Thursday 2nd of May 2024
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it's my cup of tea...

cupotea

A BOOK about cranks could be a career-limiting move for someone with degrees in physics and mathematics whose livelihood is writing about science. But Margaret Wertheim became intrigued by ''what drives a man [and they are invariably men] with no science training to think he can succeed where Einstein and Hawking have failed.''
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With the field under attack, she thought about shelving the project for fear she would be accused of being ''anti-science''. But she is standing her ground. ''If you can't ask these questions without being accused of being anti-science, it seems to me science itself is in danger of becoming another fundamentalism.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/big-bewildering-science-to-thank-for-cranks-says-writer-20120906-25hav.html#ixzz25jaPUOVY
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Gus: I will admit I am one of these "cranks"... And I would not feel good with myself if I did not try to "understand", try to be "curious" and try to explain things with elastic bands... Though I have a "bit of science training" and some "mathematical" gymnastic ability, I know that my quests are bound for failure. Yet I know that I am not alone in the reject basket... Einstein and Hawking have failed too, though why not rub shoulders with the failures of these great men? And try and try again until whenever?...
One area that has fascinated me since I was a young lad has been gravitation... Gravity has been the sore point for all theorists including Einstein... Although I have had some successes in other areas of doing stuff, gravitation has been the centre of my dreams — or nightmares depending on your point of view... Gravity is a "very very very weak atomic force", yet without it the universe would be non-existent. We can manipulate the magnetic force and the electric force, we can manipulate the other force that binds the nucleus of atom together, yet we cannot manipulate gravity... We can play with it, but we cannot change it... Hence the boffins at the CERN trying to blast bizos to find the Higgs boson at the core of "mass" — hence "gravity"... We're lucky they have not seeded a black hole yet...
Black holes are singularities in which gravity is so strong that all the other strong forces more or less collapse in it, compressing energy in a reduced space from which not much can escape, including light... Thus these gravity anomalies are "dark"...
Without the "cranks' there would be no science fiction which for all intent and purposes is often at the forefront of new stuff... especially in the communication area. Who can forget the gizmos used in "Fobidden Planet"... Meanwhile science itself needs some hard yakka to tally observations and conduct experiments in areas where flux can "stuff up" the readings — unless we understand the flux... 
When I was born no-one knew about genes. Now we know so much about these we're going to have an array of command buttons on our forehead that will tell us if we push this lever, such and such will happen... If you smoked age 15 onwards, your genes predisposition will lead to you dying on 12 November 2016, but should you have started smoking age 17 you will die on 4th April 2019, even if you were born on the same day... And on top of that should someone else start smoking at 15 and have a different gene predisposition they will die on June 5th 2032.
Thus there are various systems. There are various components... various "elasticity".... Mathematics has been keen to define "space within" and "space outside" and "space conjoined"... These are my own terms that define the process... But this demands the acceptance of clearly defined boundaries... In nuclear physics, there is no such defined boundaries but precisely calculable probabilities. Big difference. For example I am filling a jug from a tap. Either the jug is under the tap and is filling up, either the jug is not under the tap and the jug is not filling up. But should the jug be slightly off-skew, it will fill up at a slower rate and there will be a spill going into the sink... The calculation of how much is lost becomes difficult should the rate of flow not being constant, thus hitting the jug at a variable angle... creating a probability of filling up time. 
There was this funny experiment shown on Catalyst (see picture at top) the other day where they studied the spill from coffee cups being carried by hand say in an office or at home... It could have been a hoax... But the chance of spill was mostly between the 6th and 8th step... all due to resonance between the slosh in the cup and the walking steps... I have studied that particular problem too and one of my solution to avoid a spill was to skip the 6th, 7th and 8th step... Just kidding... But soon after the 5th step I stop and move the cup in a different direction then track again forward... It works: there is no spill. All this of course is also dependent on the shape of the cup and other factors such as how full the cup is... 
The universe is like a giant shapeless sloshing cup of tea with no edges... with holes and singularities... in which the last great scientific mystery is gravity — until the next one... In this search, beliefs have no place. beliefs are curiosity killers. Beliefs are idiotic.

 

the fog machine...

Did we descend from reptiles, do animals get headaches and how a backyard disco fog machine tested alternate physics theories...

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/media/s3584589.htm

more certainty in the uncertainty principle...

It remains true that there is a fundamental limit of knowability, but it appears that, in this case, just trying to look at nature does not add to that unavoidably hidden world.

Or, as the authors put it: "The quantum world is still full of uncertainty, but at least our attempts to look at it don't have to add as much uncertainty as we used to think!"

Whether the finding made much practical difference was an open question, said Prof Steinberg.

"The jury is still out on that. It's certainly more than a footnote in the textbooks; it will certainly change the way I teach quantum mechanics and I think a lot of textbooks.

"But there's actually a lot of technology that relies on quantum uncertainty now, and the main one is quantum cryptography - using quantum systems to convey our information securely - and that mostly boils down to the uncertainty principle."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19489385

them values in science...


