« July 2006 | News Picks home | September 2006 »

August 31, 2006

MIT's inconvenient scientist

The Boston Globe: Speech codes are rare in the industrialized, Western democracies. In Germany and Austria, for instance, it is forbidden to proselytize Nazi ideology or trivialize the Holocaust. Given those countries' recent histories, that is a restraint on free expression we can live with.

More curious are our own taboos on the subject of global warming. I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.

Spectroscopy: Shifting light with spin

Nature: NMR spectroscopy has changed enormously over the years, but signal detection has stayed the same since the technique was invented. The latest thinking literally shines a new light on things

Ozone hole shrinking view of planet

Los Alamos Monitor: A Harvard climate professor said Monday reports that the leveling off of what had been a thinning stratospheric ozone layer could be seen as a sign of recovery.

"The ozone hole over Antarctica is not getting deeper, but the issue is still controversial," said Daniel J. Jacob, a prominent professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering who spoke at a laboratory colloquium.

US conducts subcritical nuclear test

ABC News Online: The United States says it has carried out a subcritical nuclear experiment successfully at an underground test site in Nevada - the 23rd such test since 1997.

August 30, 2006

Nobel Prize Winner Melvin Schwartz Dies at 73

The New York Times: Melvin Schwartz, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for generating a beam of wispy particles known as neutrinos, died Monday at a nursing home in Twin Falls, Idaho. He was 73 and lived in Ketchum, Idaho.

In effort to host the International Linear Collider, Chicago bids for Fermilab

Times Leader: U of Chicago may build particle accelerator to keep up with Europe’s science.

Previous Physics Today news pick:

University of Chicago to bid for Fermilab

Anicent polar catastrophe occured 12 milllion years ago

MSNBC: A 30-mile maze of canyons in Antarctica was carved out of bedrock by the catastrophic draining of subglacial lakes during global warming 12 million to 14 million years ago, according to university researchers who warn that a similar event today could have serious environmental consequences.

Lisowski to Lead DOE Global Nuclear Energy Partnership

News Blaze: U.S. Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon announced the appointment of Dr. Paul Lisowski as Deputy Director of Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems. As Deputy Director, Dr. Lisowski will lead the day-to-day operations of the Department's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a key element of the President's Advanced Energy Initiative.

August 29, 2006

China strengthens committment to NPT

China Daily: China will spare no efforts to fulfill its international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation and enhance international cooperation in peaceful utilization of nuclear energy,said Jin Zhuanglong, deputy director of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND).

NASA bets $500 Million on private sector launch vehicles

Space.com: NASA Administrator Mike Griffin does not mince words when he calls the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration effort a gamble, albeit one with the potential to pay off big time if the entrepreneurial sector delivers.

Marine Methane Heats Things Up

ScienceNow: Oil seeping from the seafloor may have contributed to climate change long before the internal combustion engine did. The petroleum deposits are rich in the powerful greenhouse gas methane, which, according to a new study, may have played a major role in two previous episodes of global warming.

How an MRI works

The Tartan: Advances in medical technology have changed not only the way that doctors treat patients, but also how doctors discover what, exactly, needs to be treated.

One of the most accurate forms of imaging available to doctors today is the MRI. An MRI, or magnetic resonance image, is a picture of the insides of a living organism.

August 28, 2006

NASA Chief blasts science advisers, widening split with researchers

Science: NASA Administrator Michael Griffin this week read the riot act to the outside scientists who advise him, accusing them of thinking more of themselves and their research than of the agency's mission. Griffin's harsh comments come on the heels of the resignation of three distinguished scientists from the NASA Advisory Council (NAC), two of whom have questioned Griffin's plan to dramatically scale back a host of science projects.

