End of Days

November 07, 2009

Are you ready for the End of the World? Master of the Apocalyptic Blockbuster Roland Emmerich unveils his latest doomsday disaster on Friday November 13: 2012, starring John Cusack as sci-fi writer Jackson Curtis, a divorced father who occasionally moonlights as a limousine driver. First come the mass suicides in Guatemala in anticipation of the end of the world. Then vast cracks are found in California fault lines; Curtis saves his ex-wife, child and her new boyfriend in the nick of time as Los Angeles crumbles into the sea. Rio, Washington DC, and the Vatican in Rome are all destroyed in short order. Oh, did I mention the sooper sekrit society that is constructing giant arks in the Himalayas to save a small fraction of humanity from impending doom? It's all delivered in Emmerich's trademark cataclysmic style (what io9 has dubbed "disaster porn"). Check it out:

The film's premise derives from a popular doomsday prediction centered on the Mayan calendar. It lasts 5126, at which point the calendar abruptly stops at December 21, 2012. For whatever reason, the Mayans didn't bother to count any further, leading certain highly imaginative, rather hysterical types to conclude this denotes the End of the World.

2012 conspiracy theorists have also bundled in the notion that this global destruction will occur when the legendary Planet X crashes into Earth. Astronomers were intrigued by the possibility in the mid-19th century, shortly after the discovery of Neptune -- they thought it might explain perceived discrepancies in the orbits of the great gas giants. Pluto, discovered in 1930, was initially heralded as Planet X, but it turned out to be too small to effect the orbits of the gas giants. Heck, it's not even technically a planet any more. (There is a dwarf planet called Eris just beyond Pluto, but it's in a stable orbit and isn't going to crash into Earth.)

And because you can never cram too many crazy ideas into a single Disaster Hoax, there are some people who believe Planet X is actually the mythical Nibiru, supposedly known to ancient Sumerians, which has a highly elliptical orbit and passes into our solar system every 3600 years. Earth itself, according to this crackpot theory, was created from a collision between Nibiru and some other object in the asteroid belt. Oh, Nibiru also doubles as a "spaceship" of sorts, in that an alien race supposedly traveled to Earth during one of its passes and founded the human race.

There isn't a shred of evidence for any of this, of course, and any number of articles and blog posts have been written debunking the nonsense -- along with Neil de Grasse Tyson, who does so with typical good humor in the clip below. That doesn't mean we won't thrill to the sight of a cinematic end of the world, because who doesn't love a good disaster flick now and then? But we should really focus our doomsday anxieties to more realistic scenarios.

No, No Baguette!

November 06, 2009

Oh noes! We're doomed! And it's not because of the 2012 prophecies, but because of the Large Hadron Collider, that giant particle accelerator in Switzerland that fear-mongers are convinced will destroy the earth with black holes -- assuming it ever turns back on and gets up to its peak energies.

The LHC was all set to be fired up and ready to go -- and then an errant bird with a taste for good bread went and dropped a hefty crumb on a sensitive piece of outdoor equipment. The end result? Overheating the accelerator and causing yet another delay for the beleaguered collider. For a big bad, world-destroying machine, the LHC is turning out to be more of a hot-house orchid, brought down by a l'oiseau and une baguette. (The bird is just fine, by the way -- probably just peeved at the waste of good quality bread.)

Notes Popular Science: "With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched." Or, as New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye summed up that particular theory: "A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."

Don't you love the sly innuendo of "otherwise distinguished physicists?" Let us heed our ornithological omen, people. Maybe Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya -- the harbingers of this particular fringe-y theory -- are onto something: a vast conspiracy on the part of Nature to keep lowly mortals from discovering her innermost secrets. Nature doesn't really abhor a vacuum, but apparently it abhors the Higgs.

Admit it: the conspiracy theory is way more interesting that the far more mundane (and likely) explanation: that with such a large, expensive and complicated machine, there are bound to be vulnerabilities and technical difficulties before everything gets up and running smoothly.

Photo: Popular Science

WiFi in the Sky

November 03, 2009

Quick question: what do black holes and your laptop's WiFi connection have in common? A recently honored astronomer and engineer named John O'Sullivan has the answer. There are lots of astronomy related prizes out there, but the 2009 Australian Prime Minister's Prize for Science, awarded to O'Sullivan, is noteworthy because its impact has been felt far beyond the field of astronomy and astrophysics.

