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

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:

Hangin' With Captain Kent

October 19, 2009

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.

Brueghel's Telescopes

October 13, 2009

History books generally identify the inventor of the telescope as one Hans Lippershey, an eyeglass maker in the Netherlands in the late 16th century. The story goes that Lippershey saw a couple of children playing with lenses in his shop, and overheard them exclaim that looking through the lenses made a nearby building seem larger.

Lippershey experimented a bit further, and built a device he called a "looker," using a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. Galileo snagged an early version of the telescope as it spread through Western Europe, and improved the design to make the first observations of the moons of Jupiter, among other momentous findings.

But Johannes Kepler suggested the instrument could be improved even more in 1611 by using a convex eyepiece, resulting in a wider field of view. Nor was it necessary any longer to plate the eyepiece so close to the eye of the observer. The only disadvantage: the resulting image is inverted. Astronomers adapted accordingly. The first Keplerian telescopes were believed to appear around 1631.

Of course, there is evidence that Lippershey may not have been the first to build a telescope after all. His 1608 patent application was denied because the knowledge that combinations of lenses could magnify objects was already well known by that time. And now Kepler's own contribution to the development of the telescope is coming into question, according to astrophysicists at the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Trieste. The evidence can be found in a painting by a Flemish artist named Jan Brueghel the Elder, which depicts a telescope of Keplerian design even though the canvas was painted a good 15 years before its supposed invention.

Paolo Molaro and Pierluigi Selvelli have studied five paintings by Brueghel depicting telescopes, and maintain the artist made the first such representation of the telescope in his work, "Extensive Landscape with View of the Castle of Mariemont." Brueghel was court painter to Archduke Albert VII of Habsburg, and it just so happens that Lippershey gave one of his earliest telescopes to Albert. Molaro and Selvelli believe the telescope in the painting is, in fact, that particular instrument.

Another painting, "The Allegory of Sight," depicts a telescope that seems very much to be of Keplerian design -- except the canvas dates from 1617, well before the first Keplerian telescopes supposedly were built. Molaro and Selvelli base their conclusion on the length of the painted instrument -- is is longer than the earlier Galilean designs, just like Kepler's telescopes -- and the size of the eyepiece, designed to limit how close the eye can be brought to the eyepiece lens.

It's always a bit risky to draw scientific conclusions from works of art: all artists take liberties with their subjects when creating a painting, after all. But sometimes historical paintings can offer tantalizing clues, particularly when so little is known about an era. I guess we'll have to wait and see if art (or science) historians manage to dig up some corroborating evidence to support Molaro and Selvelli's hypothesis. In the meantime, it certainly makes for an intriguing premise.

Forward in a Flash

September 23, 2009

I definitely will be among the physics fans glued to the TV set this Thursday evening for the series premiere of Flash Forward, based on the sci-fi novel of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer. Heck, the novel kicks off the action at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, despite the fact that it hadn't been built yet when Sawyer wrote the book in 1997. But Sawyer, an uber-science fan, read about plans for the project, and it just so happened that the concept of achieving unprecedented energies fit very neatly into a science fiction plot he was sketching out at the time. The result was an action-packed story that prominently featured physicists on the ALICE experiment.

Particle physics has come a long way since 1997, but the LHC is unlikely to trigger a global event in which billions of people black out for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and catch a glimpse of their lives six months into the future. Judging by the series trailer, a lot can happen in six months. That's one of the departures from the original book, according to Sawyer, who told io9 recently that the producers opted not to have the glimpse be 20 years into the future, because then they would face the daunting task of trying to imagine and then create that future on a Hollywood set. And who has the budget for that these days?

Symmetry Breaking is currently featuring a terrific interview with Sawyer about the series, his book, and his love of science. The blog is also running a series of posts on the science of Flash Forward, including the reactions of physicists who have volunteered to watch the pilot. I predict a bit of nit-picking, since even Sawyer admits the producers departed significantly from his book (which took some liberties of its own). But Sawyer did serve as a technical consultant on the series, and was chuffed to discover that several cast members had read the book to prepare for their roles, including star Joseph Fiennes (pictured above with Sawyer).

Flash Forward isn't Sawyer's only novel to feature physics and physicists. He's also featured the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Hominids) and the search for dark matter (Starplex), and hints in the Symmetry Breaking interview that his next book may well feature the Canadian Light Source, a national synchrotron research facility. He doesn't think that gives much away, since "a synchrotron is a Swiss army knife of science."

If this keeps up, network television will be dominated by physicists in the coming years. Certainly Flash Forward has the advance buzz to make it a potential candidate to displace The Big Bang Theory as the hippest physics show on TV. Can a physics-based crime drama be far behind?

Flames Creep Up on Mount Wilson

September 18, 2009

Via Julianne at Cosmic Variance comes this sobering time-lapse video of the California wildfire that came so very close to destroying the Mount Wilson Observatory. You can see the flames creeping up on the structure, and the odd flash of backfire lit by the firefighters to clear the surrounding underbrush to deprive the wildfire of fuel. It worked! Mount Wilson Observatory survives to scan the skies once again. There is some serious clean-up being done, however, before the observatory is fully operational again. So if you feel so inclined to support an historical science site, head on over to this Website to make a donation to the fund to restore Mount Wilson. There's astronomical work to be done, after all!

