Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor is a mind-bending fantasy that grabs you from page one. In a post-apocalyptic Africa, fear runs rampant: fear of invaders and fear of those who don’t look like the rest of the population. It touches on things that are real and happen even now in African nations; sometimes it’s very raw and graphic, but it maintains its truth about the terrible things that happen to girls throughout Africa today.
The title character, Onyesonwu, is an Ewu, someone who is seen as evil and shunned just because of the way they look. Onyesonwu is also a sorceress, but she won’t learn this until her middle years. When she learns she can do things that others cannot, she wants to learn more. Onyesonwu knows of someone who can teach her the things she longs to know; his name is Aro. But there is one main reason Aro refuses over and over again to teach her the mystic ways—Onyesonwu is a girl.
Once their arguments and battles over that fact are finished, Aro at last decides to teach her. Then, from Aro’s teacher, both Aro and Onyesonwu learn that she is to fulfill a prophecy—to correct the wrongs done by the Nuru people and to kill the one who rules them all.
The dynamic writing by Okorafor pulls you in to this fantasy world, with real-world touches, and stuns in the spell-binding writing on how the sorcery works in this post-apocalyptic world. A fascinating read.
Australian metals mining wastes (top) and the metal hyperaccumulator plants Alyssum murale and Berkheya coddii (bottom). The former plant can take up 1–3% of its weight in nickel. It has demonstrated yields of up to 400 kg of nickel per hectare annually, worth around $7000 at current prices, excluding processing and production costs. (Images adapted from A. van der Ent, A. Parbhakar-Fox, P. D. Erskine, Sci. Total Environ.758, 143673, 2021, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143673.)
Topics: Climate Change, Green Tech, Materials Science, Research
When it comes to making steel greener, “only the laws of physics limit our imagination,” says Christina Chang of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA–E). Chang, an ARPA–E fellow, is seeking public input on a potential new agency program titled Steel Made via Emissions-Less Technologies. During her two-year tenure, she will guide program creation, agency strategy, and outreach. Steelmaking currently accounts for about 7% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and demand for steel is expected to double by 2050 as low-income countries’ economies grow, according to the International Energy Agency.
Founded in 2009, ARPA–E is a tiny, imaginative office within the Department of Energy. SMELT is one part of a three-pronged thrust by ARPA–E to green up processes involved in producing steel and nonferrous metals, from the mine through to the finished products. Another program seeks ways to make use of the vast volumes of wastes that accumulate from mining operations around the globe—and reduce the amounts generated in the future. The agency is also exploring the feasibility of deploying plants that suck up from soils elements such as cobalt, nickel, and rare earths. Despite being essential ingredients in electric vehicles, batteries, and wind turbines, the US has little or no domestic production of them. (See Physics Today, February 2021, page 20.)
Steelmaking
The first step in steelmaking is separating iron ore into oxygen and iron metal, which produces CO2 through both the reduction process and the fossil-fuel burning necessary to create high heat. An ARPA–E solicitation for ideas to clean up that process closed on 14 June. The agency is looking to replace the centuries-old blast furnace with greener technology that can work at the scale of 2 gigatons of steel production annually. It may or may not follow up with a request for research proposals to fund.
Topics: History, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Steven Weinberg
AUSTIN, Texas — Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, has died. He was 88.
One of the most celebrated scientists of his generation, Weinberg was best known for helping to develop a critical part of the Standard Model of particle physics, which significantly advanced humanity’s understanding of how everything in the universe — its various particles and the forces that govern them — relate. A faculty member for nearly four decades at UT Austin, he was a beloved teacher and researcher, revered not only by the scientists who marveled at his concise and elegant theories but also by science enthusiasts everywhere who read his books and sought him out at public appearances and lectures.
“The passing of Steven Weinberg is a loss for The University of Texas and for society. Professor Weinberg unlocked the mysteries of the universe for millions of people, enriching humanity’s concept of nature and our relationship to the world,” said Jay Hartzell, president of The University of Texas at Austin. “From his students to science enthusiasts, from astrophysicists to public decision-makers, he made an enormous difference in our understanding. In short, he changed the world.”
I'm sure the University of Texas, the New York Times, US News & World Report among many others will do more justice than a blog post from a doctoral student in Nanoengineering.
Photo at a banquet for the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP), and National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP) joint meeting, September 22, 2011, University of Texas, Austin.
