Science
LHC Restart - Still a Flawed Plan?
Yesterday, the management of the LHC project at CERN announced plans for a restart of the damaged facility later this year. The Geneva press release reads in part:The new schedule foresees first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period. The LHC will then run through to autumn next year, ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.
In Chamonix there was consensus among all the technical specialists that the new schedule is tight but realistic.
“The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year.”
But is the schedule they have now the best for the health of the LHC? We raise this question as it was nearly 20 months ago that we wrote this after the previous magnet faux-pas at CERN:
As we wrote a few months ago (yes, the science column has been getting short shift), the catastrophic failure of the 'inner triplets' in a vacuum test in March would likely delay the startup schedule of the LHC. With a press release this past week, CERN has both denied and confirmed our assessment by keeping the originally planned full startup date of May, 2008 but canceling the initial low-energy test run.
“The low-energy run at the end of this year was extremely tight due to a number of small delays, but the inner triplet problem now makes it impossible,” said LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans. “We’ll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go.”
This seems to us a foolish course of action which only serves to make management look 'effective' by keeping to the original full startup date. However, by tossing out the low-energy warm up run CERN risks finding out about more problems the hard way. Prudence suggests that with a machine this complex and costly, caution should be the order of the day and an abbreviated test run should be scheduled to kick the tires before driving the new Porsche off the dealer's lot.
In fact, the ultimate start date was delayed another four months but our fears were well founded as the near full energy runs last fall resulted in significant damage to the collider and at least a one year delay in real physics being done.
Now, we will readily admit to only one brief course ('foray') in beam physics so we don't portend to be even remotely as knowledgeable as those involved in day to day operation of the LHC. However, common sense tells us that this is an extremely complex machine - both in terms of the number of disparate parts as well as its function - and that it is far better to burn two or three months time doing low energy runs than to just flip the switch on full and cross ones fingers, again. Delays due to mechanical failure are incredibly costly, not just because of money spent on repairs but also from the downtime of hundreds, if not thousands, of physicists and technicians. CERN will have wasted over a year because of the events of last September and another similar delay would be devastating coming at a time of budget constraints due to the ongoing world wide economic recession. Well, we'll cross our fingers for you, but perhaps a good old fashioned spirit cleansing is in order:
Physics Nobel for Symmetry Breaking
Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi, and Toshihide Maskawa have been awarded the Nobel prize in Physics for 2008. This award recognizes their work on issues related to symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking in nuclear and particle physics. However, the award comes with quite a bit of controversy for the ommission of Nicola Cabibbo, the 'C' in the CKM (Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa) matrix which describes how quarks change flavor under certain weak decays ('flavor changing'). Cabibbo is in fact noted for his 1963 proposal of θC, a measure which describes the mixing of down and strange quarks under weak interactions.Kobayashi and Maskawa went on to generalize this idea to all quarks when in the late 1960s and early 1970s theory showed there were three families of quarks totaling six particles. Tommaso Dorigo's A Quantum Diaries Survivor blog has reaction from the Italian INFN to the omission of Cabibbo from the prize. We have to agree - they dropped the ball as the initial idea was clearly his and thus he should have been included.
Nambu's name appears in many areas of nuclear and particle physics. The Nobel was awarded for his work on the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking but he is also known for proposing the color charge of QCD (quantum chromodynamics) as well as massless Nambu-Goldstone bosons which appear in field theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking. This award is for his work in the 1960s which resulted in pions being recognized as the result of spontaneous breaking of an (inexact) axial-vector current symmetry. A more detailed explanation appears midway through this Cern Courier article.
That the Nobel committee recognized this theoretical work is a very good thing but it is sad that it will be tainted by ignoring Cabibbo's contribution.
Its LHC Day!