See, way back in 1977, O'Sullivan co-authored a technical paper about how a set of equations known as Fourier transforms could be used to improve the optical images from telescopes that had been distorted by the atmosphere. Fourier transforms are central to modern digital signal processing: they essentially take complex wave signals and break them down into their component parts. Once the "recipe" is known, it is possible to rebuild the signal, or build a signal that effectively cancels out the noise in collected data. Fourier transforms can be applied to any wave: sound waves, water waves, and light waves.

O'Sullivan developed his techniques because he was searching for radio waves emitted by exploding black holes -- a phenomenon predicted by Stephen Hawking in 1974. O'Sullivan didn't find those objects, despite his success cleaning up the distorted inter-galactic radio waves; the remnants of those radio emissions were simply too faint. But his techniques are now central to the wireless Internet revolution, making it possible for us to surf the Web without those pesky cable hookups -- and relatively free of distortion and interference from other radio sources.

So I congratulate O'Sullivan on being so honored, and thank him not just for my wireless connection, but also for improvements to radio astronomy that have yielded images like those below of the galaxy at the center of the Perseus cluster, courtesy of the Chandra Observatory. (The first is a composite image combining optical, x-ray and radio wave imaging; the second is the isolated radio wave image.)

"We Are All Connected"

October 28, 2009

Just to ease the mental anguish inflicted by the "science of homeopathy" video, here's a fantastic musical mashup called "We Are All Connected" -- not in any vague, New Age-y way, just by the fact that we're all made of "star stuff" forged in the explosions of supernovae, as Carl Sagan so eloquently put it when Cosmos first hit the airwaves. Sagan and Cosmos are sampled, naturally, along with Bill Nye the Science Guy, astrophysicst Neil de Grasse Tyson, the History Channel's Universe series, and a set of 1983 interviews with the late Richard Feynman. Get your physics groove on!

A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing

Just in time for Halloween, we bring you a terrifying pseudoscientific YouTube video, courtesy of a 2007 Wellness Seminar in Bozeman, Montana. (h/t: PZ Myers of Pharyngula -- perhaps you know him by his hip-hop moniker, P-Zeddy.) The woman is attempting to "explain" the "scientific" basis for homeopathy by invoking the name of Albert Einstein, among other luminaries. Her (highly disjointed and rambling) argument appears to boil down to this:

[pseudospeak on] Einstein said that light times mass is energy in his famous equation, E=mc<2>. But how much mass are we, really? Compress all the mass in the universe so that there is no space at all, and you'd get something the size of a bowling ball. So, really, our body's mass is an infinitesemal amount! Which means we can just cancel out that pesky "m" expression in Einstein's equation to conclude that light is energy. How amazing is that? And since our bodies have almost no mass, really, that means we are made of energy. Energy can't be created or destroyed, only transformed from one state to another state. That is the definition of disease: we have transformed our healthy energy state into a diseased energy state. Homeopathy just transforms one form of energy to another to "heal" disease.

And hey, speaking of vibrations, there's a physicist name Stephen Hawkings who invented the string theory that says the particles in the universe are tiny strings that work by vibration -- those very same vibrations picked up by our eyes and ears. If none of us having any real mass, and everything is energy, that means everything has a vibration to it. We just need to encase some form of energy for later use! Homeopathy is teh awesome! [/pseudospeak off]

Sigh. Really, there's so much wrong or misguided here, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Seriously, would it have killed her to look up "Stephen Hawkings" on Wikipedia to learn that there is no "s" in his surname, and that he actually works on general relativity? And that string theory was invented in the 1970s by numerous theorists, including Gabriele Veneziano and Leonard Susskind, among others? (Veneziano is the one who first unearthed a long-forgotten equation by Leonhard Euler 200 years earlier, and Susskind found the equation could describe not just the strong nuclear force, but also vibrating elastic particles.)

This is a prime example of how well-meaning but misguided people learn a few cool-sounding physics terms -- thermodynamics! string theory! relativity! -- and try to twist otherwise perfectly valid science around to justify their personal beliefs. But that isn't science, people; it's the classic definition of pseudoscience. Watch the whole scary thing... if you dare! Don't be surprised if your head goes all 'splodey.

Felicia Day, Cosmic Buzzkill

October 26, 2009

Via io9 and uber-fanboy Phil Plait, here's a genuine treat: actress and all-around Web goddess Felicia Day (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, The Guild) shows off her science chops in a new PSA from the Spitzer Science Center on behalf of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Apparently there was a bit of public consternation earlier this year when the folks at Spitzer announced the "imminent" collision of two distant galaxies.

Our intrepid heroine battles condescension and sarcasm from a highly misguided director -- not to mention awkward cameo voice-overs from Sean Astin -- to reveal the far less scary truth about what really happens when galaxies collide. "Once again, Felicia Day sucks all the fun out of our film," the director snipes; she clearly finds truth to be a buzzkill.

