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It's been a few weeks since we had a roundup of Friday Fodder here at the cocktail party, and it's high time we got back on schedule. So here's a sampling of cool physics-y links to liven up your cocktail party conversation this weekend.
Simulating the End of Time. Physicists at the University of Maryland -- the same group that brought you analogues of black holes back in 2006 -- have now used plasmons ("a two-dimensional form of light that moves along the interface between a metal and an insulator") to create analogues of what might happen to spacetime at the end of time itself. According to George Musser of Scientific American, they ended up with some unusual nonlinear effects corresponding to "the creation of particles—basically, Hawking radiation. In short, matter would go haywire at end of time. It would not go gentle into that good night." Or, as Brandom Keim put it over at Wired Science's coverage of the same story, "This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a higher harmonic generation." And in other time-related news, physicists re-confirm that time travel is probably impossible.
Oh, the Glare. Chad over at Uncertain Principles wondered how effective polarized sunglasses really are at blocking polarized light. So like any good physicist, he did the experiment.
Naked Science: The Singularity. No, not the kind of singularity futurists are always going on about. Over at io9, physicist Dave Goldberg tells you all about the science of a black hole's singularity -- and whether such a singularity could exist without the "clothing" of an event horizon. If so, then we might one day be able to observe the singularity without, you know, all the dying and stuff. Because once you fall into a black hole, Goldberg warns, "you get killed very quickly — it takes about a tenth of a second between mild discomfort and being ripped to shreds by tidal forces."
Through a Scanner, Lightly. The BBC made an eye-catching video of a multimedia musical performance by the Aurora Orchestra in London's Wilton's Musical Hall. The piece was composed by Mira Calix and Anna Meredith, who got their inspiration from the sounds of an MRI machine. Definitely worth a listen.
Hubble Space Telescope and the Scarlet Letters. Richard Panek at The Last Word on Nothing delves into an intriguing bit of recent space history, looking back to the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1986.
The idea was to include a small memento for the mission. Perhaps a pipe belonging to Edwin Hubble himself? Or something better: "What about the photographic plate with which Hubble had made the discovery that essentially began modern cosmology: that our vast menagerie of stars is not alone but is, as we now know, merely one among billions of galaxies clouding the universe as far as even HST would be able to see?"
In Defense of the James Webb Space Telescope. Physicist Lawrence Krauss writes an impassioned essay over at Richard Dawkins' place on why the successor to Hubble is important not just for science, but also for inspiring the public -- and, one hopes, a new generation of scientists.
The cancellation of the JWST would likely herald the beginning of the end of US leadership in Space Science, just as the cancellation of the SSC moved the center of gravity in particle physics to Europe. The JWST was designed to take off where the Hubble Space telescope—which has revolutionized astronomy—has ended, by taking us to the very beginnings of visible structure in the Universe. It was meant to be the centerpiece of astronomy for the next two decades, and without it, the tantalizing hints that Hubble has been able to glean about our beginnings will remain just that for perhaps a generation. ...But the potential loss of the JWST is far greater than just science. It is hard to think of a single NASA project, exceeding even the Mars Rovers, that has captured the imagination of the public, and in particular children, than the images of the cosmos provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. Whenever I lecture and show a Hubble photo I can be guaranteed to provoke excitement and awe. One can only imagine what inspirations the next generation will miss without another comparable eye in the sky.
The Science of Scotch. Over at Popular Science, reporter Paul Adams samples a bit of aged scotch at the Tales of the Cocktail convention in (where else?) New Orleans. But first, the chosen scotch is fractionated by scientist Dave Arnold: "He has set up his laboratory evaporator and physically separated out the flavor components in a glass of Glenlivet so they can be sipped individually.... The evaporator uses a process of vacuum distillation at room temperature to separate liquids based on their relative volatility."
Hot Enough To Fry an Egg? As the Northeast simmered in record-breaking heat, Alexis Madrigal and his colleagues at the Atlantic wondered if it was really possible to fry an egg on the pavement -- or, even better, on the rooftop of the infamous Watergate Hotel. So they did the experiment. Also? Here's a brief history of the science of air-conditioning.
When Circuits Go Squish. Who knew that PlayDoh could be used to build simple circuits? Lots of folks, apparently. The Exploratorium offers this terrific post and photographs of the museum's first session of summer trainings with its High School Explainers. "We led three workshops on squishy circuits on different days hoping that as many Explainers as possible could try out this activity. The workshops started with the challenge of using the playdoh and batteries to turn on an LED and then progressed to free exploration with all the materials."
The Ladies of the Mercury 13. Via Science 2.0 we learned that in the early days of the space race, NASA investigated the possibility of training women rather than men as astronauts for those early Mercury missions. (In other space trivia, apparently the spacesuits worn by the Apollo astronauts were handmade by seamstresses at Playtex.) Meet the 13 women who passed the same rigorous testing procedures as their male counterparts. In the end they didn't go to space, but they definitely brought some advantages.
Their proposition was based purely on physiology and practicality. They recognized that women's lighter weights would reduce the amount of propulsion fuel being used by the rocket's load and that women would require less auxiliary oxygen than men. They knew that women had fewer heart attacks than men and their reproductive system was thought to be less susceptible to radiation than a male's. Finally, preliminary data suggested that women could outperform men in enduring cramped spaces and prolonged isolation.
One-Minute Physics: Dark Matter. Is it possible to summarize the basic physics of dark matter in one minute? Watch the video and decide for yourself!
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. Regular readers know that Cocktail Party Physics celebrated its five-year anniversary back in February. Since then, it's morphed into a group blog, and back to a solo blog, and gotten a much needed design facelift, but it's always been consistently at the same site. That's about to change. Earlier today, Scientific American officially launched its spiffy new blog network, and the (newly rebooted) Cocktail Party Physics is among the 40 or so blogs selected for inclusion. That means from now on, our main site will be over at Scientific American rather than here.
Say what? Some of you might be thinking, and with good reason: until now, we've had an almost pathological need to remain independent. I've turned down past invitations to join similar bloggy conglomerates (most notably SEED's Science Blogs, back when I was just starting out). But the science blogosphere is changing rapidly, with more and more bloggy networks springing up, and the cocktail party has to adapt to those changes. Besides, the "blogfather" himself, Bora Zivkovic, is the mastermind behind Sci-Am's new network, and how could I say no to Bora?
Other than the hosting site, nothing much will change. Jen-Luc will still preside over the festivities, I'll be covering the usual fun whimsical topics, and there will still be the Friday Fodder feature. The Sci-Am design is pretty darned spiffy, and might even encourage me to write shorter posts. (The Time Lord scoffed in derision when I brought up this possibility, so perhaps not.)
What's gonna happen to the original site? Well, I will continue to mirror new posts here, with a 24-hour delay (mostly for archival purposes, and to keep this site active in case the whole network experiment doesn't work out), but comments will be disabled. And really, wouldn't you rather read the posts over there on the fancy new site when they're spanking fresh and new? Right now, there's just a welcome post, but that will change as we get up and running. I'm really looking forward to this new adventure, and hope you all will come along for the ride.
In the meantime, what with all my travels, we haven't really had a cool links roundup in awhile. So here's my picks from the last two weeks of the niftiest stuff we found around the Interwebs.
The Physics of Fireworks. This is a favorite topic on the Fourth of July weekend, and Ethan over at Starts With a Bang weighs in this year with a richly pictorial overview of the science behind those sparklers.
Grilling for Geeks. The folks at Scienceline have some tips about the science of grilling that perfect burger for the holiday.
M-80s or Gunshots? For those (like us) who live in urban areas, EastersiderLA has some handy tips to tell if that pop-pop-pop or loud bang you just heard was from fireworks, or an outbreak of gunfire.
Hitler Sucks at Math. Herr Hitler tries to learn about open and closed sets, and ends up unleashing his fury at those stupid topologists who keep making up confusing terms like "clopen sets." (Do we really need to warn you about the NSFW language? Everyone knows Hitler has a potty mouth!)
Lightning in Super-Slo-Mo. Via Laughing Squid, we thrilled to the site of Rob Flickenger setting up an array of ten cameras to capture the lightning emitted from his Tesla coil. The result: a video effect that resembles that awesome super-slo-mo bullet sequence in The Matrix.
Arizona Wildfires Threaten Los Alamos. Wildfires in Arizona began encroaching on Los Alamos National Laboratory last week, prompting worries about radioactive material getting airborne. Fortunately, Daniel of Cosmic Variance was on the scene to give a clear-eyed assessment of the real state of affairs -- check out part one and part two. Physics Buzz also covered the story.