It’s time to get serious about science


By Jim Cooper and and Alan I. Leshner, Monday, September 10, 10:04 AM

Some policymakers, including certain senators and members of Congress, cannot resist ridiculing any research project with an unusual title. Their press releases are perhaps already waiting in the drawer, with blanks for the name of the latest scientist being attacked. The hottest topics for ridicule involve sex, exotic animals and bugs.

The champion of mocking science was the late William Proxmire, whose Golden Fleece Awards enlivened dull Senate floor proceedings from 1975 until 1988. His monthly awards became a staple of news coverage. He generated good laughs back home by talking about a “wacko” in a lab coat experimenting with something seemingly stupid. Proxmire did not invent the mad-scientist stereotype, but he did much to popularize it.

The United States may now risk falling behind in scientific discoveries as other countries increase their science funding. We need to get serious about science. In fact, maybe it’s time for researchers to fight back, to return a comeback for every punch line.

Toward that end, we are announcing this week the winners of the first Golden Goose Awards, which recognize the often-surprising benefits of science to society. Charles H. Townes, for example, is hailed as a primary architect of laser technology. Early in his career, though, he was reportedly warned not to waste resources on an obscure technique for amplifying radiation waves into an intense, continuous stream. In 1964, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov.

Similarly, research on jellyfish nervous systems by Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien unexpectedly led to advances in cancer diagnosis and treatment, increased understanding of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and improved detection of poisons in drinking water. In 2008, the trio received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this initially silly-seeming research. Four other Golden Goose Award winners — the late Jon Weber as well as Eugene White, Rodney White and Della Roy — developed special ceramics based on coral’s microstructure that is now used in bone grafts and prosthetic eyes.

Across society, we don’t have to look far for examples of basic research that paid off. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then a National Science Foundation fellow, did not intend to invent the Google search engine. Originally, they were intrigued by a mathematical challenge, so they developed an algorithm to rank Web pages. Today, Google is one of the world’s most highly valued brands, employing more than 30,000 people.

It is human nature to chuckle at a study titled “Acoustic Trauma in the Guinea Pig,” yet this research led to a treatment for hearing loss in infants. Similar examples abound. Transformative technologies such as the Internet, fiber optics, the Global Positioning System, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer touch-screens and lithium-ion batteries were all products of federally funded research.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-get-serious-about-science/2012/09/09/5b5c1472-f129-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_print.html

hungry SgrA*...

A young star and its planet-forming cloud are being pulled towards the huge black hole at the centre of our galaxy, astronomers say.

Like other galaxies, the Milky Way hosts a black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (SgrA*), at its centre.

SGrA* dislodged the star from its original orbit within a ring of young suns circling the black hole.

The disc of gas and dust will be devoured before it can evolve into a solar system.

The research by a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US, is published in Nature Communications journal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19558443

see story at top...

meanwhile, in serious research labs...

When a team of scientists decided to work out the complex mathematics that control the shape and movement of a human ponytail, they had not set their sights on fame or glory. On Thursday, however, the British-American team behind the work were celebrated as this year's laureates for the Ig Nobel prize in physics.

They were honoured alongside authors of research into why you spill coffee when walking around with a cup, how brain scans can detect brain activity anywhere (even in dead fish) if you use the right statistical tricks, and why leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller.

The 22nd Ig Nobel awards, organised by the humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research and awarded on Thursday at Harvard University, are a spoof of the Nobel prizes, to be announced next month. They honour achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

Raymond Goldstein, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, was set the challenge of considering the physics of ponytails by the company Unilever.

After developing a 3D imaging system to observe the properties of individual hairs – such as their curliness and stiffness – Goldstein's team was able to work out a mathematical equation that described the collective properties of a bundle.

"We found that the bundle of hair collectively behaved like a simple spring, where the force necessary to compress it was proportional to the extent to which you compressed it. That simple law is one of the things that would apply to a large number of systems."

The mathematics might be interesting, said Goldstein, for people who want to make better loft insulation. "You'd like to understand, if I manufacture this out of microscopic fibres with a particular elasticity and waviness, then what are the properties of the macroscopic bunch? How much will they settle under gravity over time?"

Craig Bennett, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was awarded this year's neuroscience prize with colleagues who decided to test out magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners on dead fish.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/21/ig-nobel-awards-dead-salmon/print

helium helium, where art thou?...

 

Diminishing helium supplies should be used for life-saving equipment not balloons, says professor


LAST UPDATED AT 14:33 ON Fri 21 Sep 2012

HELIUM is being squandered on children's party balloons when it should be kept for use in life-saving equipment, an academic has claimed.

Tom Welton, a professor of sustainable chemistry at Imperial College, has told Radio 4's Today programme that using the gas to pump up balloons is "absolutely the wrong use of helium".