Well today is the big day, many years in waiting. Today CERN will turn on the LHC and the earth will be swallowed up by a strangelet. No, just kidding. The LHC should go operational today with 450 GeV test beams for the first time, on its way to 5 Tev beams later this year and ultimately 14 TeV CMS. But rather than recount a list of stats, we refer you to the very accessible CERN LHC faq. It is a pretty amazing device and the four principal detectors Alice, Atlas, CMS and LHCb) are as well. LHCb is said to have the early track at seeing the Higgs boson (mission #1 for the LHC) if it decays in certain unusual ways, such as by neutralinos (also hypothetical). Of course, that would presuppose that Fermilab's Tevatron doesn't see it first. Man that would really, really piss of the EU. Hope they haven't counted our boys out!Some people will object to the very large price tag (over $6 billion) spent on getting the LHC to this point and we don't disagree that a large amount of coin was spent. However, beyond the scientific merits of the project, LHC and the Tevatron before it bring many tangible benefits to the rest of world. Perhaps most famous is the hypertext transmission protocol (the http of web pages) which was developed at CERN and became what the rest of us call 'the web'. Fermilab pioneered the use of superconducting magnet technology - even after CERN researchers laughed at the idea - and besides use in particle accelerators, the technology is now used in MRI devices. According to the DOE, Robert Marsh, the head of a major alloy supplier, once said that "every program in superconductivity that there is today owes itself in some measure to the fact that Fermilab built the Tevatron and it worked." Other advances have come in the areas of networking, network computing and data processing. The 'Grid' is a widely distributed processing network to analyze the 15 Petabytes of data the LHC will take each year (a CD-ROM every second). Grid computing is now being used for many other research projects.
But this should also be a fun day so we leave you with these videos by some CERN natives called Les Horribles Cernettes (they're good, really!):
If hip-hop is more your thing, check out the Large Hadron Rap:
Gustav From The Buoys
Mother Nature provides us with another encore opportunity to look at the progression of a hurricane from the weather buoys in the National Data Buoy Center system. These buoys vary considerably in ownership and observational mission. While many are owned by NOAA, others are the property of and/or maintained by regional universities while still others operate off oil and gas drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Most record air pressure, wind speeds, gusts, directions and water temperature. Some only record wind speeds and water currents and directions. Still others are tsunami warning buoys which measure wave heights.We begin with Buoy 42040, east of the southern tip of LA and about 65 miles south of Dauphin Isle, AL:
Buoy 42040 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Next, right on that southern tip of LA is Pilots Station East at SW Pass, LA. This buoy recorded the highest wind gusts, just over 100 knots or nearly 120 mph:
Buoy PSTL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Slightly further inland and west of Pilots Station East is the NOAA station at Grand Isle, LA:
Buoy GISL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Moving inland, we first come to the Shell Beach, LA station:
Buoy SHBL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
and west of that, the Bayou Gauche, LA station which is also run by NOAA:
Buoy BYGL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Interestingly, a bit further west, the lowest pressure of 28.50 in Hg was recorded at Amerada Pass, LA:
Buoy AMRL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
And just to show that a buoy and weather station's job is not an easy one, the buoy station at South Timbalier Block 52 off the south west coast of LA seems to have taken the second half of the day off:
Buoy SPLL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Have LHC Black Holes Jumped The Shark?
By now many people in the world are aware that CERN is about to commission the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and bestest ever toy for high energy particle physics. After a problem with some of the magnet assemblies was discovered last year, the time table was pushed back a bit and some preliminary testing plans were reduced or eliminated. By late July, all the beam lime components were at their nominal operating temperature of -271°C and just last week a first test was done to work on synchronizing the injector (SPS or Super Proton Synchrotron) with the LHC. September 10th is the tentative date for the first 'live' circulating beam at 450 GeV with the goal of ramping up to 5 TeV beams for collisions at a center of mass energy of 10 TeV this fall. Fermilab and their search for the Higgs particle is now officially on the clock!Along the way though there has been considerable hand wringing in the press over the objections of a small number of people (some with physics degrees) who feel that planet earth will be be in great peril if the LHC is operated at full energy and luminosity. Many of these individuals believe that the LHC will create mini-black holes which will, so they claim, swallow the earth. Others also believe that the LHC may be able to create exotic new forms of matter called 'strangelets' which also could interact with ordinary matter on the earth resulting in our doom. Similar complaints were lodged before Brookhaven's RHIC (relativistic heavy ion collider) began operations in 2000. CERN, like BNL, caved into these outrageous speculations and produced detailed reports on the 'risks' of operation and presented them to the public.