His passing made me take stock of the popular books by physicists in my library (a short list): "The Collapsing Universe" (Asimov); "Ideas, and Opinions," "Relativity: The Special, and the General Theory" (Einstein); "Surely, You're Joking Mr. Feynman," "Six Easy Pieces," "QED: The Strange Theory of Light, and Matter," (Feynman); "Gravity" (Hartle); "Stephen Hawking's Universe," "A Brief History of Time," "The Universe in a Nutshell," (Hawking), "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?" (Lederman); Warped Passages: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" (Randall); "The Black Hole Wars: My Battle With Stephen Hawking To Make The World Safe for Quantum Mechanics" (Susskind); "Black Holes, & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" (Thorne), following in alphabetical order by author, lastly Professor Steven Weinberg. Some of my humble ruminations of him:
The above is from a Joint Conference between the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists in Austin, Texas on September 22, 2011. The photo above as I recall is from the now-defunct Blackberry mobile phone, so please forgive the image quality and pixel density. In my mind, a parallel remembered photo: Einstein lecturing African American physics students at Lincoln University. I cannot say he was going for a double entendre. I remember in the parking lot before I left, holding tightly the steering wheel of the rental, feeling goosebumps, and catching my breath.
I met Dr. Weinberg and thanked him for signing my only copy of "The First Three Minutes" when I was a graduate student in Astrophysics at the University of Texas (I have a hardcover copy; the most recent prints are paperback or Kindle). I was quite astonished that he remembered me. I filed my request sheepishly through his Administrative Assistant, but he did remember my request, and me specifically.
These were my first thoughts when a friend posted the UT News article on Facebook. Her husband had been a student of Dr. Weinberg, and a physics colleague for almost four decades. I called him to give my personal condolences. We both agreed it was the passing of an age that may never be repeated again. With each passing day, each quote by Dr. Carl Sagan in "A Demon-Haunted World" is becoming prophesy.
Though my friend is an accomplished scientist himself, he always felt intimidated by his mentor's presence. He and Professor Weinberg tentatively made a date to resume their lunch meetings, subsumed by the pandemic, until life or the cessation of life inevitably happens. The body wears out, and Entropy eventually has the last say. In the end, our positive impact is our epitaph, it is how we will be remembered.
*****
It is the loss of a giant in an age ruled by madness. I got to shake hands with Professor Steven Weinberg at the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP), and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP) when they held a joint meeting in Austin, Texas, September 22, 2011.
I have both “The First Three Minutes” (he graciously autographed), and “To Explain the World.”
His passing should make us all more determined to do just that in a world now ruled by gaslighting, and in the words of Carl Sagan, “thirty-second sound bites” (if they’re even that long). We should shine his passion for scientific inquiry as lights in “this present darkness.”
I think he’d want us to remember him that way.
At least that’s how I’m consoling myself through the tears.
This month, we’re taking a look at another reference book to help us with our craft. The Screenwriter’s Bible (I read the 5th Edition) by David Trottier is an absolute must for anyone looking to write and sell a screenplay or TV script. When it says on the cover, “A Complete guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script,” it delivers on its promise. Even though I mostly write fiction novels, you should see how many sticky notes I have tagged on pages throughout my book. I would recommend this to anyone who writes; there are several elements that apply to other forms of writing as well.
The Screenwriter’s Bible is divided into Books, from I to VI. It begins with “How to Write a Screenplay: A Primer” discussing “How stories work” going through discussions on concept, plot, character creation, theme, dialogue, and scene-making. And that is just Book I. Book II covers, “7 Steps to a Stunning Script: A Workbook,” allowing you to create a screenplay concept and write down your thoughts and outline, helping you develop your story thoroughly from Act I to finish.
Book III is, “Proper Formatting Technique: A Style Guide.” Mr. Trottier doesn’t mince words here, if you want to get your screenplay past the initial screener, it has to be formatted correctly or it won’t get looked at. Period. He offers sample scripts for you to follow, “Formatting in a nutshell,” to each part of the screenplay—what they’re called and how they should be formatted on the page. Book IV, “Writing and Revising Your Breakthrough Script: A Script Consultant’s View,” gives you insight into breaking into the industry and “key principals and exercises in revising scenes,” so your work stands out along with your formatting.
Book V informs on “How to Sell Your Script: A Marketing Plan.” It goes over everything from selling your work, protecting your work, preparing your script for the market, creating a marketing plan, how to find an agent, “How to pitch without striking out,” and even “How to sell your script without an agent,” and so much more. The last part, Book VI is, “Resources and Index,” with a link to updates on the Bible’s latest editions, industry organizations, writers’ organizations, schools, software, directories and more. The index is thoroughly organized, so if you’re looking for something specific, it’s easy to find.
If you’re serious about scriptwriting and breaking into Hollywood, this is your guide to getting your screenplay or TV script past the front door. Read it, follow the guidelines, do the workbook and you’ll have a knock-out story concept and correctly formatted script that with luck and perseverance will get your script seen where others don’t get past the front door.
(As mentioned, I read the 5th edition, so if there are later additions, they can only have even more helpful information for you, staying on top of an ever-changing industry.)
