"Violating" Einstein's Photoelectric Effect

One of the most spectacular theoretical description that Einstein had ever produced is the corpuscular nature of light that he used in his 1905 photoelectric effect paper. In fact, there have been arguments put forth that of all of his 1905 papers, the one proposing this model for light is what is truly most revolutionary, even more than his special relativity theory.

In case you need a refresher, the photoelectric effect experiment is where you shine light onto a surface of a material (typically a metal). If the light has a sufficient "energy", then photoelectrons are emitted. What was puzzling before the 1900s was that light, as understood as a wave via the Maxwell Equations, seemed to not be behaving the way it should within this photoelectric effect experiment. The energy of the light wave was tied to its intensity - the larger the intensity, the larger the energy. Yet, in the photoelectric effect experiment, there were two puzzling observations:

1. As one increases the intensity, the energy distribution of the emitted photoelectrons does not change. Electrons are not emitted with more energy. Rather, increasing the intensity simply increases the number of electrons being emitted. The energy distribution remains the same as before.

2. If the frequency of the light is below some value, then no matter how intense the light is, no electrons is emitted.

Einstein took those two puzzling observations and reformulated the light description, tying the frequency, not the intensity, to the energy of light. Not only that, he proposed that light's energy comes in discrete quantum (photon). He then proposed a simple description of the photoelectric effect experiment:

KE = hf - F

where KE is the kinetic energy of the emitted photoelectrons, hf is the energy of each photon (f is the frequency of light and h is the Planck constant), while F is what is known as the work function of the material. When the photoelectric effect is defined this way, then a natural explanation for both #1 and #2 is obtained. Since light's energy only depends on the frequency, increasing the intensity does nothing to the energy of each photon. The intensity only affects the rate of photons being emitted, thus that explains why we obtain more photoelectrons, but with the same energy distribution. And if the frequency of light is less than the work function F, then no matter how high the intensity is, it is still less than F and therefore unable to produce any photoelectrons.

This photoelectric effect description was soon experimentally verified by Millikan (who initially was very skeptical of Einstein's description, but later on admitted that all of the experiments seemed to point to its validity). Since then, Einstein's formulation of what light is has certainly been verified and accepted many times over, and is the only description of light being used in many advanced application such as photoemission spectroscopy.

Still, does this mean that we do not have any evidence that this description can be "violated"? I'm putting "violated" in quotes because, as I'll explain later on, it turns out that, as is the case in many areas of physics, the photoelectric effect description of Einstein is only the simplest, most naive description of a "single-photon" emission. What this implies is that we have several situation where the Einstein's photoelectric effect equation can be "violated".

There are two different types of experiments where this can be done.

A. The Schottky effect type experiment.

This type of experiment was done[1] even way back in the 20th century, even by giants in physics such Ernest Lawrence[2]. This is where the same photoelectric effect experiment was done, but in a rather high external accelerating electric field. This field is applied usually perpendicular to the metal's surface in the direction that will accelerate the emitted electrons away from the metal's surface. What is observed here is that one can in fact observe emission of electrons even when the energy of the photons is LESS than the work function (violation of #2 above). What is going on here is that the applied electric field acts in such a way that it lowers the effective work function of the metal. The photons with a lower energy can start to emit electrons even below the metal's bulk work function.

B. Multiphoton photoemission.

This discovery occurs especially after lasers were invented, and high intensity monochromatic light sources become easily available. What is observed in these experiments is that, even without applying any high fields to the metal (i.e. no lowering of the effective work function), one can still get photoelectrons even using photons with energy lower than the work function, especially when one increases the intensity of the light source by a lot. This again violates #2. A very simple explanation for this is that, with highly intense light source such as those coming from a laser, one can induce a multiphoton photoemission process.[3,4] This is where the first photon excites an electron in the metal's conduction band to an intermediate state. Normally, its lifetime in the femtosecond range would cause it to decay back down. But with a highly intense light source, the probability of another photon being absorbed by that excited electron before it decays becomes significant. Thus, if you have a light source with photon energy just slightly more than half of the work function, there is a non-negligible probability that you can now have an emission of electron due to the absorption of 2 photons. One can easily imagine this being done for 3, 4, etc.. photons. Of course, the probability of emission with higher number of photons is significantly lower.

So here, I've just described two different ways of violating Einstein's photoelectric effect description[5]. So does this mean that we should try to get the Nobel committee to revoke Einstein's prize? Does this mean that the photoelectric effect description is no longer valid?

NO!

The most significant consequence of Einstein's photoelectric effect description - the photon - is STILL valid and very much alive. In fact, the multiphoton experiments could not be easily explained without using the concept of photons. What we know now is that the Einstein's description is valid only for the simplest case - an emission of electron using single photons only, i.e. single-photon photoemission and under a revised definition of the work function being the EFFECTIVE work function, rather than the original bulk work function. As with other aspects of physics, we make progress in the study of an area, and now we know more of what we didn't know then. Einstein's work opened the pathways to viewing light in a different way. Without such insight, most of what we know now in this area would not have been possible. Just as Newtonian mechanics became more of an approximation (albeit a valid one at our normal scales), the Einstein's equation also became more of a special case valid for the simplest situation.

Zz.

[1] E. Guth and C.J. Mullin, Phys. Rev. v.59, p.867 (1941).
[2] E.O. Lawrence and L.b. Linford, Phys. Rev. v.36, p.482 (1930).
[3] K. Giesen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. v.55, p.300 (1985).
[4] W.S. Fann et al., Phys. Rev. B v.44, p.10980 (1991).
[5] There is actually another way, via heating the metal. See, for example, R.H. Fowler, Phys. Rev. v.38, p.45 (1931).

The Most Accurate Measurement Ever Made

Would you ever think that using single photons and an interferometer, one could get the most accurate measurement ever made up to now? One certainly can, as shown by this very elegant experiment (link may be available for free for a limited time). In fact, they got close to the Heisenberg Uncertainty limit!

But Pryde and his coworkers in Australia have demonstrated a way of reaching the Heisenberg limit of measurement precision without needing these elusive states: by looking at photons traversing an interferometer's arms one at a time. The key is to avoid making measurements that determine which arm the photon is in, until the beams are recombined at the end. This allows the shot noise to be more or less smoothed away.

Another very clever experiment. Way to go, people!

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.

Surprise!! More Bastardization of Quantum Mechanics

Remember that I had already mentioned that, when people do not understand the mathematical description of quantum mechanics, they only get to see all of these things appearing out of nowhere, and conclude that anything is possible. What's worse, they can't tell the difference between QM phenomena, and things that come out of mysticism and other psychic pseudoscience. They seem to think that one can easily extrapolate all the "weirdness" of QM into other realm, without any justification that such extrapolation is valid. In other words, they learn about physics in bits and pieces, and ignore the rest, such as the concept of decoherence that I've covered in the last few blog entries here.

If you don't believe me, here's one example. This appears to be a news article out of the Philippines, where they are claiming that there's no difference between what QM is saying, and what mystics are saying.

This negative attitude may soon change. Psychics and mystics have found an unexpected ally within the ranks of a relatively new scientific field called by various names like quantum mechanics, modern physics, particle physics and, lately, quantum physics.

In fact, the way pioneers of quantum physics describe the ultimate nature of physical reality is often indistinguishable from the way mystics talk about it.
This uncanny and incredible parallelism in the thinking of both mystics and modern physicists was not lost on several keen observers of recent developments in science.

These people obviously forgot one VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE - EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.

I suppose when one is scientifically illiterate, that issue never crossed one's mind.

The "weirdness" of QM are well-tested, not only qualitatively, but also QUANTITATIVELY! And they can be produced almost on demand - just look at your modern electronics. We know QM well enough that we USE it for practical purposes.

Now when was the last time your local neighborhood psychic can produce a transistor?

So yes, there is a HUGE difference. But if you are blind, how can you tell? So the bastardization continues.

Zz.

Do Classical Laws Arise From Quantum Laws?

This is a timely subject, since the issue of "decoherence", and how far quantum laws can be extrapolated into our classical world seems to be the topic of discussion on here (see comments from the last few blog entries).