The Physics of Tibetan Singing Bowls. Via io9, we learn that "The physics of the bowls are the same as a tuning fork, or a wineglass that is stroked around its rim. The friction of an object moving against it causes the overall object vibrates at a certain frequency. This vibration gives off the tone that we hear when a wine glass is played, or a tuning fork is struck." Not only do the bowls sing, they can also fizz and spit. Resonances. It's all about the resonances, people. And speaking of resonances...
Aural Geometry. The folks at Coilhouse tipped me off to the amazing video below exploring the geometry of sound. "A group of over 30 animators and sound artists teamed up to create short pieces between 12 and 20 seconds with the aim to 'explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways.' The result is a series of warped, surreal sound visualizations."
Mythbusting About Baseball With Physics. Working with colleagues from the University of Illinois and Kettering University, Washington State University physicist Lloyd Smith investigated cheating in baseball, resulting in a new paper in American Journal of Physics: "Corked Bats, Juiced Balls, and Humidors: The Physics of Cheating in Baseball."
Can the Coriolis Effect Influence a Baseball? Over at the Virtuosi, Corky takes an in-depth look at the Coriolis force -- "one of the artificial forces we have to put in if we are going to pretend the Earth is not rotating" -- and how it might impact a baseball's trajectory on a home-run hit.
Life in the Atomic City. Over at Believer Magazine, there is a lovely memoir by Millicent G. Dillon about her experiences in the late 1940s as an employee of the nascent Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It's a fascinating inside look at a very different world. Here is her recollection of hearing about the infamous 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
I thought of electrons spinning around a nucleus, held in place—could one speak of “place” in such a small universe?—by the forces binding the atom together, an enormous ergy locked within. But now that energy had been unlocked in a sudden, violent release that brought about the annihilation of a city….
And, later, a second city—to show that the annihilation could be repeated? Even later I would learn—we would all learn—of the many thousands dead in an instant, of survivors walking in a daze, their skin stripped, hanging, some walking with their eyeballs in their hands, of the many dying thereafter, slowly, of radiation.
Listen Up: Particle Physics Windchime. Symmetry Breaking recently featured Stanford particle physicist (and trained musician) Matt Bellis and his development of the Physics Windchime: "a computer application that could take particle physics data such as particle type, momentum, distance from a fixed point, and so on, and turn it into sound."
Last, but certainly far from least, I give you The Ultimate Late-Night Geek-Out, featuring sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman's star turn on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Just try to keep up with the hardcore geekitude.
We're having a bit of a thematic installment of Friday Fodder this week. See, I regrettably missed this year's Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle, but I still managed to rifle through their impressive collection of lay language papers covering talks presented at the meeting. I already covered the watershed work on muting the noise of flushing low-flow toilets a couple of weeks ago. But there were also tons of papers relating to speech: researchers at looking at the voice physiology of transgender people; how men and women imitate each other and what this might tell us how gender, emotion and just plain old acoustics impact those imitations; and how to identify the sexual orientation of speakers based on just their voices.
There was even a paper on "understanding casual speech," which I guess must be, like, hard and stuff for some folks. And now I'm happy to report that Abby Kaplan, who works in the linguistics department at the University of Utah, had some interesting things to say about drunken speech patterns -- namely, whether it's harder to pronounce certain sounds or words when intoxicated.
This might strike many readers as "Duh!" science, but as Kaplan discovered, actually demonstrating in a rigorous fashion what we all instinctively feel to be true -- based on personal experience -- isn't quite as simple as it seems. (Nor is she the first to be intrigued by this question. Via Language Log, I learned that there is a 1902 treatise by a guy named Edward Wheeler Scripture, The Elements of Experimental Phonetics, that toys with the notion of studying the phonetics of drunken and other unusual speech patterns through recordings.)
Let's start with the assumption that certain sounds and words are more difficult to pronounce than others (an effect that is exacerbated if, like me, your vocabulary was acquired through extensive reading -- I habitually put my emPHAsis on the wrong syllABle). "Intuitively, it seems obvious that some sounds are harder to pronounce than others," Kaplan writes. She points to the "th" sound, as in "think" as being rather rare in the world's languages, and a stumbling block for many ESL students.
Linguistic theory holds -- so far -- that some phonetic speech patterns involve substituting easier sounds for harder ones. The most common example is how [p] is ponounced [b] in some languages (Korean, Malaysian) when it occurs between two vowels, while in other languages [b] is pronounced [v] when between two vowels. But how do we know if these quirks occur because one sound really is easier than another? Well, you can always conduct a controlled experiment with participants reading a list of words first while sober, and then while intoxicated, since the latter sate impairs verbal (and other) functions.
And here is where the fun begins, because in order to test this hypothesis, Kaplan had to get her study participants quite drunk. I'm guessing she had quite a few volunteers. They were plied with equal parts vodka and orange juice until they reached a blood alcohol content level of between .10 and .12, just above the legal driving limit in the US of .08) -- until, one assumes, they started to sound like the title character played by Dudley Moore in the original Arthur from the 1970s:
Kaplan's findings: (a) drunken speech is indeed different from sober speech (the "Duh" aspect); and (b) "the overall range of sounds that people pronounce is smaller in drunken speech than in sober speech," which is consistent with Kaplan's original thesis, with one caveat: the participants didn't always choose the easier sounds when they were drunk. Sometimes they pronounced more of their [p]'s like [b]'s when drunk, but then, they also pronounced more of their [b]'s like [p]'s. So you can't really say, based on her study, that one sound is easier than the other. And this, says Kaplan, has some interesting implications for the prior assumptions made by linguists:
"If drunken speech really does involve saying `easier' sounds, then these results are a challenge for what linguists have traditionally believed about the sound patterns described above. These results suggest that neither [p] nor [b] is easier to pronounce between vowels, but rather that some sound intermediate between the two is easier than both. If it's not true that [b] is easier to say between vowels than [p], then there must be some other reason languages replace [p] with [b] in this context.... One important goal for future research is to try other methods of studying 'easy' and 'hard' sounds, and see whether the results of those methods are consistent with the results of this experiment."
Arthur's slurred speech is made more difficult to understand, one presumes, by his pronounced British accent. Over at The Last Word on Nothing, Sally Adee has an amusing post on why a British accent makes phrases like "chuffed" and "can't be arsed" -- even random dialogue from Jersey Shore -- sound posh, whereas when Adee herself attempts those phrases, her native-German-laced-with-Long-Island-and-a-bit-of-Baltimore accent simply isn't up to the "can't be arsed" challenge: "When a Brit delivers the phrase, those three little words are transformed into gleaming pearls of wit. But in my mouth, that 'r' is like hitting a ten-foot pothole in a clown car.”
I think we should all be able to say "chuffed" and other amusing Britishisms if we feel so inclined, even if it makes our friends roll their eyes -- possibly even with a fake British accent. C'mon, it could be funny, as well as pretentious. Jen-Luc Piquant deliberately puts on airs for her fellow avatars in Cyberspace; she thinks it makes her sound more sophisticated to affect zee 'eavy Gallic accent, n'est-ce pas? I don't have the heart to tell her that it just makes her seem like a prat. Who am I to judge?
Heck, sometimes I find myself imitating (badly) people's regional accents in casual conversation in spite of myself. I recall as a teenager, during church fellowship hour, finding myself in conversation with a well-spoken, articulate high school senior girl, who was making a valiant effort to reach out to the shy, socially awkward sophomore (i.e., me -- people don't believe me today, but I was painfully shy through much of college), fidgeting before her and struggling to maintain eye contact. I did my best to match her liveliness, her vocal inflections -- except then she got a strange look on her face and abruptly walked off. She thought I was mocking her (I wasn't). It was one of many failed attempts to fit in with my church's social structure.
The tendency of people to imitate tone of voice, gestures, and other elements of conversational style is something that is well-documented by linguistic studies, according to Sara Phillips, a linguist at Ohio State University. Phillips and her collaborators decided to explore one commonly imitated factor in particular: regional dialects, most notably, how certain vowels are pronounced. Northerners, for instance, might flatten out the vowel sound in "block" such that it seems closer to "black," and make a subtle distinction in vowel sound when they say "caught" or "cot," compared to Midland speakers. "We wanted to see if speakers imitate only idiosynchratic properties of the talker's voice, or if they imitate properties of the talker's dialect, too," writes Phillips.
