Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
A great technical photograph
This sequence of three photos were taken approximate one-millionths of a second apart,during in a nuclear test in Nevada in the 1950's.
In 1947 a firm called EG&G (Edgerton, Germeshausen and Greer) was founded by three MIT professors/affiliates to market their expertise and inventions (Harold Edgerton had in fact, invented the photograpic strobe light, although it's unsure is we ever went to discos.)
They did invent also the 'Rapatronic' camera, capable of taking the equivalent of one million frames per second,
and the means for synchronizing devices miles apart, down to the millionths of a second.
This sequence of three shots were taken by a ' telephoto' version of the Rapatronix, with a 160-inch (4064mm)
focal length Cassegrain lens, looking directly into the shot tower at the device at 'zero time'.
The rectangular object seem is the actual weapon casing.
The 'light' seen around the weapon casing is called "Teller light' after the physicist Dr. Edward Teller.
When a nuclear device explodes, the first products of the reaction are X-rays, which penetrate the bomb casing without destroying it. When outside the bomb casing, the X-rays encounter normal temperature air, which is opaqueto X-rays. So the X-rays are abssorbed by and excite the air molecules to a higher energy state for a very brief period, after which they 'fall back' into a lower energy state and emit that excess energy largely as photons of light.
This is what is actually being photographed here: the bomb casing itself has not been destroyed since the 'physical' parts of the explosion/reaction travel far slower than light speed, but the X-rays race ahead, and the excitation of the air molecules and re-emission of light photons is the 'Teller light' being photographed.
In 1947 a firm called EG&G (Edgerton, Germeshausen and Greer) was founded by three MIT professors/affiliates to market their expertise and inventions (Harold Edgerton had in fact, invented the photograpic strobe light, although it's unsure is we ever went to discos.)
They did invent also the 'Rapatronic' camera, capable of taking the equivalent of one million frames per second,
and the means for synchronizing devices miles apart, down to the millionths of a second.
This sequence of three shots were taken by a ' telephoto' version of the Rapatronix, with a 160-inch (4064mm)
focal length Cassegrain lens, looking directly into the shot tower at the device at 'zero time'.
The rectangular object seem is the actual weapon casing.
The 'light' seen around the weapon casing is called "Teller light' after the physicist Dr. Edward Teller.
When a nuclear device explodes, the first products of the reaction are X-rays, which penetrate the bomb casing without destroying it. When outside the bomb casing, the X-rays encounter normal temperature air, which is opaqueto X-rays. So the X-rays are abssorbed by and excite the air molecules to a higher energy state for a very brief period, after which they 'fall back' into a lower energy state and emit that excess energy largely as photons of light.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
For all you 'Heavy Lifters' out there...
SpaceX - a private company - has just announced their Big Guy:
"Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket, represents SpaceX’s entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category. With the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons (117,000 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Falcon Heavy can lift nearly twice the payload of the next closest vehicle, the US Space Shuttle, and more than twice the payload of the Delta IV Heavy."
Let's go.
Let us not as a species, give up the dream of the Stars...
step by step.
"Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket, represents SpaceX’s entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category. With the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons (117,000 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Falcon Heavy can lift nearly twice the payload of the next closest vehicle, the US Space Shuttle, and more than twice the payload of the Delta IV Heavy."
Let's go.
Let us not as a species, give up the dream of the Stars...
step by step.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
January and Frebruary -- Months of Remembrance
On 27 January 1967, a fire in the cabin of Apollo1 during testing, claimed the lives of all three astonauts aboard.
Gus Grissom, Ed White II and Roger Chaffee were lost.
May they rest in peace, and their lives serve as inspiration to those who still dream of High Flight.
On 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off on STS-51-L.
Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnick, Michael J. Smith, and Dick Scobee were lost.
May they rest in peace, and their lives serve as inspiration to those who still dream of High Flight.
On 1 February 2003, The Space Shuttle Columbia was lost as it reentered at the end of a two-week mission, STS-107.
Rick. D. Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chowla, Laura B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon were lost.
May they rest in peace, and their lives serve as inspiration to those who still dream of High Flight.
Gus Grissom, Ed White II and Roger Chaffee were lost.
May they rest in peace, and their lives serve as inspiration to those who still dream of High Flight.
On 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off on STS-51-L.
Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnick, Michael J. Smith, and Dick Scobee were lost.
May they rest in peace, and their lives serve as inspiration to those who still dream of High Flight.
On 1 February 2003, The Space Shuttle Columbia was lost as it reentered at the end of a two-week mission, STS-107.
Rick. D. Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chowla, Laura B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon were lost.
