Update on Fire at Soudan Mine

I mentioned earlier about the unfortunate fire at the only underground laboratory in the US at the Soudan mine. Several new reports on the update appear to show that the fire is now under control, and investigations are ongoing on the possible cause of the fire.

After fire-fighting efforts over the weekend, in which thousands of gallons of foam and water were sprayed into the mine, the Minnesota Interagency Fire Center reported on Sunday that the fire was 99% extinguished. Fire officials will only declare the blaze officially "out" once its source has been located and any smouldering ashes or embers have been extinguished.

A three-man team has already descended down the lift shaft to restart some of the pumps. By Sunday night they had reached the physics lab on level 27, where they encountered a large amount of foam, which seems to have prevented them from entering the lab. The laboratory's back-up systems, however, including infrared sensitive cameras, have so far indicated that the laboratory seems to have escaped the initial fire.

Phew! I'm crossing all fingers and toes and hoping that the lab has been spared of any serious damage when they finally get to go in for a closer inspection. We all need and deserve some good news lately.

Zz.

Public Demo of Quantized Conductance

OK, this is way too neat to not highlight here.

This preprint provides a very simple and doable demonstration of quantum conductance in a 2D conductor. In fact, it is so simple that the authors claim that ".. the setup is operated full-time, needs practically no maintenance and is used on different educational levels." Nice!

The paper provides a good basic intro to the issue of conductance, and what happens when you get to the "ballistic regime" of electron transport, i.e. when the length scale is smaller than the mean-free path of the electrons. Any intro QM student would be familiar with the energy level diagram shown in Fig. 1(b). And it really is a neat experiment. You can see the step-like increase in the conductance.

A very good paper, and could be a very good demonstration to add to either a class demo, or a permanent exhibit. Another clear effect of out of quantum mechanics.

Zz.

One Clear Difference Between a "Myth" and "Science"

I initially dismissed this news article because it doesn't report on anything new about homeopathy. But then, a passage in there caught my eye, and I see the same cracpottery tactics that many try to pass when they can't stand on their own body of evidence (mainly because they lack such evidence). When you have no evidence to support you, what do you do? You either piggy-back onto well-verified science (Deepak Chopra's tactics), or you point out "similarities in situation" to science. The latter is what is going on here.

Regardless, proponents say it shouldn’t be discounted simply because it can’t be explained. For years, no one knew how aspirin worked. And scientists still don’t fully understand the mechanism behind a conventional drug such as Ritalin, argued Dr. Tim Fior, director of the Center for Integral Health in Lombard, Ill.

I've described a similar situation before during my report of my attendance at a public talk on "The Science of Spooky", when the person tried to justify Psi research by claiming that we don't know anything about gravity. This was my rebuttal to that claim:

While it is true that at the very fundamental level, we do not know what gravity is, it doesn't mean that we do not understand it or have no clue on what it is. There is a HUGE difference between our understanding of gravity, and our understanding (or lack thereof) of psi. We understand gravity well enough to be able to describe it not just qualitatively, but also QUANTITATIVELY! That's very important, because when you can predict something by putting numbers, it implies that you have understood its behavior very well. However, the most important difference between psi and gravity is the FACT that our knowledge of gravity has continue to GROW. The boundary of our knowledge on gravity, ever since mankind first realize what it is, and ever since Newton and Kepler formulated it, have continued to expand. Einstein's description of gravity via his General Relativity is one prime example of how we know MORE and MORE about gravity, and the fact that we can send space craft to meet up with various celestial bodies and objects is ample proof that we know A LOT about gravity and continue to refine our knowledge of it.

The same can't be said about psi phenomena, and paranormal phenomena in general. After hundreds of years since its purported "discovery" and years and years of study, the field is trying to prove the existence of these phenomena. It is still stuck in first base in trying to show that these things truly are there. All that have been done (and this is certainly the message that I got out of the evening) is that there are now more varied and different ways to try to find it. That's it. After so many years, it is still trying to show that these phenomena truly are there and valid. They still are stuck in the "discovery" phase. This is not even remotely close to resembling what we know about gravity!

So in my rebuttal, replace Psi phenomenon with homeopathy, and replace gravity with "aspirin and conventional medicine", and you have the exact response I would put out here again. It is a tired, old argument, and those who continue to make such arguments never bothered to look BEYOND their claims and the fact that in valid science, there is this series of PROGRESSION. Such progression results in our increasing knowledge of what we are studying. This means we no longer get stuck on the discovery phase for years and years (and some, even for hundreds of years).

It is the same shortsighted argument that crackpot makes. When you criticize their "theories", they will then claim that both Einstein and Galileo also were faced with such skepticism when they produced either "new" ideas. Of course, they neglected a very important fact that Einstein and Galileo were masters of the subject they were working in (i.e. they weren't ignorant of the subject matter). Einstein had to understand classical E&M extremely well to be aware of the problem with its non-covariant nature under Galilean transformation. You can't say the same about the overwhelming majority of crackpots who don't even understand basic physics. Yet, they think they're Einsteins.

So here's a "friendly advice" to crackpots and others trying to promote your pseudoscience. If you can't stand on your OWN body of evidence, don't try to shift the focus onto something else! Just because you found something similar being done in conventional science, doesn't mean the comparison is valid. That tactic doesn't work because it will reveal the ugly shortcoming of what you believe in when we looks closely at the comparison beyond the superficial level.

Zz.

Test of MOND on Gas-Rich Galaxies

This made the news a while back, and it is now finally in print.

The people working on Modified Newtonian Dynamics got a boost recently when an analysis of gas-rich galaxies produced a very good agreement with MOND's prediction, better than the Dark Matter model.

McGaugh collects from the literature a sample of 47 gas-rich galaxies, for which recent 21 cm spectral line observations provide reliable estimates of both their atomic gas masses (which are combined with stellar population model masses to produce Mb) and their asymptotically flat rotation velocities vf. These data show an impressive match with the MOND prediction of Mb∝vf4, and also agree well with the acceleration parameter a0 required to fit the rotation curves of star-dominated galaxies. McGaugh further claims that the data have no scatter about the MOND prediction beyond measurement errors. This statement appears to be premature since statistical incompleteness, large distance uncertainties (many of the galaxy masses rely on estimated distances only), and other observational realities do not seem to have been taken into account. These will introduce biases into the observed scaling and have been shown to reduce the observed scatter (e.g., Ref. [13]). Such biases will most likely not significantly change the observed correlation, but they cast doubt on the exact details, particularly the interpretation of the scatter.

As one can read in that paragraph (and in the article in the link), there are still a lot of skepticism and issues here in turning this into a slam-dunk success. The other part is this:

McGaugh’s result adds a new facet to the argument that MOND is better at explaining galaxies than standard cosmology. However, as McGaugh admits, MOND cannot compete with ΛCDM as a full cosmological theory. Attempts to generalize MOND into a fully relativistic theory of gravity abound, but even the most promising ones (e.g., tensor-vector-scalar, or TeVeS [14]) struggle to interpret the combination of large-scale observations of the Universe that ΛCDM explains so well. The tuning required in MOND, most notably to explain the dynamics of galaxy clusters, is more severe than that faced by ΛCDM to match galaxy rotation curves. We know that standard but poorly understood baryonic physics plays an important role in shaping the properties of galaxies in ΛCDM. Reconciling MOND with galaxy clusters, on the other hand, requires invoking significant amounts of the missing matter, which MOND was conceived to avoid in the first place.

So already, there are problems with this, but it certainly is an encouraging sliver of hope for MOND.

Zz.

Bell-Type Experiments With No Loopholes?

In case you missed it, there's a very fascinating article in the March 18, 2011 issue of Science (p.1380). It describes the physics of quantum entanglement, which is essentially 2 separate phenomena - superposition and non-locality - and the Bell-type experiments that have demonstrated it (i.e. violation of Bell inequality), but up to a certain point. The article deals with the 2 types of loopholes - detection and locality loopholes - that still plague the experiments, and the efforts to design experiments that are devoid of these loopholes.

With their eyes on the prize, a group led by Paul Kwiat of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been collaborating with engineers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, to develop photon detectors with near 100% efficiency. “Those are good enough to perform a loophole-free test,” says team member Joseph Altepeter of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The struggle now is to chain these components together with optical fibers across a large enough distance to keep the communication loophole shut. “Essentially the pieces are all in place, but the devil is in the detail,” Altepeter says.

