The Scientist in Me.

My apologies for my absentee blogging. Much has happened as it always does. We are now the proud parents of 4 furry pups. And that's all I can handle right now folks. Anyone who has a dog can tell you that they're not much different than human children as far as their need for quality time, play, etc..

The scientist in me has returned. I am now a Research Scientist with the Space Sciences Group at the University of Texas at Dallas. We are model bits and pieces of interactions with the Global Electric Circuit. There are many interactions, most not known, but currently we deal with modeling collision coefficients for atmospheric aerosols and particles. These coefficients eventually lead to relationships with observable parameters.

It's late and I'm at the end so wait for my next posting about this....

Virgin Galactic

It always gets me into a lift so high it takes days to come down to earth, the idea of spaceflight, getting off the ground and into space!

 As a young girl, I was glued to the TV for every Apollo lift-off and if not, I was down at Cape Canaveral where we had on site passes from my NASA employed uncle to watch lift-offs close-up. While my buddies were outside riding bikes and lamenting my absence at the local creek where we usually played, I was seriously camped out on the floor for nearly a week in front of our TV for the Apollo 11 moon flight. It was the spark that gifted me as well as millions of other young people over the globe to become scientists. Even if we had only dreamed of ourselves as future space travelers.

So, here's a post about the Virgin Galactic ships that have been test flying for the last few years. The video below is Virgin Galactic's SS2 First Feather Flight which took place at their Mojave test site in May 2011.

 

An aside: The concept of 'feather flight' is based on Burt Rutan's idea of entering the atmosphere in a safer mode as opposed to the  NASA shuttles. The concept includes a light weight structured ship made of newer composites which allow for the aerodynamic motions that birds often use when gliding downwards. What this means is that the ship's wings are tilted forwards allowing for an aerodynamically stable high-drag"feathered" shape. The shuttle experienced strong aerodynamic loading on re-entry and gliding, severely stressing it's outer structures.  Lessons were well learned by space craft pioneer Burt Rutan who developed the concept, applying it to his Space Ship One design which made the first commercial space flight on June 21st, 2004. It won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, on October 4th by flying to an  altitude of 100 kilometers twice in a two-week period.  A total of three people flew and it used slightly less than ten percent of the spacecraft's weight in fuel replacement between flights.  Paul Allen funded the project at an estimated $25 million dollars.

The Sounds of the Vela Pulsar

Well, I'm back after a busy couple of months...

Got this video from YouTube of course. The source of the actual video is unknown to me. The video is neat however, so to check out authenticity, I went to the  Jodrell Bank site where Pulsar data is recorded.

The Vela pulsar (PSR 0833-45) recording at Jodrell Bank sounds like the pulsar the video is referring to. It's period is 89.3 ms which means it's spinning at a rate of  11 times a second. It’s is a  supernova remnant (SNR), about 800 lyr (light years) distance and is estimated to have exploded between 11,000 to 12,300 years ago. It is one of the closets SNRs to us. The Geminga Pulsar is still closer along with another one, RX J0852.0-4622 estimated at 650 lyr. The spectrum of SNRs we see vary in size, radiation type and strength, etc. I’m only touching on the aesthetic aspects here as time is short. Bill Blair has a neat page with solid links that explains much about this SNR.      

 

 



How Big is Space?

Just how big....?

How Big is Space?

I checked this out on the BBC Science site. It's actually quite good, one starts at ground level Earth, then proceeds upwards to edge of the Solar System where one is informed that the rest of space to the edge of the universe is available for view if one has the time (22 million years) to scroll continuously the rest of the way!

Actually the scrolling stops there. No way is the BBC going to employ 22 millions years worth of human generations to keep this thing running. I thought that the next time I'm adopted via 'Adopt-A-Physicist' I'd refer my mentees to this nifty little web depiction of our neighborhood!

Sixty Symbols

 

 SixtrySymbols.com; University of Nottingham

  

The SixtySymbols.com site of the University of Nottingham  has a nifty front page full of physics symbols each linking up to a YouTube video. The videos are quite easy to take on and understand. For example the video below is the result of clicking on E=mc²; one of the more popular videos.

