Category Archives: science

Tales From The Industry XIII – Magnetic Moments

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[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

magnetism shoot

The strange object pictured above is a rather nice demonstration of the “field lines” around a bar magnet. It is not a great photo (all my fault), but the demo is great. The designers suspended the tiny bits of iron in oil, inside a sealed chamber, forming a block. There’s a little cylindrical hole through the centre of the block (but still outside the chamber) that allows you to put a bar magnet in. This makes for a demo far more exciting than any shake-it-up snow scene: You shake block and the iron filings are all over the oil in three dimensions, randomly arranged. You then insert the magnet. They slowly but determinedly arrange themselves into the familiar pattern, in three dimensions. It’s great. (Why didn’t they have these when I was growing up?! I might have gone into science… Oh, wait…)

I was looking around one of our demo labs last week for things to use to demonstrate some of the principal effects of magnetism. The above demonstration was one of the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Under the Sea

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[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (body, comments and images to follow)]:

jellyfish from AP story

There’s something ever so romantic (not in the hand-holding-under-the-moon sense) about deep sea exploration. It occupies the roughly same part of one’s emotional landscape as space exploration, I think, but it’s maybe even more exciting in some ways, because there’s something about the utterly weird and unknown being just under the surface of the familiar, while space seems so far away (actually, in one sense it isn’t, if you go straight up, but in terms of logistics, it seems and is far…). It also very much has the feel of a 19th Century adventure, with explorers going off and bagging the weird and wonderful specimens to bring back for museums and entertainment. This was seldom good for the specimens involved, of course, and we […] Click to continue reading this post →

Orionids!

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[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (body, comments and images to follow)]:

Don’t forget the Orionids over the next night or two (peaking late tonight, the wee hours of Sunday morning). As the name implies, look for them coming from Orion, although even if you don’t know exactly where that is, you’ll see them almost anywhere you look in the sky if you’ve enough dark. Recall that Orion has those three bright equally spaced stars in a line, making up his belt. I spoke about this, and gave more directions about the Orionids in a post last year.

There’s a Space.com piece by Joe Rao with more discussion. About sightings, it says:

Expect to see few, if any Orionids before midnight – especially this year, with a bright waxing gibbous Moon glaring high in the western sky.

But moonset is around 1:30 a.m. local daylight time on Sunday, and that’s a good time to begin preparing for your meteor vigil. At its best several hours later, at around 5:00 a.m. when Orion is highest in the sky toward the south, Orionids typically produce around 20 to 25 meteors per hour under a clear, dark sky.

Today’s StarDate (as usual, read on NPR by the wonderful Sandy Wood) has a piece on it too. Here’s an extract from the transcript (written by Damond Benningfield):

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Massive!

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[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (body, comments and images to follow)]:

Messier 33 GalaxyThere’s been a recent discovery* of an unusual black hole. It is about sixteen times the mass of our sun. While this might not seem as dramatic as the black holes that are millions of times the mass of our sun that live at the cores of galaxies, such large black holes that result from the collapse of ordinary stars have hitherto been unknown. This presents an important and exciting puzzle about the processes by which black holes form from the collapse of stars. There’s evidently more going on than previously thought, possibly as a result of complicated interactions with its companion star during formation.

(Image: A Harvard-Smithsonian Center image of the galaxy Messier 33, in which the new black hole was found.)

I talk a bit more about this on Correlations, and you can read more about the recent […] Click to continue reading this post →

Talk Talk

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dbranesTwo Thursdays ago I went up to Santa Barbara to give a seminar. I had a great time, and it reminded me why it can be so much fun to go somewhere and visit for even a short time and do that. I got to catch up with several old friends, including Santa Barbara itself, where I lived for a number of years in the 90’s when I was a postdoc. I spent time chatting with the various people there before (at lunch) and after (individually) the seminar, learning about some of the research they’re doing, and also talking about other matters physics-wise and gossip-wise. I wish I’d had more time to talk since I did not get to talk to everyone I wanted to talk to, and not at as much length as I would have liked. (This was partly due to the fact that I spent the morning in my hotel room writing some of the slides for my talk. – I had a presentation the day before to focus on, along with a departmental visitor to host, and the day before I was also occupied. Don’t ask about any earlier than that – I never prepare new material that much in advance. Not because I don’t want to, but it just never happens… if I have more than a day or two, I will find that there’s other stuff I have to do.)