Meanwhile, Weinfurter and his colleagues are tackling the problem from an entirely different angle. They were inspired by an experiment, carried out in 2001 by David Wineland's team at NIST, that successfully closed the detection loophole using atoms rather than photons. Because atoms are far more hefty than flighty photons, Wineland realized, they are less likely to escape the apparatus, so they provide a potentially perfect detection rate. The team performed a Bell test that compared how often the energy levels—high or low—of electrons in entangled pairs of atoms matched up. Once again, quantum mechanics was hailed victorious, as the level of correlations exceeded Bell's inequalities. But it was not a resounding win because the atoms were close enough together to have influenced each other. In other words, the researchers had closed the detection loophole but in the process were forced to leave the communication loophole open.

Building on Wineland's experiment, Weinfurter's group is attempting to tie up both loopholes at once, by weaving photons together with atoms to reap the benefits of both. The idea is to start with two initially unentangled atoms in separate laboratories—ideally more than 100 meters apart, so that the atoms cannot influence each other over the course of the test. Each atom emits a photon; the two photons are captured and transmitted along optical fibers to a third location, where they are entangled. “The magic is that as soon as the photons are entangled, their parent atoms automatically become entangled, too,” explains Weinfurter's collaborator Marek Zukowski at the University of Gdansk in Poland.

These newly entangled atoms can then take the Bell test, with a perfect detection rate, while sitting far enough apart to keep the communication loophole closed. “The setup is being tried in two neighboring labs right now,” Zukowski says. “When we are happy that everything is working, we will try it in two distant labs.

Of course, the article then threw another wrench in the possible closure of these loopholes by pointing out the possibility of a "freedom-of-choice" loophole that can go back "... far back as the big bang..." Oy vey!

I think such superdeterminism needs to be shown to be influential for me to start putting any degree of validity on it.

It is a good article if you have access to it.

Zz.

Rush Holt On Japan's Nuclear Crisis

His win over Watson made him a household name among the public. So hopefully, the voting public in the US knows enough about him (and the fact that he is a physicist) to at least pay attention to what he has to say.

And being a nuclear physicist and someone who knows about nuclear reactions intimately (certainly more than the talking head Michio Kaku on TV), he has an expert and unique perspective on the nuclear crisis going on in Japan, and the whole idea of energy source and consumption. This is what we get in this news article. So read it while you have a chance.

Zz.

Fire In The Soudan Mine

Oh my! A fire broke out in the underground Soudan Mine in Minnesota, which is the site of an underground laboratory.

Smoke detectors went off at 9 p.m. Thursday at the Soudan Underground Mine State Park in northern Minnesota, signaling what appears to be a fire in the timbers lining the shaft. The park is home to the Soudan Underground Laboratory, a 36,000 cubic meter facility that houses half a dozen physics experiments including one that uses a detector weighing 5400 metric tons to study neutrinos fired through the earth from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory 730 kilometers away in Batavia, Illinois.

The fire is burning between the mine's 23rd and 25th levels, between 610 and 660 meters underground. The lab lies on the 27th level, about 710 meters underground. Officials with Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) are considering temporarily sealing the shaft to try to starve the fire of oxygen, says Marvin Marshak, director of the lab and a physicist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, which runs the lab.

Luckily no one is trapped or injured in this incident. These underground laboratories have always had an extensive safety precaution in the event of such fires, because it is a major concern.

The Soudan mine houses neutrino detectors for several projects, including MINOS. Interestingly enough, they had an Open House to the underground laboratory almost a year ago.

I definitely hope that this gets resolved very quickly, and that the pumps can be restarted before water damages become extensive. I think we've had enough news of water damaging things such as water pumps this past week.

Zz.

Hints of New Physics from the Tevatron

A report in today's Symmetry Breaking reveals the latest findings out of CDF and D0 of a possible new particle that might have been observed during a top quark-anti top quark production at the Tevatron.

When top quarks and their anti-particles, anti-top quarks, are created in particle collisions at the Tevatron, detectors note the direction in which they fly. Theory predicts that the particles will favor one direction slightly over the other, traveling that way about 5 percent of the time more.

However, in studies by the DZero collaboration and the CDF collaboration, the particles seemed to be picky 15 percent of the time. Top quarks went forward and anti-top quarks went backward. This month, the CDF collaboration announced results with an even larger asymmetry.

This could possibly be quite exciting. More confirmation of this should come later this summer, and especially from the LHC that should be able to verify this, if it truly exists.

Zz.

High Energy Physics Experiments in Japan

Ah, it is with great relief that we get good news like this for a change out of the disaster in Japan. It appears that many of the major high energy/particle physics facilities in Japan survived relatively unscathed.

During an earthquake, tsunami, or nuclear meltdown, the safest place to be is in a mine.

So says Stuart Freedman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's spokesperson for the KamLAND neutrino experiment, whose 1879 glass photomultiplier tubes emerged from the earthquake unscathed. Both KamLAND and the Super-Kamiokande experiment, which contains 11,146 glass bulbs each 20 inches in diameter, are ensconced 3300 ft underground in the Mozumi mine. This is to protect both American-Japanese collaboration experiments from solar radiation that would obscure their data.

Unfortunately, it appears that the KEK-Tsukuba facility may have suffered extensive damage. The article further reported on J-PARC facility that survived the earthquake and the tsunami.

Zz.

Will You Marry Me? Oh, BTW, Your Ring Is In the SEM Chamber

It's about time we have people using scientific instrument as creative way to propose. This is one such example that happened at Berkeley lab:



It certainly was cute, so congratulations to the happy couple.

Still, I have TONS of questions since the synopsis accompanying the video didn't tell much:

1. Was the guy an employee of the lab, or did he just arranged this?

2. What "electron microscope"? I'm assuming it is an SEM or some kind.

3. She saw the ring on the screen, but it didn't surprise her. It would have been way neater if, besides the ring, there's a message that reads "Will You Marry Me?" That would have been a hoot! Instead, all she got initially was a ring box and I thought the moment looked a bit awkward.

Still, it's a cute idea. I hope DOE doesn't consider this a "use of govt. property for personal gain". Now let's hear YOUR idea on similar creative ways to propose, or maybe you had done one already.

Zz.

Bouncing Grapes In Soda

Again, as I had mentioned before, I love these kinds of "mundane" experiments and finding the physics behind it.

In the March 2011 issue of Physics Education journal, the section on "What Happens Next?" dealt with a very common phenomenon that a lot of people have seen, most of them while sitting at a bar drinking beers. This time, the scenario uses grapes.

You have a glass of a carbonated drink. You drop an unpeeled grape into it. What happens next? Interestingly enough, similar to dropping raisins and peanuts into such carbonated drinks (or beer), the grape will start to sink, and then after some time, it will float back to the surface. This gets repeated over and over again.

But but happens if you drop a peeled grape? Will it act any differently?

And what is the explanation behind all this?

Just so I won't spoil the fun for those who want to offer their explanations, I won't post what the article in the journal has written (you can, of course, "cheat" and look it up yourself). I will make another follow-up post at a later date and reveal to you the explanation.

Zz.

Radiation

As expected, whenever something like this occurs, the fear (be it warranted or not) about radiation resurfaces once again. It is also a good time to educate the public a little bit on what radiation is, and the fact that we, human beings, live with it every single moment of our lives.

This news article looks at everyday sources of radiation that we live with.

With the help of CU physicists, 7NEWS tested everyday objects with a Geiger counter, a device that detects radiation levels.

We held the meter against the buildings on campus, a post office mailbox, electronic devices, even a banana with potassium. All of the objects caused the meter to beep and show levels of radiation, but only in trace amounts.

"These parts of the country are actually naturally blessed with a slightly higher level of radioactivity," said Nesbitt. "Low is good, but zero is just not what you're ever going to find in everyday life."

People who have an unreasonable fear of "radiation" should look at this article and accompanying video. Often, these are the very same people who put granite countertops in their homes. I'm not saying that such material is unsafe. I'm saying that ALL of us have accepted a certain level of radiation that we live with.

Zz.

Celebrating 100 Years of Superconductivity

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity. The IoP has compiled all superconductivity-related articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics over the last 10 years, and has graciously made them available to read, FOR FREE, till the end of 2011.

Don't miss this opportunity.

Zz.

Tevatron Increases the Higgs Exclusion Zone

There's still life in the old lady after all.