 

 

What may interest most physics-philes is that in this particular video, the term E=mc² is actually not a complete description of the concept itself. We physicists appreciate that the m in this term is the rest mass or relativistic mass but the complete more correct expression is:

 

E² = p²c² +m²c⁴

 

Why is this important? The term:

 

E = mc²

 

states the equivalence of energy and mass and when particles bind together, they must do so with a binding energy E. For example take the constituents particles of an atom where all their masses sum to M_1. Putting them together to form that atom requires energy so some of M₁ is converted to energy leaving an atom with a total mass M₂ and with the same internal constituent particles. How cool is that!

 

I don't want to just parrot the video, but I will say it is beautifully and simply explained as to how Dirac got hint of the positron by coming up with the simple negative energy roots of the complete expression. The positron was discovered later.

 

Each video is a layman's dream spiel on an important concept in our understanding of the universe. So many of the ideas we hear about when physicists discuss the Standard Model, Quantum Mechanics, etc. seem abstruse and disjointed. How can they come together to make a coherent picture of what we think may be happening? One may get a somewhat more coherent picture by viewing everything historically rather than all at once. It worked for me

 

2012 and a Norwegian Cruise

I had the ambition earlier this year to say something even if pithy about the Mayan Doomsday prediction scheduled by most Mayan Calendars to occur on December 21st. However, given it's importance in my 'things to do' list, it never happened. I just never had the urge to research actual Mayan historical data and then compare to what is known phenomenologically (the physics of the matter).

What I have gotten is this; most Mayan traditions have it that something significant is going to happen on December 21st, 2012.  The Coba Mayans however apparently had a different calendar so December 21st 2012 was of no significance to them.

End of days is a recurrent theme in most religions and amongst all prophets and naysayers. So Jim and I, to make the best of the situation have decided that for our 30th anniversary we are going on the Not the End of the World Cruise aboard Norwegian cruise lines. It's a true Geek affair arranged by a consortium of scientists and authors with lectures, workshops and yes -  a masquerade ball. The highlight of the trip will be a visit to the Coba Mayan Ruins in Quintana Roo, Mexico. It's located about 90 km east of Chichen Itza and about half that far northwest of  the Tulum site. It's the Tulum and Chichen Itza Mayans that really believe the 21st to be significant. According to our itinerary, we'll be near - not really at epicenter should whatever 'end of days' scenario plays out. It does look as if we'll read Mayan glyphs and move around a courtyard where prisoner heads were used soccer ball style in games. I personally plan to take pictures of this whole zen affair to bring back to my clan after the 21st!

Check it all out at:   Not the end of the World Cruise.

And on a final note, given our busy traveling itinerary to Mexico and afterwards Florida, there's likely to be no new posts after this one until I return in January 2013.....

October 2012 CERN update: Is it the Standard Model Higgs?

 Veritasium Video: Higgs Boson Update from CERN

 

 

This YouTube video is a very accessible and understandable description of what the Standard Model Higgs is and what they know to date. Just get past the 5 second ad and you're in.

 

The 3 dimensional schematic layout of the CERN facility is the best - something I certainly appreciated. However, given in succinct and easy to understand layman's terms, the video describes the CMS detector where protons are accelerated and the ATLAS detector which does the same thing. Last year  both detectors discovered a particle in the same mass range of 125 - 126 GeV.  But is it the standard model Higgs?

 

Aside from it's expected mass range, the only other information seen is that the Higgs decay spectrum yields too many photons, in conflict with the standard model. What does this mean? One explanation is extra dimensions while the other is that we are seeing a mirror image of our universe, namely 'supersymmetry'. 

 

I wanted to come out of hibernation to say something about recent events but given limited time (and my dogs pawing on my right arm) I'm  providing a list of links in case anyone wants to delve deeper:

 

NY Times Kathy Sykes Higgs Matters

Wikipedia's Higgs boson    

 Nature.com November 15, 2012 New Higgs Results bring relief and disappointment