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MOND on Maundy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 29, 2018 at 10:10am
The image on the right shows the galaxy, full of "globular clusters." The image on the left shows the measurement the researchers used to track the speed of one such object. Credit: Gemini Observatory / NSF / AURA / W.M. Keck Observatory / Jen Miller / Joy Pollard

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter, Theoretical Physics

Note: I almost didn't blog about this, because the original links at Live Science and Cosmos Magazine lead to "page not found" errors. I was able to find the article on Nature's direct website and provide it here. It's strange both sites had the same bogus links.

Here's a problem: The universe acts like it's a lot more massive than it looks.

Take galaxies, those giant, spinning masses of stars. The laws of motion and gravity tell us how fast these objects should turn given their bulk. But observations through telescopes show them spinning way faster than we'd expect, as if they were actually much more massive than the stars we can see indicate.

Astrophysicists have come up with two main solutions to this problem. Either there's a lot of mass out there in the universe that we can't detect directly, mass scientists call dark matter, or there's no dark matter out there, but there is something missing from our laws of gravity and motion. Researchers call the second proposed solution modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), which suggests that if the laws are properly tweaked, the universe would make sense without dark matter.

A new paper, published today (March 28) in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that there really is dark matter out there and that modifying the laws of physics wouldn't by itself solve the universe's weight problem.

In that study, the researchers found an object that could exist in a universe that has dark matter, but that would be nearly unimaginable in a MOND universe: a totally normal galaxy, one that seems to operate without any dark matter-type forces. [1]

*****

In a study published in the journal Nature, scientists have found a galaxy that appears to contain no dark matter — the unknown material thought to be common in the universe because of its gravitational effect on normal matter.

It was a startling discovery, because galaxies similar to our own Milky Way generally appear to contain 30 times more of the mysterious substance than normal matter, while smaller galaxies can contain up to 400 times as much.

The dark-matter-free galaxy, called NGC 1052-DF2, lies 65 million light years away in the constellation Cetus. It initially caught the attention of astronomers because, while it’s about the size of the Milky Way, it contains only 0.5% as many stars.

“That makes it very diffuse,” says the study’s lead author, Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University, in Connecticut, US. “You can look straight through it. You can see galaxies behind it.”

It was discovered by a special, low-tech telescope in New Mexico called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, which consists of a bundle of 400-millimetre camera lenses of the same type used by sports photographers, and can scan the sky for large, dim objects. So far, it’s found 23 of them, but NGC 1052-DF2 (the DF is for “Dragonfly”) stood out because it wasn’t just a big, diffuse blob. [2]

1. Astrophysicists Claim They Found a 'Galaxy Without Dark Matter', Rafi Letzter, Live Science

2. Found: a galaxy devoid of dark matter, Richard A Lovett, Cosmos Magazine

Read more…

Lithium Air Battery...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 28, 2018 at 1:03pm
"The new battery design protects the lithium metal anode with a coating of lithium carbonate. That allows lithium ions from the anode to enter the electrolyte while keeping unwanted compounds from reaching the anode. It’s easy to create this protective layer, too. The researchers just had to run a few charge-discharge cycles with a pure carbon dioxide atmosphere, and a crystal mesh of lithium carbonate accumulated." Extreme Tech

Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, Green Tech, Solar Power

The lithium-ion battery has transformed the portable electronics industry and is making inroads into energy storage on the electric grid and electrically powered transportation. Today, research laboratories around the world are seeking to develop beyond-lithium-ion batteries that are even more powerful, cheaper, safer and longer lived.

As reported in the journal Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has produced a new design for a beyond-lithium-ion battery cell that operates by running on air (hence, referred to as “lithium-air”) over many charge and discharge cycles. Larry Curtiss, co-principal investigator and Argonne Distinguished Fellow, observed that the team’s article was appealing to Nature because “others have tried to build lithium-air battery cells that run on air, but they failed because of little cycle life.”

“This first demonstration of a true lithium-air battery is an important step toward what we call ‘beyond-lithium-ion’ batteries.” — Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor, University of Illinois at Chicago.

The problem with past technology has been that battery cells tested in the lab required a separate supply of pure oxygen (hence, referred to as lithium-oxygen batteries). As a consequence, a tank of oxygen gas would have to be part of the battery system, making it prohibitive for use in electric vehicles due to space requirements. A lithium-air battery that uses air from outside eliminates this problem.

The key features of the team’s newly developed battery cell are a new protective coating for the lithium metal anode, which prevents the anode from reacting with oxygen and hence deteriorating, and a novel electrolyte mixture that allows the cell to operate in an air atmosphere. In tests under an air environment, this cell maintained high performance during 700 cycles, far surpassing previous technology. According to Amin Salehi-Khojin, co-principal investigator and assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “The energy storage capacity was about three times that of a lithium-ion battery, and five times should be easily possible with continued research. This first demonstration of a true lithium-air battery is an important step toward what we call beyond-lithium-ion batteries.”