Latest results from D0 and CDF detectors at the Tevatron have increased the exclusion zone for the Higgs.

The new analysis of data from Tevatron's CDF and D0 experiments – along with earlier results – adds spice to that race, ruling out a Higgs mass of 156–183 GeV/C2. Much of this region is excluded to 95% confidence, with some excluded to 90%. The new analysis extends Tevatron's previous Higgs exclusion zone of 158–175 GeV/c2 (95%), which was reported in July 2010. "This makes the Tevatron the frontrunner in the hunt for the Standard Model Higgs boson," claims Fermilab physicist Rob Roser, who works on the CDF experiment.

Yeah, but not for long, I'm afraid.

So there's an even smaller place for the Higgs (at least, one specie of it) to hide .... assuming that it is there in the first place.

Zz.

What Happened at the Fukushima Reactor?

With all the media hoopla surrounding the nuclear incident in Japan after the earthquake, the media, as expected, bungled on a lot of accuracy regarding the physics and engineering of such a thing. And the use of talking heads (Michio Kaku, really?) to discuss what essentially required a nuclear engineer to elaborate is beyond comprehension.

So it is nice to find an article like this, written by a nuclear engineer. It also reflected what I had gathered from the news article about the incident. The FACT here is that all these reactors SURVIVED the devastating earthquakes! Let's not for this important point. The structural integrity was maintained at all the nuclear reactors. What happened subsequently is the inability to maintain power to the pumps to continue the cooling process in the core, due to the flooding.

There's a tremendous amount of lessons that the nuclear industry can learn from this, and this can only make these things even safer. But the public also need to pay attention to the details and where nuclear industries got it right! For once, don't be swayed by the bells and whistles, but really, really look at the facts as they are!

Zz.

The Physics of Basketball Bank Shots

Here in the US, the college basketball tournament is about to start - we call it "March Madness". Naturally, a lot of articles on basketball get produced and published around this time. I've mentioned a while back several articles on the physics of basketball, and the physics of the free throw shots. Now comes an article on the physics of banked shots in basketball.

After analyzing computer-generated 3-D simulations of more than 1 million basketball shots, a team led by NC State’s Larry Silverberg determined that, while it does vary, there are large, identifiable areas on the court where a bank shot can be up to 20 percent more successful than attempting a direct swish.

Don't think any of the players in the tournament would be interested in reading the paper, but for the rest of us armchair spectators, it adds another dimension of "understanding" to something like this.

Zz.

Don't Drown Science Documentary With Background Music

Us science documentary fans will simply not tolerate background Muzak that drowns even the voice of the host of the show! So let this be a lesson to all producers and directors of such programs!

Fans of the BBC "Wonders of the Universe" have loudly complained to the TV network of loud background music some time drowning the voice of the show's host Brian Cox.

Beeb bosses were forced into action after viewers complained that they were unable to discern the Mancunian intonations of its presenter, Brian Cox, above the din of its backing track.

It has prompted critics to re-dub the show, which sees Cox globetrot around the world to examine the formation of the Universe, as the “Wonders of Brian Cox and his Orchestra.”

Now THAT'S funny! :)

I think in the US, you can see this series on the Science Channel, no? In any case, has any of you noticed the loud background music in this TV series that became distracting?

Zz.

Japanese Physics Labs Affected By Earthquake

It is not surprising that scientific endeavor, including physics research and facilities, are severely affected by the Japanese earthquake and subsequent events. This report reveals how it affects a couple of facilities, including the neutrino T2K experiment.

The T2K neutrino experiment was just about to announce important new results when the earthquake struck. A series of planned seminars around the world has been postponed until the results can be announced first in Japan as planned. Here's a UK site with some background information about T2K itself. Apparently all the people from the neutrino experiment hall of T2K were evacuated safely, though it is very hard to confirm anything at the moment.

With Japan hosting a number of major research facilities, and the Japanese being involved in many experimental effort, the effect of this disaster will surely be directly felt in many scientific efforts around the world. But right now, we can only hope that everyone there is safe.

Zz.

Earthquake And Tsunamis

As in the devastating earthquake and tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean several years ago, the disaster that occurred in Japan a couple of days ago reignites interest in learning more about tectonic plates, the cause of earthquakes, and tsunamis. PhysicsCentral has a short intro on this subject.

We also have articles that might appear to be in poor taste. This item describes why you can't surf on a tsunami wave. What is interesting is the comments generated by this article. A reader thought it was done in poor taste, while another didn't direct it to the article, but rather a news story that there were people who actually planned on surfing the waves that were about to his the US shoreline. The latter is certainly an activity done in very poor taste and judgment.

I personally do not think this is done in poor taste. The article is actually explaining the difference between those regular, giant waves we often see people surfing on. It is a normal question to ask why that is any different than the tsunamis. So in the process of answering why one can't (and shouldn't) surf on a tsunami wave, one learns about the physics of ordinary waves and tsunami waves. Maybe the premise of such explanation could be done in a different way, but that's the common question that many of us have seen in this situation. No better way to deal with it than to answer it directly.

Zz.

Argonne On Jeopardy

This time, no Watson, but DOE's Argonne National Laboratory recently was a category on Jeopardy.



You get a sampling of some of the stuff they do at the lab. For more information, visit the Argonne website.

Zz.

The Quest For Laser Fusion At NIH

We have reports of more dramatic progress at the National Ignition Facility. The latest report indicated that they have achieved the necessary temperature and compression conditions inside the "hohlraum".

NIF first began testing the laser beams last year and now two groups at Lawrence Livermore have shown that they can obtain the desired conditions inside the hohlraum. They did this by using plastic spheres containing helium, rather than actual fuel pellets, since these were easier to analyse, and by combining their experimental measurements with computer simulations, the researchers found that the hohlraum converted nearly 90% of the laser energy into X-rays and that it heated up to some 3.6 million degrees Celsius. They also found that the sphere was compressed very uniformly, its diameter shrinking from around two millimetres to about a tenth of a millimetre.

It's quite a progress for something that has been up for only a year, and for a facility that is this complex.

Zz.

China Doubles Basic Research Science Funding In 2 Years

While nations such as the US are hampering science research in the name of cutting its budget deficit (a likely story), China has effectively doubled its basic science research in just two years! In a news article reported in Science this week (March 11, 2011), the budget for China's National Natural Sciences Foundation (NSFC) has been increased by 17% over 2010, doubling its budget from just two years ago!

NSFC is not the only science winner in China's 2011 budget, released here on 5 March. New spending plans promise massive investments in shared research facilities, such as new beamlines for structural biologists and materials scientists at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility that opened in 2009. The rationale, science officials say, is to erode barriers between scientists at universities and institutes.

Here, in the US, if the House budget bill passes through unchanged, synchrotron facilities throughout the US might face several days of shutdowns due to lack of money for operations. This is in addition to other major facilities, such as RHIC, the Tevatron, LCLS, CEBAF, etc., that are facing similar fates.

Compare and contrast, folks!

Zz.

Physics Enrollments In US Universities

The latest data on physics enrollments in US universities are out. The latest survey came from 2008 and looks at not only the number of students at the undergraduate and graduate level in physics, but also the number of US universities providing Bachelor, Masters, and Ph.D degrees in physics.

In terms of enrollments, there is a clear trend in the increase in the number of US students in physics graduate programs during the last 10 years of the survey, whereas the population of international students have been either flat, or slightly decreasing over the last 4 years of the survey. This could be directly due to a delayed effect on visa restrictions after Sept. 11, 2001.

Zz.

"Perfect Lens" Getting The Fisheye

A very interesting article on the quest for the so-called "perfect" lens. At this point, the leading medium for getting such a device are the metamaterials having negative index of refraction. But as stated in the article, there appears to be another way at getting this via the old Maxwell's fisheye lens.

Now scientists in the UK and Singapore have published experimental evidence that shows perfect lenses don't need negative refraction at all – and that a simpler solution lies in a 150 year-old design pioneered by James Maxwell. If true, the discovery could be a goldmine for the computer-chip industry, allowing electronic circuits to be made far more complex than those of today. However, the work is proving so controversial that the lead scientist has become embroiled in a fiery debate with other experts in the field.

I actually found the controversy surrounding this more fascinating. Isn't that odd? :)

Still, I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Zz.

Simon van der Meer

We mourn the passing of another giant in physics, Simon van der Meer, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize with Carlo Rubbia.

