Discover Magazine | Einstein

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Clouds

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:35:00 -0500

4 So much for People Power. After reviewing 40 years of cloud-seeding efforts in an area north of Israel, researchers at Tel Aviv University have concluded that seeding doesn’t actually produce additional precipitation (pdf).

12 Highest of them all: 50 miles up, noctilucent, or “night shining,” clouds glow an eerie bluish white. They are invisible by day, but after sunset they catch solar rays shining from far below the horizon.

13 Noctilucent clouds seemed to first appear after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and are now a common sight.

18 In 1959 Lt. Col. William Rankin was flying his F-8 fighter jet over a cumulonimbus when the engine failed. He parachuted out and spent the next 30 minutes bounced around inside the storm. Amazingly, he survived.

19 In 2007 German paragliding champion Ewa Wisnierska experienced “cloud suck.” While gliding under a cumulonimbus, she was pulled upward to 32,000 feet. She blacked out due to lack of oxygen but regained consciousness at roughly 23,000 feet.

Image: A lenticular cloud over the Tararua Mountains in the North Island of New Zealand. Courtesy: NASA

How to Survive the End of the Universe

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:15:00 -0500

Next year will be a doozy for doomsayers. depending on the prophecy, the world is predestined to expire by means of a solar storm, asteroid strike, rogue-planet collision, plague, falling stars, earthquake, debt crisis, or some combination thereof. Of course, nobody seems to be preparing for any of these impending 2012 apocalypses, with the exception of a porn studio reportedly building a clothing-optional underground bunker.

And why should we? Scientifically speaking, the prophecies are strictly ballyhoo. Physicists can do a lot better. When it comes to end-times scenarios, cosmological data-crunchers have at their disposal far more meaningful prognostication tools that can tell us how it’s really going to end—not just Earth, but the whole universe. Best of all, they can tell us how to survive it.

Science, oddly, is a lot better at predicting things like the death of stars than next week’s weather. The same laws of physics that enable scientists to study the Big Bang that occurred 13.7 billion years ago also allow them to gaze into the future with great precision. And few people have peered farther than University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomer Greg Laughlin, science’s leading soothsayer. As a graduate student in 1992, he was plugging away at a simple computer simulation of star formation when he broke for lunch and accidentally left the simulation running. When he returned an hour later, the simulation had advanced 100 million billion years, much further into the future than most scientists ever think (or dare) to explore.

The program itself didn’t reveal anything terribly startling—the simulated star had long since gone cold and died—but Laughlin was intrigued by the concept of using physical simulations to traverse enormous gulfs of time. “It opened my eyes to the fact that things are going to evolve and are still going to be there in timescales that dwarf the current age of the universe,” he says.

Four years later, still fascinated, Laughlin teamed up with Fred Adams, a physics professor at the University of Michigan, to investigate the future of the universe more rigorously. Working in their spare time, the two researchers coauthored a 57-page paper in the journal Reviews of Modern Physics that detailed a succession of future apocalypses: the death of the sun, the end of the stars, and multiple scenarios for the fate of the universe as a whole.

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Selling Cheap: Abandoned, Half-Finished, Would-Be Collider Facility

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:50:00 -0500

Image: Wikimedia Commons

$6.5 million: The initial asking price for the 135-acre property in Texas that two decades ago was supposed to be the site of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Superconducting Super Collider. Congress canceled the project in 1993 after spending $2 billion (300 times the site’s current price) to construct eight buildings and 14 miles of underground tunnels. At press time the property was under contract. Bryan Loewen, a real estate agent at Newmark Knight Frank who is handling the sale, says potential buyers expressed interest in using the tunnels  for alternative energy generation, secure storage, and mushroom farming. Nobody has accessed the tunnels since the government closed them off in the mid-90s...

20 Things You Didn't Know About... The Periodic Table

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:40:00 -0500

1 You may remember the Periodic Table of the Elements as a dreary chart on your classroom wall. If so, you never guessed its real purpose: It’s a giant cheat sheet.

4 To determine atomic weights, scientists had passed currents through various solutions to break them up into their constituent atoms. Responding to a battery’s polarity, the atoms of one element would go thisaway, the atoms of another thataway. The atoms were collected in separate containers and then weighed.

6 Fond of card games, Mendeleyev wrote the weight for each element on a separate index card and sorted them as in solitaire. Elements with similar properties formed a “suit” that he placed in columns ordered by ascending atomic weight.