All Along the Watchtower

August 31, 2009

Space science fans are on tenterhooks today awaiting the fate of the historic Mt Wilson Observatory just outside Los Angeles. The observatory is threatened by a wildfire still raging and casting a cloak of smoke over the region. Firefighters battled through the night to keep the flames at bay, and as of 9 AM Pacific this morning, the observatory's Webcam was still up and running -- a good sign, although it's not out of the woods yet.

For those who aren't familiar with Mt Wilson, this is the place where Edwin Hubble made his momentous discovery that the universe was expanding. That observation, combined with Einstein's theory of general relativity, changed the way we viewed our universe, from static and unchanging to dynamic and constantly evolving. Sure, there are communications towers at the observatory as well as the precious Hooke telescope with which Hubble made those observations. Communications towers can be rebuilt. A piece of astrophysical history is on the line, and here's hoping LA's firefighters prevail.

By the way, Hubble was assisted in collecting the spectrograph images of galaxies he used to make his conclusion by one Milton Humason -- a former janitor who found himself promoted to staff scientist and a place in this astronomy history books. You can read more about him here.

Image: The Los Angeles Times

Rare Isotope Rap

June 15, 2009

She's baaack! AlpineKat (a.k.a., Kate MacAlpine), that is, who gave us the Large Hadron Rap last year -- currently viewed by over 5 million people on YouTube, and still counting. This time, she busts a rhyme over the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a new project of the DOE being bult at Michigan State University in East Lansing. MSU hosted an event this past week to celebrate the future of rare isotope research, and AlpineKat was on hand to debut her new rap in full HD version: three elevated screens 14 feet across, augmented by a cutting-edge sound system.

This is the way physics rap was meant to be experienced, I'm sure, although YouTube is still the best way to reach a massive audience. Here's what MacAlpine had to say last year in Symmetry Magazine:

I think rap is a good way to communicate. Rhyme has always helped embed words in my mind; hopefully science rap can help cement ideas in the minds of students and other interested people. “Nerdcore” has been on the Web for a while, fusing “nerdy” from the cultures of video games and hard science with the “hardcore” of rock and hip-hop.

Check out the cameo appearance of Brad Sherrill, chief scientist of FRIB and a distinguished professor of physics at MSU -- who has a little fun wagging his bushy eyebrows mischievously at the camera.

In the case of FRIB, there's precious little material on the Web that isn't either highly technical, or, well, exceedingly non-specific -- what is it about DOE Web copy that puts a reader to sleep faster than Proust's Remembrances of Things Past? But give them time: FRIB is a brand new facility, after all. AlpineKat's Rare Isotope Rap is a welcome summary of what the project is, how it works, and why we should care about studying rare isotopes.

Rare isotopes are short-lived nuclei not normally found on Earth, and as AlpineKat raps, scientists still don't understand why some isotopes are stable while others decay. Investigating this myster could reveal clues about the life cycles of stars and the birth of the elements -- most of the heavier elements (everything except hydrogen, helium, and a bit of lithium and other light atoms) are the result of supernova explosions). Some of these rare isotopes could also lead to better diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, so it's not just all about esoteric, space-age science.

People keep asking MacAlpine about possible record deals, and she's pretty realistic about those prospects: "I don't think that'll be happening any time soon." And that's just fine by me. The music industry's loss is physics rap's gain. Five million YouTube viewers blows most record sales out of the water.

Moving in STEREO

May 26, 2009

The Sun has been awfully quiet of late. Too quiet, according to those who study our star and its many interactions with the stuff around it. There have been an unusually small number of active regions and sunspots over the last solar cycle. This hasn't happened since the late 17th/early 18th century, sparking concern in some scientific circles that the Sun could be approaching another ″Maunder minimum″ (as that earlier period is now known), perhaps spawning a second ″Little Ice Age″ of global cooling.

So a frisson of excitement spread through the community earlier this month when NASA's STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spotted the first major activity of the new solar cycle: a coronal mass ejection (CME) emanating from the far side of the sun.  It is "the first major outbreak of solar activity in [the new] Solar Cycle 24,″ according Joseph Gurman, who will take over as project scientist for STEREO at Goddard Space Flight Center on June 1. 

STEREO is part of a new subfield that has emerged in recent years to address this and related issues: heliophysics. The word was coined by Boston University's George Siscoe to describe anything related to the Sun's heliosphere. It is a systems approach, encompassing planetary atmospheres, magnetospheres, the solar corona and the interstellar medium, among other topics.

Launched in October 2006, STEREO is designed to study CMEs. Ham radio operators have known for more than 100 years that the ionosphere -- that region of space that gives rise to a layer of ionized gas (plasma) that surrounds Earth -- can bend, distort and even absorb radio waves. And if a CME from the Sun -- also known as a magnetic storm -- happens to erupt in the direction of our pretty blue planet, it can knock out power grids on Earth, not to mention air and satellite communications. Such events could also generate x-rays, gamma rays and other radiation that could put astronauts at risk. Small wonder, then, that scientists are eager to learn more about "space weather," particularly how they might better forecast magnetic storms.

