The WOW Science Thread

[hhfarang]

each one 10 billion times the size of the Sun.

I wouldn't even be able to comprehend a number that big if it weren't for hearing so much about the U.S. deficit and debt over the last few years!

[buksida]

Cern scientist expects 'first glimpse' of Higgs boson
The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN The search for the Higgs boson could be approaching its conclusion at Cern.

A respected scientist from the Cern particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see "the first glimpse" of the Higgs boson next week.

It comes as the search for the mysterious fundamental particle reaches its endgame.

If so, this will be a significant milestone for teams at the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The particle-accelerating machine on the French-Swiss border was built with the hunt for the Higgs as a key goal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16074411

[sandman67]

As Ive said earlier in the thread Im a bg fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, eminent US scentist and media presenter....so I thought that this would be interesting for others on the thread. The interview is lighthearted but does cover some serious science topics and the overall philosophy of science.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy - 2010-Jan-29



enjoy

[buksida]

he expects to see "the first glimpse" of the Higgs boson next week.

Found the fecker already; it was behind the fridge with the half eaten crackers and mouse shit ...

[dtaai-maai]

This is as good a thread as any for this, I suppose.

I recently watched a documentary presented by Alan Yentob about OLIVER SACHS, the doctor in the film AWAKENINGS (played by Robin Williams).
Now the science bit.
Sachs himself suffers from something called "face blindness," meaning that he simply cannot recognise and remember faces, even of those closest to him. Imagine not physically recognising your daughter from one day to the next...
It also dealt with a woman who for years could see only in 2D, a man who saw only in black and white (must have been from Yorkshire...), people with Usher syndrome who could communicate only by touch.

Fascinating documentary, but what came through over everything else was the warmth and humanity of this remarkable man.

[Big Boy]

Sachs himself suffers from something called "face blindness," meaning that he simply cannot recognise and remember faces, even of those closest to him. Imagine not physically recognising your daughter from one day to the next...

I have that problem. If I see somebody in a place where I wouldn't normally see them, I do not recognise them. I've actually failed to recognise my own brother before. People think you are being ignorant or snubbing them, but you just don't see them - quite embarrassing.

[sandman67]

re the 2D 3D vision thing. I was having a chat at a works do to a friend of a friend who works in neuroscence one tme and asked why it was that I cant play 1st person shooter games wthout feeling seasick and she explained all about whats called DOOM Syndrome...its a none too rare depth perception / motion and balance misfire. Around 1 in 10 people have the same thing.

Then things took a really interesting turn when I asked if that was linked to the fact that I see ordnance survey maps with contour lines as a 3D object rather than a flat map....fact. To me a contour line map looks like a 3D model of the landscape...I can literally see it as hills and valleys. She explaned it wasnt linked but it was sort of rare, and agan linked to depth perception. Seems about 1 in 10,000 people have some degree of the same "skill". The Brit govt have been running studies on it since WW2 when analysis of ariel photography took off big time.

Got me a date .... and a few afternoons at the lab gettng tested by her colleagues.

Anyone else here have that quirk?

[pharvey]

More on the Curiosity Mars Lander care of Countdown



I like Derek Pitts....always has a good laugh whle educating at the same time

gotta say tho.....that jet pack landing system they are using looks pretty high risk to me - looks like there is plenty of room at the table for Mr Buggerup.

Fingers crossed for August 2012.

Well I certainly hope they've got the distance and fuel calculations right this time around!!

As an aside, it seems one of the Rovers has found a vein of Gypsum - probably the strongest evidence of water on Mars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/spac ... -Mars.html

Let's see what data they are able to get in late August 2012 and in the moths and years ahead. Exciting times in my book.

[pharvey]

One to get your collective heads around....... Quantum theory - but perhaps not for cat lovers!!

Testing the Copenhagen interpretation: a matter of live and dead cats

Quantum theory, which measures the truth of what we perceive to be real, is nearing a landmark moment in its history , writes Roger Highfield.

Cats that are both dead and alive, atoms that “know” when you are staring at them and parallel worlds that harbour any and every possibility: quantum theory has always thrown up some bizarre ideas. Now, for the first time, it may become possible to test one of its very strangest.