9 Ehen argon was discovered in 1894, it didn’t fit into any of Mendeleyev’s columns, so he denied its existence—as he did for helium, neon, krypton, xenon, and radon...

Image: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

How to See the Invisible: 3 Approaches to Finding Dark Matter

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:10:00 -0500

Spiral galaxy M74 holds 100 billion stars. Oddly, stars at its outer edges rotate with the same velocity as those closer in, suggesting the influence of a substantial mass of unseen dark matter.

Credit: NASA

Although we live in a renaissance era of cosmology, in which theories and observations have advanced to the stage where ideas can be precisely tested, we also live in the dark ages. About 23 percent of the universe consists of dark matter, mysterious stuff that exerts gravitational forces but doesn’t interact with light. Ordinary matter makes up just 4 percent. (Another 73 percent is dark energy, an even more mysterious component that permeates the universe.)

The last time something was called “dark” in physics was in the mid-1800s, when Urbain-Jean-Joseph Leverrier of France proposed an unseen dark planet, which he named Vulcan. Leverrier’s goal was to explain the peculiar trajectory of the planet Mercury. Leverrier, along with John C. Adams of England, had previously deduced the existence of Neptune based on its effects on the planet Uranus. Yet he was wrong about Mercury. It turned out that the reason for Mercury’s strange orbit was much more dramatic than the existence of another planet. The explanation could be found only with Einstein’s theory of relativity. The first confirmation that the theory of general relativity was correct came when Einstein proved it could be used it to accurately predict Mercury’s orbit.

It could turn out that dark matter presages a similar paradigm change. Even so, I’d say that it is very likely to have a more conventional explanation, consistent with the type of physical laws we now know. After all, even if novel matter acts in accordance with force laws similar to those we know, why should all matter behave exactly like familiar matter? To put it more succinctly, why should all matter interact with light? If the history of science has taught us anything, it should be the shortsightedness of believing that what we see is all there is...

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Out There: Are There Mysterious Forces Lurking in Our Atoms and Galaxies?

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:40:00 -0400

Caption: Far more delicate than the tug on a spider's web: If a fifth force is out there, its impact on our world must be nearly imperceptible.

iStockphoto

At the turn of the 20th century, finding a new form of radiation could put a physicist’s career on the fast track. Wilhelm Röntgen changed the world by discovering X-rays in 1895. Soon thereafter, Ernest Rutherford and Paul Villard identified three different kinds of radiation, dubbed alpha, beta, and gamma rays, emitted by radioactive compounds. In 1903 French scientist René Blondlot added to the frenzy with his announcement of N-rays, a strangely democratic form of radiation emitted by wood, iron, living organisms—just about anything at all.

Some 300 scientific papers were written about N-rays. There was just one problem: They weren’t real. A skeptical physicist named Robert Wood visited Blondlot’s lab and secretly removed a key part of his apparatus; this had no effect on Blondlot’s perception of N-rays, showing that they were purely a product of the imagination.

Blondlot’s reversal of fortune served as a reminder that the world isn’t really full of countless kinds of radiation waiting patiently to be discovered. Nature is more parsimonious than that. Even as forms of radiation seemed to proliferate, theory was driving physics the other way, toward consolidation. X-rays and gamma rays were soon recognized as different forms of electromagnetic radiation, like radio waves and visible light but more energetic. Beta rays are simply fast-moving electrons, and alpha rays are fast-moving helium nuclei. Beneath the dazzling array of new phenomena lurked just a few simple ingredients...

Out There: Welcome to the Multiverse

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:35:00 -0400

Theoretical cosmologist isn’t one of the more hazardous occupations of the modern world. The big risks include jet lag, caffeine overdose, and possibly carpal tunnel syndrome. It wasn’t always so. On February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno, a mathematician and Dominican friar, was stripped naked and driven through the streets of Rome. Then he was tied to a stake in the Campo de’ Fiori and burned to death. The records of Bruno’s long prosecution by the Inquisition have been lost, but one of his major heresies was cosmological. He advocated that other stars were like our sun, and that they could each support planets teeming with life. Orthodox thought of the time preferred to think that Earth and humanity were unique.