May they rest in peace, and their lives serve as inspiration to those who still dream of High Flight.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The Microminiature Scultptor
Willard Wigan MBE, born in 1957 in Birmingham, England, is an artist and scultptor whose works can fit on the head of a pin, or in the eye of a needle.
He cannot read or write, as he has suffered lifelong from severe dyslexia. Partly to escape the bullying of schoolmates and his treatment by teachers and others, he began at an early age 'making houses' for ants: because he "thought they needed them', and since the works were so small, he thought no one could criticise them.
He works under a microscope, with tools he has made himself, some of which he can use to split human hairs multiple times. Taking up to eight weeks for each piece, he describes the process as 'torture' since at such tiny scales, the blood pulsing in a finger can destroy weeks of work. To get himself into a physical state where he can work, he uses relaxation techniques similar to Buddhist meditation or personal bio-feedback, and even then can complete only one scultptor's stoke -- or one miniscule bit of paint -- at a time, and always between breaths or heartbeats.
To paint his creations, there is no animal hair or fiber thin or small enough: even the finest sable hair is thicker than some of his creations; so, to paint them, he uses a single hair, plucked from the back of a housefly. However, he is opposed to killing any creatures, so he only uses the hairs from flies he finds already dead.
Much of the material he uses in his scultures he collects from dust particles, hairs, etc. which he finds floating in the air, illuminated by the sunlight shining into his studio.
His works have ordinarily sold for anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 Pounds Sterling; but recently his collection of unsold works has been purchased for 11 million Pounds by a museum in London, to ensure that these works may be seen by the public, and not disappear entirely to private collectors.
Anecdote: he says he once lost a sculture of Lewis Carrolls' "Alice", when she disappeared while being transferred from one work surface to another, on the tip of his finger. "I think I inhaled her", was Wigan's comment...
Not believeable?: here are microphotos of some of his work:
He cannot read or write, as he has suffered lifelong from severe dyslexia. Partly to escape the bullying of schoolmates and his treatment by teachers and others, he began at an early age 'making houses' for ants: because he "thought they needed them', and since the works were so small, he thought no one could criticise them.
He works under a microscope, with tools he has made himself, some of which he can use to split human hairs multiple times. Taking up to eight weeks for each piece, he describes the process as 'torture' since at such tiny scales, the blood pulsing in a finger can destroy weeks of work. To get himself into a physical state where he can work, he uses relaxation techniques similar to Buddhist meditation or personal bio-feedback, and even then can complete only one scultptor's stoke -- or one miniscule bit of paint -- at a time, and always between breaths or heartbeats.
To paint his creations, there is no animal hair or fiber thin or small enough: even the finest sable hair is thicker than some of his creations; so, to paint them, he uses a single hair, plucked from the back of a housefly. However, he is opposed to killing any creatures, so he only uses the hairs from flies he finds already dead.
Much of the material he uses in his scultures he collects from dust particles, hairs, etc. which he finds floating in the air, illuminated by the sunlight shining into his studio.
His works have ordinarily sold for anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 Pounds Sterling; but recently his collection of unsold works has been purchased for 11 million Pounds by a museum in London, to ensure that these works may be seen by the public, and not disappear entirely to private collectors.
Anecdote: he says he once lost a sculture of Lewis Carrolls' "Alice", when she disappeared while being transferred from one work surface to another, on the tip of his finger. "I think I inhaled her", was Wigan's comment...
Not believeable?: here are microphotos of some of his work:
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The 'Butterfly Wings' and the Weather...
Please, enough with this "a butterfly flapping it's wings in [insert place here] can cause [some usually-weather-related issue] [there].
Never said, never meant, isn't true.
The whole phrase comes from a paper provided by the mathematician Edward Lorenz in 1972 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. entitled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?
Scientists and mathematicians are not above the normal human tendencies toward incisive humor, and not above the desire to present a paper whose very title would cause it to rise above of 'background noise' of other presentations. :)
In fact, the title of Lorenz' paper received far more press than the mathematical paper itself (and indeed, so still do variations of the title phrasing, although Lorenz and others meant no such thing as the popularized statement). Lorenz was intensely interested in the prediction of weather patterns by using mathematical modelling, and was one of the first to use early computers to help in the exceedingly long and tedious calculations involved. What suprised him was that in order to save time on one of his simulations, he wanted to start his calculations at a 'stoppage point' that he previously had come to, rather than starting over at the beginning. Since his computer system could only deal with three decimal places of accuracy (like a real value of 1.256445 would be rounded off to 1.256) when he restarted his program, the end results were FAR different with the 'restart' than those given by the entire run. What he had numerically shown was one aspect of 'chaotic' systems: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions (this is only ONE of the required characteristics, btw). This is what led to the 'butterfly wing' metaphor -- in some completely deterministic systems, the sensitivity to initial conditions is so great that noise, margins of errors, instrument accuracy etc. all lead to solutions whose values greatly diverge over time. This is the reason why no matter how many more instruments and measurements or accuracy we have or could have, the prediction of the weather and its patterns is unlikely to get any more accurate for more than about a week out...