Physicists from Austria have formulated a theoretical scenario in which QM laws are the underlying physical description of the classical world that we see today.

“Our motivation is to understand how the classical world comes out of quantum physics,” Kofler says. “The established approach in research is decoherence where one has to take into account the complexity of systems and interactions with environment.” It is interaction with the environment that brings decoherence into play, destroying quantum coherences and making it impossible to observe quantum phenomena. “We believe we found a process complementary to decoherence which can explain the quantum-to-classical transition.”

The exact reference to the paper is as follows:

Johannes Kofler and Časlav Brukner, "Classical World Arising out of Quantum Physics under the Restriction of Coarse-Grained Measurements", Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 180403 (2007).

Again, many people who don't understand this think that QM phenomena can be easily extrapolated, and used in mystical ways to explain human behavior, our world, etc. They can't! QM phenomena are not easy to find. If it is, we would have seen it already and won't have to wait till about 100 years ago in human civilization to formulate it! And not only that, QM effects are difficult to maintain because a system can interact so easily with its environment, destroying the coherence that is necessary to preserve such quantum phenomena.

So stop it already!

:)

Zz.

Nestle Uses Physics to Explain Complex Food Interactions

Physics is everywhere!

Of course we know that. Here's another example of where physics is useful - in the transport of flavors and nutrients in food!

A detailed mathematical model is presented in the journal using self-consistent field theory (SCFT), a quantum mechanical theory that enables the calculation of phase diagrams for the system.

Prior to this, no quantitative theoretical framework had been established to fully interpret the structural changes that occur in lipid-water interfaces under varying conditions, said the researchers.

I guess we can classify this as the physics of food structure.

Zz.

Could the Space Shuttle Return to Earth Slowly and Skip Heat Shields?

Good question! This article attempts to answer that.

You can actively slow your descent, but that needs a rocket to slow you down.

What sort of a rocket do you need to make your speed constant? Well, it would have to do pretty much what the rocket did to get you up into orbit in the first place.

To me, the best way of educating the public of science is to illustrate how it is used in things they see everyday. So questions and answers like this are some of the most effective means of science education.

Zz.

Einstein Is Still Right On Time

The more they test it, the more convincing it becomes.

New tests of Relativity's time dilation effects have been verified to even greater accuracy.

An international team of researchers used a particle accelerator to whizz two beams of atoms around a doughnut-shaped course to represent Einstein's faster-moving clocks.

They then timed the beams using high-precision laser spectroscopy and found that, compared with the outside world, time for these atomic travellers did indeed slow down.

"We were able to determine the effect more precisely than ever before," said lead researcher Gerald Gwinner of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.

"We found the observed effect to be in complete agreement."

Told ya!

:)

Zz.

Between Science and Fiction

For some odd reason, I am rather annoyed by this, or rather, highly irritated.

This is a news article on Alan Lightman. It was an interview with the physics-trained author on the occasion of the release of his latest book "Ghost". The book focuses on the "controversy" between science and religion. Nothing new there. This isn't what annoys me. What did annoy me was this:

Q: "Ghost" may be critical, but it doesn't assert one viewpoint, science or religion, above the other.

A: No, I intended not to come down on either side. I think religion and science have been two of the major sources that shaped civilization. They both represent very deeply held beliefs that are matters of faith. One doesn't often hear of scientists spoken of as people of faith, but they believe in the laws of the universe and that takes a powerful amount of faith. Both of these world views are deeply held and visceral and not subject to evidence.

Q: "Not subject to evidence?" Wouldn't scientists say that everything they do and believe is based on evidence?

A: Yes, they would say that, and of course that is true for all the experiments they have done, but what they have faith in is that all the experiments they will do will also be true. They have faith, for example, that the equations for relativity hold true everywhere in the universe. They have faith that the universe is reducible to cause-and-effect relationships and reducible to rational causes. Those are matters of faith.

With all due respect to Dr. Lightman, this is CRAP!

To say that something is simply taken as a matter of faith usually means that there's no empirical justification for accepting it. One accepts a particular religion not based on empirical evidence, but rather for other reasons.

One can't say that with science. Why do we accept the validity of Special Relativity? Because we have seen it verified experimentally! We simply didn't accept it as a matter of "faith" when Einstein introduced it in 1905. In fact, historical records have shown that there were a lot of challenges and opposition to it, so much so that even the Nobel committee was hesitant to award him a Nobel prize for it. The same can be said with other aspects of science that have been deemed to be valid. They were never taken as a matter of faith. They were verified empirically.

This is where Lightman argument that it is a matter of faith of our acceptance of how our FUTURE experiment will turn out rings hollow. The FACT that science CAN accurately predict the behavior of a system that are yet to occur is the whole reason why it exists. When you can quantify a system based on a set of knowledge gained previously, and predict what will occur in the future accurately, you have understood that system extremely well, and that is all there is to it. Is the fact that we expect our modern electronics to work when we turn it on next simply based on "faith", or is it more based on the knowledge that we have sufficiently understood how it will behave? Such acceptance is not based on "faith". It certainly is quite different than the acceptance of a belief or religion.

Furthermore, our acceptance of any scientific principle is contingent upon the criteria that we continue to test it until we find where it breaks down. When that occurs, we refine our understanding, formulate a new, more general and encompassing knowledge, and modify our acceptance of it. Is this the typical symptom of accepting something on faith? People who believe something based on faith typically really do not care if there are "contradicting" evidence facing them. Earth is not 6000 years old? We don't care! Considering how science has and continues to evolve as we understand our world a lot more, this is not even close to be considered as acceptance based on faith.

I think it is highly irresponsible of any writer to equate the acceptance of science as being nothing more than equivalent to the acceptance of religion. Certainly in this day and age where science is under attack by religious fanatics and being dismissed by some people in political power, such claims only provides more fuel against science. That it was made by someone who was trained as a physicist makes it even worse. Do some theorists sometime forget about experiments, and the lack thereof in religion? The use of the SAME word - "faith" - to describe the acceptance of both science and religion is insulting, and undermines the clear and distinct difference between those two.

Zz.

Another Bastardization of Quantum Mechanics

Again, as with previous cases, someone who barely understands QM is using it to justify some human "intuition" or feelings. This time, it is the bastardization of the principle of quantum entanglement.

Since the universe came into existence, these subatomic particles have been entangled and remain in contact in "no time." The implications are that, instead of being separate and apart from the universe, we are all linked in a cosmic dance with everything, everywhere, near and far. There is no separateness.

I know that from the moment of my birth, I have been entangled in the lives of others, everyone from the nurse in the hospital that fed me, to the old man who gave me directions to the Howard Johnson's in Savannah, to a small brown Moroccan man who brought me some mint tea, to the woman that gave me a son, to the friend who once punched me for being a jerk, to the manager at McDonald's who gave me a job, to the innocent boy who once drew me a picture with broken crayons, to the father and mother who gave me life itself, to the co-worker who bought me a Diet Pepsi when I was a nickel short, to the man who changed my oil, to the nun who scolded me for spitting on a classmate, to the woman who held my hand as I viewed the Mona Lisa, to the Chinese worker who put together the alarm clock in my bedroom, to the policeman who gave me a ticket for not wearing a seat belt, to the dying man who inspired me to run a marathon, to the stranger who smiled while passing me in the grocery store, to the lady who wanted a heater installed, to a Michigan Avenue stranger who needed a few dollars.

We are all irretrievably entangled in each other's lives. There is no separateness.

This ignores the fact that:

1. Entanglement isn't observable at the human scale of classical mechanics

2. Entanglement requires the preservation of COHERENCE between all the entangled entities. Once a measurement or interaction has been made, you lose that coherence and any resemblance of entanglement is long gone!

This person somehow didn't think through on what happened AFTER the measurement is made. Are those 2 photons still in existence? Are they still entangled? The answer is NO. The paper that I just highlighted before this blog entry shows that even an interaction with just ONE other particle is sufficient to destroy the single-particle coherence! It also means that since what we visually see at the classical scale have undergone many interactions with many degrees of freedom. They all have lost coherence and are no longer entangled with anything, and certainly NOT from the very beginning of the universe, thankyouverymuch!