Out Of thin air, Joe Harmon, Argonne National Laboratory

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Tiangong, Soon Gone...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2018 at 8:00am
Tiangong-1 altitude decay forecast as of March 22, 2018.

Topics: ESA, NASA, Space Exploration

China's first space station may fall to the ground as soon as one week from now, and certainly within two, orbital debris experts with the European Space Agency (ESA) say. Scientists, however, still cannot predict with any confidence where pieces of the 10.4-meter long Tiangong-1 station, which is traveling at 17,000 km/h, will land.

The latest estimate from the ESA indicates the station will enter Earth's atmosphere between March 30 and April 3, at which time most of the station will burn up. However, the station is large enough—it weighed 8.5 tons when fully fueled but has since used much of that propellant—that some pieces will very likely reach the planet's surface.

Beyond the fact that the station will reach a final impact point somewhere between 42.8 degrees north and 42.8 degrees south in latitude and probably near the northern or southern extremity of those boundaries due to Tiangong-1's orbital inclination, it is not possible to say where on Earth the debris will land. However, the likelihood of it affecting humans is quite low. Scientists estimate the "personal probability of being hit by a piece of debris from the Tiangong-1" is about 10 million times smaller than the annual chance of being hit by lightning.

A Fiery End - Chinese space station will fall to Earth within two weeks

Eric Berger, Ars Technica

#P4TC: Tiangong, Tentatively... April 30, 2011

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Single Atom Sensor...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 26, 2018 at 1:04pm
Image Source: Link below

Topics: Atomic Physics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Nanotechnology

Researchers at Griffith University working with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have unveiled a stunningly accurate technique for scientific measurements which uses a single atom as the sensor, with sensitivity down to 100 zeptoNewtons.

(Zepto = 10-21, or 0.000000000000000000001.)

Using highly miniaturised segmented-style Fresnel lenses - the same design used in lighthouses for more than a century - which enable exceptionally high-quality images of a single atom, the scientists have been able to detect position displacements with nanometre precision in three dimensions.

"Our atom is missing one electron, so it's very sensitive to electrical fields. By measuring the displacement, we've built a very sensitive tool for measuring electrical forces." Dr Erik Streed, of the Centre for Quantum Dynamics, explained.

"100 zeptoNewtons is a very small force. That's about the same as the force of gravity between a person in Brisbane and a person in Canberra. It can be used to investigate what's occurring on surfaces, which will help miniaturise ion trap type quantum computers and other quantum devices.

Scientists unveil high-sensitivity 3-D technique using single-atom measurements, Griffith University

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Graphic Justice

Posted by Stephen Alexander on March 26, 2018 at 6:55am

Graphic Justice is a blog that covers/studies legality and justice within comics and the comic industry. They run conventions and submit academic papers on topics related to comics every year.

They are always looking for submissions, and so I've decided to submit a legal concept article to their site. In my first book Super Humanity, the characters face a tribunal because they executed a prisoner during the Battle of Cleveland. They won because of legal technicalities. 

If you've ever wanted to write about comics and legalese together, now's your chance. 

You can find submission guidelines at the link here.

Read more…

The Shattering (repost)...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2018 at 2:58pm
Image Source: wiseGEEK

Topics: Civics, Existentialism, History, Politics

This was originally posted March 31, 2017. I've updated it with the YouTube video by Channel 4 London on Cambridge Analytica (CNNMoney.com and The Guardian details). The original blog post has aged well.

From FBI.gov:

COINTELPRO The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.

The John Birch Society (TIME):

Had his story ended when he retired as a candy-maker, Robert Welch Jr. might have made his mark on history as the father of the Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. But Welch, whose shrewd leadership helped grow his brother’s Massachusetts candy business a hundred-fold from 1935 to 1956, shifted his aim from caramels to communists.

On this day, Dec. 9, in 1958, Welch — then retired from the candy business — founded the ultraconservative John Birch Society along with 11 like-minded “Americanists,” as they referred to themselves. Their goal was to expose and eradicate the growing leftist threat in America, which they believed to be 40 to 60 percent communist-controlled, according to a 1961 TIME report. Members of the John Birch Society saw communists wherever they looked, from the Oval Office of Dwight Eisenhower (“A conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,” per Welch) to the Bay of Pigs (“a theatrical performance jointly sponsored by Castro and ‘his friends in the U.S. Government’ in order to strengthen the communist hold on Cuba,” as paraphrased in TIME).

The "growing leftist threat"...