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights
Coups
There is a strong Trump following in the military, and retired generals on the crazy train, making moot all the protestations about Bill Clinton being a "draft dodger." Mango Mussolini has five deferments from fake bone spurs. Most of the retired generals are part of the Vietnam era, when they, returning from the theater were spat on and called "baby killers," they resented rich kids dodging service, yet they support one because of the coming preponderance of Melanin in America's future: a future the old farts will never live to see. Most of those retired generals aren't BIPOC (black, indigenous people of color). Many of the terrorists from January 6, 2021, are being arrested, but the jewel will be getting the seditionists that helped the insurrection getting taxpayer dollars. The seditionists in Congress don't want a bipartisan commission because criminals don't want a crime investigated in which they participated. They will also - on cue - complain a special committee comprised completely of Democrats is grossly partisan.
Any coup unpunished, whitewashed, or ignored becomes a rehearsal. The global economy would pivot on a dime if we suddenly became a failed state.
Crackpots
The highest-rated show on Fox Propaganda (AI inserts this automatically on my phone) used the legal excuse that "no one should take Tucker Carlson seriously." Greg Abbott, after dozens of his constituents died this past winter, passed laws to let psychopaths open carry, and is continuing the grift of building the wall. Meanwhile, temperatures in the west are soaring to dangerous levels, and brownout is inevitable. Greater than one hundred degrees Fahrenheit without air conditioning is as deadly as freezing without central heating. He'd rather ban Critical Race Theory in K - 12 schools (where it's not taught unless kindergarteners are lawyers), and solve voter fraud (which doesn't exist). But hey, we passed Juneteenth: we just can't teach where it comes from, or what it meant to ex-slaves, their descendants, and America. We managed to protect the Affordable Care Act, but Moscow Mitch has promised to "Merrick Garland" any Biden nominee if he gains the majority in 2022. It's why they're blocking votes and making it harder. It's an admission of political impotence in [a[ Democratic Republic: in a fair fight, they know they would lose.
The modern Republican Party died at the 2016 National Convention when they accepted a nonprofessional politician, a gameshow reality host playing the role of "billionaire" (only Cy Vance truly knows) as their bizarre nominee. They are now the party of conspiracists, domestic terrorists, insurrectionists, and QAnon. He plugged into an anti-democratic strain in the party that was tired of listening to talking points from conservative think tanks, and preferred ranting word salad from Archie Bunker, the racist dad brainwashed right along with them, and their shared hatred of the one-and-only African American president in 232 years of the federal republic. The former GOP have wined and dined racists winked and nodded at "states rights" Dixiecrats since Reagan's initial campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Entropy works in physics and politics: eventually, genteel racism was going to metastasize into a full-on fascist. It's only natural the "grand old party" seeing no fortune in attracting, or being beholden to people of color became the "gang of Putin." They thus needed no stinking platform in 2020. After decades of running on Reagan's "aw shucks" populism, white ethnic nationalism is far more appealing. "Deconstructing the administrative state" means installing a dictator after destroying democracy.
Psychopaths
"Chief Executive" references one of the many roles in the US Constitution for an American president. It became convoluted with "Chief Executive Officer" during the Reagan years.
Three years into the new century, and two past 9/11, a documentary called "The Corporation" aired on screens and quickly went to video, which you can watch at the link.
Synopsis
One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic, and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy, and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled, or absorbed into some new order. In this complex, exhaustive, and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence.
Based on Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns, and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts, and possible futures. The Corporation charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.
Case studies, anecdotes, and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate dramas. Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising, and undercover marketing. In addition, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians, and thinkers are also interviewed.
*****
In the book "The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success," Kevin Dutton explains that there are jobs that can attract literal psychopaths - and also jobs that are least likely to do so.
So what jobs are most attractive to psychopaths? Here's the list, originally published online by Eric Barker: 1. CEO, 2. Lawyer, 3. Media (Television/Radio), 4. Salesperson, 5. Surgeon, 6. Journalist, 7. Police officer, 8. Clergy person, 9. Chef, 10. Civil servant.
And for those looking to potentially avoid working with the least number of psychopaths, here's the list of occupations with the lowest rates of psychopathy: 1. Care aide, 2. Nurse, 3. Therapist, 4. Craftsperson, 5. Beautician/Stylist, 6. Charity worker, 7. Teacher, 8. Creative artist, 9. Doctor, 10. Accountant.
The premise of The Corporation is if the corporation is a person, what kind of person is it? According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders, the only "type" of person this can be is a psychopath.
So, why do we want a psychopath to have the nuclear codes? A care aide sounds more species-extending, and a lot more stable than fake billionaire gameshow hosts.
Juneteenth is my sister and my late father's 96 birthday. I will take a break next week in celebration and remembrance.
The Kardashev Scale is a discussion, and ranking of civilizations based on energy output:
Type I: able to marshal energy resources for communications on a planet-wide scale, equivalent to the entire present power consumption of the human race, or about 1016 watts. Here, Carl Sagan begged to differ, due to power gradation, we're more like (on his measure) a 0.7 civilization, or 7 x 1015 watts. We have pockets of deployed resources, but definitely not "planet-wide," else there would be no economic distinctions: east/south side to west side; 1st and 3rd worlds. Perhaps we could edge up our score with renewable alternatives? Type II: surpasses this by a factor of approximately ten billion, making available 1026 watts, by exploiting the total energy output of its central star, using a Dyson sphere. Type III: evolved enough to tap the energy resources of an entire galaxy, ~ 1036 watts. Type IV and V here.
