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Topics: History, Modern Physics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

Soon after Enrico Fermi became a professor of physics at Italy’s University of Rome in 1927, Ettore Majorana joined his research group. Majorana’s colleagues described him as humble because he considered some of his work unexceptional. For example, Majorana correctly predicted in 1932 the existence of the neutron, which he dubbed a neutral proton, based on an atomic-structure experiment by Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Despite Fermi’s urging, Majorana didn’t write a paper. Later that year James Chadwick experimentally confirmed the neutron’s existence and was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.

Nevertheless, Fermi thought highly of Majorana, as is captured in the following quote: “There are various categories of scientists, people of a secondary or tertiary standing, who do their best but do not go very far. There are also those of high standing, who come to discoveries of great importance, fundamental for the development of science. But then there are geniuses like Galileo and Newton. Well, Ettore was one of them.” Majorana only wrote nine papers, and the last one, about the now-eponymous fermions, was published in 1937 at Fermi’s insistence. A few months later, Majorana took a night boat to Palermo and was never seen again.¹

In that final article, Majorana presented an alternative representation of the relativistic Dirac equation in terms of real wavefunctions. The representation has profound consequences because a real wavefunction describes particles that are their own antiparticles, unlike electrons and positrons. Since particles and antiparticles have opposite charges, fermions in his new representation must have zero charge. Majorana postulated that the neutrino could be one of those exotic fermions.

Although physicists have observed neutrinos for more than 60 years, whether Majorana’s hypothesis is true remains unclear. For example, the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which earned Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, demonstrates that neutrinos have mass. But the standard model requires that neutrinos be massless, so various possibilities have been hypothesized to explain the discrepancy. One answer could come from massive neutrinos that do not interact through the weak nuclear force. Such sterile neutrinos could be the particles that Majorana predicted. Whereas conclusive evidence for the existence of Majorana neutrinos remains elusive, researchers are now using Majorana’s idea for other applications, including exotic excitations in superconductors.

Majorana qubits for topological quantum computing, Physics Today

Ramón Aguado is a senior researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid.

Leo Kouwenhoven is a researcher at the Microsoft Quantum Lab Delft and a professor of applied physics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Scene from the Stake out. Apart of the up coming mini anthology Dark Spider: Lovers and other Heroes.

A fan made cover for George Orwell's novel. "Animal Farm" is one of Orwell's most well-known works and gained unlikely popularity with Ukrainian refugees. (Photo from Flickr user Ben Templesmith.) PRI.org

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." Arthur C. Clarke

A lattice scaffold 3D printed directly onto soft living tissue. (Courtesy: Ohio State University)

Topics: 3D Printing, Bioengineering, Biofabrication, Biology, Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering is an emerging field in which cells, biomaterials and biotechnologies are employed to replace or regenerate damaged or diseased tissues. Currently, this is achieved by generating a biomaterial scaffold outside of the body, maturation in a bioreactor and then surgically implanting the created tissue into the patient. This surgery, however, poses the added risk of infection, increases recovery time and may even negate the therapeutic benefits of the implant.

To prevent such complications, a US research team is developing a way to fabricate 3D tissue scaffolds inside a living patient – so-called intracorporeal tissue engineering. The researchers, from the Terasaki Institute, Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University, aim to use robotic direct-write 3D printing to dispense cell-laden biomaterials (bioinks) in a highly precise, programmable manner. The printed bioinks are delivered through minimally invasive surgical incisions and the body itself acts as the bioreactor for maturation.

Any technique used to directly print tissues inside the body, however, must meet a specific set of requirements. The biomaterial must be 3D printable at body temperature (37 °C), for example, and all procedural steps should not harm the patient. For example, current methods use UV light to crosslink the constructed tissue, which is not safe for use within the body.

To meet these requirements, the team produced a specially-formulated bioink designed for printing directly in the body. They used the hydrogel gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) as the biomaterial, and introduced Laponite and methylcellulose as rheological modifiers to enhance printability. “This bio-ink formulation is 3D printable at physiological temperature, and can be crosslinked safely using visible light inside the body,” explains first author Ali Asghari Adib.