So they had participants repeat words and phrases of certain regional dialect talkers, recording the utterances of both. These were designated A, B and X, in which B was the speaker's normal pronunciation, A was the speaker prnouncing the same word in imitation of a dialect speaker, and X was the original dialect speaker's pronunciation. Then they played the recordings back for a control group of listeners who were asked to determine whether A or B sounded more like X. (There are sound files so you can hear for yourself.) Anyone who chose A seemed to be picking up on the imitated accent of the dialect. Or were they? Phillips et al. coupled their study with an acoustic analysis, and came to a somewhat different conclusion:
"It appears that speakers were imitating aspects of pronunciation that are not known to mark dialect, such as the duration of the vowel or final consonant of the word. In our experimental materials, the Northern talkers produced longer vowels and consonants than the Midland talkers. This difference may have resulted in the appearance of dialect imitation, even though participants were really only imitating idiosyncratic features of the talkers’ speech. If they were imitating dialect features, we would have expected to find effects of vowel pronunciation instead. While we did find weak evidence for vowel imitation, the effect was not significant.
Taken together, these results suggest that while speakers imitate characteristics of individual talkers’ speech, they do not necessarily imitate well-known dialect markers. It may be that our effect of dialect on imitation was due to peculiarities of our speakers rather than real differences between the Northern and Midland dialects.
Okay, but has anybody bothered to study what it is about foreign accents that makes the speakers so difficult to understand? Mais, oui! I give you graduate student Alison Trude and her faculty advisor, Sarah Brown-Schmidt, both of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign's psychology department, who conducted a series of studies looking at a listener's ability to understand a native English speaker and a native Quebecois speaker both speaking English words and phrases.
A classic illustration of the difference is the respective pronunciations of "bee" and "beet." While a native English speaker will pronounce the "ee" in both the same, the Quebecois will pronounce "beet" with a short "i" sound, so that it sounds like "bit." It was an elaborate experimental setup involving tracking eye movement as participants viewed computer images of various objects while listening to accented and unaccented words describing those images. Supposedly this told the researchers how quickly they understood the words.
The prediction: "Previous research has shown that participants spend more time looking at pictures whose names sound more alike, so it was predicted that participants would look at the picture of the beet more when hearing the English speaker say 'bees' and would look at the picture of the beet less often when hearing the French speaker say 'bees,' because in the French accent, 'bees' and 'beet' sound less similar."
The actual result was just the opposite. Participants looked at the wrong picture more often when listening to the French speaker, and adapted more easily if they heard each of the accented words pronounced with the same ending ("beet", "seat", or "feet"). It also helped if the accented words didn't sound like another English word, since there was less room for further confusion. So Trude and Brown-Schmidt concluded from their experiments that (a) if you're talking to someone with foreign accent, having that person utter a string of words that sound similar will help you adapt to their accent; and (b) you'll have more trouble if the accent causes you to confuse two real words in English, i.e., the "beet" vs "bit" example (or "beep"). Per Trude and Brown-Schmidt:
These findings show that we as listeners have very particular expectations about how speech should sound. Some theories say that when listening to a foreign speaker, we relax the rules of pronunciation and are more accepting of things that don’t sound quite right because we understand that he or she cannot speak the language perfectly. However, these results suggest the opposite: native speakers of a language are listening for well-formed words, regardless of who’s talking.
This might have a useful application in bringing foreign actors to Hollywood, for example. Arnold Schwarzenegger notoriously kept his lines to a bare minimum in Conan the Barbarian in his early acting days, all uttered in heavily Austrian-accented English. And Hong Kong martial arts master Jackie Chan's move to American films was hampered by his broken English and heavy Chinese accent; ditto for Jet Li, who had, like, three lines in Lethal Weapon 4. And thus we come full circle back to our theme of drunken speech with a look at a unique style of martial arts: Zui Quan, which loosely translates as "drunken boxing." (Yeah, it's just an excuse to bring up Jackie Chan and include an awesome video clip. What of it?)
Chan immortalized the style in two films, Drunken Master I and Drunken Master II, wherein his protagonist gains the upper hand in climactic fight scenes by becoming inebriated --although it's important to strike the right balance: earlier in DM-II, Chan's character becomes a bit too drunk after a fight with his father, slurring his speech and warbling a little ditty called "I Hate Daddy," before getting the crap beaten out of him by thugs because he's too inebriated to fight at all.) In reality, Zui Quan practitioners only imitate the physical movements of drunkards; they are not actually drunk. Per Wikipedia:
"The postures are created by momentum and weight of the body, and imitation is generally through staggering and certain type of fluidity in the movements. It is considered to be among the most difficult wushu styles to learn due to the need for powerful joints and fingers. ... Zui Quan techniques are highly acrobatic and skilled and require a great degree of balance and coordination, such that any person attempting to perform any Zui Quan techniques while intoxicated would be likely to injure himself.
Even though the style seems irregular and off balance it takes the utmost balance to be successful. To excel one must be relaxed and flow with ease from technique to technique. Swaying , drinking, and falling are used to throw off opponents. When the opponent thinks the drunken boxer is vulnerable he is usually well balanced and ready to strike. When swigging a wine cup the practitioner is really practicing grabbing and striking techniques. The waist movements trick opponents into attacking sometimes even falling over. Falls can be used to avoid attacks but also to pin attackers to the ground while vital points are targeted."
You can see Zui Quan in action in this eight-minute choreographed fight scene from Drunken Master II, when Chan was at the height of his athletic prowess. (And remember, he does all his own stunts, so he really is falling backward onto a bed of hot coals. Ouch!) Definitely one of the Best. Fight. Scenes. Ever.
It's been a deadline-centric week so blogging has been light, with only the occasional foray into interesting things on the internet. For instance, Jen-Luc Piquant was tres desole to learn from the folks at Jezebel that caffeine-infused leggings won't make her ass get smaller; it's back to the Cyber-Elliptical for her! But we were thrilled to discover, via Isis the Scientist, that there is an entire blog devoted to a Jell-O Shots Test Kitchen. Also? Technology Review will be having an entire special issue devoted to science fiction stories -- we can't wait! But there were also more substantive bloggy items as well; we offer a sampling below for your weekend perusal.
Don't Toss Out Your Cell Phone Yet! It's baaack! The specter of cancer-causing cell phones! Folks are freaking out again over WHO's latest public service announcement regarding evidence for a correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer. Bear in mind that WHO is not making the claim that cell phones cause cancer; it knows full well that correlation is different than causation, and the biological and epidemiological evidence just doesn't meet (yet) the standard of causation -- unlike, say, smoking and cancer, where the link is very well established. Sadly, this distinction is being lost in much of the media coverage and public response. Orac lays it all out for you here and he's pretty fair as well as respectfully insolent; for a less personal take on the actual data, check out Ed Yong's piece at Cancer Research UK.
When Physics Gets Counter-Intuitive, Part I. Scientific American continues to pump out well-written, thought-provoking guest blog posts on fascinating topics, and this week they featured physicist Vlatko Vedral describing his latest research into a counterintuitive conundrum of quantum mechanics that appears to violate a principle (if not an actual law) of thermodynamics:
"Everyone who has ever worked with a computer knows that they get hotter the more we use them. Physicist Rolf Landauer argued that this needs to be so, elevating the observation to the level of a principle. The principle states that in order to erase one bit of information, we need to increase the entropy of the environment by at least as much. In other words we need to dissipate at least one bit of heat into the environment (which is just equal to the bit of entropy times the temperature of the environment).... Our new paper argues that in quantum physics, you can, in fact, erase information and cool the environment at the same time. For many physicists, this is tantamount to saying that perpetual motion is possible! What makes it possible is entanglement...."
When Physics Gets Counter-Intuitive, Part II. Over at Skulls in the Stars, Dr. SkySkull regales us with two related posts on the weirdness of water and the "Mpemba effect": namely, that under just the right circumstances, hot water can freeze faster than cold water. Per the Good Doctor: "In 1963, a Tanzanian secondary school student named Erasto Mpemba noticed that hot ice cream mix froze faster than cold ice cream mix. He pointed this out to a visiting physics lecturer, and the two published their experimental observations in 1969." It's weird, and it's not entirely understood, which makes for some fascinating reading.
The Physics of Blood Spatter. Via io9, we learned that physicists at Washington State University got all C.S.I. in the lab to investigate patterns that might indicate the exact height of the blood-spurting wound. And they did it with a couple of boards, some string, Ashanti chicken wing sauce and Ivory dish soap (the latter two ingredients were combined to get just the right consistency for the test droplets). Dexter would be so proud.