Quite a few physics blogs (written by those who have PhD's in high energy physics or related fields) have quite thoroughly explained the issues involved. One of the better ones, generally accessible to lay readers, is by BackReaction with the following posts: one, two, and three.
So it was with befuddled amazement that we heard the LHC and black holes mentioned while listening to the NYC area sports talk radio station, WFAN. A NJ car dealership, Brad Benson Hyundai (Benson was an offensive line star of the NY Giants super bowl team of 1986/7), regulalry runs radio spots with Benson spoofing or otherwise making fun of some topic of current events while extolling the '30% off' his dealership gives on new car sales. Most of the spots make light of politicians and their problems and a few have made it onto YouTube such as this one on Bush or this one on Elliot Spitzer.
Well, Black Hole Strangelet People (BHSP's), you've jumped the shark. Benson just ran an add in which he comments on the possibility of black holes and other weirdness swallowing up the earth when they turn on the LHC this fall while promptly offering a $1,000 "End Of The World " discount so you can enjoy a new car before it is too late. Luckily, I was driving slowly in a low traffic neighborhood as there was a serious risk of my truck having a collision with another car - physics! on the radio! on WFAN!?! LHC??? Hopefully for Brad he only has to pay the discount if CERN actually creates some strangelets or black holes which start eating the earth. (PS - Brad, its pronounced haa-drons, not hey-drons)
Fonzie where are you?
Are Electric Cars Worth It?
While reading Engadget we came across a post about a car called Think. This is just one of many recently announced electric car projects and we've always wondered.. but how much does it cost to 'fuel it up?' The press on this car (Forbes and the Intl. Herald Trib. have written about it) is very light in this regard, though for the Think we did see a mention of 3c per mile. Well that's at least a start but we are chronic cynics and needed to calculate this for our self.Using the technical specs available on the Think website, we see that a full charge requires 10 hours of 230 VAC at 14 Amps. This works out to be 32,200 watt hours or 32.2 KiloWatt hours in common units of electricity use. In our area of the Northeast US, 16 cents per KWH is common (though we are told the unweighted national average is about 10c) which equates to $5.15 per complete charge. The Think is said to have a range of 111.85 miles (180Km) for a cost per mile of $0.046. Sounds cheap so far.
Lets compare to a gas powered car getting 40 mpg - there aren't many but they are available. And to make the comparison fair, in addition to the electric bill, we have to add in the "mobility charge". What's that you say? In order to make the purchase price of the Think more attractive, Think has decided to in effect lease the owner the most expensive part, the battery. This runs about $300/month in Europe but is expected to drop closer to $100 as production ramps up. For this analysis, lets go with $150/month.
A typical light driving commuter - to the train station and back 5 days a week and errands on the weekend or someone living in the city driving a few miles a day, 7,500 miles per year is typical (and usually the lowest usage on insurance policies). For this driver, the traditional, high mpg gas car would cost 187.50 gallons, or $750 per year at $4.00/gallon. The Think will run (in the Northeast) about $350 in electricity cost but an additional $1,800 per year in battery fees for a total $2,150 or nearly 3X the operating cost of the gas powered car. Stretching this out to a more common 15,000 miles per year, the Think would run $2,500 total while that old fashioned car comes in at $1,500. The break even comes about 32,500 miles per year! -more-
CERN Announces Non-delay Delay
As we wrote a few months ago (yes, the science column has been getting short shift), the catastrophic failure of the 'inner triplets' in a vacuum test in March would likely delay the startup schedule of the LHC. With a press release this past week, CERN has both denied and confirmed our assessment by keeping the originally planned full startup date of May, 2008 but canceling the initial low-energy test run.“The low-energy run at the end of this year was extremely tight due to a number of small delays, but the inner triplet problem now makes it impossible,” said LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans. “We’ll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go.”This seems to us a foolish course of action which only serves to make management look 'effective' by keeping to the original full startup date. However, by tossing out the low-energy warm up run CERN risks finding out about more problems the hard way. Prudence suggests that with a machine this complex and costly, caution should be the order of the day and an abbreviated test run should be scheduled to kick the tires before driving the new Porsche off the dealer's lot.