In a statement, current CERN boss Rolf-Dieter Heuer and the lab's director of accelerators Steve Myers describe Van der Meer as "a true giant of modern particle physics, though a gentle one [whose] contributions to accelerator science remain vital for the operation of accelerators such as the LHC today". He was, they say, "an incredibly inventive man [who] when confronted with a problem would sink into deep reflection, rarely emerging until he had a solution", adding that "stochastic cooling was typical of a Simon van der Meer invention: deceptively simple at first sight, but to anyone who truly understands accelerators it was nothing less than a stroke of genius".

You may read more of the statement from CERN here, including background on the work that he did.

Zz.

Recreating Disney/Pixar's "Up"

We had a spirited discussion on the physics of Disney/Pixar's "Up" a while back, focusing on the infamous and glorious scene of the house floating away due to all those balloons. Well now, in an episode of "How Hard Can It Be?" on National Geographic, some people were actually testing this principle of floating a house using balloons! Check out the video!



It is never as easy as in the movies, isn't it?

Zz.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg Answered Physics Question

Hey, there really is some hope after all for politicians!

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg unexpectedly had to answer a physics question during a radio talk show. The question was sent via Twitter and read "Magnets: how do they work?"

Of course, that was a rather odd question to ask to a Mayor of the largest US city. Still, Bloomberg took on the question and provided a credible answer.

"Now why they're asking the mayor that…," said a laughing Bloomberg before he touted that he had once been an electrical engineering student and insisted on answering the question.

"Everything is made of atoms," Hizzoner said, striking a scholarly tone. "Atoms have electrons, usually in pairs orbiting around them, and they create mini-magnetic fields."

"But the two electrons spin in orbit \[and\] the pairs spin in opposite directions, so they cancel out each other," he continued. "But magnetic materials aren't in pairs, so the spins don't cancel out each other, and if there's enough of them, you create magnetic fields."

That really isn't bad at all! I doubt that the majority of the public would be able to answer that, much less, politicians in general (I'm counting Congressman Rush Holt out of that one).

But of course, those of us who study these things (such as those in condensed matter/solid state physics), would say that the answer only provides the premise on why certain atoms have a net magnetic moment. It doesn't explain how the BULK material become magnetized, i.e. how does the collective behavior of each of the magnetic moments behave, producing materials that are ferromagnet, antiferromagnet, etc. Still, the mayor provided a very understandable and good answer to such a question, and did it on the spot as well! I'm quite impressed!

Zz.

IoP's Schools and Colleges Lecture 2009 - Exploring the Universe

This lecture on modern telescopes and the technology that allows astronomers to explore the universe is quite suitable at all levels of knowledge.

The Institute of Physics Schools and Colleges Lecture 2009 is delivered by astronomer Dr Andrew Newsam. This lecture will reveal how:

Modern telescopes can be used by astronomers to look at the universe in ever greater detail;

Progress in technology allows astronomers to observe things further and further away and therefore further back in time;

Astronomical observations can be used to learn more about the origins and future of the universe.

It's a long video, though.



Zz.

The Art of Physics Demonstration

No, not demonstration as in the ones going on in northern Africa and the Middle East. This is demonstration of a concept or phenomenon.

Physics World has blurb and a video on the importance of using appropriate demonstrations as part of a physics education. The article has a link to the PhysicsEducation YouTube channel that has many videos of various demonstrations, a few of which one can easily adapt for one's physics class.

Zz.

More On Optical Tweezer App For The iPad

Hey, remember when I showed a video of the optical tweezer app for the iPad a while back? There's a coverage of this in an article on Wired.

The new app is an interface for controlling optical tweezers, an instrument that uses laser light to trap and move microscopic objects. It works a little like a sci-fi tractor beam: The radiation from a tightly focused beam of light applies enough pressure to tiny objects like cells or proteins to pin them to the spot or push them around.

The invention of optical tweezers won Secretary of Energy Steven Chu a Nobel Prize in Physics, and they have proven their worth in biology labs, where they have been used to trap and manipulate everything from viruses to DNA. They have helped measure some of the smallest forces ever recorded, detected how DNA’s double helix unzips, and watched molecular motors move matter around inside cells.

Now, hopefully, it will run even "faster" and more smoothly on iPad2! :)

Zz.

Doing Something "Original" As A Physics Lab TA

Recently, I read a feedback e-mail from a math instructor about a student posting a question in a public forum that was something that he (the math instructor) had formulated himself. He described how it really isn't that easy and it was time consuming to come up with a set of "original" questions to ask the students, so that they don't have the chance to simply copy off some other sources and submit as answers.

That triggers some distant memories for me on when I was a physics lab TA during my graduate school years. Most of us physics graduate students, at some point, have to TA either a discussion class, or a lab, or both. Now, unlike a lot of graduate students, I actually enjoyed doing TA work ... most of the time. I of course, hated the grading work and correcting homework assignments, but the actual TA work with the students, those I enjoyed tremendously. I think I empathized with the students and I recall how difficult it was for me when I went through similar undergraduate program. So I instinctively tried to do my best with such responsibility.

During the first semester of my Lab TA work, it was a challenge, very enjoyable, but also a rather rude awakening. The biggest challenge was trying to make sure that the lab reports that were written were actually the work of the students, and not just a copy of someone else's report, or from some "database". I learned from other students that one can find a complete set of pre-made lab reports kept at some fraternity or somewhere else. These lab reports corresponded exactly to the lab assignments being given each semester for the various undergraduate courses, and that includes the physics courses.

The thing was that, a few of the students didn't even bother changing a word of what they copied, so I ended up with lab reports with practically identical wordings. When I queried, the most common excuse was that they "worked together" and so simply produced one lab report for both. Of course, I didn't buy that, and emphasized to the students that the actual writing must be done individually, regardless on whether they worked together in the lab itself, or outside.

Well, you can guess what comes next. I then get practically identical lab reports (same numbers, same types of errors, same type of analysis, same number of significant figures, etc.), but the words have been changed a bit here and there to no longer make them carbon copies. Oy vey!

At that point, I could have easily threw my hands up in the air and stop caring. If they don't care that they're not learning how to do these things, why should I? But then, I saw the other side of this issue. What about the students who actually put in an honest effort, spent time actually doing the analysis and writing a report, but because they didn't copy off some "perfect" lab reports already in some database, they are getting penalized for a less-than-stellar lab report? I just couldn't live with the fact that honest students are getting the short end of the stick, while students who simply copied were not only getting away with it, but also getting higher grades!

{Now, you could have wondered why I didn't take more serious actions if I suspected students were cheating. You need to remember that it was my very first TA job, I was new, and frankly, I didn't want to get into such a big deal when I myself was still trying to get a feel on how to do the job. So as much as I hated it, I let it go, while the "offending" students continued to make just enough modification to their lab reports to not make them too obvious that they were copies.}

After that first semester of TA work, I became wiser for the next semester, and I was determined that those who wish to simply take the easy way out will not get away with it that easily. Being more familiar with the content of the experiments, I decided to go through the entire semester's worth of lab work to see if I can introduce something unique to each one of them. My observation was that most of the laboratory experiments that the students had to do were just too long, with too many tasks. Instead of learning a few things very well, the students ended up rushing to complete a lot of the measurements without learning much on what they did and why. Luckily, as a lab TA, I was given some flexibility in how I conducted each of the lab session. So I decided to do two things: (i) cut down on the number of tasks in each experiment, so that the students have a lot more time to do what's left, and (ii) introduce something new that isn't covered in the written lab manual. This last part wasn't as dramatic as one would imagine. The "new" stuff could be an extra measurement, or measurement done in a slightly different way, etc. For example, in the experiment where the students used a spectroscope to look at the various discrete line spectrum from various light sources from discharge tubes, instead of having them look at all 3 or 4 different light sources, I gave all the students one known source (hydrogen), and then gave each group an "unknown" source. The unknown source is not identical for all the groups, and I asked each group to see if they can identify the element they were looking at (they were given a chart consisting of the spectrum of various elemental gas). So the task they had to do wasn't too far off what the original instruction in the lab manual, but it did introduce a new element (no pun intended) to it.

So when the new semester started, I gave a briefing on what I would do for each of the experiments that semester, so that the students know fully that there will be new stuff not covered in the lab manual, and that I will be handing out instructions on changes for each lab session. In other words, there would be no surprises by the time they show up for each lab on what needed to be done. What transpired was rather .... er ... fascinating.