Tissue engineering moves closer to 3D printing inside the body, Tami Freeman, Physics World

A scene from the Stake out mini story in Lovers and other Rivals

Vulcan from the link, also see Memory Alpha

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Science Fiction, Star Trek

Note: 2018 article, but neat nonetheless.

One of the more interesting and rewarding aspects of astronomy and space exploration is seeing science fiction become science fact. While we are still many years away from colonizing the Solar System or reaching the nearest stars (if we ever do), there are still many rewarding discoveries being made that are fulfilling the fevered dreams of science fiction fans.

For instance, using the Dharma Planet Survey, an international team of scientists recently discovered a super-Earth orbiting a star just 16 light-years away. This super-Earth is not only the closest planet of its kind to the Solar System, it also happens to be located in the same star system as the fictional planet Vulcan from the Star Trek universe.

The study which details their findings, which recently appeared in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by Bo Ma and Jian Ge, a post-doctoral researcher and a professor of astronomy from the University of Florida, respectively. They were joined by researchers from Tennessee State University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Universidad de La Laguna, Vanderbilt University, the University of Washington, and the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory.

“The new planet is a ‘super-Earth’ orbiting the star HD 26965, which is only 16 light years from Earth, making it the closest super-Earth orbiting another Sun-like star. The planet is roughly twice the size of Earth and orbits its star with a 42-day period just inside the star’s optimal habitable zone.”

“Star Trek fans may know the star HD 26965 by its alternative moniker, 40 Eridani A,” he said. “Vulcan was connected to 40 Eridani A in the publications “Star Trek 2” by James Blish (Bantam, 1968) and “Star Trek Maps” by Jeff Maynard (Bantam, 1980).”

Astronomers find Planet Vulcan – 40 Eridani A – Right Where Star Trek Predicted it, Universe Today

A meme of past memes - seemed apropos.

Topics: Astrophysics, Humor, Science Fiction, SETI

Note: I use three sources for the commentary I've seen breathlessly displayed on the Internet speculating there may be 36 communicative (but, noticeably silent) civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. I grinned, and composed the combo meme above. Two words came to mind on my social media feed: click bait.

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The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is. Source: Wikipedia

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It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

SETI Institute: Fermi Paradox, Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer

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How many intelligent alien civilizations are out there among the hundreds of billions of stars in the spiral arms of the Milky Way? According to a new calculation, the answer is 36.

That number assumes that life on Earth is more or less representative of the way that life evolves anywhere in the universe — on a rocky planet an appropriate distance away from a suitable star, after about 5 billion years. If that assumption is true, humanity may not exactly be alone in the galaxy, but any neighbors are probably too far away to ever meet.

On the other hand, that assumption that life everywhere will evolve on the same timeline as life on Earth is a huge one, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who was not involved in the new study. That means that the seeming precision of the calculations is misleading.

"If you relax those big, big assumptions, those numbers can be anything you want," Shostak told Live Science.

The question of whether humans are alone in the universe is a complete unknown, of course. But in 1961, astronomer Frank Drake introduced a way to think about the odds. Known as the Drake equation, this formulation rounds up the variables that determine whether or not humans are likely to find (or be found by) intelligent extraterrestrials: The average rate of star formation per year in the galaxy, the fraction of those stars with planets, the fraction of those planets that form an ecosystem, and the even smaller fraction that develop life. Next comes the fraction of life-bearing planets that give rise to intelligent life, as opposed to, say, alien algae. That is further divided into the fraction of intelligent extraterrestrial life that develops communication detectable from space (humans fit into this category, as humanity has been communicating with radio waves for about a century).

The final variable is the average length of time that communicating alien civilizations last. The Milky Way is about 14 billion years old. If most intelligent, communicating civilizations last, say, a few hundred years at most, the chances that Earthlings will overlap with their communications is measly at best.