When people bastardize physics like this, they're not doing physics any favor. This is because they have extended physics into the realm of mumbo jumbo that not only trivializes physics, but also its applicability. They have cheapened it with unverified claims and watered down its importance and relevance. When false claims like this continues to be made, eventually no one would believe such a thing anymore. Do the public then remembers who made such stupid claims in the first place, or do they remember and blame the science?

Zz.

The "Simplest" 2-Slit and Decoherence Experiment

While the big news this week is the major report out of the Auger Collaboration, the other significantly as important paper in the same issue as Science is a very elegant and astounding report.

The Simplest Double slit: Interference and Entanglement in Double Photoionization of H2, D. Akoury et al., Science v.318, p.949 (2007).

Abstract: The wave nature of particles is rarely observed, in part because of their very short de Broglie wavelengths in most situations. However, even with wavelengths close to the size of their surroundings, the particles couple to their environment (for example, by gravity, Coulomb interaction, or thermal radiation). These couplings shift the wave phases, often in an uncontrolled way, and the resulting decoherence, or loss of phase integrity, is thought to be a main cause of the transition from quantum to classical behavior. How much interaction is needed to induce this transition? Here we show that a photoelectron and two protons form a minimum particle/slit system and that a single additional electron constitutes a minimum environment. Interference fringes observed in the angular distribution of a single electron are lost through its Coulomb interaction with a second electron, though the correlated momenta of the entangled electron pair continue to exhibit quantum interference.

A review of this work can also be found at PhysicsWorld (free registration is required) and at PhysOrg.

What they essentially did is this. They use the H2 molecule as a "double slit". The different between the regular double-slit experiment is that the regular experiment typically uses plane waves, whereas here, you essentially get spherical waves originating from each of the H atom in the molecule. Still, the physics is the same and you get angular interference pattern. They used photons of energies 240 eV and 160 eV to cause a double-photoionization of the H2 molecules, resulting in 2 electrons, but with varying energy.

When they use photons of 240 eV, the electron tagged as "1" comes out at between 185 and 190 eV, while the second electrons comes out with less than 5 eV. Due to the widely different kinetic energy, electron 1 doesn't really "see" electron 2, so electron 1 essentially can be described via single-particle physics. This is where you get the expected interference pattern as the experiment is repeated many times.

But when they use photons of 160 eV, they get two different cases. The first case is electron 1 emitted with energy 110 eV and electron 2 emitted with energy < 1 eV. They get roughly the same result as before. However, for the 2nd case where electron 1 has energy of 95 eV and electron 2 has energy of between 5 and 25 eV, the interference pattern almost completely disappear! In this second case electron 1 has now "seen" electron 2, and has sufficiently coupled to electron 2 to demolish the single-particle description of it. In essence, electron 2 has caused a decoherence of the single-particle description of electron 1, cause electron 1 to behave classically.

What this report is saying is that it only requires ONE particle and one interaction to induce a decoherence of a single-particle picture. Electron 2 is sufficient to be the "environment" that electron 1 couples to to induce such decoherence. Interestingly enough, while the single-particle picture is no longer valid for electron 1, both electron 1 and 2 are now "entangled" and their correlated momenta actually can still exhibit quantum interference. The system has evolved into a 2-particle state.

I love, LOVE clever experiments like this!

Zz.

A Celebration of Science

This is a wonderful report on the Festival of Science in Genoa, Italy. This writer is from the UK, and so made the comparison of science interest in Italy and the UK.

Even so, 250,000 attendances from a city of 600,000 people seems like good going. The implication is that the society that gave birth to Galileo, Galvani and Dante Alighieri, is doing well, and keeps an ever-open mind. Since attendances at British science festivals range from the haphazard to the downright disappointing (at one event, my fellow panelists and I left the podium and sat with the audience while we talked, because it seemed only polite to keep him company), it suggests that the island that produced Newton, Darwin and Charles Dickens has become more insular, and is now more interested in Big Brother than in the Big Bang.

I wish we have some Science Festival here in the US. If we can have music festival, art festival, etc.. etc.. why not a science festival where, for a few days, the general public can hear prominent physicists/scientists talk about science, and not only that, talk about it intellectually and not dumb it down? We have seen how encouraging the reception was when Hawking showed up to give a "speech".

So far, the only thing close to such a festival as far as physics is concerned is when the APS have their March and April meetings and have some events that are opened to the public. To me, this is more of a "side event". A festival of science should have as its main focus, the presentation of science to the public. It should include both speeches and hand-on demonstrations, including that Wonders of Physics traveling show! :)

Zz.

Highest-energy Cosmic Rays Linked With Violent Black Holes

The first major result coming out of Pierre Auger observatory has now been reported.

Using the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, the largest cosmic-ray observatory in the world, a team of scientists from 17 countries found that the sources of the highest-energy particles are not distributed uniformly across the sky. Instead, the Auger results link the origins of these mysterious particles to the locations of nearby galaxies that have active nuclei in their centers. The results will appear in the Nov. 9 issue of the journal Science.

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that are devouring large amounts of matter. They have long been considered sites where high-energy particle production might take place.

As I've said earlier, I have an indirect involvement in this via the AirFly collaboration. One of the technique they use at the Auger observatory is to detect the fluorescent signal made by electrons streaming through the atmosphere. These electrons came from showers in the upper atmosphere made by these high energy cosmic rays and gamma rays. What we provide is a way for them to calibrate their signal with the energy of the electrons as they pass through different nitrogen gas pressure.

In any case, it is fun to see how things have progressed, and now we're starting to see results. Let's hope Auger North gets built soon.

Zz.

Edit: This is the PhysicsWorld review of the report.

SETI: Is It Worth It?

{EDIT ON 11/28/2007 - It appears that some poor, pathetic soul who cannot read very well has decided to use this blog entry in agreement to somehow propagate the notion that aliens have already landed on earth. Ignoring the fact that this person had somehow misread the intention of the blog, he has also ignored all of my criticism on adopting quackeries such as this based on the flimsiest of "evidence". So it is strange that this person would "agree" with me on this, yet almost every single tone and entry in my whole blog have been devoted to debunking silly claims such as the one he's making.

If you read this from some entry by this person in a public forum, complain to the moderator or forum owner. You have a CRACKPOT on your website who has been spamming the open forums with the identical post.}


This is an article defending the existence of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Frankly, I don't understand why, even when it is not funded by any taxpayers money, there are still critics of it. So it is a very long-shot haunch. If people can put their hard-earned money on crackpotteries such as the hydrino and perpetual motion machine, this is certainly a less dumb means of using their money. Using an argument that the money should be spent towards eliminating hunger and poverty and other social aliments is actually quite insulting - to the people who are experiencing hunger and poverty, etc. This is because it trivializes the nature of the problem, that by simply pouring in money, we could solve something that could easily be a complicated political, social, cultural, religious, and economic problem. I could easily use the same logic at criticizing these people for spending money buying CD and DVD's and going to all those fancy restaurants. Why not use those money to fund medical research instead?

When I was "younger", I was quite "gung-ho" about the SETI project and did send them some money. But as I got older, my "gaa-gaa'ness" for the mission died off and I stopped sending them money. Maybe as one gets older (and hopefully wiser), one tends to see things differently. What was "interesting" may not be that "important" in one's priorities. So I certainly don't send any monetary support for SETI anymore. But I don't believe that those who do should be criticized, and certainly not criticized this way.

Zz.

Accelerating Science at the North Physics Laboratory

I love reading about stories of various physics facilities around the world, especially those that have some historical significance. I think it is because, in many cases, people simply do not appreciate or give enough recognition to the historical importance of scientific facilities the way they do towards military, cultural, and political history.

This article describes the cyclotron facility located at the University of Washington in Seattle. This facility may not have that much historical significance (yet), but it is still fascinating to read what something as small as that can actually do and contribute to the body of knowledge. Most of the new physics that we get today are not done out of large-scale facilities, even those those facilities and their discoveries tend to get a disproportionate amount of publicity.

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.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Is Falling Down

So I'm sure everyone has seen the video footage of the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. It became a case study of engineering design, and also a lesson in my physics classes.

This news article describes the detailed event leading up to that collapse, involving a few people who were present right before the historical event. While there were no human fatalities, the incident did kill Tubby, a pet dog who was stuck in one of the vehicles left on the bridge that day.