Quantum theory is the most successful framework for understanding the universe that we have, providing predictions that are borne out to a stunning degree of precision. But there’s a problem: no one actually knows how to interpret it. Albert Einstein, one of its architects, spent much of his life plotting its overthrow, because of the peculiar picture of reality – or “spookiness”, as he liked to put it – that it revealed.

One such odd feature is that, according to quantum physics, the act of observation changes the universe. An unobserved event, according to quantum lore, has neither happened nor not happened: it exists as a mathematical object called a wave function, which describes all possible versions of realities, and which only breaks down into one or other when we make an observation. A molecule may actually exist in what is called a “superposition”, which means an impossible coexistence of apparently contradictory possibilities, being both a dot-like particle and a wave that ripples over a distance some 1,000 times greater.

To come up with a more tangible example of just how odd this view of reality is, Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment in 1935 starring a cat that is neither dead nor alive. Only when we take a peek inside the box does the wave function “collapse” into one actuality: there is either a dead cat, or a live one.This model of reality is known as the “Copenhagen Interpretation” – but not all physicists accept it. Some claim that the very act of observation causes the universe to split: I see a live cat, but in another universe, a different me sees a dead one. This is the so-called “Many Worlds” interpretation, which dates back to 1957.

Full Story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... -cats.html

[pharvey]

E-Cat: Is it Cold Fusion or Hot Air?

Paul Desmond


We talk a lot these days about the need to conserve energy, especially in data centers where the electric bill can quickly get out of hand. But imagine if we had a power source so cheap it wouldn’t be worth measuring how much customers consumed.

That’s exactly the story that Mark Gibbs, an independent analyst and writer, has been following for his columns at Network World and Forbes. We last caught up with Gibbs for a podcast on his idea that “all business is now IT because all business is about information.” This time we talked about the Energy Catalyzer, or E-Cat, a device created by an Italian inventor named Andrea Rossi.

“He’s come up with a thing that, if it works, would transform our culture, our society,” Gibbs says. It’s a small device that creates a reaction between hydrogen and nickel powder, as Gibbs explains in his Network World column:

The device is said to work by heating hydrogen to an “ignition temperature” using an external heat source, after which a catalyst, which has yet to be explained, causes the hydrogen atoms to “penetrate” the nickel and transform it into copper, producing energy in the process — essentially a nuclear fusion reaction — that is self-sustaining (i.e. the external heat source can be removed and the device will continue to function).
Water fed into the reaction chamber comes out as steam with which you could drive a turbine, and voila! You have a generator. Or you could use it for motive power. You could also use the heat to drive a Stirling Engine, but for whatever reason, this option hasn’t been much discussed.

Rossi calls it a “low-level nuclear reaction,” but Gibbs thinks it’s basically the same as cold fusion – a nuclear reaction at relatively low temperatures. Cold fusion has proven to be illusive, at least in terms normally associated with science, such as the ability to repeat experiments and get the same results.

Still, Rossi claims he’ll deliver a 1-megawatt reactor next year for $2 million to a customer he hasn’t named. If he comes through, Gibbs says the device would produce a virtually endless stream of cheap electricity. Gone would be the infrastructure that carries electricity around the world; instead, homeowners and businesses would have their own E-Cats.

However, as Gibbs details, while Rossi demonstrated the E-Cat as recently as October 28, it’s always with an air of mystery. In the latest demo, for example, a generator with a capacity of one-half megawatt was set up right next to the trailer housing the E-Cats, ostensibly to generate the heat required to start the reaction. But, as Gibbs points out, the E-Cats succeeded in generating just about one-half megawatt of power; suspicious, to say the least.

[redzonerocker]

As an aside, it seems one of the Rovers has found a vein of Gypsum - probably the strongest evidence of water on Mars.

Let's see what data they are able to get in late August 2012 and in the moths . . . .