During the second experiment, the students were told (verbally and in the extra instructions that were handed out the week before) that whole sections of the lab will be taken out and something they won't have to do. In fact, the equipment to do those sections were not even on the benches. Strangely enough, when I received the lab reports the following weeks, there are groups of students with results from that part of the lab! Of course, I did a double take when I saw this, and not only that, we have the same "identical lab reports" all over again.

I didn't grade those reports. All I wrote on them were "Please See Me". So the following week, when all the students got their graded lab reports back, the group of students that received my note (I think there 5 or 6 of them) came up to me and asked why I wanted to see them. So I asked them how they did this experiment, pointing to their report. One of them started to explain how he did it. I then tell them that that's impossible, because the equipment for them to do that experiment wasn't around. In fact, that part of the experiment wasn't even set up. Well, I remember that you can hear a pin drop in the lab, because other students also suddenly realized what's going on. Still, one of the "guilty" students had the audacity on asking me if I was sure that it wasn't set up and the experiment couldn't have been done. I then turned to the other students in the lab and asked them if any of them saw that part of the set up. They all said "No". Essentially, I let their contemporaries reveal their guilt.

Having left no doubt of the fact that they've been caught cheating, I gave them the option of either getting a "Zero" for that lab report, or the ability to come back at the end of the semester, and redoing the lab. All of them opted for the latter, which of course, is more work on my part, but what the hey....

Several things happened after this incident. (i) all the students in that lab session now knew the deal, that I will look very closely at their report, and that there will be new stuff that they can't simply copy off something (ii) all the students that were caught cheating left my lab session - a few I think dropped the course, while others changed to another lab session conducted by other TAs (iii) I also gained other students who transferred into my session (I later found out that, not surprisingly, that the news traveled pretty fast among the students in the same lecture session).

There were minor issues of "copying" the rest of the semester, but I think everyone in the lab class rather knew that they have to write the report themselves and not copy off some previous reports. It created quite a bit more work for me, because I have to keep inventing something new and unique for each experiment. But my whole principle was not to prevent students from cheating, but rather I wanted to make sure those that did their work honestly were sufficiently rewarded. And I think, to some extent, that was accomplished because at the end of the semester, a student came up to me and told me that she appreciated that students who simply copied off previous lab reports can't get away with it in my lab class. She told me of this copying practice in other classes, and that's when I was told that the various fraternities do keep copies of lab reports, homework, etc.

In the end, I don't know if what I did made a difference in the overall scheme of things. I can't change people's behavior too much. All I know is that I simply couldn't just do nothing and let them get away with it that easily. I also knew that I had to be fair to those students who put in an honest work, or else there was just no incentive to be honest.

After that semester, I TA'ed only for one more semester before I received a research assistantship and didn't have to do any more teaching work. Still, I think I learned quite a bit in executing that responsibility. I certainly sharpened my skill as an instructor quite a bit, and learned what worked and what didn't. But most importantly, I realized that students will try to get away with as much as they can if you let them! I can only imagine how it is now, with all the portable electronic devices that they now carry. How do you know that they are using the calculator function on their mobile phone, and not text messaging someone for the answer, or surfing the web looking for the answer?

Zz.

Higgs By End of 2012, Or Else.....

In my blog entry on the issue surrounding the missing SUSY particles at the LHC, I mentioned a news article regarding the same looming "deadline" facing the search for the Higgs.

If the collider does not detect the Higgs within two years, researchers say they will know that it does not exist - at least in the form required by the Standard Model, the framework which was devised to explain the behaviour of fundamental particles.

"The Higgs is one model of many," according to Professor LeCompte
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"If we don't see it after this two year run it means that something is perhaps not the way that we think it is, either the Higgs search itself had to be amended in some way or some of its indirect evidence may be pointing us in the wrong direction," said Professor LeCompte.

After I read that, I had a slight puzzle in my head. The LHC will be running at 7 TeV till the end of 2012 when it will undergo a long shut down to make the necessary electrical repairs. It will then go back online at the nominal design energy of 14 TeV. Presumably, at the higher energy, one expects that it should be easier to spot the Higgs signature. So I was wondering if Tom LeCompte might be a bit premature in expecting the Higgs to show up before the energy upgrade. So I asked him! This is the reply I got back, which I'm posting here with his permission:

The LHC will be at 7 TeV this year, and 7 or 8 TeV next year. Since protons are not elementary particles, we get a broad-spectrum beam of quark energies, so are sensitive to many different masses at once.
(Unlike an e+e- machine where you often have to scan energies)

The Higgs has to be above about 110 GeV, otherwise it would have been discovered earlier and below about 1 TeV, beyond which it is too heavy to have a role in EWSB (which is why it was postulated in the first place). Precision electroweak fits suggest that it's on the low end of this range. The LHC in 2012 can discover/rule out a Higgs on the low side. If we don't see it at 7 TeV, and do see it at 14 TeV, we have a problem with the precision electroweak data.

Well, there you have it.

Zz.

AIP Advances Journal

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has announced the release of a new online open access journal called AIP Advances.

AIP is pleased to announce that its new journal, AIP Advances, has now published the initial articles of its debut issue. If you haven't heard about AIP Advances, it's a fast-track, community-based open access journal, focusing on applied research in the physical sciences, and represents a major innovation in physical science publishing.

So if you are not familiar with the applied side of physics, this is the journal you should read regularly and show other people who think that physics only deals with esoteric subjects that have no bearing on their lives.

Zz.

SUSY In Trouble

See, this is why I love physics. You can have the most elegant, the most beautiful, the most "favored" theory in the world, and yet, it still requires empirical evidence to show that it is valid, or else it is nothing more than window decorations.

There are beginnings of a rumbling that Supersymmetry theory might be in trouble after the latest results from LHC failed to find any indication of the existence of supersymmetry particles {link open for free only for a limited time}.

Yet there is growing anxiety that the theory, however elegant it might be, is wrong. Data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometre proton smasher that straddles the French–Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, have shown no sign of the 'super particles' that the theory predicts1–3. "We're painting supersymmetry into a corner," says Chris Lester, a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who works with the LHC's ATLAS detector. Along with the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, ATLAS has spent the past year hunting for super particles, and is now set to gather more data when the LHC begins a high-power run in the next few weeks. If the detectors fail to find any super particles by the end of the year, the theory could be in serious trouble.

The next couple of years, till the end of 2012, will be pivotal not only for SUSY, but also for the Higgs. Even with the LHC at 7 TeV and not yet reaching its nominal designed energy of 14 TeV, the failure to find indications of the Higgs by the end of 2012 might be a cause for concern and excitement in the particle physics community.

Zz.

Rush Holt Beats Watson!

There's hope for humanity after all! :)

US Representative Rush Holt, nuclear physicist by training, beat IBM Supercomputer Watson in an untelevised contest of "Jeopardy".

At the finish, IBM supercomputer and “Jeopardy!” e-nonpareil Watson trounced four members of Congress tonight in a pitched battle of trivia. Only Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and five-time “Jeopardy!“ winner, bested the machine.

Heckled by the crowd with shouts of “Go humanity,” the artificial intelligence powerhouse beat Reps. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), Jared Polis (D., Colo.), Jim Himes (D., Conn.) and Nan Hayworth (R., N.Y.). Watson is a computer system that can answer questions framed in natural language.

So it took a physicist to beat the supercomputer, while other so-called "brainiacs", including the infamous “Jeopardy!” champions Ken Jennings couldn't. Draw your own conclusion. :)

More coverage here.

Zz.

More Coverage of Berkeley Earth Project

Here's another, more skeptical, coverage of the Berkeley Earth project, headed by Richard Muller.

The team consists of: Muller, David Brillinger, a statistician at UC Berkeley; Saul Perlmutter, physicist at UC Berkeley; Art Rosenfeld, commissioner of the California Energy Commission; Robert Jacobsen, UC Berkeley physicist; Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology; and Robert Rohde, a recent PhD graduate of Berkeley.

Curry and Muller are both seen as climate skeptics by many in the climate science world. A recent blog post at Climate Progress examines these scientists and the funding for the project.

I first mentioned about the formation of this group in a previous blog entry. Whether extra data point around the same region is "supersaturating" or not, I am still curious to see what they come up with.

Zz.