Scientists are using STEREO to track CMEs from the Sun to the Earth and predict when that surge will arrive so there will be more time -- as much as 24 hours' notice -- for preventive measures to be taken to protect satellites and other technologies. This is possible because STEREO produces actual 3D images and movies using two wide-angle telescopes on satellites: one flying ahead of, and one behind, the Earth, thereby providing "stereo vision." (You can see a movie of the May 5 CME here.) Prior instruments were less able to determine the precise direction of a CME because they looked at the Sun straight on, whereas STEREO's instruments  observe the Sun-Earth "system" from two separate locations. It makes it much easier to tell if the Earth's ionosphere is likely to be hit by a powerful cloud of plasma.

A couple of years ago, just after the launch of STEREO, I spoke with program scientist Lika Guhathakurta (NASA) for an article that never ended up being written about heliophysics in general, and STEREO in particular. She assured me that the first images from STEREO would be "spectacular." And she was right. Here's hoping the mission continues to amaze and enlighten us as it orbits its way through space.

Photos: 3D images from STEREO showing a CME that erupted on May 5. Source: NASA/SOHO. Public domain.

Diamonds in the Sky

May 07, 2009

With Mother's Day fast approaching, jewelry retailers are anxiously hawking their wares, assuring us that what Mom really needs to feel appreciated is a lovely diamond necklace or diamond earrings -- and the rarer the gem (and hence more expensive), the more special she'll feel. I'm sure most moms don't really need diamonds; breakfast in bed is fine, even if the toast is burnt, because it's the gesture that's meaningful. But if I were going to buy my mom a diamond pendant, I'd want to gem to be something truly rare: a diamond from outer space.

What, you don't think there are diamonds in space? If course there are! Granted, they're awfully tiny -- less than the width of a human hair -- but there are countless numbers of them scattered throughout the circumstellar disks around very special distant stars, like Elias 1, located in the general vicinity of the constellation Taurus. Astronomers aren't sure what makes these stars so special -- their humbler counterparts aren't adorned with tiny diamonds -- and they'd like to find even more of them. Such is the quest of the Subaru Telescope, one of the largest optical-infrared telescopes in the world, located on the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea. 

The first evidence for diamonds in space was unearthed in 1983, when scientists spotted the telltale signature traces -- fingerprints, if you will -- of diamond crystals in the infrared wavelength in images of Elias 1. it is one of many very young, bright stars, about 1.5 to 10 times as massive as our own Sun (which, alas, is not adorned with diamonds). So far, however, despite extensive surveys of similar stars, only three others show that same distinctive signature, indicating the presence of diamonds in their disks.

Diamonds form on Earth under specific conditions: extreme high pressure and temperature, which is why they usually must be mined deep underground. But space has low pressure. If there are diamonds in interstellar space, that means there must be high pressure pockets in the vacuum. Knowing what we do about how diamonds form on earth, can scientists devise a treasure map of sorts to find hidden troves of diamonds in space? An international team of astronomers says yes. (They hail from the Max Plank Institute for Astronomy in Germany, Hokkaido University in Japan, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan -- which operates the Subaru telescope -- Jena University in Germany, and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.)

Specifically, by comparing all the data collected to date, they noticed that these spectral signatures usually are densely concentrated in the central portion of the circumstellar disk, and also that large X-ray flares are often observed in their vicinity. They suspect there is a link between the two, which seems to be borne out by key findings in the past.

For example, in 1996, German physicists discovered that tiny diamond particles would form at the cores of "carbon onions" when high-energy electron beams were fired into a vacuum. As its name implies, a carbon onion is made up of a shell of multiple layers of carbon, and this serves as a natural pressure container. The electron beam knocks out carbon atoms in the shell, so that shrinks (since there are now fewer atoms), until the pressure (and temperature) build up in the onion's center to thousands times more than the Earth's atmosphere. Carbon + heat + pressure = pretty diamonds!

Similar conditions could be created in interstellar space, around just those stars that show signs of diamonds in their circumstellar disks. The current team of scientists thinks that the X-ray flares -- which seem to come from the lighter of two stars in a binary system -- are accompanied by particle acceleration, thanks to stellar magnetic activity. And that would give rise to the sort of conditions wherein carbon onions could form in the vacuum of space, eventually shrinking down to tiny diamonds.

So we're looking for young bright stars of a certain intermediate mass (to warm the disk to a medium temperature), with a disk and a slightly smaller companion star emitting X-rays. Check. Too bad those conditions are so rare. But the international team is hopeful that there could be man more diamond crystals in space that we simply haven't been able to see because their emissions are shielded by the onion "shells." Perhaps someday, we will be able to buy our mothers literal diamonds from the sky, courtesy of a few special distant stars.

Photo: Carbon-based material in the circumstellar disk of Elias 1. Source: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.