So, everyone please drop the 'butterfly wing' metaphor unless you want to spend a lot of time studying non-linear differential equations, Poincare maps, Euclidean and non-Euclidian mathematical geometry and all that stuff that'll make your head REALLY hurt.
(it does mine :( )
PS: Wikipedia has good articles on fractals, chaos theory and related subjects, with a great bibliography.
Never said, never meant, isn't true.
The whole phrase comes from a paper provided by the mathematician Edward Lorenz in 1972 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. entitled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?
Scientists and mathematicians are not above the normal human tendencies toward incisive humor, and not above the desire to present a paper whose very title would cause it to rise above of 'background noise' of other presentations. :)
In fact, the title of Lorenz' paper received far more press than the mathematical paper itself (and indeed, so still do variations of the title phrasing, although Lorenz and others meant no such thing as the popularized statement). Lorenz was intensely interested in the prediction of weather patterns by using mathematical modelling, and was one of the first to use early computers to help in the exceedingly long and tedious calculations involved. What suprised him was that in order to save time on one of his simulations, he wanted to start his calculations at a 'stoppage point' that he previously had come to, rather than starting over at the beginning. Since his computer system could only deal with three decimal places of accuracy (like a real value of 1.256445 would be rounded off to 1.256) when he restarted his program, the end results were FAR different with the 'restart' than those given by the entire run. What he had numerically shown was one aspect of 'chaotic' systems: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions (this is only ONE of the required characteristics, btw). This is what led to the 'butterfly wing' metaphor -- in some completely deterministic systems, the sensitivity to initial conditions is so great that noise, margins of errors, instrument accuracy etc. all lead to solutions whose values greatly diverge over time. This is the reason why no matter how many more instruments and measurements or accuracy we have or could have, the prediction of the weather and its patterns is unlikely to get any more accurate for more than about a week out...
So, everyone please drop the 'butterfly wing' metaphor unless you want to spend a lot of time studying non-linear differential equations, Poincare maps, Euclidean and non-Euclidian mathematical geometry and all that stuff that'll make your head REALLY hurt.
(it does mine :( )
PS: Wikipedia has good articles on fractals, chaos theory and related subjects, with a great bibliography.
And yet one more short Yeats bit.
From 'Supernatural Songs'
"There"
There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
There all the serpent-tails are bit,
There all the gyres converge in one,
There all the planets drop in the Sun.
"There"
There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
There all the serpent-tails are bit,
There all the gyres converge in one,
There all the planets drop in the Sun.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
More W.B. Yeats - the greatest poet to every write in English, requested by my friend Linda
The Circus Animals' Desertion
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
From "The Wind Among the Reeds; - 1899
--------------------------------------------------------
The Song of Wandeing Aengus
I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
From "The Wind Among the Reeds; - 1899
--------------------------------------------------------
The Song of Wandeing Aengus
I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
"The Theory of Almost Everyhing
A highly recomended book by Robert Oerter, paperback ISBN 0-452-28786
From the Introduction:
"There is a thory in in physics that explains, at the deepest level, nearly all the phenomena which rule our daily lives. It summarizes everything we know about the fundamental structure of matter and energy. It provides a detailed building block from which everything is made.It describes the reactions that powwer the sun and the interactions that cause fluorescent lights to glow.I explains the behavior of light, radio waves, and X rays.It has implications for our understanding of the very first moment's of our universe's existence,and for how matter itself came into being. It surpasses in precision, in universality, in the range of applicability from the very small to the astonomically large, every scientific theory that ever existed. This theory bears the unassuming name of "The Standard Model of Elementary Particles", or just the 'Stanbdard Model"...it is pehaps the pinnacle of human achievement to date. Some of the Theory' architects are perhaps more visible than the theory itself: the clownish iconoclast Richard Feymann, and the egotisitical polymath Murry Gell-Mann.
and other names, though are practically unkown outside specialist circles: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Geoege Zweig, Abdus Salam, Sten Weinberg, Yuval Ne'eman, Shalon Glashow, Martin Veltman, Gerard t'Hooft. There is no solitary rejected genius, no genius - no Einstein working alone in the Patent Office, no theory springing full blown in existence overnight. Instead the Stanard Model was cobbled together by many brilliant minds over the course of nearly the whole of the twentieth century."