Truth is Stranger Than Webcomics. So, I'm assuming you all read Zach Weiner's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal regularly, so you saw this comic about how George de Hevesy used "aqua regia" to melt down Max von Laue's Nobel Prize medal during World War II to protect the gold from the invading Nazi hordes. But did you know it was a true story? I didn't! Fortunately, The Stray World was on the case and gives you the backstory, along with a nifty demo video for good measure.
The Natural Science of E.B. White. So, my pal Michael Sims has a new book out, The Story of Charlotte's Web, exploring the biographical back story to this childhood classic. And he's also written a fascinating article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about White's attitude towards animals and nature, which was far more nuanced than many critics have assumed to date. Sure, he could make a young child weep over Charlotte's inevitable demise, as if one had lost a true friend; but he wasn't prone to cheap sentimentality either (hence the power of his famous novel). Michael makes a strong case, and also delves into White's realization that science and fiction/storytelling do, in fact, make excellent bedfellows:
In writing Charlotte's Web, White developed much of his fanciful, empathetic story from what might seem the least likely direction—natural science. After watching a real-life spider spin an egg sac above his barn doorway, he determined a likely species for her so that he might learn her characteristics. Turning to scientific sources, both recent and antique, he carefully researched the life cycle of spiders: how they spin orb webs and egg sacs, how they trap prey and lay eggs, how in the spring the spiderlings balloon and disperse on filaments of web. "I discovered, quite by accident," he wrote, "that reality and fantasy make good bedfellows."
From the first, his scientific research and his whimsical imagination encouraged each other. He envisioned Charlotte performing certain actions in her web, such as writing letters that showed up well enough for people to see, and immediately he turned to scientists to learn by what chemistry and acrobatics she might accomplish what he had in mind. He pounced on an unexpected tidbit of information in a source book, such as the detail that stream-side spiders have been known to catch small leaping fish in their webs, and soon Charlotte was retailing these facts as anecdotes about her extraordinary family.
And because you can never have too much of these contraptions, we bring you (via Popular Mechanics) a video of the winners of the 24th Annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at Purdue University, who built the most complicated such device yet. To wit: "It starts with the Big Bang, re-creates the extinction of the dinosaurs, holds a jousting competition, flips over an album, and simulates World War II, a shuttle launch, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even the alleged apocalypse in 2012. In its precisely executed review of history, "The Time Machine," a Rube Goldberg contraption built by members of the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, incorporates a record-breaking 244 steps—all to water a single flower." It's Short Attention Span Science!
Journalism Train Wreck of the Week: Finally, John Rennie has a hilarious takedown of a "news story" -- Jen-Luc added the scare quotes in a pique -- at the Mail Online that he has dubbed "The Alpha Cavewoman Fiasco." Granted, the Mail is an easy target, but it's always a treat to watch John whip out the Scalpel of Sarcasm. His post also has the best lead of the week: "If a news story about human evolution mentions Raquel Welch or One Million Years B.C. in the lead paragraphs, you should lower your expectations for the rest because it is shallow and hackneyed. If it mentions The Flintstones, you should probably skip the rest because it is juvenile. But if it mentions both Raquel Welch and Wilma Flintstone twice in the first six paragraphs, you should sigh with relief: because you will never read anything more stupid in the rest of your life."
Just got back from a whirlwind road trip to San Francisco, where the unqualified highlight after a long rewarding day was meeting up with uber-mensch Steve Silberman and a host of local science writers (some I knew, most I met for the first time) at a cozy Italian place in Haight-Ashbury (I think). Bay Area science writers are an awesome bunch. We drank copious amounts of wine, laughed a lot, and my only regret is I didn't think to move to the other end of the table midway through the meal to chat with the folks over there. Mea culpa. Despite all the driving, we did manage to stay somewhat abreast of cool things on the Intertubes, so can still bring you the weekly roundup.
The Many Worlds of the Multiverse. Yanno, when I first heard about Hugh Everett III's "Many Worlds" hypothesis, I initially confused it with theories about the multiverse. I'm told it's a common confusion among those of us who happen to lack physics PhDs. But this past week, two physicists -- Raphael Bousso and Leonard Susskind -- posted a paper on arXiv arguing that perhaps. Debating the subtle nuances between them is, frankly, a bit above my pay grade, but fortunately the Time Lord weighed in over at Cosmic Variance with a thoughtful analysis. Quoth he: "These two ideas sound utterly different. In the cosmological multiverse, the other universes are simply far away; in quantum mechanics, they’re right here, but in different possibility spaces (i.e. different parts of Hilbert space, if you want to get technical). But some physicists have been musing for a while that they might actually be the same."
The Quantum Fallacy. Over at New Stateman, Michael Brooks has an intriguing article about the latest theoretical attempts to connect quantum mechanics with consciousness. This is something that usually sets a physicist's teeth on edge, with a few notable exceptions. Brooks' article is behind a paywall, but worth a read; or you can read Ian O'Neill's summation at Discovery News. For a very different take on consciousness, check out Malcolm MacIver's latest ruminations on how consciousness evolved and the supremacy of vision over at Science Not Fiction.
The Physics of My Little Pony. Self-explanatory, really, but major props for creativity! Friendship is magic... or is it?
Art, Art, Baby. The New York Timesfeatured multimedia artist Cory Arcangel this week in anticipation of the opening of his new show, "Pro Tools,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art:
Arcangel, 32, is known for work that imports a sense of humanity into the technological realm, in part by making sure the technology it uses is never too slick. Unlike electronic media artists who rely on state-of-the-art equipment to make their work, Mr. Arcangel collects outmoded computer games, decrepit turntables and similar castoffs that pile up in Dumpsters and thrift stores or are posted on eBay whenever a fresh crop of gadgets has rendered them obsolete. Through a bit of ingenious meddling, he reboots this detritus to produce witty, and touchingly homemade, video and art installations.
How Do You Lose a Pyramid? Jen-Luc Piquant isn't sure, but she knows exactly how to find one: infrared satellite imaging! This week the BBC reported that a new satellite survey of Egypt revealed evidence for 17 "lost" pyramids, and "more than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements."
Crazy-Cool Patent of the Week. John Ptak combs through wacky historical patent applications so you don't have to. Among this week'd finds: the Atom Bomb Suit, a "solitary, encapsulated, iron maidenesque survival sarcophagus," submitted in 1958. It even came with a handy attache case for storage, because who knows when a bomb might drop? "The bomb(s) would go off, and there you would be, standing with your back against the wall, or laying in the gutter pressed against the curb, just another piece of the dead city, another piece of metal waiting to decay."
Is There Anything Metamaterials Can't Do? The latest news on metamaterials, courtesy of 80 Beats, is that they could one day be used to improve wireless power transfer -- currently possible, but only in tiny amounts -- thereby enabling us to charge our devices without the hassle of cords and wires. How do metamaterials help? Well, according to a study published last week in Physical Review B:
Using current techniques, the amount of energy needed to charge personal electronics could, if transmitted wirelessly, burn up whatever’s in its way—up to and including the device it’s supposed to charge. What’s more, energy tends to dissipate through open space, making this sort of power transfer extremely inefficient.
But the researchers calculated that certain metamaterials—specifically, ones with effectively negative index of refraction—could transmit the needed power without frying anything. The metamaterials could be used to make a superlens that would stand between the power source and the device, essentially focusing the energy so it doesn’t scatter. According to their analyses, a hypothetical metamaterial array composed of thin copper-fiberglass loops, and resembling a set of Venetian blinds, could do the trick.
When You Wish Upon a Neutron Star. Over at io9, physicist David Goldman explores what would happen if someone, say, decided to travel to a neutron star intent on harvesting its "gooey" neutrons. It's not good news for human beings, given the density and immense gravity of such objects. Think "explosive decompression." I'm guessing it's as gruesome as it sounds.
Angry Birds... Plus a Constant. Rhett Allain of Dot Physics finally tackles a truly pressing science question: is the launch speed in the wildly popular Angry Birds game constant? Seriously, it's a wonderful example of "found physics," complete with charts and graphs and equations. Jen-Luc Piquant hereby refrains from making a joke about the air speed velocity of African swallows (laden or unladen).
It's time for the weekly cool science links post -- Vegas edition! The Time Lord whisked me off to Sin City for my birthday, and we've been indulging in great food, a bit of poker, sidecars at the Bellagio, and he even went with me to see Bridesmaids because Time Lords are totes secure in their masculinity. We're returning to our usual hard-working ascetic existence this very moment, but it's been a great week for weird and wonderful science on the Interwebz.