Zz.

Another Physics of Golf Swing

Wow! This seems to be a popular topic.

I highlighted a website a while back that describes in painful detail the physics of a golf swing. Turns out there's another person, a professor at Yale, who also has a description on the physics of a golf swing.

Would be interesting to compare the two approaches.

Zz.

Pencil + Sticky Tape = Desktop Supercollider + Post-Silicon Processors

OK, so the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but still, the article is rather entertaining to read. It is an article on how some of the most common objects and material that we see can, in fact, be some of the most exotic and could reveal something more fundamental about our world. It is more about the hottest compound in condensed matter/material science right now - graphene.

You can read for yourself why this material is such a hot area of research currently, but pay attention to the end of the article.

Geim and his co-workers suggest one such. Normal electrons can tunnel through potential barriers: as the barriers get higher the tunnelling becomes exponentially less likely to happen. Yet theory suggests that at very high speeds and with very high barriers, electrons will start to find it easier to get across as the barriers get taller. This is called the Klein Paradox, and demonstrating it in the universe outside graphene would need the sort of conditions you find close to an exotically heavy nucleus or, if you're particularly keen, a black hole. In graphene, you may be able to recreate an appropriate barrier with an ordinary semiconductor junction: there's talk of desktop super-colliders.

Other areas that graphene may illuminate include direct observation for the first time of relativistic electrons generating their own anti-particles – and there are even suggestions that some aspects of string theory, long thought to lie well beyond practical observation, may become testable.

And this shouldn't surprise anyone, especially if you're read my take on the physics that we learned from condensed matter. Many condensed matter systems can become the "testbed" of some of the most complex and exotic theories of nature.

Zz.

Sci-fi Meets Sci-fact

If you are in Tempe, Arizona on Nov. 8th, you might want to attend this at the campus of Arizona State University. Renowned physics Lawrence Krauss will talk about the physics of Star Trek and other sci-fi fantansies. Krauss, as I'm sure you know, wrote the book on the physics of Star Trek. So this should be fun.

Zz.

Wonders of Physics at Asheville, NC

I mentioned earlier about the Wonders of Physics show that first started at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The "road show" version is coming to Asheville, NC on Nov. 12. While the show is free, you need to make a reservation.

So if you're in the area, you might seriously want to consider attending this. It'll be a memorable show.

Zz.

The Kondo Effect

I was 'trolling' around the 'net looking for a few articles when I came across this article on the Kondo effect. This is where the resistivity of a certain type metal, as you lower the temperature, suddenly shoots up, which is not what is expected. This phenomenon was discovered in the 1930's, and was explained by Jun Kondo in the 1960's.

What is fascinating here is that this is, as far as I know, the first example of an "asymptotic freedom" in nature that was discovered. This, of course, was waaaaay before the same type of description was applied to the strong interaction in elementary particles. It reinforces my view earlier that there are many aspects of condensed matter physics that actually are extremely important and "fundamental". Peter Higgs, in fact, clearly confesses to getting his idea about the Higgs mechanism out of condensed matter. So these are just a few of the examples where this field actually has a huge and significant contribution to fundamental knowledge. It isn't just an "applied physics" field, even though it is responsible for the understanding of properties of materials that we use.

I just wish many students that are going "ga-ga" over String theory and particle physics would realize this.

Zz.

Forum on Physics and Society Newsletter

The Oct. 2007 issue of Forum on Physics and Society newsletter is now available online.

Table of Contest:

News of the Forum

* Upcoming Forum Election
* Forum Short Course on Physics of Sustainable Energy
* Deadline Approaching for AIP State Dept. Fellowship

Articles

* What Are Nuclear Weapons For? Michael May
* What are Nuclear Weapons For? John S. Foster, Jr. and Keith B. Payne
* Nuclear Fuel Banks: A View From the South Fernando de Souza-Barros
* The Origins of CAFE Allan R. Hoffman
* The CAFE Formula, David Hafemeister
* Sputnik – 50 Years Later Alan J. Scott

Commentary

* Three Inconvenient Truths, Robert Ehrlich

Reviews

* Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics, Edited by Nina Byers and Gary Williams, reviewed by Marty Epstein
* God: The Failed Hypothesis—How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, By Victor J. Stenger, reviewed by Lawrence S. Lerner
* The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, reviewed by Richard Wiener

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Scientists Taking Next DUSEL Step

The plan to build the underground lab at the Homestake mine is progressing.

In July, the National Science Foundation chose Homestake as the site for a proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. Now, scientists and engineers are designing the proposed lab. "This meeting this weekend is crucial in putting together the initial suite of experiments," physicist Kevin Lesko of the University of California at Berkeley said.

Still, that thing about the water still rising is a bit disconcerting.

The South Dakota science authority re-entered the mine in July, and crews are slowly working their way down the 5,000-foot Ross Shaft to install pumps to remove the water that has been filling the mine since it was sealed shut in 2003.

Dave Snyder, executive director of the science authority, told scientists Friday that water had risen from the bottom of the mine, 8,000 feet underground, to 4,996 feet underground "as of an hour ago."

If water reaches the 4,850-foot level, South Dakota's plan for a Sanford Laboratory will be more expensive, but Snyder said the water had risen only 4 feet since July 27. He estimated the water would not reach "the 4850" until February, and crews are working double shifts to start pumping before then.

I can already see it. One of the safety courses[1] all workers have to take before working there will be on how to swim! :)

Zz.

[1] If you have worked in a US Nat'l Lab, then you'll know that you have to go through all of these safety classes first, depending on the nature of your job, before you can start work.

Leonard Susskind Joins Perimeter Institute

Another big coup for the Perimeter Institute. Renowned theorist Leonard Susskind has joined its faculty.

They continue to attract well-known physicists over there. Nice job!

Zz.

Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Want something to read over the holidays while you try to get away from annoying relatives? Try this one: "Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine", by R. Barker Bausell (Oxford Univ. Nov. 2007)

Bausell’s casual writing style and dry wit produce a lively but scientifically sound, well-documented work that objective readers should find informative. A good companion to Robert Park’s Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, it is highly recommended for public and medical libraries.

So along with Bob Park and Richard Dawkins, scientists are certainly on the offensive at all of these pseudosciences that till now seem to be having their honeymoon seducing the public. It's about time too!

Zz.

Experimental Evidence for Quantum Spin Hall Effect

A new report published in Science this week presents compelling evidence that verify the existence of the quantum spin Hall effect[1]. It appears that they have achieved something similar to a "dissipationless flow" of the spin current.

This is touted as being a crucial step in spintronics.

Zz.

[1] M. König et al, Science v.318, p.766 (2007).

Citizen Science

This is a very timely article by Robert Crease of Stony Brook. He highlights two different college courses (they're more like projects), one at Stony Brook itself while the other at Columbia University, on efforts to introduce and educate students on science, regardless of their majors and specialties.

He clearly stated the exactly difficulty in trying to accomplish such a mission:

On the one hand, they must incorporate a significant amount of mathematics and scientific knowledge if they are to be effective in teaching the science relevant to the modern world. On the other hand, they must appeal to students with little or no background in maths and science.

This clash usually dooms such courses. If they weaken the science and maths component, they become more about science than genuine science courses — versions of what is often pejoratively called "physics for poets". If they do not weaken it, they risk being too intimidating and difficult for the target audience.

As I've said in another blog post, there is a distinct different between studying physics, and studying ABOUT physics. One doesn't actually get the feel for what physics is if one doesn't actually study physics itself.

The first of these efforts in teaching science to the masses is from Columbia University:

Columbia University's "frontiers of science" course is compulsory for all first-year undergraduates. It is part of the core curriculum, which aims to give each student "a rigorous preparation for life as an intelligent citizen in today's complex and changing world".

"Frontiers of science" is Columbia's largest single course. Once a week, students attend a one-and-a-half-hour lecture and a two-hour seminar. The lecture is given in the university's theatre, where the 560 or so students fill the orchestra pit and spill onto the balcony. The seminars are smaller, consisting of groups of 20 students each, and taught by professors and postdocs selected following an international search.