--from the Introduction
What is made much of, and what is so important, woven into the very fabric and frame work our of universe on so many levels: symmetry.
Yet the theory requires symmetty-breaking in very early universe, and gives us understanding of how all this 'IS' now...
The one thing -- the force that we feel every day even though it's about 10^38 (ten the the 38th power) weaker than the other forces -- gravity -- is not explained in the current version of the Standard Model. Various candidates exist to attempt to explain this and attempt to integrate their ideas and outright speculations into a more all-encompassing 'GUT' - Grand Unified Theory. This seem beyond humankind's reach at the present, although there are multiple competing 'string' theories and a promising theory of 'loop quantum gravity' -- we may not know the outcomes of these things in our lifetime.
Suggested:
"The Theory of Almost Everything", by Robert Oerter
"Not Even Wrong - he Failure of String Theory and the Search of Unity in Phyical Law:, by Peter Woit.
"The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in the Twentieth Century Physics" bu Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann
terrific -- bk.
From the Introduction:
"There is a thory in in physics that explains, at the deepest level, nearly all the phenomena which rule our daily lives. It summarizes everything we know about the fundamental structure of matter and energy. It provides a detailed building block from which everything is made.It describes the reactions that powwer the sun and the interactions that cause fluorescent lights to glow.I explains the behavior of light, radio waves, and X rays.It has implications for our understanding of the very first moment's of our universe's existence,and for how matter itself came into being. It surpasses in precision, in universality, in the range of applicability from the very small to the astonomically large, every scientific theory that ever existed. This theory bears the unassuming name of "The Standard Model of Elementary Particles", or just the 'Stanbdard Model"...it is pehaps the pinnacle of human achievement to date. Some of the Theory' architects are perhaps more visible than the theory itself: the clownish iconoclast Richard Feymann, and the egotisitical polymath Murry Gell-Mann.
and other names, though are practically unkown outside specialist circles: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Geoege Zweig, Abdus Salam, Sten Weinberg, Yuval Ne'eman, Shalon Glashow, Martin Veltman, Gerard t'Hooft. There is no solitary rejected genius, no genius - no Einstein working alone in the Patent Office, no theory springing full blown in existence overnight. Instead the Stanard Model was cobbled together by many brilliant minds over the course of nearly the whole of the twentieth century."
--from the Introduction
What is made much of, and what is so important, woven into the very fabric and frame work our of universe on so many levels: symmetry.
Yet the theory requires symmetty-breaking in very early universe, and gives us understanding of how all this 'IS' now...
The one thing -- the force that we feel every day even though it's about 10^38 (ten the the 38th power) weaker than the other forces -- gravity -- is not explained in the current version of the Standard Model. Various candidates exist to attempt to explain this and attempt to integrate their ideas and outright speculations into a more all-encompassing 'GUT' - Grand Unified Theory. This seem beyond humankind's reach at the present, although there are multiple competing 'string' theories and a promising theory of 'loop quantum gravity' -- we may not know the outcomes of these things in our lifetime.
Suggested:
"The Theory of Almost Everything", by Robert Oerter
"Not Even Wrong - he Failure of String Theory and the Search of Unity in Phyical Law:, by Peter Woit.
"The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in the Twentieth Century Physics" bu Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann
terrific -- bk.
Friday, December 31, 2010
One hundred years ago, in 1910...
Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead published the first volume of Principia Mathematica, (commonly abbreviated as PM) one of the most important works on the foundations of mathematics; the second and third volumes were published in 1912 and 1913. This monumental (both in size, scope and complexity) was attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a fixed set of rules and axioms in symbolic logic. Cited by The Modern Library as #23 of the hundred most important non-fiction works of the century, it's also referred to as 'the most important scientific or mathematical work, which no one has read." (Largely due to it's scope and the need to master a symbolic logic syntactical language invented by Russell and Whitehead.)
As an example, it takes until page 379 of volume I, for Prop. 54.43 to be proven. This is a proof that -- given the limited number of axioms and relational rules posited in PM:
"1 + 1 = 2".
Here it is:
This proof is actually completed in the section on cardinal arithmetic in volume II page 86, accompanied by the comment, "The above proposition is occasionally useful." :)
As an example, it takes until page 379 of volume I, for Prop. 54.43 to be proven. This is a proof that -- given the limited number of axioms and relational rules posited in PM:
"1 + 1 = 2".
