Africa has traditionally been a neglected landscape in speculative fiction. Terry R. Hill brings the second largest continent to the fore in a spectacular way in his compelling work of science fiction titled Third Exodus. In the novel, terrorists inadvertently unleash a chain of events on Earth that sparks a catastrophic conflict between humans and machines. The war devastates the planet, but leaves the African continent relatively unscathed. A visionary African leader, recognizing that life on Earth is doomed, proposes and eventually implements a plan to settle humans on Mars. Col. Zune Adamini, a famed military officer, is chosen to lead an expedition to the Red Planet.
All is not smooth sailing in this monumental endeavor to save humans from a dying Earth. Power, greed, and unbridled ambition casts a shadow over the evacuation efforts. Adamini is forced to undermine an agenda set in place by superiors he cannot trust, but he must do so with utmost secrecy and deception. He receives assistance in his efforts from an alien artificial intelligence. While Adamini understands the mentality of his human enemies and takes measures accordingly to thwart their plans for the Martian colony, the AI's intentions remain a mystery to him.
The author does a seamless job of imagining a manned journey to Mars and its eventual colonization. His background in NASA confers an authentic feel on the narrative, infusing his description of space tech with an engineer's eye. Add to the hard science element his skillful use of science fiction's popular tropes: the sentient AI and FTL travel, and what you have is a well rounded adventure with interesting, well developed characters. Third Exodus envisions a desperate migration from a world that can no longer sustain life. Hopefully, a real world exodus will not be saddled with that level of urgency. ”
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| Source: Voluntary Action History Society |
Pseudoscience (Meridian-Webster): a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific (disproved handily by Mr. Jesse Owens).
Olympic.org: Jesse Owens
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| Dark flow like features called Recurring Slope Lineae emanating from bedrock exposures at Palikir crater on Mars during southern summer. These flows are observed to form and grow during warm seasons when surface temperature is hot enough for salty ice to melt, and fade or completely disappear in cold season. Arrows point to bright, smooth fans left behind by flows. Credit: NASA/JPL |
Martian experts have known since 2011 that mysterious, possibly water-related streaks appear and disappear on the planet's surface. Georgia Institute of Technology Ph.D. candidate Lujendra Ojha discovered them while an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. These features were given the descriptive name of recurring slope lineae (RSL) because of their shape, annual reappearance and occurrence generally on steep slopes such as crater walls. Ojha has been taking a closer look at this phenomenon, searching for minerals that RSL might leave in their wake, to try to understand the nature of these features: water-related or not?
Ojha and Georgia Tech Assistant Professor James Wray looked at 13 confirmed RSL sites using Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) images. They didn't find any spectral signature tied to water or salts. But they did find distinct and consistent spectral signatures of ferric and ferrous minerals at most of the sites. The minerals were more abundant or featured distinct grain sizes in RSL-related materials as compared to non-RSL slopes.
"We still don't have a smoking gun for existence of water in RSL, although we're not sure how this process would take place without water," said Ojha. "Just like the RSL themselves, the strength of the spectral signatures varies according to the seasons. The signatures are stronger when it's warmer and less significant when it's colder."
Science Daily: Flowing water on Mars appears likely but hard to prove
OK everyone!
It is time for us to make some Afrofuturistic 3D Action Films!
We are down to our last few weeks on our campaign to raise funds for the Earth Squadron movie. We need everyone that reads this to please donate to make this a reality. Whether it is $5, $10 or more, each donation ads up. We often see depictions in movies and TV shows that are stereotypical or less than flattering to say the least regarding women and ethnic groups.
Earth Squadron is a film about what happens when planet Earth's rejects are the only ones that can save them from an unknown alien foe bent on world domination. We want to produce films that show positive images for our kids to emulate. We believe you do as well. Please click this link and play your part in this great project. Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/earth-squadron-movie-project
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| Image source |
In an era of #Scandal, it's probably hard today for kids to imagine this was as controversial as it was. It was groundbreaking, and made room for the creative talents of Ms. Shonda Rhimes (not "her only rodeo," as they say in Texas). I know it was BANNED in North Carolina and most parts of the south in the 1960's. Wikipedia seems to show an international bias as well:
"Plato's Stepchildren" is a third season episode of the original science fiction television series Star Trek, first broadcast November 22, 1968. It is episode #65, production #67, written by Meyer Dolinsky, and directed by David Alexander. This episode is one of the first scripted American television broadcasts to depict an inter-racial kiss between a white man (Kirk) and a black woman (Uhura).[1][2] This episode was withdrawn by the BBC in the UK because of 'sadistic plot elements' during the initial run in 1971 and was not shown until a repeat run in January 1994.