The other is from Stony Brook University:

Meanwhile, Stony Brook University runs an "introduction to experimental research" course that takes a different tack. It takes place in the Nuclear Structure Laboratory in the basement of Stony Brook's Van de Graaff building among dozens of scintillation counters and the infrastructure for monitoring them that is associated with a project called Mariachi (Mixed Apparatus for Radar Investigation of Atmospheric Cosmic-Rays of High Ionization). The course has no formal lectures or seminars, but instead thrusts its dozen students almost immediately into selfdesigned research projects to detect and study cosmic rays.
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The beauty of the course is that, while cosmic rays are scientifically interesting because they provide clues to the origin and structure of the universe, they allow important research can be carried out without using much maths. This allows Marx to get students and teachers with a range of backgrounds involved in a scientifically viable project with significant connections to wider scientific issues in cosmology. Even physics students like it because it is a lab course much less micromanaged than most; students develop their own projects rather than being told exactly what to do.

I think I would gravitate more towards the Stony Brook project (but then again, I'm bias since I'm an experimentalist). I think there's nothing better than having students to actually have to do things and measure things. It is a more direct and transparent study of how nature behaves, rather than simply listening to what someone has to say.

Still, these are commendable efforts in educating the public (in this case, students who need not necessarily go into science) in science. It adds to the previous two efforts that are being done at other universities in this regard (Physics for Future Presidents and the course New Mexico State University).

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.

MOG Trumps Dark Matter?

First we had MOND. Then came the observation from the Bullet cluster that puts MOND into trouble and give further support to Dark Matter. Now along comes MOG (link may be open for free only for a limited time), as reported in today's Science daily news update.

In a paper published online 25 October in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Moffat and co-author and Perimeter Institute colleague Joel Brownstein argue that their modified theory of gravity, which they call MOG, can also explain the Bullet cluster discrepancy. Einstein argued that gravity arises because mass warps space and time--he even came up with an equation for how the warping works. Moffat says he added "minimal" additional terms to Einstein's equation that subtly change how gravity behaves on galactic scales. The upshot is that gravity is stronger at these scales than Einstein predicted and that MOG can explain the gravity of the Bullet cluster without dark matter. Brownstein says he and Moffat have applied MOG to the behavior of more than 100 galaxies and more than 100 clusters, and in all cases, it has successfully predicted their motions "without the necessity of adding dark matter."

Of course, many astrophysicists are not convinced, so we will just have to wait and see how this turns out, especially with more and more observations being planned. Even the LHC will come into play at the search for the possible dark matter candidates.

Zz.

Einstein Earned $18 Million Last Year

I'm not making this up! Forbes has compiled the list of top earning dead celebrities, and Albert Einstein landed at #5 with $18 million last year!

Rounding out the top five on this year's list were George Harrison from the Beatles, who died in 2001, with $22 million, and German-born physicist Albert Einstein with $18 million.

Einstein has become a key trademark in child education due to the Disney-owned Baby Einstein brand of videos and toys.

Wonder if he gets any other royalties from the use of his likeness, etc.?

Zz.

In Science Classrooms, a Blast of Fresh O2

Don't you wish that all physics classrooms and all high school physics teachers are like this? Of course, in the ideal world, adequate funding and salary for teachers exist to be able to support such a program, and students who are motivated to study are given ample opportunities and facilities to follow their interests.

Not every place and every student are lucky enough to have such situation.

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.

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New Physics Course Informs Students on Scientific Issues

This course at New Mexico State University appears to be on the similar level as the "Physics for Future Presidents" that I've mentioned already on here, but without the podcast and online uploads.

According to Ni, the course covers, among other topics, energy and convservation, the theory of relativity, earthquakes and quantum physics. Quantum physics is the study of how tiny things like electrons work.

Ni said students of the physics course can expect to learn how physics applies to current and past events, such as how the World Trade Center fell when airplanes were flown into it. Ni said the airplanes' gas, which has an abundance of energy, was ignited by oxygen air. The fire caused the buildings to buckle as if someone hit them from above with a hammer.

So essentially, the students learn ABOUT physics, not learn physics, which is fine because they need to know how physics can be applied to all these cases. It is more important to convey how careful and systematic process is applied in analyzing such issues and problems, because this is the skill that they should acquire later on when they deal with life issues.

Zz.

Loose Strings: Pressure Mounts To Tie String Theory To The Real World

This is a news report on the talk that David Gross gave at Los Alamos. It has been described more as a "progress report" of String Theory. It would have been interesting to hear it, since it isn't much of a "progress".

This week of advanced science talks at the lab culminated in a lecture by Gross who offered a note of apology about the string theory of reality, to which he has been a major contributor

"It hasn't led to any big observational payoffs," he said.

I think that's a huge understatement. I think most of the audience probably feels the same way as this comment, because I certainly do:

A member of LANL's Theoretical Division, astrophysicist Salman Habib said after the talk that string theory remains difficult to assess.

"It's a funny field to look at from the outside because it has yet to connect with the outside world," he said. "Mathematically, it's very pretty and theorists like to do fundamental mathematical computations, but they have not led to any big observational payoffs so far.

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And Knowledge, Too

You have seen several time on here where I tried to emphasize whenever I can some parts of physics that actually have a direct application and benefit to our lives. This is because from my many encounters with people both personally and online, they have a vague idea that physics is nothing more than some esoteric, particle-physics-meet-string-theory type of study that has no direct bearing on anything they might use, or might affect them. In other words, physics is just the study of basic knowledge that may not mean much to them.

I've tried to dispel this myth as much as I can. However, it doesn't mean that I do not appreciate the theoretical and basic science aspect of physics. They certainly have a place in the evolution of physics, and a necessary ingredient. So that is why I found this opinion letter rather compelling because it explains and answers the question rather clearly with regards to why basic knowledge research should not be used as a pawn in problems of our world today.

The annual budget for NSF's entire physics program, of which theoretical physics is only a small part, is approximately $249 million; this represents 0.009 percent of the federal budget. Our government devotes more than 1 billion dollars per week in deficit spending to perpetuate the war in Iraq.

[b]The amount that the federal government spends on curiosity-driven scientific research does not impede our nation from making progress in the day-to-day effort at improving the human condition. Our nation's misplaced priorities are much larger in scale and much harder to scapegoat[/b]. While learning about the origins of the universe or the evolution of man may not lead to more shelters for the homeless, collectively burying our heads in the sand is unlikely to have the desired effect either.

In other words, even if you stop completely funding ALL of physics funding, it will STILL be a drop in the bucket of the amount of money you "saved" to help solve world hunger or diseases, etc. And this is still not considering the fact that advancement in medicine, biology, and pharmacy occurred in no small measure due to physics. Modern equipment and facilities that are widely used in those fields such as synchrotron centers, x-ray, MRI, PET scans, etc.. all came out of basic physics research in quantum physics, high energy physics, elementary particle physics, etc., all area in which people do not think to have any "effect" on their normal, everyday lives. So it can easily be argued that there have been precedent that these seemingly worthless, basic knowledge research has actually spawned many useful technologies that we currently use.

Zz.

Physics For Future Presidents - Follow-Up

I mentioned about this popular lecture at Berkeley that have been available online for a while now. It seems that this lecture gets an audience from all over the world. But what was more touching is that some of the members of the armed forces serving currently serving overseas also listened to these lectures.

Now imagine this scene: I haven't showered in over 36 hours, temperatures are hitting near 110 degrees, I'm as filthy as I can ever remember being because of the blowing dust, a goat herder and his family tending their goats pass by our vehicle — once in the morning and once during the evening, going in the other direction, each time waving a white flag to make sure they aren't accidentally shot — and I've got physics going in one of my ears. Back on the base, I would take a cot outside at night and use my night-vision goggles to look at stars and constellations while listening to Professor Muller….

I continue to be amazed that some people go to great lengths to be able to study physics, even on their own, while others couldn't care less for it. Recall the story a while back about students at a Nepal university who held a protest to be able to take physics classes! The problem with most societies nowadays is that there aren't that many who realize this, or why it is important to know a bit of physics, not just for the content, but for the way it approaches a problem.