Professor John D. Barrow is an astrophysicist and mathematician at Cambridge. His take is going not from the aspect of starships, instead of from ever-shrinking technology to make advanced control of energy, and technology possible.
On the Barrow Scale, we're clearly in the Barrow Three minus or nanotechnology. Arthur C. Clarke said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and kind of gives a runway that is the impossible-to-design Trek technobabble.
Could we go further?
Well, that depends on whether the purveyors of this technological node haven't blown ourselves to smithereens, [climate] changed ourselves to death, or ignored another zoonotic virus and comforted ourselves with throwing caution to the winds, taking vitamins, and jogging to the self-made apocalypse. Sorry for being cynical.
Also, each technological node is driven by industry, and at the top of that are apex predators also known as CEOs/billionaires who have a propensity to not share the resources they plunder. Also after seeing the Netflix documentary: "The Social Dilemma," I wonder what an AI-enabled-Planck-technology Internet, or economy would LOOK like, and who would it ultimately favor? Billionaires don't occur naturally, and trillionaires, quadrillion, or quintillion-empowered varieties would likely be tyrannical, and obscene.
Though this tech through-line is ambitious, bold, imaginative, it has a Pollyannaish feel to it, dependent on the benevolence of our fellow human beings, and a shared vision of humanity's progress.
Then, there are those apex predators that won't pay taxes, give a damn, or build starships so they can first ride on for their three minutes of narcissistic pleasure. Star Trek and a United Federation of Planets post-scarcity is still a Gene Roddenberry dream.
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, History, Human Rights
Note: This post meant for Friday was delayed by a crashing hard drive. I now have a brand NEW solid state version thanks to Best Buy and the Geek Squad (shameless plug). I now have the dubious and quaint job of finding all of my files on this newer, faster drive.
At a time when statues that honor our past often whitewash that history or honor traitors, Paine’s is a legacy all Americans can be proud of today and which our nation should honor. Paine was a thinker far ahead of his time. Almost uniquely among the Founding Fathers he opposed slavery and favored abolition, called for a progressive income tax to pay for universal education (including for both sexes), a welfare system for poor relief, pensions, women’s rights, and more. He was an eloquent advocate for equality and representative government, writing, “The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights.” He added, “the danger arises from exclusions.”
Thomas Paine was one the greatest political writers and philosophers of his time; his best-selling works, Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason fundamentally altered the political and social landscape of the 18th and 19th centuries and helped forge the United States of America.
Thomas Paine embodies the American Dream in a selfless way, rising from humble origins and penury to become a foremost political figure of his time, a friend to humanity and a foe to tyrants. He never sought personal power or wealth; instead, he championed the rights of the “common” people and believed emphatically in the dignity and rights of humans, which drove him to challenge the traditional authority of kings and dogmas of established churches, forever changing the course of human history.
Thomas Paine helped create America. It’s time America honored his legacy.
We saw to our horror a modern insurrection on January 6, 2021. As the battle ensign of Robert E. Lee's North Virginia Regiment paraded the halls of the Capitol during the siege, we discovered later the number of confederate figures venerated at the "Temple of Democracy" as well as state Capitols and cities that were guilty of the first insurrection.
Thomas Paine was as much a Founding Father to the United States of America as any other whose histories have been whitewashed, and mythologized to the point of unrealistic apotheosis. He apparently named the United States (lately, an oxymoron), and penned the lines you've probably heard in one form, or another:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
He was a scientist, poet, philosopher, scholar, and best-selling author. He was a deist, as were most of the Founding Fathers, meaning they believed in a God, just not a sovereign one intimately tied into, or interested in human affairs. There is such a thing as the Jeffersonian Bible, where Thomas Jefferson took scissors to every miraculous occurrence in the tome. Yet like the Tulsa Massacre and other vile atrocities masked by state propaganda, Paine’s history is deliberately hidden: unknown except to atheists, agnostics, freethinking societies, historians and theologians who study him, and humanists who revere him.
Despite the artistic flow of his prose that inspired a revolution against the British Empire and birth of its American analogue, there are no statues of him at our Capitol, the seat of our power. It is ironic the vitriol against the District of Columbia becoming the 51st state, existing as the last visible example of literal taxation without representation. “It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
History is best defined as a study of past events, particularly human events, to learn important lessons from them. History gains insights from the past; science make hypotheses, design experiments, looking for patterns to make predictions that can hopefully improve our futures, extend our lives, and maybe, our civilization.