COINTELPRO was the government version of John Birch. Though the write up eludes to other groups the FBI had under surveillance, it was felt by African American communities the most, specifically the Black Panther Party; the Nation of Islam; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, etc. The approval of the Communist Manifesto by the likes of Huey Newton and the unrest in the streets likely gave J. Edgar Hoover much alarm. It couldn't have been the treatment of American citizens by their fellow citizens and de facto/de jure Jim Crow laws against them. It was easy to wrap surveillance in the flag and patriotism to hide the racist overtones of the act.
The "growing leftist threat"...

If the Birch philosophy sounds familiar, it's because one of its ardent members was the famous Koch Brother's father, Frank Koch, an MIT oil engineer. He infamously built oil refineries for Nazi Germany and did a considerable amount of business with the Russians.

The Nazis... the Russians...

It was "American" to oppose godless communism. It was easy for the right to demonize the left as unpatriotic, out-of-touch and not fluent in the deified "free market."

The reclusive billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer has been known to fund right wing groups in this country (Steve Bannon) and overseas (Nigel Farage). Like many of the self-made billionaires, he's likely a fan of Ayn Rand and her apotheosis of selfishness in "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," lauded by Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, Speaker Paul Ryan and President Ronald Reagan. It's funny how an avowed enemy of religion as a sickness can be so praised by those who put the Ten Commandments, godly masculinity and "family values" on high pedestals.

During the 1960's, COINTELPRO was concerned that foreign powers were infiltrating us and destabilizing our republic in the various Civil Rights organizations. They, along with the John Birch Society, were decidedly anti-communist, such that the Republican Party made this stance a litmus test for two generations. At that time, foreign Russian interference would have been called the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, or the Committee for State Security). If they were infiltrating Civil Rights organizations, it was a time and an environment ripe for manipulation.

Fast-forward 40 years: 1968 - 2008. Forty years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the country has gone through a massive experiment in forced busing that would eventually be objected to and eliminated. Cities would through economic opportunities and structured stratification re-segregate more so than 1968. The former Soviet Union would fall in that window in 1989. Then President George Bush (41) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would opine on the "Peace Dividend." The previous Russian Politburo was their 1%. As I recall from Air Force ROTC class in college, they were the ones with the actual money while their populations starved. They had access to things like fashion, food, sex all the while pretending that the Politburo was "temporary" and eventually there would be pure Communism with no hierarchy, no stratification: no "income inequality" as we now call it. It never came. An attempt at reformation from the previous authoritarian communist regime - Democratization - would be attempted and fail. Some would say it was a weakness of Russian civil society, as in democratization usually entails a beneficial tug-of-war from above and below. If citizens aren't putting pressure on their leadership, that leadership will eventually go back to what they know well: ironclad, authoritarian control.

2008 saw the election of the country's first African American president, Barack Hussein Obama, for the first time in 232 years of the republic during a financial free fall compared quite literally to the Great Depression, a concern that furrowed his brow and eventually grayed his mane. A graduate of two elite schools, a Constitutional Scholar and community organizer, he "dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't'." His crowds were compared to rock concerts. We quickly spat out the bubblegum philosophy of a "post-racial" society. We had "grown up" Dr. Maya Angelou commented; poems were composed, t-shirts were made, tearful hymns were sung: we had finally "overcome."

President Obama's name was a source of angst to his legitimacy. Then the Tea Party arose, AstroTurf-fed by dark money - Koch, Mercer et al - as a faux grass movement, their bigotry was hidden - at least initially from their Tea Party selves - behind clever slogans and jingoism: "I want my country back!" The demographics was decidedly, predominately the only original creation of the American continent: "whiteness," and a few people of color comfortable in tokenism and able to maneuver within a religion of white supremacy, that itself masquerades as a faux evangelical Christianity.

The KGB became the FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or Federal Security Service). Some rumors that they would weaponize misinformation on a scale heretofore unseen. As the former KGB observed an opening in the Civil Rights unrest, the FSB noticed Birtherism, the bigotry, the calling out "YOU LIE" during a president's State of the Union; the praying of  Psalms 109:8 and callously calling themselves "Christians." They saw faux voter integrity ID laws designed to act as a 21st Century poll tax; they saw the slaughter of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, and countless others. Add to it the lack of any jurisprudence/convictions of their slayers (the noted exceptions in Davis and McBride): note also the rush to call them "thugs" and disappointed Kentucky fans "students." The clever bigotry giving way to blatant racism, our national pathology laid naked to any intelligence officers to manipulate. From the ascendancy of a rock star African American president, the situation demanded his precise antithesis as counterbalance.

It was simply a change in strategy: if COINTELPRO was correct (though biased), the infiltration was through some Civil Rights organizations. If our current intelligence is correct, the infiltration was through our obvious bigotry: it was designed to shatter our institutional norms, and internationally like democratic republics from within.