Anyway, a good time was had by all (I think). I can even post a picture of some of us at dinner in the evening after the talk. (Will update later with that, since it was downloaded to computer that’s not here.) We went to an old haunt of mine in downtown Santa Barbara – Roy’s. I’m pleased and surprised that it is still there and going strong, since it is the sort of highly individual restaurant that – since it is also reasonably priced – you’d expect to vanish from such a high value spot in town.

What was I talking about? Well, with three students (Tameem Albash, Veselin Filev, and Arnab Kundu), I’ve been involved in some fun work on some of the physics concerning […] Click to continue reading this post →

…And He Got Einstein’s Office!

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[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (comments and images to follow)]: From the Nobel Prize site, the final one of the year: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007 jointly to Leonid Hurwicz … Click to continue reading this post →

A Peace Prize for Science

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This is just great!

From the Norwegian Nobel Committee (remember, this prize does not come from the Swedish Academy):

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

This is simply fantastic, since I see it as a major step that a peace prize has been given for work on a scientific issue that affects our lives so profoundly. The IPCC was tasked with sifting through all the science on the matter, and present a thoughtful set of reports to guide governments, other organisations and individuals on the issue. This is a huge and important task that has been deservedly recognised by the committee. (My Correlations colleague Michael Tobis has more thoughts here.)

It could not stop there though. We live in a society where it is not enough to make a scientific case, since there are people and organizations that will try to confuse the issue for their own personal gains, and -most dismayingly- the vast majority of people are not going to be swayed by scientific arguments that they will never read, or take the time to understand, or consider as not personally relevant to their lives. This is where Al Gore (and others) comes in. You can read some of my recent thoughts about Al Gore’s role in all this in an earlier post entitled The Man of Tomorrow?, and so I won’t repeat all of that here, but here are some extracts:

[…] I’ve been very heartened by the pace of change that has happened in a short time with regards to people talking about the environment, and (some) people beginning to do something about it. Not become activists of the sack-cloth wearing sort, but merely thinking about the small things that individuals can do here and there that correspond to large changes when you add up the effort of millions. To begin thinking about changes to lifestyle and business practices that might make a real difference.

[…] So what is responsible for this pleasant change, this marked increase in awareness in the populace? At least in the USA (the environment’s worst offender – although it is being challenged for this dubious position by China), whether you like it or not we must point to Al Gore as being one of the principal messengers who has got the debate going on the street and in people’s households. It would be nice to think that it was all (or mostly) about people -under their own steam- stopping and weighing the arguments from scientists and other thinkers that were already out there for many years, but that’s largely a fantasy. A lot of it has to do […] Click to continue reading this post →

Coffee Thoughts

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Well, it’s almost the end of the morning, I’ve just finished one set of tasks and about to move on to another and I thought I’d sit down and chat with a cup of coffee. This morning has largely been about three different outreach-type tasks. I hope to spend the entire afternoon on Physics research. I’m an optimist.

Here’s the shape of this morning:

At 7:00am I checked my email and found that an editor at a magazine was looking for something different from what I initially wrote in response to a question of hers about art and science. I’d spent some of the evening before writing something and sent it along, adding a couple of sentences at the end as a sort of final thought. Of course, she liked the last two sentences and not the rest so much (it was not getting directly at what she wanted me to speak to). So, a bit crestfallen, I tried again. In fact, I had indeed spoken to the issue, but had sort of buried it a bit. So I spent some time scraping away the unnecessary and bending and reshaping the text. Amazing how long that takes when you’ve got a word limit. I sent it along eventually. I’m not sure it is actually as good as what I wrote last night in terms of literature, but it is more to the point of what their feature is about, and so in that sense it is better. From the response I got back, it seems to be more like what they’re looking for now. I’ll tell you more about it when it appears… it’s all about a personal take on the interaction between art and science as far as inspiration goes, with a single piece to illustrate it. It’s the picking of a single piece that was the true difficulty. Took me days to decide. In the end, I had to make some hard choices indeed. I actually enjoyed thinking about the issue though. Sort of re-invigorating. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts about the matter in the comments. I’ll come back to this once the piece appears – if it does.