Thomas Paine, and the Tulsa Massacre: both are sins of omission, both leave a citizenry of a federal republic uninformed. Uninformed citizens don't make decisions using faculties of critical thinking skills, since that part of the brain is unused, if not atrophied. Uninformed citizens cannot manage the responsibilities of a democratic republic. Uninformed citizens are anathema to a democracy. Such citizens are open to conspiracy theories, as nature abhors a vacuum. What would our country be if we faced our past, and planned logically for our futures? Gaslighting history and ignoring science is a disastrous combination that limits our survival runway as a species. Without global cooperation, management of resources, addressing income inequality that exacerbated our response to the pandemic, systemic racism that impoverishes not just BIPOC, but nations, we will crumble, as other empires have. The Mayas sacrificed fellow tribesmen and women to a water god to eliminate drought. New flash: it didn't work out too well for them.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
It is not the time to tire. We must defeat this evil, or witness the death of democracy.
Our next actions will either save, or doom the republic.
Our next actions will be guided either by apathy, or common sense.
A major challenge in cell biology remains to unravel is how cells control their biochemical reaction cycles. For instance, how do they regulate gene expression in response to stress? How does their metabolism change when resources are scarce? Control theory has proven useful in understanding how networks of chemical reactions can robustly tackle those and other tasks.1 The essential ingredients in such approaches are chemical feedback loops that create control mechanisms similar to the circuits that regulate, for example, the temperature of a heating system, the humidity of an archive, or the pH of a fermentation tank.
Theories for the control of biochemical reactions have largely focused on homogeneous, well-stirred environments. However, macromolecules inside cells are often highly organized in space by specialized subunits called organelles. Some organelles, such as the cell nucleus, are bound by a membrane. By contrast, another class of organelles—biomolecular condensates—show the hallmark physical properties of liquid-like droplets, and they provide chemically distinct environments for biochemical reactions.2–4
Such droplets can act as microreactors for biochemical reactions in a living cell (see figure 1). Their liquid nature sustains the fast diffusion of reactants while their specific composition gives rise to the partitioning of reactants in or out of the droplets. In general, the concentrations of reactants inside condensates differ from the concentrations outside. Those differences modify reaction fluxes, which, in turn, can dramatically affect reaction yield and other properties of chemical reactions. Just how such modified fluxes govern the biochemistry inside cells remains poorly understood.
Drops in Cells, Christoph Weber, Christoph Zechner, Physics Today
They can survive temperatures close to absolute zero. They can withstand heat beyond the boiling point of water. They can shrug off the vacuum of space and doses of radiation that would be lethal to humans. Now, researchers have subjected tardigrades, microscopic creatures affectionately known as water bears, to impacts as fast as a flying bullet. And the animals survive them, too—but only up to a point. The test places new limits on their ability to survive impacts in space—and potentially seed life on other planets.
The research was inspired by a 2019 Israeli mission called Beresheet, which attempted to land on the Moon. The probe infamously included tardigrades on board that mission managers had not disclosed to the public, and the lander crashed with its passengers in tow, raising concerns about contamination. “I was very curious,” says Alejandra Traspas, a Ph.D. student at Queen Mary University of London who led the study. “I wanted to know if they were alive.”
Traspas and her supervisor, Mark Burchell, a planetary scientist at the University of Kent, wanted to find out whether tardigrades could survive such an impact—and they wanted to conduct their experiment ethically. So after feeding about 20 tardigrades moss and mineral water, they put them into hibernation, a so-called “tun” state in which their metabolism decreases to 0.1% of their normal activity, by freezing them for 48 hours.</em>
They then placed two to four at a time in a hollow nylon bullet and fired them at increasing speeds using a two-stage light gas gun, a tool in physics experiments that can achieve muzzle velocities far higher than any conventional gun. When shooting the bullets into a sand target several meters away, the researchers found the creatures could survive impacts up to about 900 meters per second (or about 3000 kilometers per hour), and momentary shock pressures up to a limit of 1.14 gigapascals (GPa), they report this month in Astrobiology. “Above [those speeds], they just mush,” Traspas says.</em>
Wakanda forever! What an amazing collection of short stories about the technologically advanced, spiritually laden land of Wakanda. Award-winning authors from the African diaspora contribute their own visionary tales of the Black Panther and his homeland. Eighteen short stories touch on various aspects of the marvelous country: from tales of past kings/Black Panthers to the regal, warrior-class of the Dora Milaje; from the technological genius sister of the latest Black Panther to the troubled upbringing of Killmonger. There is something for everyone in this heavy, wonder-filled volume.
A few of my favorites are And I Shall See the Sun Rise, Ukubamba, and The Underside of Darkness. Survival tales of the queen of Wakanda, child-kidnapping tales even in this hidden country, spies and traitors, as well as visits to a burgeoning country called America and its days of slavery, all are here in this one magnificent volume. Each tale grabs hold of you, mind, body and spirit and sets you down deep in the rich history of Wakanda.
Grab your copy of this ground-breaking anthology by Marvel—Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, edited by Jesse J. Holland. You won’t be disappointed.