These days, cosmologists like me may be safer, but our ideas have grown only more radical. One of the most controversial but widely discussed concepts in the field resembles a hugely amplified version of Bruno’s cosmology: the idea that the thing we call “the universe” is just one of an infinite number of regions in a much larger universe of universes, or multiverse. A big focus of my own research asks whether a multiverse can help explain the arrow of time...

Twisting Radio Waves Could Give Us 100x More Wireless Bandwidth

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:25:00 -0400

As more people stream video to their mobile devices, wireless bandwidth is becoming an increasingly precious commodity. Data traffic increased 8,000 percent in the past four years on AT&T’s network alone. In trying to avoid what the Federal Communications Commission calls a “looming spectrum crisis,” telecommunications companies are lobbying the government to assign them more spectrum space in the 300- to 3,000-megahertz range, the sweet spot for wireless communication. But Italian astrophysicist Fabrizio Tamburini says a solution may lie in making better use of the frequencies already in use. In a recent paper, he demonstrated a potential way to squeeze 100 times more bandwidth out of existing frequencies.

The idea is to twist radio waves like corkscrews and create multiple subfrequencies, distinguished by their degree of twistedness. Each subchannel carries discrete data sets. “You can tune the wave with a given frequency as you normally do, but there is also a fingerprint left by the twist,” Tamburini says...

Image: Warped radio waves may satisfy the ballooning demand for spectrum space. Source: iStockphoto

Playing With Fire

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:30:00 -0400

NASA aerospace engineer Sandra Olson created this kaleidoscopic collage of fire as an artistic side project to her research on combustion in space. The white, yellow, and orange colors reflect the increasing temperatures of soot within the flame, while blue is the glow of excited carbon and hydrogen bonds as the paper burns...

Image courtesy of NASA

This Is What It Looks Like When Black Holes Collide

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:50:00 -0400

A new visualization method shows the twists in space-time, called vortices, thrown off after two block holes merge. Theoretical physicist and black hole guru Kip Thorne says he gets about one great idea every 10 years. He recently unveiled what he considers the latest of these once-in-a-decade doozies: a new way to visualize how black holes stretch and bend the fabric of space-time...

Image: A new visualization method shows the twists in space-time, called vortices, thrown off after two block holes merge.

The Strange Physics—and Singular Sights—Inside Black Holes

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:05:00 -0400

It is late December and snow is swirling as Andrew Hamilton coasts up to his office at the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus, in the foothills of the Rockies. On a blustery day like today, most of his colleagues arrive in SUVs or at least in cars shod with all-season tires. Hamilton rides in on his Cannondale mountain bike.

Following his own path is not just a pastime to Hamilton, it is the essence of his career. For 15 years the astrophysicist has ventured nearly alone into the darkest, most impenetrable part of the universe: the inside of a black hole. “I’m not religious, but I share with religious people a desire to understand the truth about our universe. I’m focused on attaining a complete understanding of the interior of black holes,” he says, his British accent adding solemnity and power to his words. That quest has been called mad or just plain futile by colleagues who insist that the inner structure of the black hole is so extreme that it lies not only beyond exploration but beyond comprehension. Hamilton, an athletic 59-year-old  with a mane of sandy blond hair, brushes such doubt away. “I don’t necessarily avoid things others consider crazy, or I never would have gotten started in this black hole business. I’m a guy who likes adversity. I like to struggle. It’s fun to try to beat the odds.”

Black holes are massive objects that have collapsed in on themselves, creating a gravitational suction so intense that their insides become cut off from the rest of the universe. A black hole’s outer boundary, known as the event horizon, is a point of no return. Once trapped inside, nothing—not even light—can escape. At the center is a core, known as a singularity, that is infinitely small and dense, an affront to all known laws of physics. Since no energy, and hence no information, can ever leave that dark place, it seems quixotic to try peering inside. As with Las Vegas, what happens in a black hole stays in a black hole.

Where other scientists see the end point of scientific inquiry, Hamilton sees the beginning, an entrée to an extraordinary and unexplored terrain. He pictures a waterfall of space and time pouring over the event horizon to an inner zone where “all the light and material that ever fell into the black hole piles up in a tremendous collision, generating a maelstrom of energy and an infinitely bright, blinding flash of light.” Then he jumps in his barrel and takes the plunge.

Image courtesy of Andrew Hamilton/University of Colorado, Boulder; Axel Mellinger/Central Michigan University; John Hawley/University of Virginia.