Previous Physics Today news pick:
Griffin forces NASA Advisers to resign, after they opposed science budget cuts

Nature experiments with Wiki peer review

Wired: Getting published in the illustrious British scientific journal Nature is, frankly, a bitch. It's not just the years you spend designing the perfect experiment, or the hustling for grant money to collect the data. It's not even the long nights of trying to figure out how to express all that work elegantly in the cold language of scientific communication. No – the real trick is getting the editors at Nature to like it.

Russia preparing to pull out of INF Treaty

Russianforces.org: It looks like Russia is preparing the ground for pulling out of the INF Treaty. For about two years now it has been trying to get the United States to agree to terminate the treaty, but apparently without success. Today most Russian news agencies quoted an unnamed Ministry of Defense official who said in an interview to RIA Novosti that "if necessary, Russia will withdraw from the INF Treaty unilaterally." No points for guessing what kind of precedent was mentioned in this regard - he said, "We've seen precedents like this before - the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty."

Interest in ocean power resurges

Honolulu Advertiser: With oil topping $70 a barrel and fuel costs soaring, engineers and scientists are again focusing on how to wring power from the world's largest reservoir of renewable energy — the oceans.

August 25, 2006

Pluto re-classified as a dwarf planet

PTStaff: Members of the International Astronomical Union have finally voted on Pluto's status as a planet. Four competing proposals, one of which would have introduced four new planets called "plutons" to the solar system, and another in which a new sub-class of planets called dwarf planets, caused controversy in the astronomical and geophysical communities, as scientists argued over the new definitions. About 5% of the world's astronomers voted at IAU, to decide the new definition of a planet.

Under the new guidelines, a celestial body must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit" to be called a planet. Pluto has an elliptical orbit that overlaps with Neptune, so is disqualified full planet status.

Previous Physics Today news picks on Pluto

Pluto will stay as a planet says IAU

Plutons, its not a particle, its the name of a new class of planets

Debate continues over Pluto definition

List of stories regarding today's vote

Pluto loses 'battle of the planets'
The Guardian

Solar System Shrinks with Pluto's Demotion
NPR

Pluto booted out of league of planets
The Register

Pluto Demoted: No Longer a Planet in Highly Controversial Definition
Space.com

Vote Makes It Official: Pluto Isn’t What It Used to Be
The New York Times

How the Facts Align - As Pluto Is Demoted, Some Look for Scientific Clarity
The Washington Post

Astronomers use supercomputers to study atoms linked to black holes

The Hindu: Super-hot atoms in space hold the key to an astronomical mystery, and an Ohio State University astronomer is leading an effort to study those atoms here on Earth.

DIY Nuke Detector Patrols SF Bay

Wired: The Department of Homeland Security announced plans last month to bolster U.S. port defenses with radiation scanners. The program, primarily aimed at detecting nukes smuggled by terrorists in shipping containers, will cost an estimated $1.15 billion, but won't be completed until 2011.

The world's longest-running experiments

MSNBC: Some experiments run well after scientists who began them are gone

August 24, 2006

China set to make fusion history

Nature: Plasma physics comes under scrutiny in new breed of tokamak.

Beijing collider intensifies focus on tau–charm physics
Physics Today August 2006

Shanghai builds topflight light source
Physics Today August 2006

Students not getting federal grants if they major in evolution

The New York Times: Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

Ozone hole stable, say scientists

BBC: Leading scientists in the United States say the hole in the ozone layer of the Earth's atmosphere above the Antarctic appears to have stopped widening.

Black Hole in a Pencil

ScienceNow: The stuff of pencil lead may display bizarre behavior thought to occur only around superheavy atoms and black holes. That's the implication of a new study, which suggests that the material can shoot electrons through other materials as if they're invisible. The effect could be useful for designing new kinds of transistors for electronics.

August 23, 2006

Ozone hole has stabilised, say scientists

Guardian Unlimited: Efforts to stop the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic from growing have worked, leading US scientists said today.

University of Chicago to bid for Fermilab

Chicago Tribune: For more than 20 years Fermilab in Batavia has held bragging rights both impressive and arcane: It is home to the world's most powerful atomic particle accelerator, the Tevatron.