New territory Two candidate collider-neutrino events from the FASERν pilot detector in the plane longitudinal to (top) and transverse to (bottom) the beam direction. The different lines in each event show charged-particle tracks originating from the neutrino interaction point. Credit: FASER Collaboration.
Topics: CERN, High Energy Physics, Particle Physics, Research
Think “neutrino detector” and images of giant installations come to mind, necessary to compensate for the vanishingly small interaction probability of neutrinos with matter. The extreme luminosity of proton-proton collisions at the LHC, however, produces a large neutrino flux in the forward direction, with energies leading to cross-sections high enough for neutrinos to be detected using a much more compact apparatus.
In March, the CERN research board approved the Scattering and Neutrino Detector (SND@LHC) for installation in an unused tunnel that links the LHC to the SPS, 480 m downstream from the ATLAS experiment. Designed to detect neutrinos produced in a hitherto unexplored pseudo-rapidity range (7.2 < 𝜂 < 8.6), the experiment will complement and extend the physics reach of the other LHC experiments — in particular FASERν, which was approved last year. Construction of FASERν, which is located in an unused service tunnel on the opposite side of ATLAS along the LHC beamline (covering |𝜂|>9.1), was completed in March, while installation of SND@LHC is about to begin.
Both experiments will be able to detect neutrinos of all types, with SND@LHC positioned off the beamline to detect neutrinos produced at slightly larger angles. Expected to commence data-taking during LHC Run 3 in spring 2022, these latest additions to the LHC experiment family are poised to make the first observations of collider neutrinos while opening new searches for feebly interacting particles and other new physics.
The first coronal mass ejection, or CME, observed by the Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) appears as a sudden gust of white (the dense front from the CME) that expands into the solar wind. This video uses different images, created by subtracting the pixels of the previous image from the current image to highlight changes. The missing spot in the image on the far right is an overexposed area where light from the spacecraft solar array is reflected into SoloHI’s view. The little black and white boxes that blip into view are telemetry blocks – an artifact from compressing the image and sending it back down to Earth. Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/SoloHI team/NRL
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, ESA, Heliophysics, NASA
For the new Sun-watching spacecraft, the first solar eruption is always special.
On February 12, 2021, a little more than a year from its launch, the European Space Agency, and NASA’s Solar Orbiter caught sight of this coronal mass ejection or CME. This view is from the mission’s SoloHI instrument — short for Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager — which watches the solar wind, dust, and cosmic rays that fill the space between the Sun and the planets.
It's a brief, grainy view: Solar Orbiter’s remote sensing won’t enter full science mode until November. SoloHI used one of its four detectors at less than 15% of its normal cadence to reduce the amount of data acquired. Still, a keen eye can spot the sudden blast of particles, the CME, escaping the Sun, which is off-camera to the upper right. The CME starts about halfway through the video as a bright burst – the dense leading edge of the CME – and drifts off-screen to the left.
For SoloHI, catching this CME was a happy accident. At the time the eruption reached the spacecraft, Solar Orbiter had just passed behind the Sun from Earth’s perspective and was coming back around the other side. When the mission was being planned, the team wasn’t expecting to be able to record any data during that time.
An unidentified flying object as seen in a declassified Department of Defense video, DoD
Topics: Aerodynamics, Applied Physics, Biology, Exoplanets, General Relativity, SETI
May 17, 2019- No, little green men aren't likely after the conquest of humanity. Boyd's piece for Phys.org highlights the reason why the Pentagon wants to identify UFOs: they're unidentified. If a warfighter on the ground or in the sky can't ID an object, that creates an issue since they don't know if it's friendly, adversarial, or neutral.
U.S. Navy pilots and sailors won't be considered crazy for reporting unidentified flying objects, under new rules meant to encourage them to keep track of what they see writes Iain Boyd for Phys.org.
The Pentagon refers to them as "transmedium vehicles," meaning vehicles moving through air, water, and space. Carolina Coastline breathlessly uses the term "defying the laws of physics." So I looked at what the paper might have meant. The objects apparently exceed the speed of sound without a sonic boom (signature of breaking the barrier). Even though this is reported by Popular Mechanics, they're quoting John Ratcliffe, whose name somehow sounds like a pejorative. Consider the source.
U.S. Navy F/A-18 flying faster than the speed of sound. The white cloud is formed by decreased air pressure and temperature around the tail of the aircraft. ENSIGN JOHN GAY, U.S. NAVY
The speed of sound is 343 meters per second (761.21 miles per hour, 1,100 feet per second). Mach 1 is the speed of sound, Mach 2 is 1522.41 mph, Mach 3 is 2283.62 mph. NASA's X-43A scramjet sets the record at Mach 9.6 (7,000 mph), so, it's easy to see where Star Trek: The Next Generation got its Warp Speed analog from. The top speed of the F/A-18 is 1,190 mph. Pilots and astronauts under acceleration experience G Forces, and have suits to keep them from blacking out in a high-speed turn.
