US National Compact Stellarator Experiment Cancelled

I suppose this is neither inevitable nor surprising. The National Compact Stellerator at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has been shut down, mainly due to cost overruns and delays.

"In late 2006, it became clear that NCSX construction project would not be able to meet its approved baseline total project cost of $102M or its completion date of July 2009," said Under Secretary for Science Raymond Orbach in a statement. Since then the DOE, Princeton University, and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have been reviewing their options for the project and PPPL. They concluded that "the budget increases, schedule delays and continuing uncertainties of the NCSX construction project necessitate its closure," said Orbach. The new proposed cost for NCSX was $170 million with an August 2013 start date, which would have put research at PPPL in peril said an April 2008 Office of Science report.

Zz.

Arsenic Poison Didn't Kill Napoleon

Another myth bites the dust.

A new study by physicists at INFN in Milano-Bicocca and Pavia, Italy, has shown that there's no difference in the arsenic level in Napoleon's hair during his last days when compared to when he was a child. This means that he wasn't deliberately poisoned by arsenic during his last days. Instead, it was more likely that it was due to a lifetime's worth of exposure to arsenic.

Zz.

MSU Trustees Vote For $11M In Cyclotron Enhancements

The Board of Trustees at Michigan State University voted unanimously for the $11 million enhancement of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory on its campus.

The proposed addition to the Cyclotron is a building with a 20-foot ceiling that would accommodate an experimental reaccelerator system, which is currently under construction.

This could position MSU even stronger in its effort to land the proposed rare isotope accelerator that I've mentioned before.

The university’s next proposal to the National Science Foundation would be aided by the completion of a reaccelerator and also would place MSU at the forefront for future projects, Wilcox said.

One such project, a next generation rare isotope beam facility, is a plan the government wants to pursue in the future, Glasmacher said.

“(MSU is) competing for that against everyone else in the nation,” Glasmacher said.

Well, not everyone. I would think its stiffest competitor right now is Argonne.

Zz.

The APS Press Release On The 2008 Omnibus Spending Bill

The American Physical Society put out a press release in response to the disastrous US spending bill.

APS Urges Congress and White House to Revisit Fiscal Year 2008 Science Funding in January

Current legislation is disastrous for U.S. physical sciences and technology enterprise.

(Press release issued 4:45 pm, December 19, 2007)

The American Physical Society, representing more than 46,000 physicists in universities, industry and national laboratories, regards the fiscal year 2008 omnibus spending bill as extraordinarily damaging to the nation's science and technology enterprise. The bill fails to fund appropriately the research and education programs authorized in the bipartisan America COMPETES Act, which President Bush signed into law only four months ago. The consequential layoffs of scientists and engineers throughout the nation will discourage American youth from pursuing these fields, just as the country needs their participation to sustain economic growth and national security.

While other nations are aggressively challenging American leadership in physical sciences and technology, the omnibus bill sets our country on the wrong course. It fails to provide the necessary resources for long- term research in the physical sciences and engineering. It fails to provide the requisite resources for developing new cutting-edge scientific laboratories and even for operating existing national user facilities. It fails to provide adequate funding for university- based research that is so essential for educating the next generation of scientists and engineers. It also fails to provide the appropriate incentives for American industry to innovate at an accelerated pace.

Furthermore, as we as a nation strive to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, mitigate global warming and put a lid on escalating energy costs, the omnibus bill abandons the long- term transformational research that is necessary to achieve all these essential goals. The bill is bad for our energy future and economic future.

Finally, apart from its failings on global competitiveness and energy, the omnibus legislation also places at grave risk committed U.S. participation in two large international scientific collaborations. Just one year ago, the United States made a major commitment to the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Today, Congress has pulled the plug. In so doing, it critically damages American credibility as a reliable scientific partner throughout the world and compromises the nation's standing as a host of future international scientific facilities. Congress has also cut the lifeline of the International Linear Collider, which represents the future of American high- energy physics. This action sends a strong message to the world: The U.S. is prepared to jettison support for one of our flagship areas of science that probes fundamental laws of the universe.

The APS notes with some dismay that had Congress applied the same discipline to earmarking as it did last year, the damage to the science and technology enterprise could have been avoided.

For these reasons, the American Physical Society strongly urges Congress and the White House to revisit Fiscal Year 2008 science funding after Congress convenes in January with an eye to reflecting better the nation's long term needs and obligations.

... and here are more news coverage on the disaster that will take into effect at Fermilab starting in January. I tell ya, if they survive this, and that there are new discoveries made at Fermilab, none of the current legislator should attend to bask in the glory, because all of them tried to kill not only this laboratory, but also high energy physics.

Zz.

Oppeneimer Comes To The Opera

I mentioned earlier that Dr. Atomic will be making its operatic debut at the Chicago Lyric Opera this coming January. The Chicago Tribune has a preview of this work that is currently in rehearsal.

I'm not much of an opera buff, but I am certainly considering attending this one. It isn't often that there's something related to either physics or physicists on stage. The last one that I attended was "Copenhagen" on Broadway, and it was outstanding. So if this is as good as the original review of the San Francisco premier, maybe I can sit through an opera for a couple of hours. :)

Zz.