Space Shuttle Awesomeness. Okay, the big news for space geeks this week was the final launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor on Monday, complete with wow-worthy pix and videos. Among the various items hitching a ride on Endeavor were bobtail squid, a set of LEGOs, C. elegans (earthworms) descended from the survivors of Columbia's final flight, and a ChipSat experiment to test the viability of fingernail-sized micro-satellites in space -- plus one major experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, to study high-energy cosmic rays and search for evidence of dark matter and dark energy.
Strangeness is Not Conserved. Jon Butterworth's column in the Guardian highlights a guest post by Lily Asmuth on her three least favorite quarks, Up, Down and Strange. "There are in fact six quarks now, but the others are much more exciting and deserve heir own stories. All of matter is made of the first two and electrons. Every single atom in the Universe has nothing in it other than some combination of up quark, down quark and electron. The strange ones inhabit particles that only exists transiently, before decaying to something stable that contains only normal up and down quarks."
A Poem About Love and Math. New Jersey teacher and star of the poetry slam circuit Chad Anderson performs his most requested piece. (He loves her like math: infinite and precise.)
Inventive Timepiece of the Week. Physicists can't just use a stopwatch like normal people. The folks at Physics Buzz provide a detailed account of the time-keeping device the American Physical Society's Physics Central team concocted for the American Visionary Art Museum's annual in Kinetic Sculpture Race, in which human-powered sculptures wind around the Baltimore harbor. All you need to build your own similar device is some plastic tubing, a funnel, some PVC pipe, water, corn oil, mineral oil, 91 percent rubbing alcohol, and a bit of food dye (red and green). Check out the link for more details.
Surely You're Joking. Wired's Joel Warner has a fun, lengthy feature on the science of jokes and humor, specifically, "one man's attempt to explain every joke ever." There are handy charts and diagrams, categories and subcategories, for those interested in seeing how this system applies to the humor in their own lives. Next one hopes scientists will turn to the pressing question of why trying to explain a joke renders it not funny.
People Magnets. The Guardian's M.J. Robbins offers a witty critique of the phenomenon of "magnetic people" that seem to be springing up all over Eastern Europe these days. After admitting he once craved a magnetic nose as a child (who wouldn't?), Robbins debunks the supposed video evidence, concluding, "There's nothing in the videos that can't be explained by sticky skin and some careful positioning." He might still get something like his magnetic nose, though: he ends the piece by citing a 2006 Wired feature (also well worth a read) on folks with magnetic implants in their fingertips. Science! It's like magic, only so much cooler!
Cool Physics History Moment Of the Week. Turns out I share my birthday with (a) late night host Craig Ferguson (kudos to Phil Plait for noticing), and (b) a pivotal 19th century experiment by physicist James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton, whereby they took the world's first color photograph. The two men "used three projectors fitted with red, green, and blue filters to combine three black-and-white photos of a tartan ribbon shot through similar filters, thereby forming the world’s first color photo and, consequently, the 'basis of nearly all subsequent photochemical and electronic methods of colour photography.'”
The Science of Condiments. Ketchup and mustard are practically staples in the American diet, and this week a couple of folks decided to find the science hidden in their condiments. First, over at HiLoBrow, Tom Nealon has the latest installment in his De Condimentis series, with a look at the history and science of mustard. Apparently for centuries it was used medicinally, not as a condiment. "Pythagoras claimed that it would cure the bite of the scorpion and Pliny suggested it for improving lazy housewives. As late as the Renaissance, Guillemeau suggested it for weaning babies." Other uses included dispersing snake and fungi poisons, curing coughs (mustard is "a terrific expectorant" for breaking up phlegm), as a laxative, and "simulated menses and urine." Second, io9's Esther Inglis-Arkell reports on the surprising truth about snake venom and how it enters the victim's bloodstream. Apparently it works a lot like ketchup. Snake venom, she writes,
"... is one of many deliciously-named thixotropic liquids. Ketchup is another. The running joke about how ketchup stays stuck in the bottle until a certain amount of shaking makes it flow so fast it floods the top of a burger has its foundation in fact. Thixotropic liquids behave like gels or foams, hanging loosely together, until a sideways force is applied. Sometimes it's rhythmic pounding on the side of a bottle. Sometimes it's fast vibrations. Sometimes it's the movement of prey, or the natural absorbtion of the prey's muscle tissue. When a sideways, or vibrational, force is applied to a thixotropic liquid, it flows fast. So the snake's venom holds together until it gets into the prey, and then gushes into the surrounding tissue."
When Atoms Do a Digital Dance. New Scientist posted an amazing video called "Dancing Atoms," showcasing a collaboration between ballet dancer Roberto Bolle and a team lead by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which motion capture technology creates a digital avatar of Bolle dancing. "It's unlike any ballet you've ever seen - a swarm of swirling particles gradually form the shape of a dancer and transform into a lifelike model before they explode into digital bits for the grand finale." Check it out!
Finally, we give you the Video Mashup of the Week: The opening credits from Dr. Who/Series 5, set to the theme song from Buffy. WINNING!
We're back with another weekly round-up of intriguing physics-related stories culled from all over the Intertubes -- including the mystery of what happened to that Air France flight, a little-known footnote to the history of special relativity, and a sneak peek at the new noir thriller opening this weekend that boldly goes where noir has never gone before: into a particle accelerator to search for the Higgs boson.
The Physics of Air France Flight 447. In June 2009, an Air France flight mysteriously disappeared while flying over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Physicist Keith Eric Grant explains what likely happened, physics-wise, in a fantastic guest post at Scientific American. "[The aircraft] was ... flying at a cruise altitude of 35,000 feet, an altitude where the relationship between an aircraft's stall speed and the speed of sound has gained the name 'the coffin corner.' The name does not come from 'it's deadly to fly there,' but from the shape of a plot of stall velocity versus altitude when the velocity is expressed as Mach number, the speed relative to the speed of sound. The curve then resembles the tapered corner of a coffin."
Shrinkage is All Relative. Dr. Skyskull has another terrific historical post, this time examining one of the central tenets of special relativity: length contraction (the other is time dilation). Specifically, he talks about the implications of the failed Michelson-Morley experiments to detect the luminiferous aether -- a substance once believed to pervade the atmosphere, since it was assumed light, like sound, needed a medium through which to travel) -- and an intriguing guess by an Irish scientist named George Fitzgerald who came so very close to Einstein's breakthrough insight about length contraction, but didn't quite get all the way there. All because he couldn't let go of the notion of the aether. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Also thanks to Dr. Skyskull and his "Weird Science Facts," we learned of the Pythagorus Cup, "a form of drinking cup which forces its user to imbibe only in moderation. Credited to Pythagoras of Samos, it allows the user to fill the cup with wine up to a certain level. If the user fills the cup only up to that level he may enjoy his drink in peace. If he exhibits gluttony however, the cup spills its contents out the bottom." We fail to see the point.
Just Top it Off with a TARDIS. Those wacky Caltech pranksters weren't satisfied with transporting a full-sized TARDIS to the top of a domed structure on MIT's campus. (There is a legendary prankster rivalry between the two schools.) Now they've produced a video and taken the TARDIS on the road -- this time to UC-Berkeley. And they put the filmic evidence on YouTube so we can all see how it's done. (h/t: io9) "Remember: if anyone asks, you're moving scientific equipment...."
The Paper Chase. Over at Wired's Neuron Culture blog, David Dobbs has an excellent, in-depth article -- original reporting and everything, like he's some sort of professional journalist -- posted about biologist Jonathan Eisen's struggle to collect all the academic papers of his late father Harold Eisen. His "quest has solidified his conviction that science needs to radically rework the way it collects and shares its data, methods, and findings. He has plenty of company. A growing number of prominent scientists want to replace the aging journal system with something faster, cheaper, and richer. The current system, they note, grew out of meeting notes and journals published by societies in Europe over three centuries ago."
Under Isaac's Apple Tree. The UK's Daily Mail reports that Isaac Newton's famous 400-year-old apple tree is being fenced off to protect it from prying tourists. "Visitor numbers have gone up by around 50 per cent, to 33,000 a year in three years. The more people who visit, the more the soil will become compacted around the tree and over the roots."
To Catch a Thief. Over at The Scientist, Morgan Giddings vents about the anti-science rhetoric that currently pervades so much of our cultural discourse these days -- you know, the argument that states scientists are thieves living high on the hog off taxpayers' money. Giddings gives the smack-down to that nonsense and provides a bracing defense of the forgotten concept of investing in the future:
"Perhaps the anti-science-investment folks would prefer a return to 18th century medicine and physics. I hear that leeches and bloodletting were occasionally effective. For someone who truly believes this, it would seem they should go live like the Amish, taking no advantage of the investments made in science or technology over the past century. If you truly don’t like the fruit of the investments, why are you still taking advantage of it?"