Science Drives Economic Growth

In chatting with a lot of people, I'm always surprised to hear that a lot of people simply do not realize how advancement in science is responsible for creating jobs and spur economic growth, at least within the last 50 years or so. I tend to guess that a lot of politicians, especially those who think that cutting back on science funding, might have the same ignorance as well. They do not realize that the iPhone and other electronics that they are using came out of innovations in science that not only created jobs, but also gave them the conveniences that they are taking for granted.

This article, which first appeared in 2005 to commemorate the World Year of Physics, clearly outlined the importance of physics in terms of economic growth.

This link is probably a seminar presentation, but pay attention to viewgraph on page 21. Look at how puny the funding for physical sciences is when compared to, say, the Life Sciences. And of course, compare funding for ALL of science when compared to other entitlements such as the military, etc. Yet, not only is this small sector responsible as the origin of a lot of the economic growth, it is also now a target for a horribly devastating budget cut! You're cutting your nose to spite your face!

There are many actions that simply do not make any sense, even after they have been explained to me. This is one such example. You have something that has been generally regarded as driving a significant portion of your economy, even if it has been poorly funded all this time. So what do you do? You cut it down under the guise of reducing your budget. Yet, you leave the most significant portion of your "expenses" untouched, or even give it an increase!

Zz.

Want Tender Asparagus? Use Physics!

So, being a foodie and also being a cook as a hobby, I already know about this, mainly because I watch a lot of cooking shows on TV.

Here's a cooking tip for asparagus. To know that you're getting only the tender part of the asparagus, apply physics by determining the "bending moment" (?) of the asparagus. How does one do that?

The first thing to remember about asparagus is that it is actually a tender shoot that was in the active and rapid process of turning itself into a woody stem before it was picked. The bottom part was already well on the way through the process, while the top part was still actively growing and is quite tender. From a materials perspective, those two parts have drastically different properties. The woody part is tough and resistant to breaking. It has the ability to bend a little without snapping, but is stiff enough to resist the bending. The tender, upper part is brittle and snaps easily. Most importantly, the tough part is able to withstand shear forces while the upper part cannot.
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The only trick is to apply your forces correctly so that the maximum shear stress appears at the woody end of the asparagus and the minimum shear stress appears at the tender end. If you do it the wrong way, you’ll just break off the tip. So grip the tip in one hand, about an inch from the end. With your other hand grip the other end of the asparagus as close to the cut as you can. Hold the tip steady in one hand and bend the cut end, making sure that the axis of rotation is between your index finger and thumb. The asparagus will snap right at the junction between tender and woody.

Physics, and food. What could be a better combination? Well.... maybe physics and Disney, but that's another blog! :)

Zz.

Metaphor At Your Own Risk

This is a very fascinating review of a paper[1]. It discusses the subtle effect of people's understanding and perception of something that has been presented using metaphors {link open for free only for a limited time}.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this study is that the participants were unaware of the how the metaphorical context affected their reasoning. Instead of acknowledging the image's effect, they found ways to rationalize their decisions on the basis of seemingly objective information such as statistics. "Far from being mere rhetorical flourishes," say Thibodeau and Boroditsky, "metaphors have profound influences on how we conceptualize and act with respect to important societal issues."

To have this demonstrated and quantified is valuable — not least because it underlines something that politicians and their advisers have never doubted. If there is a spin doctor or speechwriter who does not already recognize that metaphors sway opinion, it is a mystery how they ever got the job.

In other words, people can certainly be swayed by STYLE rather than substance (sounds familiar?). How you present your statement, and how you metaphorically describe something, can have a profound influence on how it is perceived by the listener. As stated, this is quite well-known in politics and how some people who barely have anything to say can get away with it (and can get elected to, I presumed).

The examples given in this article focused predominantly on biology. The scary thing is that many of these metaphors tend to stick or become dogmas.

Books of life, junk DNA, DNA barcodes: all these images can and have distorted the picture, not least because scientists themselves sometimes forget that they are metaphors. And when the science moves on — when we discover that the genome is nothing like a book or blueprint — the metaphors tend, nonetheless, to stick. The more vivid the image, the more dangerously seductive and resistant to change it is.

Thibodeau and Boroditsky give us new cause to be wary, for they show how unconsciously metaphors colour our reasoning. This seems likely to be as true in science — especially a science as emotive as genetics — as it is in social and political discourse.

I would think that in physics, we do have plenty of such metaphors. Dark energy, dark matter, the god particles, etc. are some of the examples that popped into my head at this moment. These names carry a lot of connotations to the general public who have no clue on the physics. Thus, the names themselves are the descriptive that stick to them and what they understand these things to be. There are reasons to be concerned about this, as stated at the end of this article.

But the need for metaphor in science stands at risk of becoming dogma. Maybe we are too eager to find a neat metaphor rather than just explain what is going on as clearly and honestly as we can. We might want to recognize that some scientific concepts are "a reality beyond metaphor", as Nobel laureate David Baltimore, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has said of DNA3. At the very least, metaphor should be admitted into science only after strict examination. We ought to heed the warning of pioneering cyberneticists Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener that "the price of metaphor is eternal vigilance".

This is another example on why the Helen Quinn's piece on a plea for the language that we use is so important for scientists to read.

Zz.

[1] P.H. Thibodeau, P. H. and L. Boroditsky, PLoS ONE 6, e16782 (2011).

Optical Tweezer Software For The iPad

The iPad has found its way into serious science research. This video shows a software design for an optical tweezer that runs on an iPad that allows a lot more flexibility than using a mouse or joystick.



Zz.

Quantum Criticality

A very useful resource article on quantum criticality. A shortened version of this, according to the authors, appeared in Physics Today.

Zz.

Bill Nye the Science Guy At Epcot

I guess this video is suitable for the very young, which might be slightly outside the realm of what I try to cover in this blog, but what they hey.... They are never too young to realize this path, or discover this blog!

This is Bill Nye, The Science Guy, giving a presentation at Epcot theme park, Walt Disney World. It's from a hand-held video, and the audio isn't terrific. But it is still educational.



Zz.

The Pumps Remain Alive At Homestake Mine

NSF and DOE have come to some agreement with regards to keeping the pumps running at Homestake Mine, the proposed site for DUSEL.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) have agreed to pay for pumping water out of the Homestake Mine near Lead so that it does not flood. That accord should preserve the site while the two agencies wrangle over how to transfer primary responsibility for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) from NSF to DOE. The real question is which, if any, part of the original $875 million multifaceted design will survive.

That is certainly the question on the future of DUSEL, especially now considering the enormous cuts being proposed to DOE's Office of Science budget. So having the DOE taking over the funding and running of this lab now could not happen at a worse time.

Zz.

Beware of the Pseudogap

This is a terrific article on the puzzling pseudogap that has been observed in cuprate superconductors. It reviews a paper that claim to observe the signature of two different types of pseudogaps in the normal state.

A pseudogap is the pairing of electrons in the normal state of the material but without the long-range coherence that one gets when these pairs condense to form superconductivity. The question has always been whether these pairs are "pre-form" pairs (i.e. the pairs that will eventually condenses to form the superconducting fluid), or are these competing pairs, where these don't actually condenses, but rather, took electrons away from forming the condensate. Knowing which is which is crucial not only to know if something is a red-herring or not, but also in deciphering the correct mechanism that does cause the pairing that leads to superconductivity.

The new work reviewed in this article showed that these two types of pairing do occur and can be separated out[1].

One difficulty in the cuprates has been the determination of the temperature where the pseudogap opens. If it is due to spontaneous symmetry breaking, it should open at a well-defined critical temperature. If, on the other hand, it is caused by a fluctuation of the superconducting order (similar to a finite fraction of uncondensed Cooper-pairs above Tc), one may expect that increasing the temperature erodes the pairing-amplitude in a rather gradual manner. Kondo et al. report the observation of both phenomena in a single experiment: A pseudogap opens upon cooling below a relatively high temperature, which could be the consequence of a spontaneous symmetry breaking. The experiments do not reveal which symmetry is broken. When the temperature is decreased further, a temperature is reached where N(EF) starts to diminish more rapidly. The authors take this as an indication that a second (pairing) gap begins to open on top of the pseudogap already present. The work of Kondo et al is unique, in that these two temperature scales are revealed in a single experiment.

This result might help in deciphering and interpreting all previous experiments, and for future experiments to pay close attention to which pseudogap/paring that is being measured.

See a previous report on this same issue reported earlier.

Zz.

[1] Kondo, T. et al., Nature Physics v.7, p.21 (2011).

