In the News
drorzel | January 8, 2007Paul Davies's forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled "Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life," so you know that he's not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the "Goldilocks Enigma," and what others refer to as "fine-tuning"-- basically, how do you account for the fact that the universe allows us to exist? A small change in the values of any of the constants of nature would very likely make it impossible for life as we know it to exist. And yet, here we are-- so how did that happen?
Though this book won't be released for a…
drorzel | January 6, 2007In that it's bombarded by meteorites, anyway. The object that crashed into a New Jersey house has been confirmed as a meterorite by, well, looking at it:
The family has not yet given permission for physical testing of the meteorite, but from looking at it, Dr. Delaney and other experts were able to tell that the object it had been part of -- perhaps an asteroid -- cooled relatively fast.
It is magnetic, and reasonably dense, they determined. The leading edge -- the one that faced forward as it traveled through the earth's atmosphere -- was much smoother, while the so-called trailing edge…
drorzel | January 5, 2007Via Tobia Buckell, Jeff Bezos is looking for a few good geeks:
Blue Origin; Blue Origin wants you! Actually, Blue Origin needs you and wants to hire you ... assuming you're a hard working, technically gifted, team-oriented, experienced aerospace engineer or engineering leader. If you might be interested in joining us, please keep reading.
We're working, patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system. Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we're working on it…
drorzel | January 4, 2007The Times has an article announcing the discovery of methane lakes on Titan:
The discovery, reported yesterday by an international team of researchers, was made by a radar survey of Titan's high northern latitudes by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn and its retinue of satellites since July 2004. One of the mission's major objectives is the investigation of Titan's environment, thought to be a frigid version of conditions on the primordial Earth.
The radar imaging system detected more than 75 dark patches in the landscape near Titan's northern polar region, the scientists…
drorzel | December 29, 2006Speaking of James Nicoll and space news, he also notes the launch of the COROT satellite, which is designed to look for extrasolar planets. The detection limit for COROT is supposed to be something like twice the mass of the Earth, so there's some reasonable expectation that it should shed light on planetary systems more like our own than the oddballs that have been detected so far. I also agree with James's prediction in comments:
[T]he first detection by this system of a roughly Earth-massed planet around a sunlike star will involve a "who ordered that?" moment as the new world turns out…
drorzel | December 21, 2006One of the fun things about following science news through the Eurekalert press release aggregator is that work done by big collaborations tends to show up multiple times, in slightly different forms. Take, for example, the gamma-ray-burst results being released in Nature this week, which show up no less than five times: one, two, three, four, five. It's entirely possible that I missed some others, too.
Each of those releases is written by the press office at a different institution, and each tries to make it sound like the people at their university made the most important contribution to…
drorzel | December 17, 2006A couple of quick updates on things posted earlier this week:
1) A New York Times story on the Stardust findings.
2) A somewhat better press release on the single top quark production experiment (from the Fermilab press office, rather than the press office of one of the member institutions.
drorzel | December 15, 2006One of the requirements of the Nobel Prize is that the laureates give a public lecture at some point, and as a result, there is generally a seminar scheduled a little bit before the actual prize ceremony, at which the laureats give lectures about the work for which they're being honored. These frequently involve props and demonstrations, but George Smoot takes it to a new level, using the Cal marching band to demonstrate the Big Bang:
"Professor Smoot came up to the band and asked if later that week, when we practiced at Memorial Stadium, we could do a formation like the universe forming. He…
drorzel | December 15, 2006A flurry of press releases hit EurekAlert yesterday (one, two, three), indicating the release of a bunch of data from NASA's Stardust mission. This is the probe that was sent out to fly through the tail of a comet, and catch tiny dust particles in an aerogel matrix, and return them to Earth for analysis.
The mission appears to have been a pretty impressive success, scientifically speaking, with a bunch of interesting findings relating to the age and composition of cometary material and interstellar dust. The full scientific results are released today in Science Express, and if you've got the…
drorzel | December 14, 2006The physics story of the moment is probably the detection of single top quarks at Fermilab. Top quarks, like most other exotic particles, are usually produced in particle-antiparticle pairs, with some fraction of the kinetic energy of two colliding particles being converted into the mass of the quark-antiquark pair (see this old post). There's a very rare process, though, mediated by the weak nuclear force, that allows the production of a single top quark, without an anti-top (it's paired with a bottom quark and a W boson).