Impatient Futurist: The Bright, Hi-Tech Future of Food Preservation

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:55:00 -0400

The average American kitchen is lousy with innovation. Science has bombarded us with convection microwave ovens, induction cooktops, and countless other curiosities aimed at making food preparation tidier and more efficient. Yet for all the patents crowding our counters, every time I put together a meal I find myself facing some tediously antique trade-offs: Would I prefer wholesome, quick, or safe? Maybe I can figure out how to achieve two, or even  all three? Haven’t cracked that one yet.

The truth is that nutritious, delicious food is quite difficult to obtain quickly. “Quickly” has traditionally meant either cooking food beyond recognition (safe but disgusting) or barely cooking it at all (also disgusting, if you ask me). Raw or rare food may be popular among health nuts, but it is also an attractive dining option among the world’s largest constituency, bacteria, a population riding high on its recent success in contaminating produce in Germany and killing 48 people as of July. Foodborne diseases in this country aren’t much friendlier, striking one-sixth of the entire U.S. population every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The clear way around the problem is to kill bacteria through means other than heat prior to preparation, so you can then cook food or not, to your liking, without having to worry about contamination. Chemical preservatives raise health concerns of their own, and at any rate they are not applicable to many foods. Blasting food with beams of high-energy electrons, X-rays, or gamma rays also fits the bill, but the CDC reports that at least half of all Americans say they will not eat irradiated foods if given a choice. As a result food-zapping techniques in the United States are limited to just a few fruits and spices.

So now engineers are working on more effective (and cooler) techniques like super-high pressure, chemical coatings, and, yes, laser ovens...

Discover Magazine | Einstein

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Clouds

How to Survive the End of the Universe

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #1: Faster than the Speed of Light

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #14: Astronomers Watch Black Hole Devour Star

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #17: Quantum Weirdness Enters the Larger World

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #20: Helium’s Antimatter Twin Created

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #26: The New Physics of Bicycles

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #32: Where’s the Higgs?

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #62: Star Birth Seen in Action

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #65: America’s Atom Smasher, 1983–2011

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #82: Could Random Airplane Boarding Speed Your Trip?

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #83: Gravity Probe B Gives Einstein an A

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #93: Super- Rocket Tested

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #95: Computer Builds  A Perfect Galaxy

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #11: Scientist of the  Arab Spring

Selling Cheap: Abandoned, Half-Finished, Would-Be Collider Facility

20 Things You Didn't Know About... The Periodic Table

How to See the Invisible: 3 Approaches to Finding Dark Matter

Out There: Are There Mysterious Forces Lurking in Our Atoms and Galaxies?

Out There: Welcome to the Multiverse

Twisting Radio Waves Could Give Us 100x More Wireless Bandwidth

Playing With Fire

This Is What It Looks Like When Black Holes Collide

The Strange Physics—and Singular Sights—Inside Black Holes

Impatient Futurist: The Bright, Hi-Tech Future of Food Preservation

Discover Magazine | Einstein

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Clouds

How to Survive the End of the Universe

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #1: Faster than the Speed of Light

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #14: Astronomers Watch Black Hole Devour Star

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #17: Quantum Weirdness Enters the Larger World

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #20: Helium’s Antimatter Twin Created

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #26: The New Physics of Bicycles

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #32: Where’s the Higgs?

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #62: Star Birth Seen in Action

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #65: America’s Atom Smasher, 1983–2011

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #82: Could Random Airplane Boarding Speed Your Trip?

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #83: Gravity Probe B Gives Einstein an A

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #93: Super- Rocket Tested

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #95: Computer Builds A Perfect Galaxy

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #11: Scientist of the Arab Spring

Selling Cheap: Abandoned, Half-Finished, Would-Be Collider Facility

20 Things You Didn't Know About... The Periodic Table

How to See the Invisible: 3 Approaches to Finding Dark Matter

Out There: Are There Mysterious Forces Lurking in Our Atoms and Galaxies?

Out There: Welcome to the Multiverse

Twisting Radio Waves Could Give Us 100x More Wireless Bandwidth

Playing With Fire

This Is What It Looks Like When Black Holes Collide

The Strange Physics—and Singular Sights—Inside Black Holes

Impatient Futurist: The Bright, Hi-Tech Future of Food Preservation

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #93: Super- Rocket Tested

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #95: Computer Builds  A Perfect Galaxy

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #11: Scientist of the  Arab Spring