With fake news by bots and hackers, servers between Moscow and New York; backroom deals that may have been caught with (possible) FISA-warranted incidental communications monitoring, the Russians merely enacted in real-time cyber attacks the poignant observation President Lyndon Baines Johnson made on a trip to the south with journalist Bill Moyers:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

With Brexit proceeding in the UK, spurred broadly by bigotry, their next targets to destabilize western democracy are France and Germany, with the ultimate goals of dismantling NATO and the European Union. There would be in essence a "New World Order" - not of the conspiratorial kind - but under the same conditions when "IRA" stood for Irish Republican Army (not Individual Retirement Account): there were a lot of bombings, death and instability. Before the EU, European countries often warred among themselves. That can't be good for tourism, ...or world peace.

We have "given them the store" of white supremacist bigotry, and our republic. I'm concerned apathy, racism, stupidity and tribalism may well not allow us... to get it back.

Read more…

Narcissism and Publicity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2018 at 8:00am
Image Source: Learning-Mind.com/malignant-narcissist

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics

I've been away doing grad work and thinking about how I'm going to fund myself this summer. In our current anti-science era, it's a constant concern.
I have other concerns, most recently the Austin bomber and my family in harm's way. The shame is he didn't expire himself before taking the lives of innocent others.

An excerpt of a post from another blog I manage on this subject:

*****

Megan Meier thought that "Josh" loved her. The figment of a neighboring mother's imagination broke up with her and resulted in a sweet girl’s suicide.
Now we have Robert A. Hawkins in what is now the Omaha Mall shooting at the Westroads Mall: nine dead, including Robert and five injured at last count.

I'm old enough to remember when CNN debuted in 1980. Prior to that, HBO had limited showings and television shut down (the "snow" screen in the scene of the movie "Poltergeist") around 11 PM. If you were an insomniac, you REALLY had to work at it.

Not to say there weren't shootings: the UT tower incident in the '60s comes to mind. However, with 24-hour news and the Internet on which you read this commentary, becoming "famous" can happen in nanoseconds at near light speed with the voracious need for copy by the media.

Ironically, "Robert" means "bright and shining fame." I wonder if he knew this when he wrote "I'll be famous" in his suicide note?

In 2004, Nebraska ranked 41 out of 50 states in the rate of suicides recorded: 166 deaths reported in the state at a rate of 9.5. I'm getting this from http://www.suicidology.org/.

From the CNN article linked above, his landlord paraphrased: "He basically said how sorry he was for everything," Maruca Kovac said of the note. "He didn't want to be a burden to people and that he was a piece of s--- all of his life and that now he'd be famous."

Mental health in this country is a phobia, a cousin in the attic no one wants to discuss. We've all got our issues, and they can be exacerbated by the economy, social situations and most importantly, lack of treatment.

It would seem silly if someone broke an arm or the femur in their legs and tried to "play it off" as if nothing hurts. Mind you, I've had my share of hairline fractures as a martial artist that I did the same thing with, but as I get older I'm a little more cautious and check out everything, EVERYTHING with my doctor.

When will we have this attitude about mental health?

Could crime rates be the result of desperate people finding themselves in desperate situations where nefarious criminal activity makes "sense" in warped minds?

Would their be a decrease in wars if we had clear-minded leaders that steered their countries towards peace and alternate energy sources so we're not beholding to despots and dictators to drive our SUVs, pay $3 in gas and turn on a light bulb?

*****

I'm not giving an excuse for the bomber. He paraphrased Alfred Pennyworth's line in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight: "some men just want to see the world burn."

Mark Conditt was apparently such a young man. The stereotypical "lone wolf" I'm sure they'll say. "Mental issues" and troubled will be overused metaphors. Never "thug" or terrorism. Never... There's already a stance on "not knowing his motives," despite his initial targets having a distinct hue of Melanin. No word on the motives of the Pulse Nightclub shooter. Not even a word on the motives of the Las Vegas shooter. Nothing...
Perhaps it's simpler than that.
Paul Bloom in 2017 explored it in his New Yorker piece "The Root of all Cruelty?" In it, he comments on the philosopher David Livingstone Smith's book "Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others"; the historian Timothy Snyder "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning"; "Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships" by anthropologist Alan Fiske and psychologist Tage Rai; "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny," by philosopher Kate Manne, "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps," Andrea Pitzer and starts his piece with the apropos cultural Netflix series Black Mirror all to come to a single conclusion:

Humans suck.

It is not that the Austin bomber or any other previous to this heinous act lacked an appreciation for the diversity of humanity. It may be that he realized despite his Internet screeds to the contrary, gays, women, minorities are all human...he just didn't care that they are. He "defined his stance" on his personal blog for the world to see. I've noted no news agency, save the Dallas Morning News has reported on it.