As Chief Petty Officer John David Shelton accurately noted, the course could easily be retitled as "Physics for Useful Citizens". I couldn't agree more.

Zz.

An Inconvenient Truth About Science

This writer complains about the fact that many parts of science and many scientists do not get the deserved recognition for their work that has affected our lives. He brought up the example of this year's Physics Nobel Prize winners Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg.

If you've read this blog for any considerable period of time, you'd notice that this is a familiar complaint that I've written before. Case in point is the contribution to physics (and technology) of John Bardeen, the ONLY person still to have won the Physics Nobel Prize twice. And consider that one of his nobel prizes is for the invention of the transistor which is the foundation of all modern electronics, I'd say that is as big, if not bigger, than the GMR discovery of Fert and Grunberg in terms of application.

Still, when half of the population still believes in some form of pseudoscience or science misinformation, it is hard to make them realize and appreciate the efforts of scientists.

Zz.

Poll: One-Third Believe In Ghosts, UFOs

Folks, this is what we have to deal with when we try to introduce Science and Scientific Method to the general public.

In the most recent Associated Press poll, 34% of the people believe in ghost, 34% believe in UFO, 48% believe in ESP, etc... etc. This is consistent with the National Science Foundation survey of the public perception of science and pseudoscience.

Discouraging, isn't it?

Zz.

Scientists Discover Possible Cosmic Defect, Remnant From Big Bang

Scientists may have discovered "texture", cosmic defects in the vacuum structure that is a remnant of the Big Bang.

“Our work investigates the exciting possibility that the cold spot is due to the presence of a cosmic texture; some current particle physics theories predict textures to be produced as the universe evolves, but they had never been observed. Somewhat to our surprise, we found that the cold spot, and in fact the cosmic microwave background radiation over the whole sky, is indeed consistent with such a texture model. Although the current data are not yet compelling, we suggest future observations that should be able to test our hypothesis definitively. If the cold spot is indeed proven to be a texture it will completely change our view of how the universe evolved following the Big Bang.”

If this is true, another consequence of the Big Bang is verified.

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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.

A Physicist Playing In Baseball's World Series?

The upcoming Baseball's World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies has a physics connection, beyond the usual "physics of Baseball". It appears that the starting pitcher in Game 1 for the Colorado Rockies, "..... Jeff Francis, was a physics major with a 3.8 grade-point average at the University of British Columbia....".

Didn't say if he finished his education and actually got his degree, though. Anyone knows?

Zz.

Fermilab Steering Group Report

The Fermilab Steering Group has issued its latest report, and it is available online. It comes at an important juncture in its history has it prepares for a 2nd life after the shutdown of the Tevatron, and as it positions itself as a viable site for the planned International Linear Collider (ILC). Being featured prominently in the report is the already-mentioned Project X as the precursor project to the ILC, and Fermilab's role in neutrino/muon research as far as MINOS/NOva/etc. projects.

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A Scenario for a Natural Origin of Our Universe

Vic Stenger has uploaded a shorter version of one of his recently-published article tackling the natural origin of the universe.

Abstract: A mathematical model of the natural origin of our universe is presented. The model is based only on well-established physics. No claim is made that this model uniquely represents exactly how the universe came about. But the viability of a single model serves to refute any assertions that the universe cannot have come about by natural means.

As you recall, he wrote a rather "interesting" book that came out a few months ago called "God: the Failed Hypothesis". While he's not tackling that directly here, it is still along the same line of attack whereby he's arguing that there CAN be a possible scenario for the evolution of our universe without invoking anything else (such as supernatural interference) other than known physics.

I plan to read it more closely in the next few days.

Zz.

Semiconductor Bends Light The "Wrong" Way

This is rather interesting. This is a report on a new material having a negative index of refraction by using layers of semiconductors. Before this, these so-called left-handed material can only be found in metamaterials, which consist of conducting rods and split-ring resonators.

The metamaterial is made by depositing alternating layers of two semiconductors -- indium gallium arsenide and aluminium indium arsenide -- onto a substrate using molecular beam epitaxy. Each layer of the metamaterial is about 80 nm thick, which is much smaller than the wavelength of the infrared light.

This might provide a better, more controlled way of fabricating such material. Before this, it has been a tedious process to assemble one of these metamaterial, especially if one wants it to work in the viable region of microwave or shorter.

Zz.

Cancer Treatment Center Driven by Math, Physics

This is another example that I can give to people who think that the study of physics is nothing more than some esoteric subjects with no direct relevance to human lives. This proton therapy center is nothing but physics. In fact, this is one very clear example of the application of accelerator physics beyond just high energy physics. So this news article is like the "application double-coupon" here.

Zz.

Odd Physics Lessons

Teachers try almost everything to get through to their students, and physics teachers certainly can get quite creative. With Halloween looming in the horizon, it is only natural that a pumpkin chucking contest be a part of a physics lesson.

The goal is simple, to launch pumpkins with a medieval style catapult as far as possible, but there's a surprising amount of physics that goes into it. Illini Bluffs High School students aren't just launching pumpkins as far as humanly possible with this catapult they're also learning about science. Physics teacher, Aaron Stremmel, launched the lesson plan after he chucked pumpkins as a student.

Does it work? Is this an effective means of learning physics?

Physics student, Kara Wolfe says, "I get to come out here and see it in action, I don't fall asleep, lets just say that, I don't fall asleep."

I'd say that that in itself is an accomplishment. :)

Zz.

Brain Cramps - The Puzzle of Consciousness

First of all, this blog entry is not a report on consciousness. It is also, strangely enough, not a complain but more of a praise of this book review, especially in the restraint in invoking the physics aspects. So after complaining and whining about the bastardization of physics in several psychotic pseudoscience books and news report, this is a compliment to this news article.

This article, written by Dan Falk, is a review of a book titled "THE HEAD TRIP: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" by Jeff Warren. As I've said, there is a very wise restraint on the part of the writer of the article to not make too many unproven connections between consciousness and physics. He even wisely mentioned of the fallacy of movies such as "What the bleep do we know".

That's easy enough to say and, judging by the number of people who lined up to see What the Bleep Do We Know and What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole, it's the kind of speculation that many of us are all too eager to embrace. (Happily, Warren doesn't mention either of these films, dismissed by most scientists as pseudoscientific drivel.)

There's even a very wise advice regarding invoking string theory:

But who says that the ebb and flow of neurons requires 21st-century physics? Relativity becomes important when objects move near the speed of light, or when large gravitational fields are involved; quantum theory says a great deal about the subatomic realm, but very little about the macroscopic world. (And Warren should be careful about citing string theory; as tantalizing as it is mathematically, it has yet to make a testable prediction about physics, let alone consciousness.)

When people try to apply the principles of physics into their area of study that is outside physics, they need to be aware of several important things:

1. Is that principle been tested and deemed by the physics community to be valid?

2. Do I know the principle well enough beyond just a superficial knowledge to know what is saying?

3. Is there a clear, direct, and demonstrable connection or similarity between the principle, and the scenario that I'm applying it to?

4. Are there any quantitative data to illustrate the validity of #3?

If you are arguing the validity of your claim by invoking physics, then the stringent rule of physics also applies to your claim. You can't pick and choose which part of physics, and the practice of physics, you want to adopt and ignore the rest. So if you wish to live by physics, be aware that you may also die by physics.

Zz.

Kabbalah is a Science?

Well that's news to me too!

But this expert in Kabbalah seems to think so.

Q: Why do you call Kabbalah a science and not a religion?

A: It's called a science because that is what it is. The wisdom of Kabbalah started about 5,000 years ago in ancient Babylon. At that time, the whole of humanity was connected and they were together as one nation. Egoism began to grow within people; they became more alienated, which then prompted the whole famous story of the Tower of Babylon and all of that.

Now the cure for that was a method that was discovered by a certain individual whom we know today as Abraham. He discovered a method to reconnect people despite the growing egoism.

The method he discovered was a scientific method. In other words, it uses scientific research tools to investigate our own internal mechanism, and that is what we know today as the wisdom of Kabbalah. (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) date much later than the wisdom of Kabbalah and are actually unrelated.

I don't know about you, but NOTHING in there screams "SCIENCE" to me at all. Just because he thinks he can call it a science doesn't make it so. But wait, it gets better...