A Science Magazine article in 1967 reported the dimensions and speeds for the object were undeterminable. History.com reported an object exceeding 70 knots, or 80.5546 mph underwater (twice the speed of a nuclear submarine, so I can see the US Navy's concern). I found some of the descriptions on the site interesting:
5 UFO traits:
1. Anti-gravity lift (no visible means of propulsion), 2. Sudden and instantaneous acceleration (fast), 3. Hypersonic velocities without signatures (no sonic boom), 4. Low observability, or cloaking (not putting this on Romulans, or Klingons), 5. Trans-medium travel (air, water, space).
When I look at these factors, I don't get "little green men." First caveat: there are a lot of planets between us, and them with resources aplenty. Second caveat: any interest an alien intelligence might have in us is as caretakers of an experiment, or cattle. That's disturbing: ever see a rancher have conversations with a chicken, sow, or steer before slaughter?
My hypothesis (Occam's razor) - these are projections, but of a special kind:
For the first time, a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST - 2016) have used neutron beams to create holograms of large solid objects, revealing details about their interiors in ways that ordinary laser light-based visual holograms cannot.
Holograms -- flat images that change depending on the viewer's perspective, giving the sense that they are three-dimensional objects -- owe their striking capability to what's called an interference pattern. All matter, such as neutrons and photons of light, has the ability to act like rippling waves with peaks and valleys. Like a water wave hitting a gap between the two rocks, a wave can split up and then re-combine to create information-rich interference patterns.
This of course doesn't explain the decades of observations, since holograms came into being in a 1948 paper by the Hungarian inventor Denis Gabor: “The purpose of this work is a new method for forming optical images in two stages. In the first stage, the object is lit using a coherent monochrome wave, and the diffraction pattern resulting from the interference of the secondary coherent wave coming from the object with the coherent background is recorded on the photographic plate. If the properly processed photographic plate is placed after its original position and only the coherent background is lit, an image of the object will appear behind it, in the original position.” Gabor won the Nobel Prize in 1971 for "his invention and development of the holographic method." Also: History of Holography
This is purely speculative. I have no intelligence other than what I've shared. It does in my mind, explain the physics-defying five traits described above. It does not explain the previous supposition of sightings since humans started recording history, or trying to hypothesize their sightings in antiquity. Solid objects flying at hypersonic speeds make sonic booms; projections - ball lightning, 3D laser, or solid neutron holograms - likely won't.
If these are projections (adversary, friendly, neutral), who is doing them, and why?
IT'S HERE, THE INTERVIEW YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!
Would You Rather with Jarvis Sheffield - Stowaway vs. Outside the Wire
Jarvis Sheffield, proud TSU graduate & educator, administrator of the Black Science Fiction Society and so much more joins us to figure out why that man was on that ship and why they had no backup systems. And so much more...
Illustration of the FASER experiment. Image Credit: FASER/CERN.
Topics: CERN, Dark Matter, High Energy Physics, Neutrinos, Particle Physics
Neutrinos are ubiquitous and notorious. Billions are passing through you at this moment. Occasionally described as a “ghost of a particle,” neutrinos are nearly massless, thereby making them extremely difficult to detect experimentally (“Neutrino,” meaning “little neutral one” in Italian, was first used by Enrico Fermi in the early 1930s). Neutrinos were first confirmed in 1956 (thanks to a nearby nuclear reactor), and they’ve since been detected from different sources, including the Sun and cosmic rays, but not yet in a particle collider. Their elusiveness has been the source of much intrigue (and, of course, research funding) within the particle physics community since.
What else makes them so curious? Neutrinos come in three flavors — electron neutrino, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino — and may switch between them through the process of oscillation. Neutrino oscillations have been experimentally confirmed only in the past decade at the Super-K Detector in Japan (physicists Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for it). This discovery signified an important direction in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model because the longstanding theory does not explain neutrino oscillations and describes them as completely massless particles. Something isn’t quite adding up.
Enter: FASER. Initially proposed in 2018, the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER) is CERN’s newest experiment poised to detect neutrinos, potentially up to 1300 electron neutrinos, 20,000 muon neutrinos, and 20 tau neutrinos. Constructed in an unused service tunnel located about 500 meters from an Atlas experiment interaction point, FASER and its corresponding sub-detector, FASERν, have been designed to probe interactions of high-energy neutrinos (predicted to be between 600 GeV and 1 TeV).
Continuous improvements in farming and biofuel production technology have helped establish ethanol as a low-carbon fuel.
Topics: Biology, Biofuels, Climate Change, Dark Side, Economics, Environment
The carbon footprint of corn ethanol shrunk by 23% between 2005 and 2019 as farmers and ethanol producers adopted new technologies and improved efficiency, according to a new analysis published in the academic journal Biofuels Bioproducts and Biorefining by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. By 2019, the researchers found, corn ethanol was reducing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by 44-52% compared to gasoline.