Anyone in a free society is free to hold any opinion that s/he wishes as long as it doesn't impact others negatively.

But for a malignant narcissist, that's not good enough. It is the "other" that's responsible for their pain. It is the "other" that must suffer.

Symptoms
Narcissistic personality disorder includes symptoms such as poor self identity, inability to appreciate others, entitlement, lack of authenticity, need for control, intolerance of the views/opinions of others, emotional detachment, grandiosity, lack of awareness or concern regarding the impact of their behavior, minimal emotional reciprocity, and a desperate need for the approval and positive attention of others "How to Recognize a Malignant Narcissist," Rhonda Freeman, PhD, Psychology Today.

Malignant narcissists on a personal level can be associated with physical violence. I'm not sure if it's been correlated with domestic terrorism. However, we have never given one the nuclear codes before, nor investigated them for collusion with a hostile power; nor seen them sued by a former adult film star, an ex-playboy playmate and a former contestant on "The Apprentice" as well as many other women for sexual assault. Nary a peep from the religious right, so animated during the Bill Clinton era.

And some with Napoleonic delusions of grandeur might be willing to burn the house down while standing in it. As the walls close in, he may use his vast powers to rain down nuclear Armageddon on the human species, versus doing a "perp walk." He might kill a cellist that was a model student and hoped to be a medical doctor. Now that dream is dust. Maybe Conditt knew him, and was jealous that the cellist, Draylen Mason was African American and his currency of whiteness only allowed him to take a few classes at Austin Community College. Whether he lived or died (the latter now reality), he'd be "famous." Pflugerville, Texas was shut down after his confirmed death in "an abundance of caution" to a discovered package. The currency of whiteness could historically get you any job in the idealized past free of "others" - the unspoken, underlying id of #MAGA. Maybe Conditt was expecting such luck, and resented it not working out for him. Even one you're hopelessly unqualified for - the US presidency as case-in-point, in probably the last, best example for all time of white male privilege.

This currency is a dividend we're all paying, whether we like it or not.

Sadly, there will be another, as there were over 600 similar threats after the Parkland shooting, that will try to one-up Conditt.

The difference of my youth to now is we're surrounded by a ubiquitous deluge of information: television, radio, satellite radio, Internet, blogs and social media apps, which can be accessed on cell phones, computers and I-pads.
I grew up in an era of ABC, CBS, NBC and a few UHF stations. There was no CNN or HBO. Television stations signed off at midnight. News wasn't instantaneously spread around. It took time. There wasn't a vast stage to visit cruelty on so many innocent "others"; instant fame and infamy for twisted psyches.

We've always had malignant narcissists. They just didn't have as many platforms for amplification and echo of their ego, mayhem and fame... or, the nuclear codes.
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The Pretenders...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 19, 2018 at 7:24am
Credit: NASA, ESA; D. Coe; J. Anderson; R. van der Marel (STScI)

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, General Relativity, Quantum Gravity

New research reveals a possible mechanism allowing “black stars” and “gravastars” to exist

When giant stars die, they don’t just fade away. Instead they collapse in on themselves, leaving behind a compressed stellar remnant, usually a city-size, superdense ball of neutrons appropriately called a neutron star. In extreme cases, however, most theorists believe an expiring giant star will form a black hole—a pointlike “singularity” with effectively infinite density and a gravitational field so powerful that not even light, the fastest thing in the universe, can escape once falling in. Now a new study is reinvigorating an alternate idea, that objects with names such as “black stars,” or “gravastars,” might exist midway between neutron stars and black holes. If real, these exotic stellar corpses should appear nearly identical to black holes save in one key way—they could not irretrievably swallow light.

There are good reasons to seek such alternatives, because black holes raise a host of theoretical problems. For instance, their singularities are supposedly hidden by invisible boundaries known as event horizons. Throw something into a black hole, and once it passes the event horizon it should be gone—forever—with no hope whatsoever of return. But such profound annihilation clashes with other long-cherished laws of physics that suggest the destruction of information is impossible, including information encoded within anything falling into black holes.

Conceived and developed across the past two decades, in part to sidestep such conundrums, models of black stars and gravastars postulate these objects would lack singularities and event horizons. But questions have lingered as to whether such objects could actually form—and remain stable after they did. New research from theoretical physicist Raúl Carballo-Rubio at the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy provides a novel mechanism that might allow black stars and gravastars to exist.

Carballo-Rubio investigated a strange phenomenon known as quantum vacuum polarization. Quantum physics, the best description yet of how all known subatomic particles behave, suggests reality is fuzzy, limiting how precisely one can know the properties of the most basic units of matter—for instance, one can never absolutely know a particle's position and momentum at the same time. One strange consequence of this uncertainty is that a vacuum is never completely empty but instead foams with so-called “virtual particles” that continuously fluctuate into and out of existence.