Solving the Drake equation isn't possible, because the values of most of the variables are unknown. But University of Nottingham astrophysicist Christopher Conselice and his colleagues were interested in taking a stab at it with new data about star formation and the existence of exoplanets, or planets that circle other stars outside our own solar system. They published their findings June 15 in The Astrophysical Journal.

Are there really 36 alien civilizations out there? Well, maybe. Stephanie Pappas, Live Science

The character of Dark Spider was created as an avatar of myself. A version of me that had the power to overcome pain and betrayal that results from infidelity. Throughout his existence he has grown and changed as I have. Going from guilt ridden down on himself hero, to relentless and resilient leader. Much like my own journey his isn't over by a long shot. So join him won't You?

https://gumroad.com/lawfulevil

"Weird Time Tunnel." Image Source Below.

Topics: Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics

It's easy to take time's arrow for granted - but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all?

An experiment from 2019 shows just how much wiggle room we can expect when it comes to distinguishing the past from the future, at least on a quantum scale. It might not allow us to relive the 1960s, but it could help us better understand why not.

Researchers from Russia and the US teamed up to find a way to break, or at least bend, one of physics' most fundamental laws of energy.

The second law of thermodynamics is less a hard rule and more of a guiding principle for the Universe. It says hot things get colder over time as energy transforms and spreads out from areas where it's most intense.

It's a principle that explains why your coffee won't stay hot in a cold room, why it's easier to scramble an egg than unscramble it, and why nobody will ever let you patent a perpetual motion machine.

Virtually every other rule in physics can be flipped and still make sense. For example, you could zoom in on a game of pool, and a single collision between any two balls won't look weird if you happened to see it in reverse.

On the other hand, if you watched balls roll out of pockets and reform the starting pyramid, it would be a sobering experience. That's the second law at work for you.

Electrons aren't like tiny billiard balls, they're more akin to information that occupies a space. Their details are defined by something called the Schrödinger equation, which represents the possibilities of an electron's characteristics as a wave of chance.

Physicists Have Reversed Time on The Smallest Scale Using a Quantum Computer
Mike McCrae, Science Alert

My intention with the idea of Lawful Evil was to explore the human life of a super-powered person, one who can be cheated on, one suffers the same relationship woes we all do, has the same doubts and even the same levels of self-criticism.  I've seen this done with a few characters, but none of them black. So I wanted to play with ideas, especially since the instance was very personal for me at the time. People often misinterpret Dark Spider and Suc-U-Babe's relationship, despite promotional art there is no romantic component to it, they function more as both foils and best friends.  Lawful Evil comics are available here  

An amazing anthology of erotic fantasy, science fiction and horror. 

When I put together Lawful Evil Comics: A Night Out I wanted to make a rap video in comic book form. Popin bottles and the whole nine. The sex that results from the drunk revelry of success isn't actually the mark of a three-pole, but a time when Dark Spider and Scarlet Recluse decide to share their love with Suc-U-Babe, who is oddly enough their best friend Lawful Evil

When I created the concept for The Menagerie: Entangle I had two things in mind. The first was that superheroes who were couples showed intimacy like any other human's love and sex aren't confined to storylines in real life so they shouldn't be on the page. The second and most important thought was to show black intimacy specifically between two superpowered individuals because it is so rare that black superheroes get together. I hope all who purchased this book enjoyed it. There will be more coming down the pipe.
 available at Lawful Evil Comics

Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Human Rights, LGBT Rights, Women's Rights

I participated in JSNN's version of #ShutDownSTEM yesterday. It was a discussion led by the Dean about the situation we all find ourselves in post the deaths of Ahmaund Aubrey, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, laid to rest next to his mom in Houston, Texas.

It was a tentative meeting, thankfully from the Zoom participants extremely diverse. The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering is by its construction diverse: Afghanistan, Brazil, Chad, India, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone and the United States represented in its student body and faculty. It's quite easy - at least, before the pandemic - to get lulled by the interactions that are often taken as routine, and that the entire country and world are doing exactly what you're doing.