LHC Delays Expected
Hmmm...was it just odd coincidence that we post on the ATLAS detector at the LHC only to learn later that night of a significant failure with the beam line? In fact, the event in question happened a few days earlier but news is just now getting around that CERN has a big problem on their hands - as does Fermilab, after the serious (catastrophic?) failure of a three quadrupole magnet set during a high pressure test. As has become the disturbing trend in high energy physics, the latest accelerators and detectors have become multi-country/multi-lab endeavors due to the inability of individual countries to finance these projects on their own. And thus Fermilab is on the hot seat with CERN pointing figures at them because these were magnets designed and assembled in the US. Fermilab has delivered nine of these quadrupole magnets but is also partially on the hook for 18 additional magnets designed and tested by the Japanese lab KEK and final assembled by Fermilab prior to delivery at the LHC.Initial indications are that there may have been a design oversight which failed to account for asymmetric loads which develop in the support structure holding the magnets inside their super cooling cryostat during a quench. [A quench is when a superconducting magnet suddenly goes 'normal' and releases a large amount of energy in a very short time.] While the engineering plans were reviewed by all parties involved, including CERN, nobody seemed to consider this issue. In addition, Fermilab only tested their magnets individually and not as part of the final triplet assembly (probably due to costs if we were to guess).
That the problem appears to be with the support structure and not the magnets themselves is a good thing. But it is hard to believe this will not result in at least a many month, if not year or more, delay for the LHC. Even if the existing structures can be used with only minor modification, engineering reviews will need to be made and modifications and testing done to all 27 of these quadrupole triplets. That won't be happening overnight. The official announcement (via Fermilab) is here.
ATLAS Detector at LHC
As many of you know, 2007/2008 will be an exciting time for particle physics in Europe as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starts to come on line. However, few people outside of the particle physics community ever set foot inside one these colliders - there aren't many of them and work takes precedence over public touring. And even when one does have the chance to sneak a peak, each facility is different. A trip in the mid 90s to Fermilab was interesting but ultimately under whelming as not much of the 'good stuff' was available, unlike a similar trip to Brookhaven where one could see up close the detectors, beam line and control rooms (picture below of the STAR detector at BNL).
STAR Detector at BNL Click for full size
From the physics blog Backreaction comes notice that CERN now has a live webcam following the construction of the ATLAS detector, the largest at the LHC and probably in the world. In addition there are some 360 ° views of the detector cavern and beam line (requires quicktime) which allow the user to zoom and pan all around. Almost like being there!
More Space Junk
As if the Chinese ASAT test last month wasn't enough, word comes today from SpaceWeather.com that Australia was treated to a spectacular display last night - of a very bright explosion and a resulting cloud of debris which was visible for almost an hour. The explosion was a "major breakup event" of an old Russian Briz-M rocket booster travelling in the wrong orbit since last year after it failed to launch of a communications satellite. When more is known on the amount of debris and orbit we'll post an update.Update 3/27/07: In a somewhat related event, a Lan Chile A340 flying to Aukland, NZ narrowly escaped being destroyed by the apparent early de-orbiting of a Russian satellite with debris raining down within five miles of the flight.
According to a plane spotter, who was tuning into a high frequency radio broadcast at the time, the pilot "reported that the rumbling noise from the space debris could be heard over the noise of the aircraft. "He described he saw a piece of debris lighting up as it re-entered (the earth's atmosphere). He was one very worried pilot, as you would imagine."
Airways New Zealand had been warned by Russian authorities almost two weeks ago that a satellite would be entering the earth's atmosphere sometime today between 10.30am and midday NZ time (6.30-8am WA time). Airways New Zealand then provided that information to airlines and pilots that would be travelling in that region at that time. They could then decide for themselves whether they wished to fly during that period. "But clearly there has been a timing issue," the spokesman said. Source: thewest.com.au
Hassium 270
An interesting result from the realm of experimental nuclear physics was announced recently by a team of 24 scientists from 10 research institutions, including the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Institute for Heavy-Ion Research (GSI) as well as institutions in Russia, the U.S., Switzerland, Japan, China, and Poland. The group is engaged in "transactinide chemistry", a fancy term for research into the chemical properties of super-heavy elements [the transactinide's are those elements with atomic number greater than Lawrencium, 103Lr (atomic number Z=103), the last element of the actinide series].As is the case with all elements with atomic number larger than Plutonium (Z=94), 270Hassium (Z=108) is not naturally occuring and is created by colliding two lighter nuclei. In the TUM experiment, a high energy beam of 26Mg (atomic mass number A=26) atoms are collided with a stationary target of 248Cm to form 270Hs (with four neutrons as byproducts). Pretty standard fare for super-heavy nuclei, though the researchers exploited a known feature of 269Hs which forms tetroxides when exposed to oxygen allowing for easier analysis of nuclear and chemical properties in a chromatographic detector.