Here it is:
This proof is actually completed in the section on cardinal arithmetic in volume II page 86, accompanied by the comment, "The above proposition is occasionally useful." :)
Sunday, December 26, 2010
IceCube: Badgers and Neutrinos at the South Pole
"Construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was completed at the the South Pole in Antarctica on December 18, 2010 New Zealand time. This scientific milestone marks completion of the world's largest neutrino detector and a powerful tool for exploring the Universe" (from the link in the Title).
IceCube is the world's largest neutrino 'observatory' and is located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, at the earth's South Pole in Antarctica.
Badgers? The University of Wisconsin at Madison is the lead instituion of the project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.
The function of of IceCub is to detect and collect information on neutrinos (uncharged, extremely light particles created by the decay of radioactive materials, particles that lack an electric charge.) Trillions of neutrinos pass through each of our bodies every day, but there is little chance that even one of them would interact with an antom in our bodies in a lifetime.
The IceCube devices located at the South Pole actually 'looks' North, using the entire Earth as a filter to block out surface radiation, etc.
The telescope/detector consists of over 4000 Complex sensors, deployed on 'strings' like Christmas lights, at depths in the ice starting between 4750ft. and 8000 feet beneath the surface. (!). It turns our the one of the best materials to embed and enclose such sensors is pure ice, and the miles-thick Antactic ice bed is exactly such a material. The sensors on the strings lowered in holes drilled in the ice by hot-water drilling apparatus don't start until about a mile below the surface, to filter out excess particles coming from the surface.
What is this all supposed to tells us: more information about the growth and death of stellar processes in the early universe, information about 'dark matter' and 'dark energy', the existense of WIMPS ('weakly interacting massive particles') and much more.
The amazing part of the device/telescople is its size: more then one cubic kilometer.
Here are some illustrative diagrams:
IceCube is the world's largest neutrino 'observatory' and is located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, at the earth's South Pole in Antarctica.
Badgers? The University of Wisconsin at Madison is the lead instituion of the project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.
The function of of IceCub is to detect and collect information on neutrinos (uncharged, extremely light particles created by the decay of radioactive materials, particles that lack an electric charge.) Trillions of neutrinos pass through each of our bodies every day, but there is little chance that even one of them would interact with an antom in our bodies in a lifetime.
The IceCube devices located at the South Pole actually 'looks' North, using the entire Earth as a filter to block out surface radiation, etc.
The telescope/detector consists of over 4000 Complex sensors, deployed on 'strings' like Christmas lights, at depths in the ice starting between 4750ft. and 8000 feet beneath the surface. (!). It turns our the one of the best materials to embed and enclose such sensors is pure ice, and the miles-thick Antactic ice bed is exactly such a material. The sensors on the strings lowered in holes drilled in the ice by hot-water drilling apparatus don't start until about a mile below the surface, to filter out excess particles coming from the surface.
What is this all supposed to tells us: more information about the growth and death of stellar processes in the early universe, information about 'dark matter' and 'dark energy', the existense of WIMPS ('weakly interacting massive particles') and much more.
The amazing part of the device/telescople is its size: more then one cubic kilometer.
Here are some illustrative diagrams:
(That's the Eiffel Tower on the right,
for size comparison)
Friday, December 17, 2010
Monday-Tuesday, Dec. 20-21: TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE IN ALL NORTH AMERICA
Well, it's been about three years since we in North America got to see a total lunar eclipse, but there will be one late Monday night-Tuesday morning:
Earth's shadow will totally engulf the Moon from 2:41 to 3:53 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, or 11:41 p.m. to 12:53 a.m. Pacific Standard Time; the earlier parts of the eclipse start and end about an hour beforehand and afterward.
Alas, it looks like here in MN, it will be cloudy and not visible, but do check. The next total lunar eclipse visible in all North America will not happen until
April 14-15, 2014 :(
For more info, check: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/111597159.html
Earth's shadow will totally engulf the Moon from 2:41 to 3:53 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, or 11:41 p.m. to 12:53 a.m. Pacific Standard Time; the earlier parts of the eclipse start and end about an hour beforehand and afterward.
Alas, it looks like here in MN, it will be cloudy and not visible, but do check. The next total lunar eclipse visible in all North America will not happen until
April 14-15, 2014 :(
For more info, check: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/111597159.html
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
"The Pale Blue Dot" - the greatest photograph ever taken
This is my nomination for the greatest photograph ever taken by mankind.