At 10:00am I called a television production company to talk about a new TV show for […] Click to continue reading this post →

Nobel Birthday Present

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Chemistry gets the focus today. From the Academy:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2007 to Gerhard Ertl (Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany), for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces.

Apparently, it’s also his birthday!! That’s a remarkable present to get!

There’s a description of the work (which has important applications all over science and technology – the solid things around us are not infinite, so surfaces abound) here […] Click to continue reading this post →

Nobel Prize for Giants

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The Nobel Prize for Physics was announced today! From the Nobel Prize site:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 jointly to Albert Fert (Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/THALES, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France) and Peter Grünberg (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany) for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance.

“Giant Magnetoresistance” sounds like something from a pulp science fiction novel or Star Trek episode, right? That may well be, but it is worth noting that this effect is what is responsible for your ipod (or other device using those remarkably compact hard drives for storage – like your laptop) being so small! (It is called “giant” because it is a much more powerful version of the magnetoresistance that was already known about. Magnetoresistance is a material’s ability to change its electrical resistance in response to an applied magnetic field**.) There’s a nice conversation about it with Richard Harris on NPR this morning (click here to read transcripts and also link to audio), and here’s the excellent summary from the Noble Prize site itself:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Too Many Events Today

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annenberg panelIn my fog of too many things to do, I forgot to tell you about this event, which happens today at 5:30. I only remembered this morning as I dug a slightly better than normal shirt (for the event) out of the laundry pile and started to iron it:

At USC’s Annenberg School of Communication:

“Does Science Get A Fair Shake in the Media?”

USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism and Scientific American presents a discussion with leading journalists and scholars to “examine all the elements that go into informing the public about the latest scientific discoveries and the challenges the media faces in getting the science right for a story. Guests include author and journalism professor K.C. Cole, astronomy and physics professor Clifford Johnson, biological sciences professor Michael Quick, Reuters biotechnology reporter Lisa Baertlein, and author and environmental journalist Marla Cone. Scientific American editor in chief John Rennie will moderate.

Reception follows discussion.

So that’s going to be great. I recommend it. Location and travel information here.

I have a dilemma. On the one hand, we have an interesting colloquium today in the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Artificial Life?

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Sheril had a post about this over on the new blog Correlations, but it is so interesting (and so potentially far-reaching) that I thought I’d point to it here too.

Craig Venter’s been at it again. This time one of his teams of scientists has apparently created a synthetic chromosome in the laboratory. As he said to the Guardian:

this landmark would be “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before”.

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Not Following the Script

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Well, it was a weekend of an unexpected character. Fantastic outside, but I did not see as much of it as I’d have liked. I was working on a script, you see. It needed to be worked on immediately and at the last minute because the work of turning it into the final product that will get seen started this weekend, and so I wanted to make as many comments and suggestions as I could before it was too late. It’s science – don’t worry. Also it is rare to get to work on something that I know will get made (most things get shelved and never see the light of day), so that was sort of fun. I won’t tell you what it is (sorry) since I’m not actually a writer on the project, but I got the chance to look at the whole thing and make a lot of comments and suggestions, rephrasings, alternative lines, and so forth. All in a good cause. I think it will be out next year.

Yes, I know. “I was working on a script…” Sounds rather like I’ve finally caved in and succumbed to living in Los Angeles completely, working on a script like everyone else […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Small Differences

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Edward Murray on Harpsichord at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is Sunday October 7th. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.

Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: Edward Murray performing on the harpsichord, in the event with the theme “Strings”.)

The theme this month is Small Differences Here’s the description from K C Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post →