On June 10, 2020, we will #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM, and #Strike4BlackLives.

In the wake of the most recent murders of Black people in the US, it is clear that white and other non-Black people have to step up and do the work to eradicate anti-Black racism. As members of the global academic and STEM communities, we have an enormous ethical obligation to stop doing “business as usual.” No matter where we physically live, we impact and are impacted by this moment in history.

Our responsibility starts with our role in society. In academia, our thoughts and words turn into new ways of knowing. Our research papers turn into media releases, books and legislation that reinforce anti-Black narratives. In STEM, we create technologies that affect every part of our society and are routinely weaponized against Black people.

Black academic and Black STEM professionals are hurting because they exist in and are attacked by institutional and systemic racism. Black people have been tirelessly working for change, alongside their Indigenous and People of Color allies. For Black academics and STEM professionals, #ShutDownAcademia and #ShutDownSTEM is a time to prioritize their needs— whether that is to rest, reflect, or to act— without incurring additional cumulative disadvantage.

Site: #ShutDownSTEM.com

I recalled my asking Mr. Tedford - my middle school science teacher - a question on the coefficient of linear expansion: I was answered with "no, you big dummy!" Upset, in tears, I relayed the encounter to my parents, who promptly made an appointment with Mr. Tedford and the principal at Mineral Springs Middle School. We got a sweaty apology, and I got all my questions answered the rest of that semester year.

I recalled my own interactions with a store detective at Kings Department Store in Winston-Salem, NC, 1976. I was body slammed and frisked while four white males robbed "Deputy Do Wrong" blind in the tennis shoe section. Despite my trying to bring this to his attention, he was convinced that "nigras steal" despite my objections and his lack of evidence.

I recalled asking a rhetorical question of the Brigade Commander: "what does it take to get to your rank" as a ninth grade, shy and impressed Neo ROTC cadet, answered with: "YOUR KIND will never get to this rank!" I did actually, three years later.The Ku Klux Klan (or, someone pretending to be them) left me a death threat: "don't show up for the Brigade Review (parade), nega, or we'll shoot your azz!" I showed up and commanded 180 cadets in formation in front of onlookers that included my parents and girlfriend at the time: anyone that spells that horribly, can't be serious or aim a gun! I'm sincerely glad I wasn't wrong.

These roadblocks are the moments that either break you, or make you, our Nietzsche ("that which does not kill us makes us stronger") Négritude.

Négritude:

The concept of Négritude emerged as the expression of a revolt against the historical situation of French colonialism and racism. The particular form taken by that revolt was the product of the encounter, in Paris, in the late 1920s, of three black students coming from different French colonies: Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) from Martinique, Léon Gontran Damas (1912–1978) from Guiana and Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) from Senegal. Being colonial subjects meant that they all belonged to people considered uncivilized, naturally in need of education and guidance from Europe, namely France. In addition, the memory of slavery was very vivid in Guiana and Martinique. Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas were already friends before they came to Paris in 1931.

Beyond the encounter between Africa and the French Caribbean Césaire, Senghor and Damas also discovered together the American movement of Harlem Renaissance. At the “salon”, in Paris, hosted by sisters from Martinique, Jane, Paulette and Andrée Nardal, they met many Black American writers, such as Langston Hughes or Claude McKay. With the writers of the Harlem Renaissance movement they found an expression of black pride, a consciousness of a culture, an affirmation of a distinct identity that was in sharp contrast to French assimilationism. In a word they were ready to proclaim the négritude of the “new Negro” to quote the title of the anthology of Harlem writers by Alain Locke which very much impressed Senghor and his friends (Vaillant 1990, 93–94).

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Négritude

I didn't say any of the above stories, or relate our Zoom meeting to Négritude, but they are not very far behind me.