But wait! Maybe it's not entirely the director's fault! Consider the slightly sensational tenor of the opening paragraphs of the press release the Spitzer folks issued back in March:

A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope offers a rare view of an imminent collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with millions of times the mass of the sun. The galactic cores are in a single, tangled galaxy called NGC 6240, located 400-million light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Millions of years ago, each core was the dense center of its own galaxy before the two galaxies collided and ripped each other apart. Now, these cores are approaching each other at tremendous speeds and preparing for the final cataclysmic collision. They will crash into each other in a few million years, a relatively short period on a galactic timescale. [emphasis mine]

No wonder the Spitzer Science Center found they needed a PSA to correct public misconceptions. The universe is an awe-inspiring place, and I'm all for punching up the prose stylings a bit when communicating science broadly. But if you describe colliding galaxies as "cataclysmic," don't be surprised if there are a few directors out there who get the wrong idea. As Felicia herself points out (in the name of Joss Whedon), real science is pretty darn cool all on its own. You don't need to punch up the verbiage quite that much.

Hey Mr. Spaceman

October 23, 2009

I've blogged a couple of times about Quantum Quest: A Cassini Odyssey, an animated feature by Dr. Harry Kloor. The full, glorious 3D IMAX experience will make its debut next year, but those who crowded into the CUNY Graduate Center's auditorium Wednesday night got a sneak peek at the 2D lower resolution version of the completed film, followed by a short discussion with Kloor himself, and his special guest: space shuttle astronaut Dan Berry, who made four spacewalks during his NASA tenure. (By the way, the CUNY  Graduate Center has an amazing Science and Arts program and regularly hosts such events.) The event was part of the Imagine Science Film Festival, and sponsored by the Science & Entertainment Exchange.

Quantum Quest is the story of a plucky little photon named Dave who lives in the sun and is drawn into an epic galactic battle between good and evil as the forces of the Core (protons, photons and neutrinos) face off against the antimatter forces of the Void to determine the fate of the universe. The film combines state-of-the-art CGI with actual images taken not just by Cassini-Huygens, but also other NASA missions (SOHO, Stereo, Mars Odyssey, Venus Express and Mercury Messenger).

Berry had a whimsical explanation for how he ended up in science as an astronaut: "I really wanted to fly." As a child he jumped off everything he could -- so much so, his folks bought him a football helmet, "even though I didn't play football; they were just tired of all the trips to the ER." He graduated to building model airplanes, then attaching small motors to the models. "Once you start doing that, you start to figure out how they fly -- and you want to make them fly better."

The path to doing that? SCIENCE! Do that, and you can grow up to be an astronaut and help build an international space station. That was the culmination of Berry's lifelong dream, and I don't think I've ever heard an astronaut speak so eloquently about The View From Up There. It's not the same thing as being inside the small, cramped shuttle: the windows are tiny so you can't really get the full panoramic effect. Berry's spacewalks gave him the opportunity to get outside the shuttle, and the visor on his space helmet gave him a full field of vision of the Earth. "That moment of watching the Earth, the camera just doesn't capture the details, the beauty of Earth," he said, describing the "gemstone qualities" our pretty blue planet set brightly against the dark backdrop of space.

Both Kloor and Berry shared a childhood love for science fiction -- Kloor's mother was writing a science fiction novel while he was in the womb -- and in Berry's case, he played fantasy games with his siblings about traveling to Saturn and distant stars. He's a fan of Quantum Quest because of the way it combines real science with imagination. "A lot of science is about imagination, channeling creativity to explore the world," he said.

While much of the scientific content in Quantum Quest is highly accurate -- there really are lakes of methane on TItan, and protons really do surf the solar wind -- Kloor admits to adhering to the "Bugs Bunny Principle" for the basic premise. Once you've personified subatomic particles as Dave the Photon and Neutrino Rangers, who are able to converse, is it really worth being a stickler for "How can they talk to each other in the vacuum of space where sound waves can't propagate?" That is nerd-gassing taken to extremes. Kloor has done countless test screenings for audiences of all ages, and finds that "Kids never get confused between the fiction and the science." It's those with advanced science degrees that appear to have lost their willingness to suspend disbelief.

The film has an undeniable educational component, but it's not a straight documentary either. That is part of its charm -- and, one hopes, its effectiveness. "One kid might only learn that a photon is a particle of light; another might pick up on the fact that the four fundamental forces don't affect the Neutrino Ranger," says Kloor. And that's good enough for him.