Taken by the spacecraft Voyager I in 1990,at a distance of 3,781,782,502 (almost 4 billion miles) from where it was launched. it shows our planet Earth -- "The Pale Blue Dot" as never seen before. The photo almost never happened -- it was not in NASA's approved activities, and it took a long series of ever-increasingly-public requests from the USA's most 'notable' writer on Astronomy -- Carl Sagan -- to finally convince NASA to try. NASA was worried that pointing Voyager I's narrow-field camera back toward the Earth (and the Sun) might damage it's sensors; but in the end, the photo was made.
Details:
The picture was taken using a narrow-angle camera at 32° above the ecliptic and it was created using blue, green, and violet filters. Narrow-angle cameras, as opposed to wide-angle cameras, are equipped to photograph specific details in an area of interest. The light band over Earth is an artifact of sunlight scattering in the camera's optics, resulting from the small angle between the Earth and the Sun. Earth takes up less than a single pixel—NASA says "only 0.12 pixel in size."
That's it -- that's us.
Voyager I and its companion Voyager II continue on into interstellar space, and after 33 years, are still sending back data.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
Here is a comment from Sagan's book "Pale Blue Dot", Random House, 1994.
https://planetary.org/bluedot_poster.html
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
Double click the image to enlarge, and see our entire planet , as the 'pale blue dot' in the upper band. The colored bands are artifacts of the multi-color-filtered imaging process.
Taken by the spacecraft Voyager I in 1990,at a distance of 3,781,782,502 (almost 4 billion miles) from where it was launched. it shows our planet Earth -- "The Pale Blue Dot" as never seen before. The photo almost never happened -- it was not in NASA's approved activities, and it took a long series of ever-increasingly-public requests from the USA's most 'notable' writer on Astronomy -- Carl Sagan -- to finally convince NASA to try. NASA was worried that pointing Voyager I's narrow-field camera back toward the Earth (and the Sun) might damage it's sensors; but in the end, the photo was made.
Details:
The picture was taken using a narrow-angle camera at 32° above the ecliptic and it was created using blue, green, and violet filters. Narrow-angle cameras, as opposed to wide-angle cameras, are equipped to photograph specific details in an area of interest. The light band over Earth is an artifact of sunlight scattering in the camera's optics, resulting from the small angle between the Earth and the Sun. Earth takes up less than a single pixel—NASA says "only 0.12 pixel in size."
That's it -- that's us.
Voyager I and its companion Voyager II continue on into interstellar space, and after 33 years, are still sending back data.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
Here is a comment from Sagan's book "Pale Blue Dot", Random House, 1994.
https://planetary.org/bluedot_poster.html
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
Double click the image to enlarge, and see our entire planet , as the 'pale blue dot' in the upper band. The colored bands are artifacts of the multi-color-filtered imaging process.
A reproduction of this photo appears in NASA's public-viewing and movie gallery. The photo needs to be replaced several times a year, because it "wears out". So many people want to go up to it, and touch the "Pale Blue Dot" for themselves...
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
ALERT! The Geminid Meteor Shower
The largest and most impressive meteor shower -- called the 'Geminid' shower -- will occur this year on Dec. 13-14th. So bundle up if it's cold and go out and take a look.
Best viewing is after midnight until dawn on the Dec. 14th.
Of course, if in your area the night is cloudy, you're out of luck. :(
Otherwise, you can expect about 120 meteor streaks per hour, and possibly some large fireballs.
The other meteor showers during the year (like the Perseids) are believed to be caused by debris shed by comets during their orbits around our sun. The interesting part about the Geminid shower (named because it appears to be centered around the constellation Gemini) is that it's known to come from a particular weird object named 3200 Phaethon, which doesn't appear to shed nearly enough material to account for the year's largest meteor shower.
Information at: http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-geminid-meteor-shower-defies-explanation.html
Best viewing is after midnight until dawn on the Dec. 14th.
Of course, if in your area the night is cloudy, you're out of luck. :(
Otherwise, you can expect about 120 meteor streaks per hour, and possibly some large fireballs.
The other meteor showers during the year (like the Perseids) are believed to be caused by debris shed by comets during their orbits around our sun. The interesting part about the Geminid shower (named because it appears to be centered around the constellation Gemini) is that it's known to come from a particular weird object named 3200 Phaethon, which doesn't appear to shed nearly enough material to account for the year's largest meteor shower.
Information at: http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-geminid-meteor-shower-defies-explanation.html
Friday, November 12, 2010
Particle Physics, the Standard Model, Dark Matter and everything...
A great site from the particle data group at the Lawrence BerkeleyNational Laboratory: supported by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation:
http://particleadventure.org/
http://particleadventure.org/
Sunday, November 7, 2010
"The Shield of Achilles', by W. H. Auden
One of the greatest commentaries on modern war, constrastion with the visions of the 'Heroic Era;...