The deaths of Ahmaund Aubrey, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd sparked a Neo-Négritude, that instead of remaining indigenous has spread throughout the world. Most marches have been peaceful and multicultural, with a few knuckleheads looting. That's important, because to deconstruct white supremacy, we need the creators of it to do it. We also need certain public African American figures to get a little Négritude, get diagnosed for Stockholm Syndrome or enough sense to shut up such that they get out of the way of progress.

This is the minefield/mind-field blacks in STEM have to navigate. Teachers, counselors and what should be "role models" feel an almost instinctive, no: tribal obligation to reinforce the status quo. They will say hateful, hurtful, disappointing things to diminish you; to "keep you in your place." A cursory review of history had only the comfortable roles of the buck boy, mammy, sex slave and step-n-fetch for the African Diaspora. The system reinforces itself by backlash politics, cognitive dissonance and a propagandized, false narrative of history that makes the descendants of the original perpetrators "feel good." Like a membrane disturbed and a nerve throbbed, it responds with cold, robotic efficiency.

This time, it's different. We've taken time out from the orgy of violent shooting incidents our news would report and naval gaze on until the next shiny object; the next shooting. We just couldn't take a break from the 401 year orgy of knees-on-necks, even during a pandemic: it's endemic to the American experiment, that currently, is not giving the results posed by the original hypothesis.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12

No truer words uttered at George Floyd's home going. He is NOT, however, a martyr:

1: a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion 2: a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle

George Floyd is not a Messianic figure. He never wanted to be. He was a man, like all of us, with his flaws, horrible choices and sins. He was a man that like any man, can learn from his sins and seek redemption, if he so chose. He was a man that had a little brother and children that looked up to him. He was a man that wanted to breathe.

Perhaps, STEM has finally inhaled the stench of racism, and instead of spraying Febreze to mask the odor, found it finally, rancid. Perhaps it will exhale in meetings to come, solutions. This will take time. It will be worth the effort.

A Cryo-EM map of the protein apoferritin. Credit: Paul Emsley/MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

Topics: Biology, Cryogenic-Electron Microscopy, Materials Science, Nanotechnology

A game-changing technique for imaging molecules known as cryo-electron microscopy has produced its sharpest pictures yet — and, for the first time, discerned individual atoms in a protein.

By achieving atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), researchers will be able to understand, in unprecedented detail, the workings of proteins that cannot easily be examined by other imaging techniques, such as X-ray crystallography.

The breakthrough, reported by two laboratories late last month, cements cryo-EM’s position as the dominant tool for mapping the 3D shapes of proteins, say scientists. Ultimately, these structures will help researchers to understand how proteins work in health and disease, and lead to better drugs with fewer side effects.

“It’s really a milestone, that’s for sure. There’s really nothing to break anymore. This was the last resolution barrier,” says Holger Stark, a biochemist and electron microscopist at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, who led one of the studies¹. The other² was led by Sjors Scheres and Radu Aricescu, structural biologists at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB) in Cambridge, UK. Both were posted on the bioRxiv preprint server on 22 May.

“True ‘atomic resolution’ is a real milestone,” adds John Rubinstein, a structural biologist at the University of Toronto in Canada. Getting atomic-resolution structures of many proteins will still be a daunting task because of other challenges, such as a protein’s flexibility. "These preprints show where one can get to if those other limitations can be addressed,” he adds.

‘It opens up a whole new universe’: Revolutionary microscopy technique sees individual atoms for first time

Ewen Callaway, Nature

The issue I wrote for Advent comic's Black Star Line: American Dreams about an immortal black man with superhuman gifts born in the post-reconstruction south who lives through the ages and deals with blackness from Jim Crow to the modern era.

Black Star Line: American Dreams

Check the super-heroics and sexual escapades of Dark Spider, Suc-U-Babe, and Co as they blaze a trail across the multiverse and beyond leaving fire and fluid in their wake. 

Lawful evil Multiverse

When the death of an unarmed black teenager sparks protests the Geist Eventied City's resident guardian comes out of the shadows to discover a strange occult conspiracy that uses black lives as fuel.

By it now on Amazon

The Hierophants physical copy

The Hierophants digital copy