By the way, among the many Hollywood luminaries who lent their voices to the film is Chris Pine, currently Tinsel Town's hottest young actor for his role as the young Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams' blockbuster Star Trek reboot earlier this year. The actor was unable to make the CUNY screening, but here's Pines chatting with Kloor by phone at this summer's ComicCon session devoted to Quantum Quest:

Down at the Particle Pub

October 21, 2009

There's nothing quite like taking science to the people in the form of their local pub, particularly if it's part of the ongoing Quantum to Cosmos Festival, hosted by the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. Last night I joined physicists Lee Smolin (a founding member of Perimeter, Jazz Whisperer, and author of The Trouble of Physics, among other books) and Cliff Burgess (McMaster University and All-Around Mensch) to chat with our fellow imbibers about the Large Hadron Collider, the Standard Model of particle physics, what one might do with an old, outdated accelerator, and after the alcohol took effect, we even delved a bit into quantum gravity (Lee's bailiwick). Good times! 

The festivities were hosted by ringmaster Wilson da Silva, Awesome Dude -- also editor of Cosmos magazine. Those Aussies know how to bring science where it counts. There are photographs of the event, oh yes, and there was supposed to be a podcast suitable for downloading, but apparently we didn't speak loudly enough and there were "technical issues" as a result. No matter. A good time was had by all, especially the panelists.

The evening's title was "The Biggest Gamble in Physics?" because Wilson believes in bringing the controversy right out of the gate. The Large Hadron Collider is a huge machine, very powerful, very expensive -- is it worth the price tag for whatever we're likely to discover (if anything)? Cliff quickly established himself as the optimist among us, convinced we will not only find the Higgs boson when the LHC (finally) turns on, but a few other exciting things too. He's expecting surprises, and looking forward to them.

I conceded that it might be difficult for the average Person on the Street to justify spending that kind of money on a big machine to explore the Big Bang when people are losing their jobs and homes in droves (especially in the US), but pointed out that there are economic benefits as well: the LHC generates jobs and spinoff technologies, many of which we can't even envision yet. And Lee brought some much-needed perspective by quoting Eric Weinstein: "For the cost of bailing out one bank, we put a man on the moon." (And that's not counting all the hefty bonuses announced this past week.)

We also commiserated about the difficulty in summing up the Standard Model of particle physics for a general audience. Wilson claims he once tried to write a short sidebar summary for a Cosmos feature, "and 748 words later, I was finally finished." I marvel he could do so in under 1000 words. I like to use the analogy of a big noisy family of particles, akin to the loud Greek relatives in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding: there are all kinds of cousins, second cousins, aunts and uncles, half of whom are named Nick, and even the occasional crazy grandparent making a rare appearance. It's tough to keep them all straight. So with the Standard Model. Lee says his goal is to reduce the model down to something more manageable, along the lines of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It would be easier to just have a Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear.

That complexity, of course, is why it proved so difficult to dispel the myth that the LHC will create a big black hole that will destroy the world. No major media outlet could resist the temptation to play the Doomsday card, although the Daily Show gets kudos for ridiculing the mastermind behind the hysteria. I argued that, as annoying as the media coverage became, the LHC was the third biggest news story of 2008. The LHC has fantastic name recognition, even if it's as a Doomsday Machine.

Afterwards, we repaired to Perimeter's famed Black Hole Bistro -- it seemed fitting, if the LHC is going to make a black hole to destroy the world -- where we hobnobbed with fellow panelists, and I got to hover shyly near author Neal Stephenson (Anathem, The Baroque Cycle, and my favorite, Snow Crash) as he chatted with MIT's Neil Gershenfeld and others. Even I have my Fangrrl moments. All in all, it was an amazing festival experience, and I'm sorry I could only take in such a small part of it.

State of the Universe(s)

October 19, 2009

Last night I had the honor of moderating a fantastic discussion between three leading cosmologists: ASU's Lawrence Krauss (of The Physics of Star Trek fame), University of Michigan's Katie Freese, and Neil Turok, now the director of the Perimeter Institute, which organized the city-wide Quantum 2 Cosmos festival. The Q2C organizers have gone all out with the multimedia: most lectures and panels are available online, streaming live while in progress, along with a Twitter feed.

We covered a lot of ground in 55 minutes, discussing the unprecedented explosion in our scientific knowledge of the universe during the 20th century and looking to the future by exploring the mysteries currently facing cosmologists: dark matter, dark energy, gravitational waves, whether inflationary theory is correct, and what might have existed before the Big Bang? These are deep waters, Watson. Okay, I had to ask Krauss about the whole "red matter" scenario in the latest Star Trek reboot (he liked the movie, had little use for the "science"). But other than that, we stuck to the serious stuff. Mostly.