The Shield of Achilles
W. H. Auden
She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died. She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field. A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept. The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
The Fine Structure Constant
Well, it's very late, so let's talk about one of the most interesting and obscure "things/values/contstants/whatever" in the universe: the 'fine structure constant', universally represented by the Greek letter alpha 'α'.
It's a coupling constant, in that it characterizes the strengh of the electromagetic interactions of everything.
In other words, it's fundamentally involved in one of the four fundamental interactions in the universe:
Electromagnetism
the strong nuclear force
the weak nuclear force, and
gravitation.
(PS: That's all there is, as we know it)
Alpha has always been mysterious, since it's a dimensionless number -- not 'meters per second' or 'pounds per square foot' or anything -- it's just a number. Where the hell did it come from, and why is it what it is, and not something else?
Here's a prophetic comment from the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, more than 40 years ago:
There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant e the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to -0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to π or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!
Feynman anticipated by a great leap of intuition and genius, that 'alpha' IS actually related to pi and and e (the base of natural logarithms), as has been subsequently shown - maybe.
But it's still a fundamental issue in the 'anthropic' question about physical theories: are the theories we use to explain the universe -- right down to its fundamental constants -- a necessary result that observations of the physical universe have to be compatible with the intelligent life which observes it? (Take an aspirin here).
It's relatively-easily calculated that alpha (the fine-structure constant) could not be greatly different from what it is, in our universe: a small variation on either side would make it impossible for stars to form, and eventually for carbon and oxygen atoms to be created through nuclear synthesis: no carbon atoms = no carbon-based lifeforms like us. Thus also, no one to measure these constants....
So, physicists still ask -- why 'this' rather than 'that'? ...
PS: this is still an open and controversial question. Some recent experimental evidence suggests that this constant: isn't.
It may now or have in the past varied in different parts of our universe. If this is the case, it is still unclear what this means...
Ref:
http://www.physorg.com/news202921592.html
It's a coupling constant, in that it characterizes the strengh of the electromagetic interactions of everything.
In other words, it's fundamentally involved in one of the four fundamental interactions in the universe:
Electromagnetism
the strong nuclear force
the weak nuclear force, and
gravitation.
(PS: That's all there is, as we know it)
Alpha has always been mysterious, since it's a dimensionless number -- not 'meters per second' or 'pounds per square foot' or anything -- it's just a number. Where the hell did it come from, and why is it what it is, and not something else?
Here's a prophetic comment from the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, more than 40 years ago:
There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant e the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to -0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to π or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!
Feynman anticipated by a great leap of intuition and genius, that 'alpha' IS actually related to pi and and e (the base of natural logarithms), as has been subsequently shown - maybe.
But it's still a fundamental issue in the 'anthropic' question about physical theories: are the theories we use to explain the universe -- right down to its fundamental constants -- a necessary result that observations of the physical universe have to be compatible with the intelligent life which observes it? (Take an aspirin here).
It's relatively-easily calculated that alpha (the fine-structure constant) could not be greatly different from what it is, in our universe: a small variation on either side would make it impossible for stars to form, and eventually for carbon and oxygen atoms to be created through nuclear synthesis: no carbon atoms = no carbon-based lifeforms like us. Thus also, no one to measure these constants....
So, physicists still ask -- why 'this' rather than 'that'? ...
PS: this is still an open and controversial question. Some recent experimental evidence suggests that this constant: isn't.
It may now or have in the past varied in different parts of our universe. If this is the case, it is still unclear what this means...
Ref:
http://www.physorg.com/news202921592.html
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The 'Big Bang' and cosmic background radiation
In about the middle of the 20th Century, cosmologists had come up with two basic competing theories about the beginning of our universe: the 'Steady State' theory and what popularly became known as the 'Big Bang' theory. The 'Steady State' theory maintained that the universe had always been around, and would continue to be so, without noticeable change. Fred Hoyle was probably the most popularly-known proponent of this theory.
Sputnik and the Russian space program actually made a big contribution to research leading to discoveries in this area.
Working at Bell Labs in 1964, Arno Penzia and Robert Wilson were trying to perfect means of communicating with satellites in orbit. To measure these faint signals, they had to eliminate ALL the interfering noise, from radios, television transmissions, nearby radar and radio transmissions, etc. They suppressed interference from the heat in the receiver itself by cooling it with liquid helium to −269 °C, only 4 °C above absolute zero. But still, there was this residual signal -- they even thought this might be from 'irregularities' in their large horn antenna (picture), caused from the accumulation of pigeon droppings. But even when the large horn antenna was thoroughly scrubbed, the residual signal remained.