Seems as though a team of Scottish astronauts has beaten everyone to it , one of which must have opened his wallet

[PeteC]

This I didn't know about, and I doubt many do. Very applicable again today given the new focus on a Mars mission. If they had continued on with it back then we would probably have been on Mars a few decades ago, or at least made the attempt. Pete

http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/factsheets/DOENV_707.pdf

[sandman67]

Searching Under The Lamppost
by Richard Dawkins

The joke is familiar. Man searches diligently under lamp-post at night. Explains to passer-by that he has lost his keys. “Did you lose them under the lamp-post?” “No.” “Then why are you looking under the lamp-post?” “Because there’s no light anywhere else.”

The argument has a certain zany logic, and it seems to appeal to Paul Davies, distinguished British physicist now at Arizona State University. Davies is interested (as am I) in whether our kind of life is unique in the universe. The DNA code, the machine code of life, is all but identical in every living creature that has ever been examined. It is highly unlikely that the same 64-triplet code would coincidentally evolve more than once independently, and this is the main evidence that we are all cousins, sharing a single common ancestor, which probably lived between three and four billion years ago. If life originated more than once on this planet, only one life form survives: our kind of life, typified by our DNA code.

If there is life on other planets, it will very likely have something equivalent to a genetic code, but it is highly unlikely to be the same as ours. If we discover life, say on Mars, the acid test of whether it originated independently will be its genetic code. If it has DNA and the same 64-triplet DNA code, we shall conclude that it is a cross-contamination, perhaps via a meteorite.

We know that meteorites do occasionally travel between Earth and Mars – and, by the way, here is my second example of searching under the lamp-post. A meteorite can land anywhere on Earth, but we are unlikely to find it lying on any surface other than permanent snow: anywhere else it would just look like a stone, and it would soon be covered by vegetation or dust storms or soil movements. This is why scientists hunting for meteorites travel to the Antarctic: not because they are more likely to be there than anywhere else, but because that is where you can clearly see them even when they landed a long time ago. Antarctica is where the lamp-post is. Any stone or small rock lying on top of the snow must have dropped there – and it is quite likely to be a meteorite. Some meteorites found in Antarctica have been shown to come from Mars. This astonishing conclusion follows from a careful matching up of the chemical composition of these rocks with samples taken by robot spacecraft sent to Mars. Some time in the distant past, a large meteorite hit Mars with catastrophic impact. Fragments of Martian rock exploded up into space and some of them eventually ended up here. This shows that matter does sometimes travel between the two planets, and this opens up the possibility of cross-contamination by (presumably bacterial) life. If Earth-life did contaminate Mars (or vice versa), we would recognise it by its DNA code: it would be the same as ours.

Conversely, if f we found a life form with a very different genetic code – not DNA, or DNA with a different code – we would call it truly alien. Paul Davies suggests that maybe we don’t need to go even as far as Mars to find truly alien life. Space travel is expensive and difficult. Maybe we should be searching right here for alien life that started on Earth, independently of ours, and never left. Maybe we should be systematically examining the genetic code of every micro-organism we can lay our hands on. Every one so far examined has the same genetic code as we do. But we have never systematically searched to see if we can find a different genetic code. Earth is Paul Davies’ lamp-post because it is much cheaper and easier to search among Earthly bacteria than to travel to Mars, let alone to other star systems where the best hope of alien life reposes. I wish Paul good luck in his search under that particular lamp-post, but I am very doubtful of success, partly for the reason Charles Darwin himself gave: any other life form would probably have long ago been eaten by our kind – probably bacteria, we can today add.

I was reminded of all this by a news story in today’s Guardian. ‘Scientists to scour 1m lunar images for signs of alien life.’ Yet again, the story concerns our old friend Paul Davies, and he is yet again down on his hands and knees, under yet another lamp-post.

If technologically advanced aliens ever visited us, they would be much more likely to have done so in the past than in the present, simply because the past is so much bigger than the present – if we define the present as one lifetime, or even as the span of recorded history. Traces of alien visitations – wrecked spacecraft, rubbish, evidence of mining activity, maybe even an intentionally deposited signal as in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’– would quickly (by the standards of geological time) be covered over on the actively heaving and vegetation-covered surface of Earth. But the moon is another matter. No plants, no wind, no tectonic movements: Neil Armstrong walked in the lunar dust 42 years ago, and his footprints probably still look fresh. So, Paul Davies and his colleague Robert Wagner reason, it makes sense to examine every high resolution photograph ever taken of the moon’s surface, just in case traces are to be seen. The probability is low, but the pay-off could be very high, so it is worth doing.