Ms. Nicols describes the scene:
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| Figure 2. The Mexican-hat potential energy density considered by Jeffrey Goldstone in his seminal 1961 paper. 2 The energy density is a function of the real (Re) and imaginary (Im) values of a spinless field ϕ. In the context of the electroweak theory developed later in the decade, the yellow ball at the top of the hat would represent the symmetric solution for the potential, in which the photon, W bosons, and Z boson are all massless. The blue ball in the trough represents the solution after symmetry breaking. In that solution the W and Z bosons are massive and the photon remains massless. The steepness of the trough is related to the mass of the Higgs boson. Citation: Phys. Today 66, 12, 28 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2212 |
Symmetries and other regularities of the physical world make science a useful endeavor, yet the world around us is characterized by complex mixtures of regularities with individual differences, as exemplified by the words on this page. The dialectic of simple laws accounting for a complex world was only sharpened with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics and the understanding of the subatomic laws of physics. A mathematical encapsulation of the standard model of particle physics can be written on a cocktail napkin, an economy made possible because the basic phenomena are tightly controlled by powerful symmetry principles, most especially Lorentz and gauge invariance.
How does our complex world come forth from symmetrical underpinnings? The answer is in the title of Philip Anderson’s seminal article “More is different.” 1 Many-body systems exhibit emergent phenomena that are not in any meaningful sense encoded in the laws that govern their constituents. One reason those emergent behaviors arise is that many-body systems result from symmetries being broken. Consider, for example, a glucose molecule: It will have a particular orientation even though the equations governing its atoms are rotationally symmetric. That kind of symmetry breaking is called spontaneous, to indicate that the physical system does not exhibit the symmetry present in the underlying dynamics.
It may seem that the above discussion has no relevance to particle physics in general or to the Higgs boson in particular. But in quantum field theory, the ground state, or vacuum, behaves like a many-body system. And just as a particular glucose orientation breaks an underlying rotation symmetry, a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the Higgs boson field, as we will describe, breaks symmetries that would otherwise forbid masses for elementary particles. Now that the Higgs boson (or something much like it) has been found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC; see Physics Today, September 2012, page 12), particle experimentalists are searching for more kinds of Higgs bosons and working to find out if the Higgs boson interacts with the dark matter that holds the universe together. Cosmologists are trying to understand the symmetry-breaking Higgs phase transition, which took place early in the history of the universe, and whether that event explains the excess of matter over antimatter. The measured mass of the Higgs boson implies that the symmetry-breaking vacuum is metastable. If no new physics intervenes, an unlucky quantum fluctuation will eventually spark a cosmic catastrophe.
Physics Today: The future of the Higgs Boson
Hey BSFS! I am very excited this week. I am making my first appearance as Foundation Press publisher speaking to a local Atlanta group called ForeverFamily as part of its Black History Month program. I have the honor of encouraging kids 5-16 and their parents to consider writing as both hobby and profession.
Also on Feb 16 I am entering both my novels T'Schai and Enemy Space in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, giving me two shots at the $50 thousand advance and publishing contracts. Wish me luck as I wish any of you entering the same!
Post 9/11/2001 to encourage national unity:
Super Bowl commercial celebrating our changing demographics and diversity (E Pluribus Unum):
Acts 17:26 "And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,"...(I doubt they've read this one)
BTW: as complained, American The Beautiful penned by Katharine Lee Bates is not the national anthem. That distinction belongs to the Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key. Civics is lacking, as ignorance is glorified and abounds...
New Colossus (The "Statue of Liberty poem")
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus
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| Kathleen Jay's travel blog |
Saw this, and became a little more than just casually concerned...
If increased realistic fears of suicide conventional bombing at Sochi were not enough, the Chechen connection is troubling when considering whether any of these groups might attempt to use radioactive materials to disrupt the Olympics. Chechens have been responsible for some of the earliest uses of radioactive material, starting from the placement of a small cesium 137 source in a Moscow park in the mid-1990s and there have been repeated threats and reports of Chechen groups intent to use radioactive material in a Radioactive Dispersal Device (RDD), particularly the threat to use explosives to carry out the dispersal, creating a “Dirty Bomb.”