And the result was to peg the lifetime of 270Hs at 30 seconds - an eternity when compared to most super-heavy nuclei which are deformed and decay in milliseconds. The fact that 270Hs was found to be 'long lived' confirmed theoretical expectations that the element would be near an island of stability. These 'islands' refer to elements having a certain combination of neutrons and protons (filled 'shells') which are energetically favorable and result in a nucleus less prone to decay through fission or other routes. 270Hs is close to the island expected to have 184 neutrons and 114 protons and theoretical calculations indicated 270Hs had sufficient closed subshells to give relative stability and long life. Elements on and near the island will also have spherical nuclei unlike their deformed super-heavy brethren. Unfortunately, the experimentalists haven't yet figured out a way to combine lighter elements to create one of the elements at the center of this island, such as ununquadium-298, unbinilium-304 and unbihexium-310 (all with 184 neutrons and proton numbers 114, 120 and 126). Unbihexium-310 is predicted to be the most stable as both the number of protons (126) and neutrons (184) are magic (closed shells), hence this element would be 'doubly magic' and very unlikely to decay. Note the funny element names are 'systematic element names' - temporary placeholders formed by an internationally approved methodology and used until the element is actually created for real. Once confirmed, an official name is assigned.
Junk Science Or Junk Food Science?
The AP wire is running a story on the results of two studies of weight gain by college students. Apparently prior studies were not very good as they looked only at the first semester of college and men were unrepresented. From the wire service articleOne out of six gained 10 or more pounds during freshman year, and 6 percent gained the "Freshman 15" or more. Men tended to gain weight sharply in the first semester and then more gradually after that, while women gained a lot at first and then tended to plateau, she said. At the end of the freshman year, more than 17 percent were overweight or obese, compared to only 14 percent at the start.Shocking! Absolutely shocking! Until of course one thinks back to their own college years and realizes they too gained weight during college. While the results of these studies may be accurate, what exactly are they telling us? Should we really be shocked that a young adult, typically 17 or 18 years old, would gain 5 to 15 pounds over their first two years of college? While drinking ages are now uniformly 21, all indications are the majority of college students still find ways to consume large amounts of alcohol, a certain way to gain weight. And once students are away from Mom, food selection is almost certain to suffer. We think it unlikely either of these factors has changed significantly during the past 30 years if not longer. But what of the more obvious fact that most people continue to grow and fill out a bit even after high school? While these studies are probably accurate and hence technically not 'junk science', we think speaking of a roughly 10% weight gain over the first two years of college in the alarmist terms they do is junk science.
The second study involved 907 students, 55 percent of them male, at an unidentified public university in the Midwest and was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Students were weighed four times as in the previous study, but also at the end of their sophomore year. Similar to the first study, students gained an average of 7.8 pounds during the freshman year. More than one-third gained 10 pounds or more, and one-fifth piled on 15 or more. Things got worse the next year. Males were on average 9.5 pounds heavier, and females, 9.2 pounds heavier, than when they started college.
"Students don't appear to be losing weight over this time and in fact they gained additional weight in their sophomore year," Lloyd-Richardson said. Source: AP
Physics Nobel Prize A Reach?