Black Hole Pretenders Could Really Be Bizarre Quantum Stars, Charles Q. Choi, Scientific American

Read more…

17 Minutes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 16, 2018 at 5:43am

Topics: Commentary, Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Politics

TypeMuzzle VelocityWeb Links
38 pistol       830http://www.ballistics101.com/9mm_vs_.38special.php
9-mm     1150http://www.ballistics101.com/9mm_vs_.38special.php
M-16     2900http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_muzzle_velocity_for_the_m4_carbine
AR-15     3241http://www.epicwilderness.com/best-223-remington-review-ar-15-ammunition/
25-06 Deer     3440https://gunnewsdaily.com/best-caliber-for-deer-hunting/

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
The calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
And a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6

The Excel graph and table compares the muzzle velocities of different firearms in feet per second (FPS). The physics of bullets and bodies can be tremendously horrible, as Gina Kolata and C. J. Chivers in the New York Times attests. Maureen Downey in the Atlantic Journal Constitution reports trained police officers have an 18% accuracy rate in a gunfight. Arming teachers is not a solution towards an "armed and polite society": it is the recipe for future bloodbaths, supplied by young bodies.

In the Y2K scare days (they seem mild in comparison to current events), my oldest son was shouted "WHITE POWER" at from the front of our lawn in Cedar Park, Texas by the occupants of a passing pickup truck. It was 1999, and everyone was getting "Apocalypse crazy." I promptly went to a pawn shop and purchased a Gloc 9 mm to protect my wife and his younger brother. I've since sold it. I admit it was a reaction to what for most African Americans is a real and historical evidence-induced fear of a crazed lynch mob. It is dissimilar completely to the irrational fears chronicled in Scientific American by Jeremy Adam Smith: "Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?" I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't because some Panther Party member shouted "BLACK POWER" from their front lawns.

If I said my sister's name, you wouldn't find it in a history book. She, like these youth was a part of a movement. It was the reason we have the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act (under attack) and the Fair Housing Act. It was the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. She was and is my hero. It was a time of lambs becoming lions.

It was the youth then that drove the change in laws, first at the Woolworth counter in Greensboro that eventually got rid of the "whites only"; "blacks only" signs ubiquitous at the time. There were nervous days when she was arrested, hosed, beaten...I just become emotional typing it out. The sacrifices were not trivial then, or now.

I also become emotional when children are killed. We failed them as a nation in Sandy Hook. The imbeciles then and now that labeled the parents and now young citizens as "crisis actors" are the vilest of humanity. They are not to be argued with, but pitied.

It appears the youth have found their voice: in organizing this impressive, symbolic walkout; by organizing the March for Our Lives on the 24th of this month. Also by realizing they have another power: voting. They have promised to vote in 2018 when many will first turn 18, 2020 and thereafter.

If there had not been an assault on their peace at a place they once considered safe, they would be sharing ear buds listening to music, gossiping and arguing on social media apps. They would have looked at Civics as antiquated, something their parents concerned themselves with. Nothing about who was president or which party was in power would have mattered. For the children at Parkland, nothing changed their fortunate and quite privileged lives...except the massacre visited on their doorsteps last Valentine's Day. The irony is like the opioid crisis vs. the crack cocaine epidemic, the difference in approach tends to correlate with zip codes. Black Lives Matter was their most recent prototype for the usage of social media to prove a point.

No more. Without specifically mentioning "intersectionality," their online, in-person and grass roots rainbow campaign has remarkably achieved it.

There will be those who tell them unceremoniously to "shut up." There will be threats both frivolous and genuinely deadly. There may be nervous days, hosing, beatings and worse. Don't listen and don't let them kowtow you. You are STRONGER than you know; you are stronger than THEM - and they KNOW it. Reagan won the youth vote 61 - 30 in the 1980's. They can't do that anymore. Jonathan Chait of NY Magazine says you are younger, more diverse, more liberal and know your power. They - the old, ossified fossils - are dying off, and they are TERRIFIED.

Children - then, and now - will lead us. It is always when lambs are slaughtered, lions are eventually stirred, and roar.

Analog signs have been supplemented with websites. Fliers have been updated to Facebook Live and Snap Chat. They are still marching as did their ancestors. That's what lions do.

10:00 am, children walked out en masse on the one month observance of the massacre when people are usually struggling with restaurant invitations, candies given to sweethearts or lamentations of not having one. 17 minutes for 17 lives lost.

The 15th of February, during African American History Month, they became adults; they became LIONS. You've taken "social justice warrior" from pejorative to movement.

#ENOUGH!...and thank you.