I always learn something new when I talk to scientists, and this time was no exception, thanks to Katie Freese. She told me about "dark stars": not the precursors of black holes first hypothesized back in the 1700s, but a new kind of star that may have been the first type of star to form in the early universe. Freese and a few colleagues published the seminal paper on dark stars in January 2008 in Physical Review Letters, and she's still uber-excited about the possibilities for the existence of these objects -- as well she should be.

See, if these things turn out to exist, it would significantly change current theoretical models for star formation. Right now, scientists believe the first stars formed inside clouds of dark matter, in which hydrogen and helium cooled down sufficiently to make nuclear fusion possible. The only role dark matter plays in this scenario is to supply the gravity needed for the gases to clump together in the first place.

But if Freese and her colleagues are correct, then the concentrations of dark matter particles would be so high that those particles would collide with each other and annihilate, releasing energy, and keeping the almost-star too hot to collapse down to sufficiently high density for fusion to begin. In short, it's an entirely different fuel source than that which powers "normal" stars. The next step is actually detecting them, and Freese thinks the new James Webb Telescope slated for launch in 2011 will be able to see them, although she cautions that while dark stars may shine, "they will look different than stars that operate by fusion." Emissions of gamma rays, neutrinos or antimatter could all turn out to be "signatures" of dark stars.

Like any new idea, it has its skeptics in the scientific community. Freese et al's model does rely on some necessary assumptions that may turn out to be incorrect. Most notably, their calculations are based on a type of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) called a neutralino -- it's the leading candidate for dark matter particles, but it may not be the right one, or the only one. But it's not an implausible scenario either. Like so much in cutting edge cosmology and astrophysics, the excitement comes from exploring what we don't know, because that inevitably leads to new discoveries.

Anyway, we ran out of time before we could really discuss dark stars in detail during the panel, but we covered lots of other great topics, and we certainly didn't ignore the "dark side of the universe." That's where all the cosmological action is these days. You can watch the whole thing below. (Note: For some reason, the "embed" feature has been giving me grief. If it's not showing up in the post, you can still watch the entire panel discussion here.)

Hangin' With Captain Kent

I'm at the Quantum 2 Cosmos festival in Waterloo, Canada (near Toronto), in celebration of the Perimeter Institute's 10th anniversary. It's quite the celebration, with two weeks of public lectures, special events, and exhibits open to the public. The public, in turn, has turned out in full force: every event thus far has been sold out, with Waterloo residents packing Perimeter's main auditorium night after night to hear world-class scientists talk about the universe, space exploration, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, technological innovation, and the intersection of science and art.

It's impossible to see everything, and I'm only in town for a few days, but I did take a moment to explore the exhibit tent in downtown Waterloo, chock-full of family friendly demonstrations. I also had the chance to meet the star of a local children's show on TVOKids, "Captain Kent" (played by Mark Sykes), whose show is called Space Trek. (I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Captain Kent's delivery has many of the signature inflections immortalized by William Shatner. And I was relieved to see Captain Kent sporting a yellow shirt, not the more ominous Red Shirt.) Plus, there's a nifty online video game associated with the series.

Anyway, Captain Kent was all agog about the full-scale model on display of "Curiosity" (formerly known as the Mars Science Laboratory), slated for launch in the fall of 2011. He wasn't alone. Sean and I had just been admiring it, and observing it looked for all the world like a dune buggy. We could just see ourselves whooping with glee as we tumbled over the Martian rocks on a fine red-hued day.

Since he was toying with the idea of purchasing said space buggy, Captain Kent had a few questions about Curiosity, some of which I was able to answer, like where could he sit on it? Alas, there is no seat, so one would have to perch precariously on top and try not to interfere with all the bits ad bobs on top, crucial for communication. He also wouldn't be able to steer the craft on his own (bummer!); that's done with computers back down on earth, and the instructions are then sent hurtling through space and downloaded onto Curiosity. It takes a few minutes to cover that distance, and you just hope the instructions arrive before the craft takes a nosedive into a crater.

Any joyrider would also have to be careful not to interfere with Curiosity's scientific missions: taking soil and rock samples with its robotic arms, collecting data on the atmosphere and climate of Mars, and determining whether life could ever have evolved there -- all with an eye towards eventual human exploration of the Red Planet.

Curiosity isn't really for sale, which didn't seem to dampen Captain Kent's enthusiasm -- probably because, whether we get to ride it or not, it's a very cool machine. You can read more about it at the official Website.