I am very sceptical. I suspect that there is life elsewhere in the universe, but it is probably extremely rare and isolated on far-flung islands of life, like a celestial Polynesia. Visitations to one island by another are hugely more likely to be in the form of radio transmissions than visitations by corporeal beings. This is because radio waves travel at the speed of light, whereas solid bodies travel only at the speed of – well, solid bodies. Moreover, radio waves travel outwards in an ever-expanding sphere, whereas bodies travel in only one direction at a time. This is why SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence using radio telescopes) is worthwhile. SETI is not wildly expensive as big science goes, but Paul Davies’ latest lamp-post is a lot cheaper and I again wish him luck.

This is interesting as I ddnt know that radio waves travel at the speed of light. So....all things being equal we now have a broadcast "Sphere" of about 100 light years around Earth. Thing is, presumably, the distance that the waves travel depends on thier energy at broadcast....so....is there any reliable estimate as to our current broadcast "sphere"?

How far out can we be heard?

My other concern is that Rush Limbaugh and all the other right wing hate jockeys of the USA are our potential ambassadors..... oh dear.

Or maybe we will strike lucky, and the little green man getting off the UFO parked in front of the White House will offer his hand and in a Jimmy Saville voice go "Hows about, hows about, guys and gals, you take me to your leader. Uhuhuhuhuhu!"

[sandman67]

Seems the International Yellow Peril have set their sights on a lunar landing in the near future

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... sion-lunar

I thnk this is a good thing.....it just may, as the artcle hints at, stick a big size 12 steel toecapped Tmberland up NASA's backside and kick off a new phase of the space race. Yaaaaay!

[PeteC]

Loch Ness is giant 'spirit level'
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16394421

Scientists have measured the way Loch Ness tilts back and forth as the whole of Scotland bends with the passing of the tides.

It is a tiny signal seen in the way the waters at the ends of the 35km-long lake rise and fall.

When combined with the direct tug from the gravity of the Moon and Sun, the loch surface goes up and down by just 1.5mm.

The study is reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

"If you were on a boat in the middle of the loch, you certainly wouldn't notice it," said Philip Woodworth from the UK National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Liverpool, "but a tide like this has never been observed in a western European lake before."

Prof Woodworth, David Pugh and Machiel Bos say their precision measurement technique could be used in other lakes around the world to understand better how the Earth's crust deforms as a result of ocean movements - rather like a carpenter will use a spirit level to gauge how a length of wood deviates from the horizontal.

"I have described Loch Ness as the largest spirit level in the world," David Pugh, who is a visiting professor at NOC, told BBC News.

None of us can feel it, but Britain rises and falls by centimetres every 12 hours and 25 minutes as a great bulge of ocean water washes around the country.

The pencil-shaped Loch Ness is the largest UK lake by volume, and although inland, is close enough to the North Sea to be influenced by this loading effect.

The team placed pressure sensors a few metres under the lake surface at six locations, from Fort Augustus in the far southwest to Aldourie in the far northeast. They then monitored the change in the height of the overlying water during the course of 201 days.

What the scientists saw was a clear spike in the data twice a day - the result of the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun. But they could also tease out a second signal stemming from the way water rises and falls as a result of the tilting of the land. And, in fact, the latter effect sits on top of the first and is responsible for most of the amplitude change.

The team says the measurement was made to an accuracy of just 0.1 mm over the loch's 35 km length.

"We had to extract the tidal signal and get rid of all the noise. This involved very high precision," explained David Pugh.

"For example, the loch surface itself goes up and down every day by four centimetres just due to the pump storage scheme for hydroelectric generation, and we have to pull out a very small signal within that.

"The holy grail would be to learn from the effects of the tides something about the Earth's crust. So the more precise we can get, the more we may learn about the crust."