Related links:

A generation raised on gun violence sends a clear message to adults: Enough is enough, Holly Yan and Emanuella Grinberg, CNN

Brittany Packnett: This is how we talk about the black victims of gun violence in America, Anthony Smith, MIC

ALABAMA 2-YEAR-OLD KILLS HIS 1-YEAR-OLD BROTHER IN ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING, Ryan Sit, Newsweek (13 March 18)

Three Accidental School Shootings in One Week — the Latest by a Teacher in a Gun Safety Class, Mark Keierleber, The 74 Million (14 March 18)

Read more…

Pi Departure...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 15, 2018 at 7:30am
Poker with Data, Einstein, Hawking, and Sir Isaac Newton on the Holodeck

Filming the scene with Professor Hawking

Images from Star Trek tribute to Professor Hawking

Topics: Physics, Physics and Pop Culture, Star Trek, Stephen Hawking

BBC: World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said.

The British scientist was famed for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.

There are a myriad of tributes to Professor Hawking from around the world. It is apropos for him, as well as poetic he passed on Pi Day and Albert Einstein's 139th birthday. Both were extraordinary and complicated men.

Less so than the world we live in, where a former campaign manager in France says to a right wing Le Pen crown to where their racism "as a badge of honor." That the president* he helped a foreign government select for us called the nations on the birth continent of the human species as well as Caribbean nations "s--- hole countries."

We are being pushed inexorably from the Age of Enlightenment into the overbearing arms of our lesser angels. Professor Carl Sagan's "candle in the dark" is being snuffed by bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia and every "ism" you can modify a noun with. The Dark Ages were about scientific ignorance as well as emotional and irrational fear. Some of us seem determined that those were our "better days."

He wasn't supposed to live beyond his twenties. Perhaps with something like his pluck and determination, we can beat back fascism as he defied the odds of his own existence.

Perhaps...

BBC: Stephen Hawking: Visionary physicist dies aged 76

Nature: Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)

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Si Qubits and Quantum Computers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 14, 2018 at 11:59am
Artist’s impression of the two-qubit logic gate device developed at UNSW. Each of the two electron qubits (red and blue) has a spin, or magnetic field, indicated by the arrow directions. Metal electrodes on the surface are used to manipulate the qubits, which interact to create an entangled quantum state. (credit: Tony Melov/UNSW)

Topics: Computer Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

A new two-qubit quantum processor that is fully programmable and single electron spins that can be coherently coupled to individual microwave-frequency photons are two of the latest advances in the world of solid-state spin-based quantum computing. The breakthroughs could help in the development of large-scale spin-based processors in the future.

While classical computers store and process information as "bits" that can have one of two logic states – "0" or "1" – a quantum computer exploits the ability of quantum particles or bits (qubits) to be in a "superposition" of two or more states at the same time. Such a device could, in principle, outperform a classical computer on certain tasks, such as factoring large prime numbers and sorting large random lists, thanks to it being massively parallel.

In recent years, researchers have succeeded in making qubits from a number of solid-state materials, including semiconducting quantum dots and superconductors. Semiconductor spin qubits appear to be better for a number of reasons. For one, they last for a relatively long time before decohering (interacting with their environment). They can also be controlled electrically and can be integrated with high density on a chip.

The problem, however, is that it is still difficult to control the state of individual spin qubits and intertwine multiple qubits in a controlled way.

Silicon qubits show promise for quantum computers, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

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The Time Telescope: Season One

Posted by Christopher Love on March 11, 2018 at 8:54pm

CONTACT ME: I am seeking Reviewers. Free Book will be shipped to you.

Historical Bureau of Investigation Agents Tad Jones and Kim Davis research history with 
The Time Telescope in order to reconnect with their history due to the Great Cataclysm. 

They discover individuals such as Sybil Ludington, Squanto and Crispus Attucks and more. 

But what happens when they are TRAPPED in the past. 

Will they ever return to the 23rd Century? 

History and Science meet at The Time Telescope.

https://www.facebook.com/thetimetelescope/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQHJ5T-qLZw

The Graphic Novel and Ebook will be available on June 1st 2018 thru
Amazon, Indyplanet and Comixology.

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Wattpad Journey

Posted by Leah Ashton on March 8, 2018 at 9:53pm

I have been on a site called Wattpad for almost a year now. I like that this website is for undiscovered writers.

I currently have four stories on here. One has a ghost in it, two have Mermaids and one also includes werewolves and witches.

 I feel a little odd writing about witches, as I have never seen any African American Wiccans or witches for that matter. I guess they are out there just like the rest of the supernaturals. I keep running into brief spells of writers block and then suddenly I get an idea.