Jlab's Laser Breaks Power Record

We have news reports that the newly installed FEL system at Jefferson lab has broken its own record for laser power.

However, the news report may have a slight typo in describing the power that was reached:

Researchers at the Department of Energy's nuclear physics laboratory on Friday injected a record-breaking 500 kilovolts of power into the laser's accelerator. The previous limit set by Jefferson Lab researchers had been 320 kilowatts.

They may have meant 500 kilowatts of power. Kilovolts is potential difference, and it is also not kosher to compare kilovolts with kilowatts.

In any case, this is quite a significant increase! One would hope that the US Navy knows where to point one of these things if they ever build it on their ships.

BTW, in case people don't realize it, a free-electron laser (FEL) is an ACCELERATOR facility (i.e. it is not an optical/solid state light source). I'm simply highlighting another application/use of accelerator physics.

Zz.

Could The Tevatron Be Shut Down Even Earlier Than Planned?

We all know that the DOE has decided not to continue the running of the Tevatron beyond FY2011. It turns out that with the proposed House of Representatives budget, the severe budget cuts being proposed for DOE's Office of Science would curtail a lot of the operations at all US National Laboratory, including Fermilab. This could adversely affect the running of the Tevatron and could possibly shut it down even sooner.

Now things are looking even bleaker for Fermilab and the Tevatron. The Fermilab Neighborhood blog reports that lab director Pier Oddone said at an all-hands meeting February 15 that budget cuts proposed in the House of Representatives would force a number of drastic measures at Fermilab. Among them: an immediate shutdown of all accelerators, two-month staff furloughs, and probable layoffs of some 400 employees.

Things just go from bad to worse.

Zz.

Celebrating Marie Curie

2011 marks the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. So I found this neat little factoids about this amazing scientist.

* Her name at birth was Maria Sklodowska.
* When studying X-rays was the cool thing to do, Curie turned her attention to Becquerel rays, which are emitted from uranium.
* Curie's quest to find other elements that would emit these rays led her to discover the element polonium.
* Polonium was named after Marie Curie's birth country of Poland.
* Curie published a paper about the discovery of polonium, even though she wouldn't have been able to measure its atomic weight with the materials she had.
* She discovered radium in 1898.
* Her husband, Pierre Curie, refused to accept the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 unless Marie could be included - and then she was.
* The Curies could not attend the Nobel ceremony in 1903 because of poor health; they had been working in a laboratory with deplorable conditions.
* Marie Curie replaced her husband as professor of physics at the Sorbonne in 1906, after he was killed by a horse-drawn wagon.
* In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming the first person to win a Nobel Prize in two categories.

So I didn't know that the Nobel committee actually did consider NOT giving her the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903, based on her husband's insistence that she'd be included.

Zz.

Scientists Searching For God?!

This is a rather "harmless" and benign article. I'm guessing it is an opinion piece of what we call "God of the Gaps".

Throughout history things that people could not understand were attributed to God. One by one this "God of the Gaps" eroded as science explained phenomena in the context of natural laws.

The laws of nature are, at the most fundamental level, subsets of the laws of physics.

Sir Isaac Newton published the first laws of physics in the late 17th century. His mathematical description of the motion of planets destroyed part of the church doctrine that included the dual universes of Aristotle and the geocentric paradigm of Ptolemy that had existed for nearly two millennia.

Not a whole lot of things to pick on (maybe I'm feeling a bit mellow this morning). But towards the end, there's a rather strange statement.

Today a group of scientists are undertaking a controversial search for God in the twisted logic of quantum mechanics.

I don't think this is true, even in light of Hawking's recent book. To be able to do research on anything, the premise must first be clearly defined. In other words, something must, first of all, be falsifiable for there to be a scientific endeavor on it. Can that criteria be applied to "god"? Considering also that there's so many different versions of that god, and the various "characteristics" of these gods, I don't think that can tackle such a thing.

Still, it is true that science will continue to address the gaps in our knowledge. After all, that is what science does best, and that is what scientists have been hired to do. And if by doing that, we are indirectly searching for the "god of the gaps" (or more like falsifying the god IN the gap), then so be it.

Zz.

Catching A Lightning

This is a fascinating interview with physicist Joseph Dwyer, who studies lightning. It's a wonderful interview because you also learn a bit of the physics of lightning, and why it isn't identical to the spark one gets due to static electricity.

But isn't it just an electrical discharge between thunderclouds and the ground?
In a sense, but the big problem is that to get a spark, air needs to break down. It needs to stop being an insulator and start being a conductor. We commonly experience this if you touch a doorknob and you get a spark between your finger and the doorknob. What happens is the charges get concentrated into your fingertip and you get a big electric field. Then, as your finger approaches, the conventional breakdown field is reached, which is about 3 million volts per metre – and then air sparks.

The problem is if you look up inside thunderclouds, the breakdown field that you need to make a spark is never found. People have been launching balloons for decades, they've been flying airplanes, they've been launching rockets...but the fields they record are not even close to this strength.

Zz.

Mad Scientists Recommend WHAT???!!!!

I belong to that insanely-addictive Groupon deals (and have had many amazing dining experience at half of the price). So yes, I look at the deals that are sent to me each day.

But this one kinda made my jaw dropped. It is a Groupon deal for a Japanese/Sushi restaurant near here called Maki Sushi & Noodle Shop in Park Ridge, IL. The Groupon notice starts off with this statement:

Though mad scientists recommend sticking chopsticks into electric sockets, rational scientists know the utensils are better used for sushi consumption.

What the hey.... ?

So, any knows where they would get this claim that "mad scientists" would "recommend sticking chipsticks into electric sockets"?

First of all, it makes no sense because most chopsticks (in fact, the majority, I would think) are made of wood, bamboo, ivory, plastic, etc. They are all insulators. So why would anyone want to stick a chipstick into electric sockets other than to ruin the socket? Besides, why is this "fun" to do, or even would create something that would satisfy someone's curiosity. Presumably, "mad scientists" only do things that would be fun, do something out of curiosity, and even something that could result in some sparks/explosion. Sticking a chopstick in an electric socket is .... er ... boring!

Man, I need to go out and get a life. I'm picking apart a mindless advertisement from Groupon!

:)

Zz.

Threat To US Science - Your Immediate Actions Requested

If you are a US Citizen and concerned about the proposed 2011 budget and how it severely affects funding for science (especially physical sciences), your immediate action is kindly requested. The devastating cuts being proposed by the Republican budget will cause severe harm to research in the physical sciences, especially those that are being done at all US National Laboratories.

For more information on the breakdown of the proposed budget, please go to the APS webpage. It will include ways that you can contact your representatives to make your voice heard on this matter.

Thank you.

Zz.

Vacuum Tubes Implosion

For those of us who work in photodetector science and technology, studies such as this can be immensely valuable. The last thing we want to have happen is the implosion of these phototubes. We all know how bad of a disaster it was when it occurred at Super Kamiokande several years ago.

Still, for everyone else, this series of videos of imploding phototubes are visual candies and can be a lot of fun to watch.



Zz.

Walk Or Run In The Rain - Which Will Get You Less Wet?

So I totally love mundane problems like this, as I've mentioned on here repeatedly. This is the problem on what one should do when it starts to rain. Should one walk at a normal speed, or should one run as fast as possible, or is there a solution in between those two extremes to get one least wet?

This new paper[1] considers this old problem once again. It considers the rain coming down vertically and at an angle, and also considers the geometry of a person (being approximated by a cylinder).

Abstract: The question whether to walk slowly or to run when it starts raining in order to stay as dry as possible has been considered for many years—and with different results, depending on the assumptions made and the mathematical descriptions for the situation. Because of the practical meaning for real life and the inconsistent results depending on the chosen parameters, this problem is well suited to undergraduate students learning to decide which parameters are important and choosing reasonable values to describe a physical problem. Dealing with physical parameters is still useful at university level, as students do not always recognize the connection between pure numbers and their qualitative and quantitative influence on a physical problem. This paper presents an intuitive approach which offers the additional advantage of being more detailed, allowing for more parameters to be tested than the simple models proposed in most other publications.

It is a fun problem to play around in your head, especially when there can be a counter-intuitive answer.

Zz.

[1] A. Ehrmann and T. Blachowicz, Eur. J. Phys. v.32, p.355 (2011).