Just announced in Sweden are Physics Nobel prize winners John C. Mather of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and George F. Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley for their work done on analyzing the inhomogeneity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) space probe from 1989-1992. The CMB, first noted by Penzias and Wilson in the late 1960's (who also won the Nobel prize for their discovery), is the first measurable relic of the Big Bang and is a nearly isotropic radiation field at a temperature of 2.7°K which peaks in the microwave region. Initial data at the time suggested the CMB was uniform, however astronomers felt this was unlikely as then the random clumping of matter into galaxies we see today would not occur. More precise data was needed and eventually was obtained with the COBE experiment in 1992 by Mather and Smoot who showed the CMB varied by parts per hundred thousand. AIP reports that at the meeting these results were announced, the audience fell silent in shock at the degree to which the data matched the expected blackbody spectrum.So why are we under whelmed with this prize? While it is certainly true that COBE and the subsequent data analysis was a technical tour de force, it really only further refined data which was known (the CMB temperature) and confirmed prior expectations (small inhomogeneity). It -more-
NASA, Orion And Great Leaps Backwards
Yesterday NASA announced that Lockheed-Martin had won the competition for the shuttle 'replacement' vehicle and future moon/Mars orbiter/lander with an estimated cost of $7.5 billion through 2019 for eight ships. Prior to this the GAO estimated NASA had spent close to $5 billion since the Challenger disaster to find a suitable replacement for the aging shuttle fleet. At this point it seems reasonable to question the judgement and expertise of both NASA and their chosen contractor. One of the never built replacements was the recent Lockheed-Martin X-33 space plane concept for which NASA paid $900 million and got a failure "for technical reasons". Lockheed claims they are much more confident about the Orion vehicle, a second design after NASA rejected a prior submission which was too similar to the failed X-33. "We're not shooting as far... I'd say it (Orion) is within reach" according to Lockheed Martin Vice President John Karas. Hmmmm... what is wrong with this picture folks? Could it be that the estimated first test flight date is September 2014 with a possible trip back to the moon in 2019 ? That the vehicle is to be build by a company the taxpayer has already sunk nearly $1 billion in for a ship whose design was scrapped?On September 12, 1962 John. F. Kennedy spoke at Rice Stadium in what is now called "The Moon Speech": -more-
PAMELA In Space
Good news out of Russia; the PAMELA experiment was successfully launched from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan yesterday on a Russian launch vehicle. PAMELA is a cosmic ray expermient being hosted on the Resurs-DK1 satellite (a seperate mission to monitor the sea surface status, the ice situation and meteorology of the Earth's polar regions). With a minimum design life of three years in orbit, PAMELA will obtain vastly better data on cosmic rays than current techniques using balloons or short lived (2 day) space shuttle missions. While most cosmic rays are very high energy protons and nuclei, a small portion are antiprotons and antielectrons and PAMELA will be able to detect about 1,000 times as many of these as in balloon experiements.The PAMELA detector is a 470kg spectrometer which can determine the momentum and charge of incoming cosmic rays by measuring the curve of the particle tracks as they are deflected by strong magnets. The spectrometer tracks alone are not enough to identify the type of particle; a calorimeter is also necessary. The calorimeter, which measures particle energy, can also result in a shower of secondary particles and it is by studying these that the researchers will identify the anti-particles (the secondary showers are different for regular protons than antiprotons). This is a good time to be in space looking for cosmic rays as the solar cycle will be at a minimum in 2008 which reduces interference from particles in the solar wind.
The hope for the detector is to measure the first traces of 'dark matter'. Some field theory models, known as 'supersymmetric theories', predict that dark matter are particles called neutralinos. The neutralinos can self-annihilate which results in positron and antiproton cosmic rays at specific energies which PAMELA is able to detect. In additional, some astronomers predict the possibility of antigalaxies made of antimatter which may be detected as jets of antihelium and anticarbon nuclei incident on the PAMELA detector. At a small cost of Euro 21M, PAMELA is poised to greatly enhance our knowledge of cosmic rays and provide first evidence of a new class of matter and validate some very esoteric high energy particle theories.
PAMELA is a collaboration between Russia, Italy, Germany and Sweden and is led by Piergiorgio Picozza of the University of Rome. More detailed information is availabe from an 8 page paper authored by Picozza and Morselli available at the LANL archive.