Since 2000, corn ethanol production in the United State has increased significantly – from 1.6 to 15 billion gallons – due to supportive biofuel policies. In its study, the Argonne laboratory conducted a retrospective analysis of the changes in U.S. corn ethanol greenhouse gas emission intensity, sometimes known as carbon intensity, over the 15 years from 2005 to 2019, showing a significant decrease of 23%.
The carbon footprint of corn ethanol shrunk by 23% between 2005 and 2019 as farmers and ethanol producers adopted new technologies and improved efficiency, according to a new analysis published in the academic journal Biofuels Bioproducts and Biorefining by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. By 2019, the researchers found, corn ethanol was reducing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by 44-52% compared to gasoline.
Since 2000, corn ethanol production in the United State has increased significantly – from 1.6 to 15 billion gallons – due to supportive biofuel policies. In its study, the Argonne laboratory conducted a retrospective analysis of the changes in U.S. corn ethanol greenhouse gas emission intensity, sometimes known as carbon intensity, over the 15 years from 2005 to 2019, showing a significant decrease of 23%.
This is due to several factors, the analysis explains. Corn grain yield has increased continuously, reaching 168 bushels/acre or a 15% increase while fertilizer inputs per acre have remained constant, resulting in decreased intensities of fertilizer inputs with a 7% and 18% reduction in nitrogen and potash use per bushel of corn grain harvested, respectively. The study also found a 14% reduction per bushel in farming energy use.
The analysis also found a 6.5% increase in ethanol yield, from 2.70 to 2.86 gal/bushel corn, and a 24% reduction in ethanol plant energy use, from 32 000 to 25 000 Btu/gal ethanol also helped reduce the carbon intensity.
“Our study shows that while the corn ethanol industry has experienced significant volume expansion, it has reduced the GHG intensity of corn ethanol through improved U.S. corn farming and ethanol biorefinery operations. Corn yield has increased, and chemical and energy use intensities of corn farming have decreased. In ethanol biorefineries, ethanol yield has increased, and energy use has decreased significantly,” according to the researchers. “Biofuels, including corn ethanol, can play a critical role in the U.S. desire for deep decarbonization of its economy.”
Bonus: I'm not sure Russian criminal elements can hack, or extort us with it.
This is not a debate. Just truth in its rawest form.
The biggest mistake made in our current humanity is accepting this flawed world, then using similar tactics that contributed to the flawed state to try and fix it. Example - striving to put yourself in a position of power to make changes. As soon as you join that way of thinking, and pursue it, you end up becoming the very thing you claim you are wanting to fix. It’s unavoidable.
For instance, look at our world governments. Look at the super rich who throw millions at world issues. Now STOP!!! Take a deep breath and look at the world we live in. NOW!!! It’s a mess. And it’s not changing for the better. No matter how many notions and wishing for so-called “positivity vibes” you put out or reach for.
This is why one cannot participate in this world although we have to live in it.
One must separate themselves from the masses in the way one processes thought in order to see change. Then you can only apply that change to oneself.
We have one purpose in this 3rd dimension, on this planet (no I will not tell you what it is although it applies to every soul on the planet, because humanity is already corrupted to the core and all humanity does is debate it, when all you have to do is actually put it into exercise. Self realization is an individual journey) in these last days of the physical cycle.
Humanity has created - Ideas, jobs, entertainment, politics, illogical logic, “iszuims” debated opinions, etc. which we all embrace as we join the “adult” world and thousands of tactics are used as a distraction to keep humanity from pursuing that one purpose.
Although this is the entire world, thee western world suffers most from this flawed understanding of thought. Most of the western world cultures, if not all, have had these flawed values physically, mentally and psychologically beaten into us.
This is why today’s humanity is spending $$$$$ on pills, shrinks , motivational speaking classes, plastic surgery, etc.
Wake up humanity There is no quick fix to the psychological damage that our humanity suffers from. The saddest part of it all is… we will continue to suffer, because humanity’s arrogance has us all “THINKING” we know how to fix the issues that plague us. In our current state we do not know, but we “ THINK” we do.
This is what Divine Destiny The Animated Series touches on. A time before this time. And how a civilization knew this and still blew it all up.
What does that say about our current civilization?
A headstrong Egyptian priestess, her brother, their sacked colony—and a rescue mission.
When Itaweret’s beloved Per-Pehu falls to the tyrannical Scylax, she and her brother Bek lead a mission to save her captured people and depose Scylax. Along the way, they run into all kinds of perils, friends, and foes—and beasts sent by an angry goddess. Set in ancient Greece 3,500 years ago, this is a tale blending magical realism with history, high adventure with discovery . . . and Itaweret’s determination to save her people while learning her heart’s desires and realizing her deeper purpose.
This is the tale of Priestess of the Lost Colony, my debut novel. You can purchase your very own copy, either digital or paperback, here on the publisher's website or at your favorite online retailer!