1 In 6 Secondary Schools In England Offers No A-Level Physics

The education woes in the UK continues with the Royal Society condemning the A-Levels at "not fit for purpose". This follows reports on the drop of the number of students studying math and sciences at the A-Levels and the number of science/math degrees awarded.

Of last year’s 300,000 graduates, just 10,000 studied chemistry, physics, biology or maths, according to the Royal Society.

The celebrated research institution also said that one in six secondary schools had not entered a single candidate for A-level physics.

It said the A-level system was unfit for purpose and should be scrapped in favour of European-style baccalaureates.

It is disheartening to see that this problem, which had been recognized for many years already, doesn't seem to be handled and tackled appropriately. Here in the US, there are clearly politicians who distrust science, put very little importance to science, or simply ignores science. Some of them are put into position to determine science policies and funding. So one should expect that support for science to have some impact. Do we know the root cause for such a disarray in the UK/England, beyond just the tough economic times?

Zz.

DOE Office Of Science Faces Severe Budget Cuts

As expected, the Republican's proposal for the 2011 Budget slashed a huge chunk of money from science funding {link open for a limited time}. The hardest hit, it appears, will be the DOE Office of Science, which is the major agency that funds research work in Chemistry and Physics, and also maintains the US National Laboratories.

Among the hardest hit in the Republicans' plan is the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science, which funds research ranging from particle physics to chemistry and materials science. The Committee aims to slice a whopping $1.1 billion from the $5.12 billion requested by President Barack Obama for the Office of Science's 2011 budget.

"It's devastating," says Pat Clemins, director of the budget and policy programme at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC. "It definitely will affect the ability of the DOE to fill the discovery pipeline."

Look, I know that the deficit is enormous. However, I still cannot get the logic in making these huge cuts on programs that, in the scheme of things, is PUNY in terms of the amount of money allocated to it. Funding for science is an awfully small percentage of the budget when compared to spending for the military, for example. Yet, it is the one getting the brunt of the axe. Why? Well, this response is very telling on how some elected Republicans feel about the importance of science funding:

The difference of opinion on energy-related research spending is likely to remain in the spotlight as both sides dig in their heels. When asked why the DOE Office of Science was cut so much, Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee, said, "The chairman was asked to cut $58 billion. He looked at excess, wasteful, duplicative spending. This is one of the choices that he made."

Wasteful, he said. Ignoring the fact that billion of dollars are unaccounted for in Iraq and Afganistan wars that could have easily funded the DOE Office of Science for YEARS, I'd like to know what exactly that is being funded that this person considers as "excess, wasteful, and duplicative".

Zz.

E. Noether's Discovery of the Deep Connection Between Symmetries and Conservation Laws

OK, this is not new. This arXiv manuscript was uploaded way back in 1998. But I was looking for some reference for someone else regarding the historical development of Noether's theorem, and stumbled upon this. It gives that, and also the significance of Noether's amazing insight. In fact, if you have not been aware of the importance of symmetries and how they reflect the conservation laws that we have, this is a good paper to read.

Abstract: Emmy Noether proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between symmetries and conservation laws. Because these theorems are not in the mainstream of her scholarly work, which was the development of modern abstract algebra, it is of some historical interest to examine how she came to make these discoveries. The present paper is an historical account of the circumstances in which she discovered and proved these theorems which physicists refer to collectively as Noether's Theorem. The work was done soon after Hilbert's discovery of the variational principle which gives the field equations of general relativity. The failure of local energy conservation in the general theory was a problem that concerned people at that time, among them David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Albert Einstein. Noether's theorems solved this problem. With her characteristically deep insight and thorough analysis, in solving that problem she discovered very general theorems that have profoundly influenced modern physics.

Zz.

The 20th Anniversary of the Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes was first described in 1991, so 2011 is the 20th Anniversary of this amazing structure.

This lecture, I presume, was given in conjunction with this occasion. It presents a new nanotube not made of carbon, but rather, of boron nitride nanotube. If you have an hour to spend, it might be an interesting lecture to sit through, especially in the beginning that should give you a brief history and the physics of nanotubes.



Zz.

A Movie About Einstein?

I suppose the question is, why not?

A biopic on Einstein is in the works and will be directed by Wayne Wang.

The film, tentatively titled “Einstein”, chronicles the true inspirational story of the trials, tragedies and vindication of the single-most celebrated scientist of the 20th century. Torn between the burdens of a family and his restless pursuit of unlocking the mysteries of the universe, he not only achieved unparalleled stature as a genius but he also changed the world forever - at no small cost to himself and those around him.

HSI Films will handle worldwide sales on “Einstein” and immediately introduce the project to distributors in Berlin.

They are still looking for an actor to play Einstein. So look in the mirror, folks. If you have that resemblance, send in your portfolio! Maybe you'll be called for an audition!

Zz.

The Science of Cooking

Hey, remember way back when I mentioned the story that several haute cuisine and avant-garde chefs are coming to Harvard to participate in a gastronomy physics course? Well now we have a report on it.

In this exclusive interview with physicsworld.com, one of the course organizers, David Weitz, professor of physics and applied physics in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, explains how cooking and food provide neat reference points for studying a variety of complex phenomena – from foams and emulsions to supercooling and complex phase changes.

"It's been beneficial and enjoyable for all of us," he says of the course, which completed its first run at the end of last year. "I'm pretty sure the students really enjoy it [and] it's certainly a wonderful way to teach freshman physics."

You can view the video interview at the link given above or see it here:



Zz.

Tackling Global Temperature Data

It seems that Richard Muller has gone beyond teaching physics for future presidents, and now tackling the issue of global warming. This might be the more difficult task, I would think, considering all the controversy and brouhaha surrounding this issue lately.

He has formed a Berkeley Earth Group with an initial task to compile ALL of the available temperature data of the earth throughout history.

Muller came to the conclusion that temperature data - which, in the United States, began in the late 18th century when Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin made the first thermometer measurements - was the only truly scientifically accurate way of studying global warming.
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To that end, he formed the Berkeley Earth group with 10 other highly acclaimed scientists, including physicists, climatologists and statisticians. Before the group joined in the study of the warming world, there were three major groups that had released analysis of historical temperature data. But each has come under attack from climate skeptics, Muller said.

In the group's new study, which will be released in about a month, the scientists hope to address the doubts that skeptics have raised. They are using data from all 39,390 available temperature stations around the world - more than five times the number of stations that the next most thorough group, the Global Historical Climatology Network, used in its data set.

This will be interesting to see. But then, I wonder how many will pay attention to such data and change their minds one way or the other. I think it will be useful to scientists who are in the midst of working in such a field. However, I'm a skeptic in the ability of the average public to be able to decipher pure data. Data, without context, are meaningless. And the majority of the public often do not have the context.

Zz.

APS Journals Available To US High Schools For Free

The American Physical Society is making their journals available for free to US High Schools.

The American Physical Society (APS) announces a new public access initiative that will give high school students and teachers in the United States full use of all online APS journals, from the most recent articles back to the first issue in 1893, a collection including over 400,000 scientific research papers. APS will provide access to its journals, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review, and Reviews of Modern Physics, at no cost, as a contribution to public engagement with the ongoing development of scientific understanding.

The high school program is a natural follow on to last summer's offering to U.S. public libraries. "When we made our journals freely available to public libraries, we were happily surprised to receive requests for access from high schools as well," said APS Publisher Joseph Serene. "We are now delighted to share our journals and their archive with interested secondary school students and teachers."

While this is a nice gesture, I am not sure to what extent these journals are useful, either to the teachers or the students. I think journals such as Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, which is already available as an open source, would be more useful to educators/teachers. The AIP could provide journals such as the American Journal of Physics for free, and that would also be useful. But PRL? PRA, PRB, etc.? I don't see how these are useful in general.

If you are a high school student or teachers and have needed to access these journals, I would love to hear what you are doing.

Zz.

"Wonders Of Physics" Returns To UW Campus

I mentioned earlier about the wonderful physics show/demonstration called "Wonders of Physics", of which I had the pleasure of being in attendance back in the early 80's when I was at UW-Madison. This show and grown in scope and popularity over the years, and even had a traveling road-show version.

This show is coming back to UW-Madison this weekend. I see that they are now doing it in Chamberlain Hall. When I was there, it was done in the huge lecture theater in Siegal Hall building. If you're near there, this is something not to be missed by young and old. It certainly beats seeing that new Justin Bieber movie that's opening this weekend, even IF it is in 3D!

Zz.