiation Exists

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'Spooky Action' in Photosynthesis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 26, 2016 at 5:15am
Dipole-dipole interactions between two chromophores were imaged on the atomic level using scanning tunneling microscopy.
Image credit: Guoyan Wang and Daping Sun


Topics: Biology, Materials Science, Quantum Mechanics, Solar Power


Photosynthesis and other vital biological reactions depend on the interplay between electrically polarized molecules. For the first time, scientists have imaged these interactions at the atomic level. The insights from these images could help lead to better solar power cells, researchers added.

Atoms in molecules often do not equally share their electrons. This can lead to electric dipoles, in which one side of a molecule is positively charged while the other side is negatively charged. Interactions between dipoles are critical to biology -- for instance, the way large protein molecules fold -- often depend on how the electric charges of dipoles attract or repel each other.

One process where dipole coupling is key is photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, dipole coupling helps chromophores – molecules that can absorb and release light – transfer the energy that they capture from sunlight to other molecules that convert it to chemical energy.

Intriguingly, a consequence of dipole coupling is that chromophores may experience a strange phenomenon known as quantum entanglement. Quantum physics suggests that the world is a fuzzy, surreal place at its very smallest levels. Objects experiencing quantum entanglement are better thought of as a single collective than as standalone objects, even when separated in space. Quantum entanglement means that chromophore properties can strongly depend on the number, orientations and positions of their neighbors.

Inside Science: Scientists Capture 'Spooky Action' In Photosynthesis, Charles Q. Choi

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Announcement about new sci fi book Sojourners

Posted by Ben Davis Jr. on April 25, 2016 at 3:07pm

Dear Sci Fi Readers and Enthusiasts:

I've recently finished writing my first novel of science fiction featuring the first adventure of the first African American family to the stars. Titled Sojourners, the Strong family will face unimaginable perils as they explore the frontiers of intergalactic space.

The book is the first in a series and is now available for purchase via Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com ($13.99) and in Kindle/E-book formats ($3.99/download). As I write this, it will soon be available in bookstores across the US.

Upon purchasing this new novel in whatever format you wish, I do hope you all will enjoy the story. My promoters have all asked that you please pass this on to any who love reading an adventure in possibilities. I also posted an announcement on my Facebook page.  

Best regards,

Ben Davis Jr.

(440) 786-8735 (H)

(440) 321-6460 (C)

 

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Omid Kocabee...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 24, 2016 at 7:14pm
Image Source: Second Link below


Topics: Laser, Optical Physics, Photonics, Physics, Politics, Research


Omid Kokabee was a PhD student and researcher at the University of Texas, Austin in Laser Physics until his capture in 2011 during a family visit to Iran, and wrongful conviction by an authoritarian Iranian court. His health is fading; cancer claiming his right kidney. It was removed finally, but he's still in considerable pain and in real danger of dying. Instead of thinking of his scientific contributions to the US and the world at large, I fear our letting him languish this long is due to his being "other."

As much as I think the Iranian nuclear arms deal is a good thing - avoiding species extinction always is - an individual like Omid Kokabee is going through his own personal extinction albeit in a kind of psychopathic slow-motion.

Omid Kokabee was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize from the American Physical Society for “his courage in refusing to use his physics knowledge to work on projects that he deemed harmful to humanity, in the face of extreme physical and psychological pressure.” He has also been suffering from a number of serious health problems that have not been treated.

The timing of the petition delivery is critical: following a concerted effort on his behalf by a number of organizations and thousands of activists around the world, Iran’s Supreme Court recently vacated the ten-year sentence and is now going to review the case against Omid Kokabee. October 28 also marks the official presentation to the United Nations of the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed. Iran’s human rights record will also be closely scrutinized when its Universal Periodic Review in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is conducted starting October 31.

The delegation delivering the petitions to the Iran UN Mission is calling for Omid Kokabee to be immediately and unconditionally released so that he can receive urgent medical treatment for his numerous and severe health problems.

The letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader calling for the release of Omid Kokabee is endorsed by the following 31 Nobel laureates in physics: Leon Neil Cooper (1972), Brian David Josephson (1973), Anthony Hewish (1974), Burton Richter (1976), Samuel Chao Chung Ting (1976), Philip W. Anderson (1977), Arno Allan Penzias (1978), Sheldon Lee Glashow (1979), James Cronin (1980), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1981), Klaus von Klitzing (1985), Jack Steinberger (1988), David. M. Lee (1996), Douglas D. Osheroff (1996), Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (1997), William D. Phillips (1997), Daniel Tsui (1998), Eric A. Cornell (2001), Wolfgang Ketterle (2001), Masatoshi Koshiba (2002), Alexei Abrikosov (2003), Anthony Leggett (2003), David Politzer (2004), David J. Gross (2004), John Hall (2005), John Mather (2006), Toshihide Maskawa (2008), Konstantin Novoselov (2010), Andre Geim (2010), David J. Wineland (2012) and Peter W. Higgs (2013).

This is grand and noble, but it's also from an entry on Iranian Human Rights' site in  2014.

To remind what exactly authoritarianism is and why it's so destructive, I give this Eric Fromm ("Escape From Freedom") primer:

Authoritarianism: Fromm characterizes the authoritarian personality as containing a sadist element and a masochist element. The authoritarian wishes to gain control over other people in a bid to impose some kind of order on the world, they also wish to submit to the control of some superior force which may come in the guise of a person or an abstract idea.

Destructiveness: Although this bears a similarity to sadism, Fromm argues that the sadist wishes to gain control over something. A destructive personality wishes to destroy something it cannot bring under its control.

Conformity: This process is seen when people unconsciously incorporate the normative beliefs and thought processes of their society and experience them as their own. This allows them to avoid genuine free thinking, which is likely to provoke anxiety.

We're seeing this the world over: Iran, Europe and especially the United States. There is and always has been a war on science by authoritarian regimes be they religious or secular (fossil fuels has no cathedral I'm aware of, but they and other business interests control a considerable amount of news media and therefore modulate consent). Science tends to report what "is," not what business interests, the liturgical or the state wishes reality to be. It is this reason why we can't get any action on Climate Change in the United States and therefore adversely affecting the planet elsewhere with no "plan B." It is a formula for species extinction. Homo Sapiens literally translates from Latin to "wise man": this clearly is NOT.

I've created a White House Petition: http://wh.gov/ioO5v. There are others out there, I know, but 100,000 signatures in 30 days with social media makes me confident we can reach that simple milestone, and get our physicist home.

We are all Omid: those of us that support and participate in any level of science, K-12 and post secondary education or industry can suddenly find ourselves in a virtual or real gulag for being ourselves; for researching, advancing academically - thinking. Thoughtcrime is not so Orwellian anymore, refer to the Fromm primer above.

This is an election year, and in the off possibilty republicans take back the White House, I feel Dr. Kokabee's chances of returning to Austin and Physics research exponentially reduce from slim to nil.

I would attend the rally were I still living in Austin. I complete this post with tears for Omid, and a swelling of hope in my chest at this activism for a fellow scientist.



I've never been prouder being a physicist.

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