I have been trying to learn how to finish my ideas instead of stopping and starting again. My main thing with Wattpad is that while I have about 17 followers, only two commented. I use the feedback I get to revise my stories, if I don't get anything then I end up unpublishing the story.

Aside from that I enjoy it. My daughter is a writer on there too.

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THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX - Directed by Julius Onah

Posted by Carles CJ Juzang on March 8, 2018 at 8:30am

If you have Netflix and had the chance to check out THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX, a little FYI is that it was directed by seasoned Nigerian born director by the name of JULIUS ONAH. To his credit are films such as "Don't Look Back"(2008), "The Girl Is in Trouble"(2015) and a forthcoming project sometime this year titled "Luce". This tie in to the Cloverfield Universe is pretty well done and centers around British Black Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw and her damaged family. The inclusion of David Oyelowo as the commander had me hooked, then there is the ALTERNATE REALITY mix. OUTSTANDING if you have not had a chance to check out.

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I Am Not Your Negro...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 28, 2018 at 1:11pm
James Baldwin, in the new documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Dan Budnik/Magnolia Pictures

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

A Facebook post I made responding to some of the president's* supporters wanting a "white history month" (last chance to disengage before the rant):

365 - 28 = 337 freaking days! You freaked out over President Obama when you had 232 years of white male rule that only changed parties. You freaked out on Black Panther, when you had THREE Thor movies. Speaking of which, you freaked out when Idris Elba played Heimdall and Tessa Thompson played Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarök. You lost it when Kate Mulgrew played Captain Janeway on Star Trek Voyager; you had a conniption fit over Avery Brooks as Commander, then Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek Deep Space Nine and you almost had a Grand Mal seizure over Sonequa Martin-Green on Star Trek Discovery! Don’t let me get started on how the sad/rabid puppies attacked NK Jemisin on having the audacity to WIN the Hugo and Nebula Awards for EXCELLENT science fiction that didn't center around gene spliced clones of Buck Rogers, John Wayne, James T Kirk and Han Solo! In other words, how emotionally butt-hurt do you have to be where ANYTHING that doesn’t involve your culture as front-and-center of the plot line is an all-hands-on-deck existential crisis? Get some therapy and switch to Decaf!

Rant over. Read the title and listen to the embed videos. Definition with ramrod straightened back follows. Blog break during spring break next week and the rest of this one to prep for midterms. \\//_

Definition of negritude (Merriam Webster)
1 : a consciousness of and pride in the cultural and physical aspects of the African heritage
2 : the state or condition of being black

The Harlem Renaissance inspired Negritude. Authors such as Claude McKay and Langston Hughes laid groundwork for black expression. Senghor, Damas and Césaire together drew influence from their work. Other artistic influences were jazz and earlier fin-de-siècle poets such as Rimbaud, Mallarmé and Baudelaire.

Negritude responded to the alienated position of blacks in history. The movement asserted an identity for black people around the world that was their own. For Césaire and Damas, from Martinique and French Guiana, the rupture from Africa through the Atlantic Slave Trade was a great part of their cultural understanding. Their work told of the frustration and loss of their motherland. For Senegalese Senghor, his works focused more on African traditionalism. In ways the assertion of each poet diverges from each other, but the combination of different perspectives is also what fueled and fed Negritude. Black Past dot org: Negritude

Fimmaker Raoul Peck's Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro features the work of the late writer, poet, and social critic James Baldwin. Baldwin's writing explored race, class and sexuality in Western society, and at the time of his death in 1987, he was working on a book, Remember This House. It was never completed, but his notes for that project became the foundation for Peck's I Am Not Your Negro.

Among those notes was a letter J Baldwin wrote to his literary agent, Jay Acton, in 1979. In that letter, he wrote that he wanted to explore the lives of three of his civil rights movement contemporaries and close personal friends: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. "I want these three lives to bang against and reveal each other as in truth they did," he wrote, "and use their dreadful journey as a means of instructing the people whom they loved so much who betrayed them and for whom they gave their lives."

Peck had been wanting to make a film about Baldwin for years, but he says it felt like an impossible one to make. When he first read Baldwin's letter, he knew he had the basis for that film. "I had access to those notes, which for me was the real opening I needed to address the film I wanted to make — which was how do I make sure that people today come back to Baldwin and the important writer that he was, and the important words that he have written, and [have] this well-needed confrontation with reality today with words that he wrote 40, 50 years ago?"

The Haitian-born filmmaker has been a fan of Baldwin's writing since he was a teenager. "He helped me understand the world I was in," Peck says. "He helped me understand America. He helped me understand the place I was given in this country."

'I Am Not Your Negro' Gives James Baldwin's Words New Relevance

Mallory Yu, NPR, heard on "All Things Considered"

Related link:

Tamron Hall: Unapologetically black and American, Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post

Read more…