Since various sorts of radioactive material has been out of control in Chechnya since the Soviet Union collapsed it is certainly possible that militant groups might possess small amounts of radioactive material. Obviously explosives are readily available. Would any of these groups use radioactive material against the Olympics if they possessed it? Unfortunately the answer may be that they would. Not only is it an extremely visible target, but Russian President Putin has made his personal prestige an issue, which may be viewed as too tempting a challenge for some of these groups to forego.
Federation of American Scientists: A Credible Radioactive Threat to the Sochi Olympics?
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| Image from Black Inventors |
Plasma etching utilizes a gas excited/ionized in an electromagnetic field into a plasma - the fourth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). Etching is how the semiconductor industry transfers a pattern in a photomask (a designed chrome mask) using UV light and photoresist. The resist captures the pattern, and is developed like photos (in old-style film and a camera). The plasma uses physical as well as chemical processes that react with the film to remove it leaving the exposed pattern. The resist is usually stripped away before subsequent processing in the wafer fab.
Plasma etch is used to transfer that pattern (s) becoming the integrated circuits in your cell phone; remote control; your thermostat in your home; your security system; your laptop; its mouse, servers for banks and the Internet: basically everything electronic you can think of.
You have the genius of this man to thank for it:
Physicist George Edward Alcorn, Jr. is best known for his development of the imaging x-ray spectrometer. Born on March 22, 1940 to working class parents, Alcorn was an excellent student and star athlete. He was awarded an academic scholarship to Occidental College in Pasadena, California, where he completed his B.A. in Physics in 1962. From there, Alcorn pursued graduate studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963, and his Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967.
At NASA Alcorn developed the imaging x-ray spectrometer. An x-ray spectrometer assists scientists in identifying a material by producing an x-ray spectrum of it, allowing it to be examined visually. This is especially advantageous when the material is not able to be broken down physically. Alcorn patented his “method for fabricating an imaging x-ray spectrometer” in 1984. He was cited for his method’s innovative use of the thermomigration of aluminum. For this achievement he was recognized with the NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) Inventor of the Year Award.
Alcorn is credited with more than 20 inventions, and holds at least eight U.S. and international patents, many of these related to the semiconductor industry. For instance, he developed an improved method of fabrication employing laser drilling, and a process for improving the process of plasma etching.
MIT Inventors of the week: George Edward Alcorn, Jr. PhD
Plasma Etching: Dr. Lynn Fuller, RIT
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| Source: Link below |
Materials shape human progress—think Stone Age or Bronze Age. The 21st century has been referred to as the molecular age, a time when scientists are beginning to manipulate materials at the atomic level to create new substances with astounding properties.
Taking a step in that direction, Jens Bauer, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and his colleagues have developed a bone-like material that is less dense than water but as strong as some forms of steel. "This is the first experimental proof that such materials can exist," Bauer said.
Ars Technica: New laser-printed material is lighter than water, as strong as steel
I've discussed my own past before, and on a recent visit to South Carolina, I found out how things haven't much changed. My cousin and our family historian were granted a tour of the plantation that my Great-Grandfather Julius and his wife Epsy lived. They toured the grounds and the slave quarters. They were then told they (and by extension, any other family member) were "invited to never come again." Sad...
This is not physics obviously, but the tabulation of the cost of service - never paid, mind you - is quite accurate, and it expresses the time-worn phrase: "living well is the best revenge" (George Herbert).
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| Escaped slaves in Virginia, 1862, Library of Congress |
Source of letter: The Freedmen's Book and Letters of Note
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson
Jourdon: Touché!
In autumn this year a brand new experiment at CERN called NA62 will start taking data and it will have the exciting goal of seeking physics beyond the Standard Model. The physicists working on it are now in the final stages of installing their 270-m-long experiment on the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) – which itself has a circumference of 7 km and feeds protons into the Large Hadron Collider. The NA62 collaboration comprises about 150 physicists at 20 institutes worldwide and its primary aim is to make an extremely precise measurement of the probability that a positively charged kaon will decay to a positively charged pion plus a neutrino/antineutrino pair.
Physics World: NA62 joins the search for new physics at CERN