Sand Could Shed Light On Quark-Gluon Plasma?

Like I've said many times before, you just never know when the most fundamental understanding in physics could come from. Who would have thought that shooting sand at a target would give you insight into the quark-gluon plasma that was thought to be present close to the Big Bang? But there it is!

Furthermore, Nagel and colleagues believe that this liquid-like behaviour of colliding particles has been seen before -- at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US. Two years ago, researchers at the RHIC smashed together pairs of gold nuclei to create multi-particle “quark-gluon plasma”. Such a plasma is believed to be present in the early Universe – just before it has cooled enough for quarks and gluons to combine and form protons and neutrons.

Just as Peter Higgs found the inspiration for the Higgs mechanism from condensed matter, you just never know when the next source of inspiration in physics would come from.

Zz.

New Particle Accelerator To Be Built In Germany

Without much fanfare, and without much fuss, a new particle accelerator will be built in Germany. Named the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), it will cost a total of $1.7 billion.

One of its goals is to try and recreate the conditions during the Big Bang.

"This laboratory will be recreating a mini version of the Big Bang," Horst Stöcker, scientific director of the German Society for Heavy Ion Research (GSI), which will oversee the facility, told the news agency DPA. "The substance we will be making resembles that in the first microseconds of the Big Bang, when it was a million times hotter than the center of the sun. We're talking a million times 10 million degrees Celsius."

How will this new accelerator differ than the LHC being constructed at CERN?

The project differs from the massive new particle accelerator currently nearing completion at CERN near Geneva in Switzerland in that it will focus more on the intensity of its particle beam rather than on the speed achieved. The CERN project, which hopes to begin experiments in 2008, hopes to find subatomic particles and antiparticles to help provide evidence backing up string theory.

I wish the process in building the International Linear Collider (ILC) is as unfussy as this. Unfortunately, with a $10 billion price tag, the ILC is naturally more complicated and more involved.

Zz.

Dr. Atomic at Lyric Opera of Chicago

Doctor Atomic will be performed at the Lyric Opera of Chicago from Dec. 14, 2007 through Jan. 19, 2008. This is a critically-acclaimed opera based on the events surrounding the first detonation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

Not into opera, you say? Well, look at it this way, at least it is in English! :)

Zz.

Why They Called It The Manhattan Project

Like almost everyone else, I didn't think the name "Manhattan Project" given to the secret nuclear project at Los Alamos in New Mexico during WWII had anything to do with the real Manhattan, NY. But this fascinating article in the New York Times traces the origin of the Manhattan Project, and it did have roots out of Manhattan.

Zz.

How Many Neutrons Can An Atom Hold?

The answer to this question is still being studied after this latest report. A group at Michigan State has managed to create isotopes of Mg40 and Al42 (link may be available for free for a limited time). These are neutron-rich atoms that contain more neutrons that was originally thought possible.

They have sent atoms crashing into one another in a particle accelerator to create bloated versions of the elements aluminium and magnesium. The new, artificial forms of these metals have many more neutrons in their atomic nuclei than do the everyday versions.

Exact citation to the paper is:

T. Baumann et al., Nature v449, p.1022 (2007).

A similar news report can be found at PhysicsWorld website. Registration (free) is required.

Zz.

The Quest for the Advanced Exotic Beam Laboratory

A Chicago Suntimes news report describes the purpose for the proposed Advanced Exotic Beam Laboratory that the Dept. of Energy is seeking to build. Both Argonne and Michigan State University are in the running to host this facility that would cost roughly $550 million.

This project was initially called RIA - Rare Isotope Accelerator, that was supposed to cost about $1.1 billion. Even though that had high importance and recommendation, budget constraints have cut it down, and the name also went away. So rather than calling it RIA Light, they found a convoluted name to give to this facility. Actually, I think the folks at Michigan State might be calling it by another name.

Zz.

Pentaquark or No Pentaquark?

If you have missed the sage of this "non-discovery", you might want to get up to speed here.

About a couple of years ago, I attended a seminar by Curtis Meyer of Carnegie-Mellon. He presented almost all of the experimental work done on the search, discovery, non-discovery of the pentaquark. I think this talk was the most extensive search of all the experimental evidence ever presented at one place that I have ever attended.

Just based on the experimental evidence alone, when they are put side by side, it is very difficult to be convinced that the pentaquark was actually discovered. Almost without fail, the experiments that did NOT observe the pentaquark have higher statistics, better resolutions, more model-independent analysis, and are able to detect known decay channels that were missing in many of the experiments that claim to detect the pentaquark.

Luckily, I found the the viewgraphs that were used in his talk yesterday. I think this is roughly what was used - I don't remember all of them, but I do remember the salient viewgraphs in this similar talk that probably was given at U. of Miami. Have a look at the collection of expt. data and see if you draw the same conclusion.

Still, it is interesting to note that there have been not a whole lot of new reports since then to support the existence of the pentaquark. So the previously-reported results are seriously in doubt right now.

Zz.