The noble gas, which is extracted from the earth's crust and cannot be manmade, is apparently running out.

Its unique combination of properties means it is lighter than air and particularly useful as a coolant. MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, needing up to 10,000 litres to function.

"You're not going into an MRI scanner because you've got a sore toe," said Prof Welton. "When I had mine they were mapping a tumour. This is important stuff."

But he said seeing people literally floating helium into the air in balloons is "hugely frustrating".

 


Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-science/49158/scientist-slams-use-precious-helium-party-balloons#ixzz27BFIi1Ng

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One can say that this problem is not new and the USA is "squandering" its reserved of helium...

 

This from the WP in May this year:
The United States is running out of helium.
Yes, helium. Thanks, in part, to a 1996 law that has forced the government to sell off its helium reserves at bargain-bin prices, the country’s stockpile of the relatively rare and nonrenewable gas could soon dwindle.Party supply stores are already feeling the pinch, as recent helium shortfalls have driven up the price of helium-filled balloons. But it’s not birthday parties we should worry about. A severe helium shortage, experts say, would cause problems for large swaths of the economy, from medical scanners to welding to the manufacturing of optical fibers and LCD screens.
Congress is slowly grasping the extent of the problem. At a sleepy Senate hearing Thursday morning, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee listened to an array of experts chat about the gas. The hearing was tied to a bill, sponsored by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), that would change how the government sells helium from its Federal Helium Reserve (yes, this exists) in order to prevent shortages.“Chances are you’ve heard little or nothing from your constituents about helium over the past 15 years,” said Walter Nelson, director of helium sourcing at Air Products and Chemicals. “That’s a good thing!” But if the problem doesn’t get fixed soon, Nelson warned, there will be serious “grumbling” across the land.
So how did we get to this point? Back in the 1920s, when blimps and other airships seemed like a useful military technology, the United States set up a national helium program. In the 1960s, it opened the Federal Helium Reserve, an 11,000-acre site in the Hugoton-Panhandle Gas Field that spans Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. The porous brown rock is one of the only geological formations on Earth that can hold huge quantities of helium. And the natural gas from the field itself was particularly rich in helium — a relative rarity in the world.
By 1996, however, the Helium Reserve looked like a waste. Blimps no longer seemed quite so vital to the nation’s defense and, more important, the reserve was $1.4 billion in debt after paying drillers to extract helium from natural gas. The Republican-led Congress, looking to save money, passed the Helium Privatization Act, ordering a sell-off by the end of 2014.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/congress-turns-its-attention-to-americas-helium-crisis/2012/05/12/gIQA4fIbKU_print.html
The problem has been known "for quite a few years" but is the new awareness of this problem a trick to charge more for party ballons?.... I don't think so...
Some computer drives will use helium intead of air inside: 

Hitachi's drive uses helium to lower the drag acting on the disks. With a density one-seventh that of air - which, incidentally, is the reason helium balloons float - the drag on the spinning platters is greatly reduced, meaning the motor draws less power and generates less heat. The fluid flow forces which buffet the disks and head-positioning arm are also reduced, allowing the platters to be placed closer together - hence the jump from five platters to seven. 

Finally, the helium works to conduct heat away from the various components more efficiently than air, making the drive run cooler by some four degrees Celsius, according to HGST's prototype testing.

Not everyone is likely to be pleased by HGST's use of helium, however. The gas is becoming a scare commodity, and its frequent use in medical applications means spare helium for balloons, storage products and making people sound like they're auditioning for a place in the Lollipop Guild of Munchinktown is hard to come by and a potentially frivolous waste of a dwindling resource.

Despite this, HGST has declared that it will be launching the helium-filled drives to market in 2013, initially concentrating on the enterprise and data-centre market. Formal specifications and pricing are expected to be released closer to that time.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/09/14/hgst-helium/1

 

a slow swat...

Trying to swat a fly is like trying to shoot Keanu Reeves in The Matrix because time appears to move more slowly in the minds of smaller animals, a new study has claimed.

The ultra-nimble fly is capable of processing nearly seven times as much  information in a second as a human. This means a rolled-up piece of  newspaper that is moving so fast that it appears as a blur to our eyes is, to the fly, more like the slow-motion bullets that are easily dodged by Neo, Reeves’ character in The Matrix.

A paper published in Animal Behaviour journal today found the perception of time was linked to the size of an animal’s body and metabolic rate. 

But it can also change depending on the circumstances: time appears to slow down during stressful situations like a car crash because in an attempt to avoid disaster, the brain increases the amount of information it is taking in.

Dogs are able to process information at twice the rate of humans and so tend not to be interested in television. All they see is a flickering image, as if a projector had broken and the film slowed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/q-why-is-it-so-hard-to-swat-a-housefly-a-they-see-us-coming-in-slow-motion-8818124.html

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My swat is faster than theirs... As well somewhere on this site I explain that should you try to catch flies bare-hand, you have more chance of doing so with wet hand...