Enter the Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This weekend Werner Herzog's new documentary opens in a limited release, detailing the interior of France’s Chauvet Cave, decorated by humans some 32,000 years ago with the oldest known figurative paintings in the world. There is a long article describing the making of the film (well worth a read) and the underlying geological science over at National Geographic.
Top Ten List of the Week. Breaking Bad's dark and twisted chemistry teacher, Walter White, is "something of a MacGyver when it comes to using chemical formulas to get out of sticky situations. Whatever the problem, Walt will find a solution in the recesses of his scientific mind." AMC has White's top ten chemistry experiments, from making pure meth to building a better battery.
Life from First Principles. If you haven't been reading science writer David Harris' new blog, The Photonist, you've been missing out. Check out his post this week about a paper in Physical Review Letters that describes some calculations from first principles that, for the first time, show how carbon can come into being in the heart of a star. As Harris writes, "In one sense, carbon-12 is easy to create. Just combine three alpha particles–helium-4 nuclei. However, the fusion of three alpha particles is highly suppressed at the temperatures of stars. You can get part of the way there–two alpha particles will fuse easily to create beryllium-8. It’s just that adding the third is tricky."
New Twist on the Zoetrope. We're fans of the history of film and animation, especially early devices like the zoopraxiscope and zoetrope. Jim le Fevre has spent the last few years playing around with a modern twist on this 19th century technology, using a record player and camera -- and few other find objects here and there. You can read all about his quest, complete with video documentation.
The Science of Storytelling. Written By is the official magazine of the Writers Guild of America, and the current issue has an excellent article talking to writers of science-centric TV shows about how they benefit from consulting with scientists to get a better story. Among those interviewed: Bones' Janet Lin and Caprica's Jane Espenson.
And speaking of science and storytelling, it's opening weekend for The Big Bang, the quirky new thriller starring Antonio Banderas trying to find a thug's stripper girlfriend and some missing diamonds, who ends up getting tangled in the scheme of gazillionaire to recreate the conditions of the big bang and find the Higgs boson. As one does. Did we mention the waitress tatooed with particle tracks? We're expecting good campy physics fun all around. (h/t: io9)
You might not expect it, but Jen-Luc Piquant is all aflutter about the forthcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Her former rather curmudgeonly attitude towards such things has mellowed, and she thinks a prince marrying a supposed commoner (albeit a wealthy commoner) is rather sweet. True, she wishes their story had a less conventional courtship -- like those who find love in World of Warcraft or through their physicsblogs, but you can't have everything. (Know who else loves World of Warcraft? Joi Ito, the hip new head of MIT's Media Lab, that's who!) Fear not, I have taken away her credit cards, lest she become too extravagant in her acquisition of Royal Wedding memorabilia. It's for her own good.
Oh, but there is science to be found in Royal Wedding Mania, too! Or so Cell magazine would have us believe, devoting an entire issue to "the more biological aspects of this historic union, including the neurocircuits that strengthen a marriage, the epigenetic changes that transform a 'commoner' into a queen, and the search process for finding a high-affinity partner in a sea of weak interactions." New Scientist also had a feature tied to the upcoming nuptials, and the Philadelphoa Inquirer's Faye Flam wrote about the royal couple and genetic diversity. Ivan Oransky took more of a "Bah! Humbug!" stance -- particularly over the lame attempts to use the event to frame science stories -- and we loved Ed Yong's tongue-in-cheek Posterous entry, Not Exactly Royal Wedding Science, finding a royal wedding link for the top science stories he'd been Tweeting about this past week.
We still managed to cull together some other interesting science stuff to prepare you for your weekend revels, even though Jen-Luc is preoccupied with knitting the ultimate Royal Wedding diorama, completely with adorable tiny knitted Corgis. At least she's not as obsessive as that guy who built a full-sized Royal Wedding Dalek (via The Mary Sue):
So You Think the LHC is a Long-Term Experiment? Via io9, we discovered at Atlas Obscura has dug up a list of the longest-running scientific experiments in history, including a clock that has been running since 1864, and the Oxford Electric Bell (or Clarendon Dry Pile) has been ringing quietly, but constantly, for over 170 years.
Electrify Your Socks Off! The folks at Improbable Research unearthed an amusing experiment conducted in 1759 by an amateur scientist named Robert Symmer, as detailed in his article, "New Experiments and Obſervations Concerning Electricity." Symmer wanted to know the relationship (if any) between the colour of socks and their ability to generate static electricity. His conclusion: more research was required. Spoken like a true scientist, sirrah!
Science Takes a Spin. Dr. Skyskull had an eventful week when his spiffy "spinthariscope” arrived in the mail: a self-contained radiation source and detector -- a precursor to the Geiger counter, in fact -- that makes it possible to watch individual radioactive decays happens with the naked eye. And it gave him the perfect opportunity to write an awesome blog post about the history and physics of radioactivity.
ScienceBlogs: They Know Drama. In case you missed the Twitter drama over NatGeo taking over ScienceBlogs, and Chris Mims' series of Tweets about the early history of the Blogging Network Once Known as The Borg, Martin Robbins has pulled everything together using Storify. This in turn gave rise to a satirical meme, FakeSBhistory. For this was Twitter created.
Of Tree I Sing. Yeah, it's a bad pun, but this Singing Ring Tree sound sculpture is nothing short of awesome in the way it interacts with its environment, namely, the wind. Per the edgy/artsy folks at Coilhouse: "Galvanized steel pipes of various sizes are bound together in a nine-foot-tall, spiraling configuration. Depending on where and how the wind strikes it, The Singing Ringing Tree creates discordant choral sounds over a range of several octaves. Tonkin Liu tuned the pipes “according to their length by adding holes to the underside of each.” The eerie music created as a result is capable of ringing out across great distances."
Honey, May I Cook With Danger? How did I miss this March 24 BBC story on exploding curry?? Okay, it's less about the curry exploding as fluorescing in the presence of explosives, thanks to one of the active ingredients in curry, curcumin -- but only when dissolved in a liquid, which makes it more difficult to implement at the airport (liquids = BAD!). Meanwhile, Tom over at Swans on Tea alerted me to this awesome "recipe" by Evil Mad Scientist, wherein we are told how to cook hot dogs using electrocution. Tom quoted comedian Rita Rudner: "Men will cook if there's danger involved." It does add a certain frisson to the evening's festivities! Because the Evil Mad Scientist cares about your safety, the recipe comes with a major disclaimer:
"The simple truth is that this just isn't safe. If you are foolish enough to attempt this, you will have to deal with pointy things, raw electricity out of the wall, hot steam, and the possibility of fire. If that isn't enough, and you succeed, you are still faced with the possibility of having to eat a hot dog. In summary: do not, under any circumstances, cook hot dogs this way."
Tevatron and the Cycle of Life. Joseph Castro at Scienceline doesn't want you to feel too upset about the pending shutdown of Fermilab's signature accelerator. The Tevatron has had a long, fruitful life. It's earned this retirement. "It seems the shutdown of the Tevatron is just part of the cycle of life for particle colliders. Like all technology, particle colliders are born, they are useful for a time, and then they die when something better comes along. Sometimes their organs are salvaged for other experiments, and other times their bones support new colliders. Recycle and repeat. Recycle and repeat."
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Chemicals. I had a genuine "head desk" moment when I saw this advertisement for a kid's chemistry set that proudly declared the product to be "chemical free." As The Daily What put it, "Because if there’s one thing kids hate about chemistry sets, it’s the chemistry." And then Steve Silberman alerted me to a feature he wrote for Wired a few years ago tackling just this issue -- go, Steve! And boo to those who are trying to take all the fun out of chemistry. I mean, where would the Mythbusters be without chemicals?
Offered (mostly) without comment: Existential Star Wars, with French subtitles ("Life is hell, and then you become one with The Force"):
Space Man Fashionistas. Over at BldgBlg, Geoff Manaugh features a fascinating Q&A with Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect, historian, and educator based in Berkeley, California, and author of a new book, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo. "Bridging the line between clothing and architecture, the spacesuit is a portable environment: a continuation of habitable space, safe for human beings, capable of radical detachment from the Earth. That a 'soft' and pliable suit designed by Playtex—manufacturer of women's underwear—would beat the 'hard,' armor-like suit design of military contractors is the surprising core story of de Monchaux's research."