In addition, Kabbalah is a study. It's like any science . . . There are no objects -- no red strings, holy water, any kind of fortune-telling, mysticism, charms -- none of that belong to authentic Kabbalah, not even meditation. It's just pure study of reality and it enhances your perception of reality to enhance your control over your own life and life in general.

And oh, just when you think it couldn't get any better, he said this:

Q: But there is spirituality?

A: Yes, spirituality is that aspect of reality which is not perceived by our ordinary five senses. The wisdom of Kabbalah simply enhances your perception of reality. It gives you additional tools which you wouldn't acquire otherwise.

Just like physics gives you certain tools, Kabbalah gives you other tools. You need all kinds of sciences to achieve a complete picture of reality. Kabbalah takes you, so to speak, behind the scenes.

Picture it as embroidery. You see a beautiful picture in front of you, of scenery or a flower, something like that. If you turn the embroidery around you see a whole mess of threads. You have to know how the threads are connected to know how to make it into a beautiful flower at the front of the picture. That's what Kabbalah teaches you, how to connect the threads from behind the scenes.

Oh brother! It's a science, but it has "spirituality"? He sees no inconsistencies in that?

I think that he has overestimated his knowledge of what science is. I'd like to know the last time he has performed any scientific experiment to be able to know what a scientific method is. Nowhere in any of his responses was there any mention of experimental verification of anything he's doing, something that is a fundamental pillar of anything to claim itself as a "science".

This claim is worse than that made for Intelligent Design, and I never thought I'd be able to say that.

Zz.

Causation and Correlaton Followup

OK, I found a news article on this report that talked about yesterday where males of a specie that have many sexual partners tend to die earlier than the monogamous specie. I was correct that they were comparing apples and oranges. The males were from different species.

At least now I know where to go looking for the article. Honestly, these news media should learn to make accurate citation of the research paper that they're referring to.

Zz.

The Black Hole

Remember a while back that I mentioned that I "accidentally" appeared on the Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"? Well guess what? That video is now online at Comedy Central! :)



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Detection of High-Energy Gamma Rays from Winter Thunderclouds

I mentioned about an article on "Thundercloud Accelerator" a while back, where a group of Japanese physicists discovered that some of these thunderclouds can achieve such high gradients as to accelerate electrons and produce gamma rays.

The paper on this has now been published. Here is the exact reference:

H. Tsuchiya et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. v.99, p.165002 (2007).

Zz.

Causation and Correlation

I was listening to the radio while driving in to work this morning, and in the news part of the morning program, the news announcer was reporting some studies (no exact citation, of course) where some researcher concluded that males having sexual competition and having multiple partners do not have healthy lives. They studied various species that found that in species where the males are monogamous, the males live longer than in species where the males have multiple partners.

Now, if you were given such a report, what's the first thing that comes to your mind, or what conclusion can you draw from it? My constant pessimism about the scientific knowledge of the general public, and how they draw their conclusion would lead me to believe that the average Joe or Joanne would immediately say "Ah ha! This is evidence that not only is monogamy morally right, it is also healthier biologically", or something to that effect.

Now, this is where, if you have been trained as a scientist, a number of questions pop into your head, the way I did when I heard this report just now.

(i) Aren't they comparing apples and oranges when they're looking at different species? Just because the males in one specie happens to live longer than the males in another specie that just also happens to have multiple partners does not mean that having multiple partners is the cause! What would makes more sense is if one compares males within the SAME specie, and then look at the ones with one partner versus those with multiple partners. This way, one removes another possible variation or factors that can influence the outcome.

(ii) This could be the chicken or the egg question. Maybe the reason the males in that specie has multiple partners is BECAUSE they have a short life span! In the need to pass on their genes, they have to find as many females to mate with before they die. So having multiple partners is the consequence of a short life span, not the other way around.

These are the two issues that immediately popped up into my head when I heard the report. Now, without actually reading the research paper itself, I can't make any definitive criticism of it. But that isn't my point here. The point that I'm trying to make is to consider what someone else who do not have a rigorous training and background in science would think given as much information as I got from that radio news report. I would not be surprised if some self-righteous religious fanatic would use something like this to justify this-and-that. One has already seen how Thermo's 2nd Law has been bastardized many times to be used against Evolution.

This is one example where science education is necessary. It isn't just important for the knowledge. It is also extremely important for presenting a systematic and analytical evaluation of "data" that we are bombarded with every day. Politicians and news media often spew statements and claims that either have very little justification or evidence to support them, or the evidence and justification used are either weak, invalid, or non-existent. One could use this research report as justification for monogamy, but one would be using rather dubious conclusion without properly examining the cause-and-effect.

This, more than anything else, is the most important reason why everyone should have at least some knowledge in science and the scientific method.

Zz.

Free-to-read Nobel Winning Research Papers

The APS is making the two papers published in PRB and PRL by Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg cited for the Nobel Prize for 2007 available for free.

Fert's paper in PRL can be found here, while Grünberg in PRB can be found here.

Happy reading!

Zz.

Groundbreaking on Daya Bay

Another neutrino project is under way. The Daya Bay neutrino experiment, a joint collaboration between China and US, has broken ground this week.

Over the last decade or so, physicists have found convincing evidence that neutrinos can transform – or oscillate – from one “flavour” (electron, muon or tau) into another as they travel through space, a phenomenon that means neutrinos have mass. The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is designed to measure Θ13, the only one of nine “mixing angles” that has not been accurately determined.

Couple that with MINOS/NuMI and the possible NOvA experiment, there will be a lot of data about neutrinos coming our way within the next 10 years or so.

Zz.

An In-Class Discussion Activity on the Nature of Science and Intelligent Design

This is a fascinating report. Brian Thomas from the Dept. of Physics of Washburn University describes a class for elementary education majors dealing with the issue on whether Intelligent Design should be considered as a science and should be taught in science classes.

The nature and process of science is a foundational topic in a course entitled “Physical Science for Elementary Educators” which I team-teach with a colleague in chemistry at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. I have developed and used in class a guided discussion activity intended to help the students think about the issues surrounding the status of ID as science and whether it should be included in state public school science standards.

Something like this is highly appropriate, especially in a state where he is in (Kansas) that had been the battleground for the ID proponents. It is imperative that if these students are to go into the classrooms as teachers, that they themselves are clear on how things are defined, regardless of on which side of the issue they are on.

However, and this again connects back to my skepticism of how the general public make their decisions, it is disheartening to read the result of this exercise at the end, even when there is a unanimous consensus that ID isn't science.

Most students recognized that ID is not properly defined as science and should not be taught in science classrooms. However, there was a definite portion of the class (about 25%) that would certainly support such inclusion. Interestingly, this group seemed to see no contradiction between stating that ID is not science, but at the same time stating that it should be taught in science classrooms. This is a discouraging finding, since it indicates that arguments against ID being science, even if successful, may not effectively counteract all pressure to nevertheless include ID in science classrooms. Perhaps a more stark confrontation with such inconsistency would force a change in viewpoint, but this was not the point of the exercise, and may not be successful in any case, given the deep-seated nature of convictions that likely underlie such statements.

That's discouraging, and implies that for many people, it is acceptable to make that kind of irrational or inconsistent decisions.

My pessimism continues....

Zz.

Worcester School Bucking The Trend in Science Education

While most of the United Kingdom schools have been seeing decline in enrollment in Physics and Chemistry, this one Worcester school has seen its science enrollment skyrocketed.

In the past year the number of pupils from Nunnery Wood going on to study biology at Worcester Sixth Form College has soared by almost 400 per cent; physics has risen in popularity by 160 per cent; and chemistry is up 42 per cent.

How do they do it? By emphasizing how relevant science is in every parts of the student's life and make it more accessible. Again, it comes to how the material is presented, and that requires knowledgeable and dedicated teachers.

After all the gloom and doom news that we've been getting from the UK, it is nice to get some positive report now and then.

Zz.

Hitachi Announce Plans for 4TB Desktop

Hitachi has announced that they'll be able to produce a 4 TB hardrive for consumers within 4 years, which would be astounding. But of course, what is relevant here is that this too will make use of the physics of giant magnetoresistance (GMR), that won its 2 discoverer the Nobel Prize this week.