Distributed Brillouin Sensor
Ask a person what they know about fiber optic cables and most would say it is something used in phone and Internet communications. That may be changing as AIP's Physics News reports on a novel use for all that extra fiber spun during the dot.com boom. In Update 768 is a report on the development by University of Ottawa researchers of "Distributed Brillouin Sensors". The Brillouin effect describes how light interacts with variations in its path caused by temperature or acoustics (phonons). By using the fact that phonons could alter the frequency of light waves in a fiber, researchers were able to make a sensor which could detect very small changes in a material caused by strains. For example, one of their demonstrations ran optical fiber around a piece of metal pipe (like those used in oil or gas transport) and were able to pinpoint strains with an accuracy of 5cm and magnitude of 20 microstrains. This is significant as current analysis of the health of structures like pipelines is done on a spot basis which is time consuming, expensive and less accurate. This DBS even exceeds the hopes of industry which have been looking for ways to detect changes of 50 microstrains with one meter accuracy. Other uses could be in the testing of concrete for large structures and it could go a long way to more effective monitoring and repair of infrastructure like bridges. So the pundits are right - fiber will be everywhere!Mars: MRO's Big Day
At 3:49 PM EST the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will begin its orbital insertion after a speedy seven month journey. The critical time period will be 4:46 - 5:16 PM EST as the orbiter travels behind the planet as the engine braking burn is completed and by about 5:30 PM NASA JPL will begin receiving telemetry with the status of the craft. JPL has quite a few pages dedicated to the mission and today's orbital insertion: Doppler Imaging of the crafts velocity; NASA TV Live from JPL all day; simulated views from the MRO . We hope everybody used the proper units in the orbital programs and all parts work as they should - in 1993, NASA lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft before entering orbit and in 1999 the Mars Climate Orbiter failed on arrival. Go MRO!New Results From Opposite Length Scales
Last week saw a few interesting results announced from completely opposite length scales - from the atomic (nanometer) to the cosmic (kiloparsecs), a difference in scale of 1029. A group from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced a new measurement of the distance to the Perseus spiral arm of our galaxy (the earth is actually located in the short Orion arm which in fact is inside the larger Perseus arm.) Prior measurements relying on the brightness of certain stars and the rotation of the galaxy differed by a factor of two and are inherently less accurate than the parallax measurement made in the Harvard-Smithsonian study. Using the VLBA (Very Large Baseline Array) of radio telescopes, they measured the slight change in relative position of region of the Perseus cluster against a distant background of quasars as the earth orbited the sun. The result: 1910 parsecs (6230 light years). A by-product of this measurement was the determination that the object they tracked (W3OH) was moving slower than expected and could indicate the spiral arms are denser than their surroundings. -more-Tropical Storm Epsilon and Storm Naming
The amazing hurricane season just won't end. Tropical storm Epsilon was named today, just 24 hours before the official end to the Atlantic hurricane season. Having once been in a fraternity, the use of greek letters was a welcome change from some of the goofy storm names of past years. This got us thinking - why not just switch to the greek alphabet permamently? It would be much easier and eliminate the whole sexist naming issue. So we propose the following system of storm names:Using this convention, this past hurricane season would have seen Katrina be Mu (storm 12), Rita be Sigma (storm 18) and Wilma be Omega (storm 24). The recently named Epsilon would have been named Alpha Zeta (storm 29). Of course, none of this would be as interesting (or litigous) as using car names. Imagine the fun TV anchors would have with 'Hurricane Pinto slams into the Keys!'
Begin with Alpha, end with Omega (24 storms) Repeat if more than 24 storms, prefixing with Alpha and beginning with Beta
Vatican Weighs In On Evolution
Late Friday came word that the Vatican appears not to have any major qualms with Darwin's theory of evolution and is not comfortable with the concept of intelligent design. Unfortunately, the only wire report is via AP - all others have copied the same article. The salient quotes areCardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate.Wish there was a complete transcript to see the exact comments in context, but it appears -more-
"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said. "The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."
Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project, Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis. "A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. Evolution "is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."
Basti concurred that John Paul's letter "is not a very clear expression from a definition point of view," but he said evolution was assuming ever more authority as scientific proof develops.
Poupard stressed that what was important was that "the universe wasn't made by itself, but has a creator." But he added, "It's important for the faithful to know how science views things to understand better." Source: AP Newswire