Penzias and Wilson were not cosmologists or theoretical physicsts, but got in contact with Robert H. Dicke, Jim Peebles, and David Wilkinson, astrophysicists at Princeton University just 60 km (40 miles) away, who were preparing to search for microwave radiation in this region of the spectrum. Dicke and his colleagues reasoned that the Big Bang must have scattered not only the matter that condensed into galaxies but also must have released a tremendous blast of radiation. With the proper instrumentation, this radiation should be detectable. (wikipedia).
After talking to Robert Dicke at length, Penzias and Wilson invited them all down to the Bell Labs facility in New Jersey, to actually listen to -- and see on monitors -- the residual 'noise' they were recording. To avoid controversy, their results and interpretations were published in separate papers.
In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint discovery.
To put it succintly, there is no longer any argument about the 'beginning' of the universe, when it happened, and a good part of its history since then. Aside from all the other evidence, there is no other explanation for the pervasive 3 degree K blackbody radiation which pervades the universe: it's the predicted and calculated remnant of the 'Big Bang' event which created this universe. End of story.
How confident are we? Check the attached photo, with the predicted vs. measured radiation, together with the 1% error bars.
PS: It must seem rather demeaning now, for Penzias and Wilson having to spend days on their hands and knees inside the big horn antenna, scrubbing all the surfaces with bleach, to remove all the pigeon shit.
Worth it, perhaps, for a Nobel Prize.
PPS: Bell Labs - whose scientists invented the transistor, the intergrated circuit, the photovoltaic cell, the C programming language, the UNIX operating system, the first wireless local area network, etc. was effectively disbanded. As of now, there is reportedly no one doing basic research.
Hope your cell phone makes you happy.
The Bell Labs Horn Antenna In Crawford Hill, NJ (now a National Historic Site)
The data from the original scans from Bell Labs, correlated with the specific numerical predictions from the models of the 'Big Bang' theory. End of subject, as they say.
Sputnik and the Russian space program actually made a big contribution to research leading to discoveries in this area.
Working at Bell Labs in 1964, Arno Penzia and Robert Wilson were trying to perfect means of communicating with satellites in orbit. To measure these faint signals, they had to eliminate ALL the interfering noise, from radios, television transmissions, nearby radar and radio transmissions, etc. They suppressed interference from the heat in the receiver itself by cooling it with liquid helium to −269 °C, only 4 °C above absolute zero. But still, there was this residual signal -- they even thought this might be from 'irregularities' in their large horn antenna (picture), caused from the accumulation of pigeon droppings. But even when the large horn antenna was thoroughly scrubbed, the residual signal remained.
Penzias and Wilson were not cosmologists or theoretical physicsts, but got in contact with Robert H. Dicke, Jim Peebles, and David Wilkinson, astrophysicists at Princeton University just 60 km (40 miles) away, who were preparing to search for microwave radiation in this region of the spectrum. Dicke and his colleagues reasoned that the Big Bang must have scattered not only the matter that condensed into galaxies but also must have released a tremendous blast of radiation. With the proper instrumentation, this radiation should be detectable. (wikipedia).
After talking to Robert Dicke at length, Penzias and Wilson invited them all down to the Bell Labs facility in New Jersey, to actually listen to -- and see on monitors -- the residual 'noise' they were recording. To avoid controversy, their results and interpretations were published in separate papers.
In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint discovery.
To put it succintly, there is no longer any argument about the 'beginning' of the universe, when it happened, and a good part of its history since then. Aside from all the other evidence, there is no other explanation for the pervasive 3 degree K blackbody radiation which pervades the universe: it's the predicted and calculated remnant of the 'Big Bang' event which created this universe. End of story.
How confident are we? Check the attached photo, with the predicted vs. measured radiation, together with the 1% error bars.
PS: It must seem rather demeaning now, for Penzias and Wilson having to spend days on their hands and knees inside the big horn antenna, scrubbing all the surfaces with bleach, to remove all the pigeon shit.
Worth it, perhaps, for a Nobel Prize.
PPS: Bell Labs - whose scientists invented the transistor, the intergrated circuit, the photovoltaic cell, the C programming language, the UNIX operating system, the first wireless local area network, etc. was effectively disbanded. As of now, there is reportedly no one doing basic research.
Hope your cell phone makes you happy.
The Bell Labs Horn Antenna In Crawford Hill, NJ (now a National Historic Site)
The data from the original scans from Bell Labs, correlated with the specific numerical predictions from the models of the 'Big Bang' theory. End of subject, as they say.
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