Is Science a Faustian Bargain? Ann Finkbeiner grapples with this question over at The Last Word on Nothing, in a moving account of her grandfather's fascination with the Faust legend, and her own argument that this approach is needlessly dualistic, using the example of the military's funding development of a Laser Guide Star, which produced amazing research completely apart from its intended military applications. Her conclusion: "I think we should hang up Faust: he’s too easy, too much a legend, too useless in the real world. But my grandfather was a high-minded and realistic man who got off the farm for a reason, who became a preacher and a professor, who would have no truck with easy or useless legends. So I’m arguing with him; but I still don’t know what he saw in Faust and I still wish I knew."
Time Is Terrifying. The Time Lord loves all things sciency that relate to time, so it's not surprising he loves the work of neuroscientist David Eaglemen, who was the subject of an excellent New Yorker profile recently.
You might be familiar with the feeling that “time slows down” when you are frightened or in some extreme environment. The problem is, how to test this hypothesis? It’s hard to come up with experimental protocols that frighten the crap out of human subjects while remaining consistent with all sorts of bothersome regulations. So Eagleman and collaborators did the obvious thing: they tied subjects very carefully into harnesses, and threw them from a very tall platform. The non-obvious thing is that they invented a gizmo that flashed numbers as they fell, so that they could determine whether the brain really did speed up (perceiving a larger number of subjective moments per objective second) during this period of fear.
Here a Higgs, There a Higgs. There was yet another flurry of excitement over a leaked memo indicating possible evidence for the Higgs boson at the LHC. Sigh. It's another three-sigma event, people, not to mention the fact that there are some potential ethical issues over that leaked memo. For more level-headed analysis, check out this piece at Discovery News, this post at io9, and Ethan Siegel's analysis over at Starts With a Bang. Scientists, beware: cry "Wolf!" one too many times, and by the time you really do discover the Higgs, everyone will be too jaded by all the false alarms to care. Just sayin'.
Finally, for your weekend listening pleasure, we give you Gogol Bordello's "Super Theory of Supereverything." Sing along! "Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi, accelerate the protons...."
It's been a long week of immersing myself in work, but Jen-Luc Piquant has not been idle, and has ferreted out another intriguing collection of nifty science links floating around the blogosphere, just in time for Easter weekend.
He's Just This Guy, You Know? I love it when The Onion tackles scientific satire, and here's a classic "opinion piece" from 2009: "I Don't Define Myself By My Ability To Travel Between Dimensions." The Time Lord can totally relate. Seems appropriate, given the sad passing of Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played Dr. Who's Sarah Jane during the Tom Baker era, this week. Bonus: Jezebel weighs in with some thoughts on how Dr. Who has helped promote sci-fi girl power. We are not entirely convinced of this -- aren't we really talking about women who leave their families and boyfriends behind to chase after an emotionally unavailable man who will always love his TARDIS more than them? -- but he is a Time Lord after all, and not just some hipster douchebag with artsy pretensions. It is true that the female companions have gotten progressively feistier over the various incarnations. That said, Ellen Ripley or River Tam they ain't.
Awesome Comic of the Week. What if the Large Hadron Collider could be ordered from Ikea? Note: follow the instructions carefully or, you know, black holes will suck you into another dimension where you'll have to battle to the death with your own doppelganger or something, because THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. Or so all those science fiction movies would have us believe.
Split-Screen Symmetry. The good folks at WNYC’s Radiolab have collaborated with a New York filmmaking trio Everynone to create what Brain Pickings calls "a mesmerizing split-screen short film exploring the poetic parallels and contrasts of our world — birth and death, heart and brain, masculinity and femininity, all many more of humanity’s fundamental dualities."
Ernest Rutherford, Force of Nature. Okay, sure, this is the guy who compared biology to stamp collecting, thereby pissing off future generations of biologists in perpetuity. He was still awesome. We love us some Rutherford here at the cocktail party, so imagine our delight at finding Tom Siegfried of Science News has written a lovely rumination on the man who sprayed a thin gold foil target to probe the struture of the atom and ended up discovering the nucleus. Per Siegfried:
A thin enough foil, Rutherford reasoned, would contain few enough atoms that the alpha projectiles should zip through as easily as a bullet through a slab of butter. At Manchester, Hans Geiger began work on the experiments, later to be joined by Ernest Marsden. One day, Rutherford recounted years later, Geiger excitedly reported that some alpha particles had bounced backward upon encountering the foil. “It was almost as incredible,” Rutherford recalled, “as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”
Cadbury Creme Physics. In honor of the Easter holiday,the Sixty Symbols folks are exploring egg-themed physics. This installment: extra dimensions, why gravity is so weak, and the cosmological constant. Feel free to munch on a tasty zombie chocolate bunny while you watch (white chocolate dyed green, of course).
It's Not You, It's Me. Any researcher can relate. You get an idea, you form a hypothesis, you figure out how to test it, but in the end, it just doesn't work out. How do you handle the inevitable break-up, after all you've shared together? Chuck over at Lounge of the Lab Lemming writes a "Dear John" letter to his hypothesis, and we think he managed the awkwardness pretty well:
"You’re a very attractive hypothesis, and I’m sure there are lots of theorists out there willing to overlook your lack of actual data. And while I hope you don’t rebound into the eye of a delusional crackpot, it’s a bit awkward for me to give advice at this point in time. In fact, you have every right to be angry. We were in love, and I really thought it would work out. Had the data allowed, I was ready to give you my name and make you my Theory. It just wasn’t to be."
Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work? Kids today are gonna ask this question, especially if they listen to Insane Clown Posse. And in a post dubbed "Science Question from a Toddler," Boing Boing's Maggie Koerth-Baker dug deep for an accesible answer.
Spark It Up. Lots of people were mystified by the 4/20 celebrations being referenced around the Internet this week, an unofficial "holiday" for Friends of Cannabis that just happened to coincide with the release of Portal 2. Honestly, it's a miracle the entire country didn't shut down. Science bloggers joined the fun by weighing in with posts on whether weed is really all that bad for your brain, and an exporation of the chemistry of heroin, morphine, and whether eating lemon poppy seed cake could give you a full dose of morphine. (Perhaps if you smoked a joint and got so hungry you ate the entire cake?)
Go Forth and Smell, My Son. This week, New Scientist's Culture Lab featured a post about the Art of Perfume, a masterclass in perfumery run by the Mulberry Institute in Sydney, Australia, where perfume designers delve deep into the chemistry of scents to come up with new techniques and combinations. (Jen-Luc Piquant read that Patrick Susskind novel several years ago and thinks all perfumiers are closet serial killers, but she's prone to all manner of logical fallacies.) For all the fancy liquid chromatography equipment, though, in the end it all comes down to the basic perfume formula:
Each fragrance is based on three "notes" or chemical mixtures. The top note is "the first impression," he says. It's made using volatile chemicals that quickly evaporate in the air, and is generally a citrus or fruity scent. The middle note is the "heart of the fragrance", which is often based on floral odours, and lasts about eight hours from when first applied. And finally, the base: a robust smell that lingers for days. A common example is musk, the deer's pheromone.
Pint-Sized Thor Parodies Littlest Vader. We all loved that car commercial with the little kid dressed as Darth Vader desperately trying to use The Force around the house and failing miserably under Dad comes home from work and secretly turns on the car remotely. You know you saw it. So you'll love Marvel Studio's viral parody of the ad with a little kid dressed as Thor, Norse God of Thunder:
Making Science Your Playground. The New York Timestakes a look at playgrounds and discovers they aren't what they used to be. For instance, "The Science Playground, designed by BKSK Architects at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, is less fairy tale than futurama. Resembling a colorful Rube Goldberg contraption, with waterworks, the 60,000-square-foot space lets children study the laws of physics while happily submitting to them."
Denialism and Science. Chris Mooney made some waves this week with an essay in Mother Jones exploring the nature of denialism, and what cognitive psychology can tell us about why people so stubbornly reject good science, despite strong factual evidence in its favor. Well-trodden ground? Maybe. But given the 400+ comment thread, I suspect it can't be repeated enough.
To Stop a Pandemic, Do the Math. One of the most fun chapters to write for The Calculus Diaries was the one about the coming zombie apocalypse and how epidemiologists use mathematical modeling to track outbreaks and assess the effectiveness of various intervention measures. This week io9's Annalee Newitz posted a terrific article on some of the latest work being done in this area (math-y modeling, not the zombies, although hey, it's definitely relevant!). It's long, thoughtful and thorough, and well worth a read.