So again, if someone tells you physics is the study of esoteric subjects with no direct impact on our lives, you point him/her to this.

Zz.

The Physics of Urinals

I kid you not!

If you think I've dug to the bottom of the trough for this story, you are absolutely correct! :)

Still, think about it. It requires quite a bit of knowledge of physics to design a urinal with minimum splashback, especially when men can be sloppy! :)

American Standard has been making urinals for 160 years, and its design and engineering group does "a tremendous amount of work" to ensure optimal splash patterns, says design director Gray Uhl.

Uhl's staff employ "mathematical formulas, fundamental geometry, and run both computer models and physical tests" to ensure minimal splashback, he says.

A parabolic back wall is optimal, and most American codes require a urinal to protrude 14 inches from the back wall to the front of a urinal.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go wash my hands.

Zz.

Stunt Brings Home Physics Lesson

I bet your physics teacher never made you lie on a bed of nails as part of physics lessons. Mine neither. We missed out on so much!

:)

I'm just surprised that some disgruntled parents haven't complained to the school for endangering their children.

Zz.

Friends, Not Policies, Win Elections

I can't say I'm surprised by this study since I've always had a very pessimistic and skeptical view of how the general public makes its decision, especially on science. Still, it is disheartening that one's skeptical view has been confirmed. This is the one area that I wish I had been thoroughly wrong.

It appears that the public tends to select its electric officials not based on the policies of these candidates, but based on simply "popularity" and recommendations from other people. Two physicists from the University of Rome looked at the election data from Poland, Finland, and Italy over several years and concluded that

...it doesn’t matter, for example, how different polices are between parties, the distribution of votes will remain unchanged. “The elections considered span a period of 30 years, in which deep cultural, economic and social transformations have occurred,” say the researchers in their paper. “There is no hint of that in the data pattern.”

They tried to find explanation for such observation and came up with this:

In attempt to explain this universal distribution, Fortunato and Castellano supposed that a candidate gains popularity, and hence votes, by a word-of-mouth effect. They considered each candidate at the top of a tree-like structure, persuading a small number of close friends of to vote for them with a certain probability, who in turn would promote the candidate to more people, and so on. The number of contacts that each person would have to spread the word would have a distribution of its own, which the researchers assumed would follow a “power law” of a generic parameter, α.

Fortunato and Castellano simulated this structure for different values of the persuading probability, the minimum number of contacts a person could have and α. They discovered that their simulation could exactly replicate the curve underlying the election data sets. This, they claim, proves that different candidates in proportional elections gain votes by word of mouth.

I wrote earlier that often, it doesn't matter about the "content" of the message that you're trying to convey to the public. What is more important is the bells and whistles, because the public tends to be persuaded more by those than what you have to say. The fact that this study indicates that most people are more persuaded by other factors other than the issues and policies of the candicates is the same underlying problem here. The message is still lost and becomes secondary.

While this study was done for 3 different countries in Europe, I have no doubt that it applies here in the US and other parts of the world. One wonders if our problems today (and maybe throughout history) could be traced to such human characteristics. My pessimistic view of the general public continues....

Zz.

Biography of James Van Allen

We all have heard about the Van Allen belt, and he has even been called the father of space science. Now there's finally going to be a biography of James Van Allen that will be released in November of this year.

It certainly is a surprised that no one, especially the U. of Iowa Press, didn't try to get someone write a biography of him till recently.

Zz.

The Nobel Prize: Did You Know…?

With all the Nobel Prize fever going on this week as each winner is announced, here's a nice diversion but still about the Nobel Prize. It's all about the neat history and trivia about the Nobel Prize that you may not know, except, of course, about John Bardeen which I'm sure you've read about in my blog entry, haven't you?

:)

Zz.

Where Physics and Mysticism Don't Meet

I've made a comment regarding this issue in relations to the book The Secret a while back as one of the bastardization of quantum mechanics. This is another article that essentially assert the same stand as mine. It is discussing the question on whether everything in the universe is "interconnected" and if this is justified from what we know from QM.

It's a well-written piece in that it tries to explain some of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. However, at the end, this is what the author had to say:

In regards to mysticism, both The Uncertainty Principle and quantum mechanics in general do not validate a belief in the ability for a person to extend their will into the universe through the use of a ‘spiritual’ force of any kind.

Again, what many people who tried to apply QM principles do not seem to address is the FACT that our world that we are so familiar with are extremely classical! The QM laws are not the least bit apparent, nor are they detectable. That's the first issue. The 2nd issue is that to be able to detect such quantum behavior, it requires quite an extreme care and under very special conditions. An atom is a quantum system because it is at such a small scale, but as things get bigger (like the world we are familiar with), to be able to detect quantum properties requires something called COHERENCE. It is why we have to cool down a superconductor to detect superconductivity. The higher temperature destroys such coherence and washes out any quantum behavior. In other words, it is NOT EASY to maintain quantum behavior under ordinary conditions.

But lastly, and this is something that I've talked about already on here, there is no evidence that one can continuously extrapolate some laws on one scale into another. We already know about this when we study phase transition, that some properties change abruptly across such phase transition. Since no one has seen the gradual change between classical and quantum systems, one has no ability to say that the rules of QM can also be applied at our scale. In fact, considering how DIFFERENT these two worlds are, there's more of an argument to say that they are indeed different and does not evolve continuously from one to the other.

Zz.

Postcards From the LHC

I like pictures, don't you?

Here are some rather cool pictures from the LHC. While the pictures can't do justice in terms of the size and scale of some of these things, one can still have some idea of how large these things are.

Zz.

BCS 50th Anniversary Conference

Today is the start of the conference marking the 50th anniversary of the BCS theory of superconductivity at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I wrote about the news of this conference in an earlier blog entry.

Several news organizations are reporting on this event such as this one. It is important to note the significance of the BCS theory of superconductivity and its impact on physics as a whole.

Not just a milestone in condensed-matter physics or physics in general, something most physicists would agree upon, but "one of the high-water marks of human thought" is how Goldbart characterized the so-called BCS Theory recently.
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"I really feel that," he said.

"This is a theory that had an enormous impact on physics in all areas, I would say," added Goldbart's colleague in the UI Physics Department, Professor Gordon Baym.

So, if you're at UIUC and attending this conference, I'd appreciate a first-hand report from you.

Zz.

Developing and Researching PhET simulations for Teaching Quantum Mechanics

I mentioned earlier of the news report of PhET winning first prize in a recent contest. Now they have uploaded a pre-print on some simulations to aid in the teaching of quantum mechanics. I've only read through the manuscript quickly and haven't tried it yet, so someone who has should let us know. If I have some time soon, I'll try to remember to check it out.

Zz.

GMR and 2007 Nobel Prize

Here's more info on the giant magnetoresistance that gave 2 physicists this year's Nobel Prize. If someone tells you that physics is nothing more than the study of some esoteric subjects that have no direct impact on our lives, you just point this very article to him/her.

Zz.

2007 Physics Nobel Prize

They had just announced that the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for the discovery of the Giant Magnetoresistance.

Looks like this award went to the condensed matter physics area this time.

The family of material that goes under the giant and collosal magnetoresistance is as complicated as the high-Tc cuprates themselves. In some respect, they also share the same behavior and properties, especially in terms of crystal structures. So many of the understanding in one provides insight into the other. Often times, they were studied using the same methods and techniques.

Zz.

2007 Ig Nobel Prize

Of course, the big news from last week is the award for the 2007 Ig Nobel Prizes! (What, you were expecting THE Nobel Prize?) :)

Now, some people often confuse this with crackpottery. These aren't. They are really actual, scientific research work. It is just that, well, to put it bluntly, it is a challenge to actually find anything important, significant, or relevant with what these people actually did. Remember, just because it is interesting, doesn't mean it is important!

Zz.

Back From Vacation

Had a lovely vacation, but I'm back now. I'm still tired (I need a vacation for my vacation), and will also need some time to get back to speed on what I've missed in the world of physics. So hopefully, I will have new things to report, especially on the big news. Still, it was great to not even read any newspaper or web news for a week.

Zz.