The D0 (or DZero) collaboration at Fermilab recently announced the…
drorzel | December 13, 2006Here's the day's final repost of an old blog post about space policy. This is yet another post from 2004, with the usual caveats about linkrot and dated numbers and the like.
This one is more or less a direct response to comments made in response to the previous post attempting to argue that using the Moon as a step toward Mars isn't a priori idiotic. Again, I'm not sure how successful this is, but you can judge for yourself:
In the comments to the previous post about the Moon/ Mars proposal, Jake McGuire raises a number of interesting points, which deserve a full response. Having sat on that…
drorzel | December 13, 2006Yet another in today's series of reposts of articles about space policy. This is another old blog post from 2004, back when the Moon-and-Mars plan was first announced. As with the previous posts, any numbers or links in the post may be badly out of date, and there are some good comments at the original post that are worth reading.
This installment contains my attempt at finding reasons why it wouldn't be completely idiotic to try to put a permanent base on the Moon. I'm not sure this was entirely successful, but it's worth a shot:
It's a little foolish to attempt to comment on the merits of…
drorzel | December 13, 2006This is the second in a series of old posts about space exploration in general, and the Bush Moon-and-Mars plan specifically. This is a repost of an old blog post from 2004, so any numbers or links in the post may be out of date. There were also a few comments to the original article, that you may or may not want to read.
In this installment, we have my half-assed explanation of the conceptual problems behind the Space Shuttle program:
There are essentially two arguments for why we ought to support manned space flight, and if you dip into the comments at any of the other fine blogs linked in…
drorzel | December 12, 2006Monte Davis, of "Thinking Clearly About Space" has another snarky look at overblown space enthusiasm, providing a helpful taxonomy of X-Treme Spacers:
Alt.Tech
Chemical rockets have let you down: after decades of gritty engineering they remain expensive and trouble-prone. It's time to start over with a space elevator, deployed by laser launch and magnetic catapult. From the top, nuclear salt-water hotrods will set out to roam the solar system. This team will take the field as soon as a few remaining kinks are worked out.
On a vaguely related note, Dennis Overbye questions the need for a Moon…
drorzel | December 11, 2006Over at Bora's House of Round-the-Clock Blogging, we find the sensational headline Beaten by Biologists, Creationists Turn Their Sights On Physics. On seeing that, I headed over to the editorial in The American Prospect that it points to, expecting to be scandalized. When I got there, I found this:
U.S. creationists have changed tactics. Though none have explicitly abandoned ID in public, the focus of their scientific cover arguments has shifted from organic change to the creation of the universe. They have picked up on the controversial claim that human life could only have evolved because…
drorzel | December 6, 2006Via EurekAlert, a press release regarding a speech by former Presidential Science Advisor (under Bill Clinton) Neal Lane, about nanotechnology. Lane apparently warned that the US is in danger of falling behind in nanotechnology, and urged steps to avoid a nano gap, including the following slightly puzzling paragraph:
A "second step critical to the success of nanotechnology is to infuse nanotechnology education into the curriculum in every school and teacher education program." Dr. Lane highlighted the huge investment the U.S. made to science and engineering education almost fifty years ago…
drorzel | December 5, 2006It's more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling "Year's Best" lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I'll throw this open to my readers before compiling my own highly biased list.
So, a call for nominations:
In your opinion, what is the most important, influential, or exciting development in astronomy in 2006?
This could be a new observation, a new type of observation technique, or it could be an exciting…
drorzel | December 5, 2006It's more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling "Year's Best" lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I'll throw this open to my readers before compiling my own highly biased list.
So, a call for nominations:
In your opinion, what is the most important, influential, or exciting development in physics in 2006?
This could be a new experimental measurement, or it could be an exciting new theoretical development…
drorzel | November 29, 2006The Times this morning offers the "Well, duh!" headline of the day, and possibly the week:
Energy Use Can Be Cut by Efficiency, Survey Says
In other news, the Sun rose in the east this morning.
Snark aside, there is an important point in the article: the efficiency savings they're talking about can be realized now, with technology we already have, and not at some indeterminate point in the future when more efficient technologies are invented.
The energy savings, the report said, can be achieved with current technology and would save money for consumers and companies. The McKinsey report…
drorzel | November 28, 2006There's a nice article in the New York Times today about applications of the theory of vibrating strings. It turns out to be a lot more practical and useful than you might think, and there are people doing some amazing things with it.
What?