Droopy LEDs. The Photonist, a.k.a., science writer David Harris, shares some new research that explains why LED lighting loses efficiency at higher power -- a phenomenon known as "droop." The culprit is a little something called "Auger recombination." So now you know.
The Songs of Science. Over at Scientific American's Observations blog, Ryan Reid provides a deliciously eclectic list of ten songs about science -- including one of his own humble offerings. "These 10 songs, listed in no particular order, cover the gamut of genres, from ambient to pop to rock to metal, and were inspired by a wide range of scientific disciplines, including mathematics, robotics, climate science and cosmology." Here's my personal favorite science-themed song, "Protons, Neutrons, Electrons," by The Cat Empire:
We are swamped with a two-day conference and subsequent deadline pressures, so this week's Friday roundup is going to be a bit abbreviated. But there's still a generous sampling of tasty science goodness to trot out during cocktail party conversations this weekend!
The Physics of a High-Speed Crash. Rhett Allain over at Wired's Dot Physics has a terrific one-two physics punch with posts examining the likely impact of a move to raise the speed limit in Texas to 85 mph. First, he examines what happens in a collision between vehicles traveling at 85 mph. In part 2, he examines what impact this increase in the speed limit is likely to have on one's gas mileage. It's fun and informative -- check it out, and make an informed decision, Texans!
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot. Back when I was seriously training in jujitsu, one of my fellow practitioners invested in a Body Opponent Bag -- a.k.a. B.O.B. -- a molded plastic torso with a head, mounted on a base you filled with water or sand for stability, so you could then beat the crap out of B.O.B. by practicing targeted strikes on something more closely resembling a human body. (And yes, you could dress up B.O.B. in a pinch; he had a constantly changing array of dew rags.) Ideally, though, B.O.B. should have been hitting back. So how excited do you think I was to read about the Punching Pro fighting robot in the IEEE Spectrum? Answer: waaay excited! It was built by an Australian structural engineer named Kris Tressider, and can randomly throw both jabs and hooks at different speeds and from slightly different directions. Also? There's an extra motor that can be engaged if you feel the need to go into "Berserker mode." Yeah -- a fighting robot with a Berserker mode. Doesn't get more awesome than that.
Neutrinos are Trouble with a Capital 'T'! So says Ann Finkbeiner at The Last Word on Nothing in a beautifully written piece detailing the intricate scientific history of this humble little particle. "Neutrinos have been trouble since day one. First a physicist, trying to explain something weird an atom was doing, broke a rule of good physics and made up neutrinos out of whole cloth; later he said he was sorry. Second, contrary to every reasonable expectation, neutrinos were found. Third, they were found to oscillate, which required physicists to re-jigger their Standard Model." And now there could be a fourth flavor, instead of three, a so-called "sterile neutrino." Yeah, those neutrinos are trouble-makers all right.
Written on the Shoulders of Giants. Over at Science 2.0, there is a truly amazing piece entitled "In the Field with James Clerk Maxwell." It's one of those long-forgotten gems, now experiencing what we hope will turn out to be a second life in the blogosphere. According to Science 2.0 blogger Hank Campbell, he came across the article and contacted Davis about posting it: "Turns out he was former editor and writer at Science 2.0 fave publication OMNI. He wrote this in 1979 for the 100th anniversary of Maxwell's death but said it never found a good home." Well, now it has, and we're all the richer for it.
Biochemistry Through the Looking Glass. Over at Scientopia, SciCurious has an excellent post about the biochemistry to be found in Lewis Carroll's writings. Think Alice in Wonderland has nothing to do with science? Hah! She covers mercury poisoning (the "mad hatter" effect), as well as chiral molecules. Furthermore, "The caterpillar smoking a hookah while sitting on a mushroom can open up lots of opportunities for discussion on the chemicals found in tobacco smoke and the damage they cause, while the mushroom the caterpillar is sitting on and start the topic of hallucinogens."
The Interpretation of Dreams. Charles Choi is guest-blogging over at Scientific American, and recently posted a provocative Q&A with Robert Stickgold, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School. It's part of an ongoing series he calls "Too Hard for Science?", whereby he interviews scientists "about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated." Stickgold's provocative idea: "Dreams often feel profoundly meaningful, bizarre experiences often interpreted over the centuries as messages from the gods or as windows into the unconscious. However, maybe our brains are just randomly stringing experiences together during sleep and investing the result with a feeling of profundity."
Offered without comment: Jousting on Segways. Because we can!
The Quantum Mechanics of Source Code. Jim Kakalios, author of The Physics of Superheroes and The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, has a nifty guest post at Cosmic Variance examining the quantum mechanical aspects of the new sci-fi thriller, Source Code. Tons and tons of spoilers, so don't go trotting out the good professor's insights in front of folks who haven't seen the movie yet. That's a surefire way to get blacklisted from the further conversations.
Big Bang in a Box. Lisa Grossman has an intriguing piece up over at Wired Science about the first-ever desktop model of the Big Bang. Relax, doomsday conspiracy theorists: it's just a simulation created with exotic substances called metamaterials.
There's an App for That. Man, there's an app for everything these days. If you're a diehard runner, and your standard pedometer just isn't sufficient to satisfy your OCD tendences, you'll love the Einstein Pedometer. You can download the sucker right onto your iPod, and it will "bring special relativity to your daily activities, showing how much time you gain by moving. The faster you move, the more nanoseconds you gain relative to your stationary friends." It's free, too!
Skateboard Science. Everyone's favorite science museum, San Francisco's Exploratorium, has started a regular "After Dark" series. The most recent: skateboard science! Check out these amazing pix.
And finally, what weekend would be complete without a visualization of a shell-sorting algorithm by way of Hungarian folk-dancing? Special comic bonus: "The Man Who Loved Math Dancing." Enjoy!
The perfect pick-me-up when gravity gets you down.
2 oz Tequila
2 oz Triple sec
2 oz Rose's sweetened lime juice
7-Up or Sprite
Mix tequila, triple sec and lime juice in a shaker and pour into a margarita glass. (Salted rim and ice are optional.) Top off with 7-Up/Sprite and let the weight of the world lift off your shoulders.
Listening to the Drums of Feynman
The perfect nightcap after a long day struggling with QED equations.
1 oz dark rum
1/2 oz light rum
1 oz Tia Maria
2 oz light cream
Crushed ice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
In a shaker half-filled with ice, combine the dark and light rum, Tia Maria, and cream. Shake well. Strain into an old fashioned glass almost filled with crushed ice. Dust with the nutmeg, and serve. Bongos optional.
Combustible Edison
Electrify your friends with amazing pyrotechnics!
2 oz brandy
1 oz Campari
1 oz fresh lemon juice
Combine Campari and lemon juice in shaker filled with cracked ice. Shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Heat brandy in chafing dish, then ignite and pour into glass. Cocktail Go BOOM! Plus, Fire = Pretty!
Hiroshima Bomber
Dr. Strangelove's drink of choice.
3/4 Triple sec
1/4 oz Bailey's Irish Cream
2-3 drops Grenadine
Fill shot glass 3/4 with Triple Sec. Layer Bailey's on top. Drop Grenadine in center of shot; it should billow up like a mushroom cloud. Remember to "duck and cover."
Mad Scientist
Any mad scientist will tell you that flames make drinking more fun. What good is science if no one gets hurt?
1 oz Midori melon liqueur
1-1/2 oz sour mix
1 splash soda water
151 proof rum
Mix melon liqueur, sour mix and soda water with ice in shaker. Shake and strain into martini glass. Top with rum and ignite. Try to take over the world.
Laser Beam
Warning: may result in amplified stimulated emission.
1 oz Southern Comfort
1/2 oz Amaretto
1/2 oz sloe gin
1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz Triple sec
7 oz orange juice
Combine all liquor in a full glass of ice. Shake well. Garnish with orange and cherry. Serve to attractive target of choice.
Quantum Theory
Guaranteed to collapse your wave function:
3/4 oz Rum
1/2 oz Strega
1/4 oz Grand Marnier
2 oz Pineapple juice
Fill with Sweet and sour
Pour rum, strega and Grand Marnier into a collins glass. Add pineapple and fill with sweet and sour. Sip until all the day's super-positioned states disappear.
The Black Hole
So called because after one of these, you have already passed the event horizon of inebriation.
1 oz. Kahlua
1 oz. vodka
.5 oz. Cointreau or Triple Sec
.5 oz. dark rum
.5 oz. Amaretto
Pour into an old-fashioned glass over (scant) ice. Stir gently. Watch time slow.
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