But Fermilab will lose that title next year when a new machine in Switzerland and France fires up. Moreover, with the Tevatron scheduled to shut down in 2010 it means that America's longstanding leadership in particle physics will slip away to Europe and Asia. It also signals the likely end of Fermilab and its 2,000 jobs and $315 million annual operating budget.

California's thirst for R&D

The Christian Science Monitor: Much of scientific research and development is funded by congressional earmarks - a troubling trend.

Debate continues over Pluto definition

Space.com: The biggest astronomical debate of the young millennium culminates this Thursday at International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) meeting in Prague, where national representatives will give thumbs up or down to IAU’s latest planet definition proposal.

August 22, 2006

Chandra finds 'proof' of dark matter

BBC: US astronomers say they have found the first direct evidence for the mysterious stuff called dark matter.

Scientists Offer Proof of 'Dark Matter'
The Washington Post

Deciphering the Matter of Dark Matter
NPR

This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 238)
University of California - Riverside

Chandra finds dark matter
The New York Times

Einstein’s Man in Beijing: A Rebel With a Cause

The New York Times: For decades, Xu Liangying has been Albert Einstein’s man in China, intertwining revolution and physics to speak up for the value of scientific curiosity.

Field medals awarded to Perelman, Okounkov, Tao, and Werner

The New York Times: One of those honored was Grigory Perelman, who solved a key piece in a puzzle known as the Poincaré conjecture.

Poincaré conjecture probably solved

August 21, 2006

US reclassifies public data on US nuclear missile stocks

Washington Post: The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the US government long provided: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

Despite the censorship from the DoE and DoD, the missile numbers can still be easily obtained from the public hearings mentioned in Congressional Record, or from the Russians and the UN, as the data was made public as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). "They are only making themselves look ridiculous," says Robert S. Norris, a senior research associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council to Post reporter Christopher Lee.

Read it

Griffin forces NASA Advisers to resign, after they opposed science budget cuts

Space.com: Wesley Huntress, Charles Kennel and Eugene Levy, who served on the NASA Advisory Council's science committee have resigned after speaking publicly against budget cuts in NASA's science program. Kennel resigned by choice but Huntress and Levy were asked to leave by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. Levy is quoted as saying that a commitment to a broad science program at NASA "didn't comport with the kind of advice that the administrator and the chairman of the committee were looking for." Science programs at NASA have been heavily affected with budget cuts as NASA attempts to get the Space Shuttle back on track, and the President's Moon/Mars vision implemented.

Read it

Can 2-D electron systems have zero resistance?

Nature: Electrons confined to the interface between two semiconductors form what is known as a two-dimensional electron gas - essentially, a two-dimensional metal. These materials provide a playground for the exploration of fundamental physics. Writing in Physical Review Letters, M. A. Zudov, R. R. Du, L. N. Pfeiffer, and K. W. West describe a experiment designed to shed light on one such phenomenon: 'zero-resistance' states induced by the application of a magnetic field and microwave radiation.

Read it

Four sites proposed for Square Kilometer Array telescope

Science: This summer, radio astronomers will recommend a location for the planned International Square Kilometer Array (SKA), a network of 4000 radio dishes spread over an area several thousand kilometers across. SKA will be 100 times as sensitive as today's best radio telescopes. There are four sites competing to host the telescope: one in the Karoo region in South Africa, another in an arid plain in Western Australia; the third in Argentina on a high, dry plateau; the fourth is between the angular karst hills of southeastern China. The SKA's international steering committee is looking for a stable ionosphere, predictable weather, and good infrastructure. But the main priority is for the region selected to maintain radio silence, as many current radio telescope sites suffer from radio interference brought about by the expansion of urban centers.

Read it

August 18, 2006

Spin set on Quantum Computing milestone

Nature: Quantum computers could solve problems insurmountable to conventional computers. The missing ingredient for quantum computing with electron spins is now available — the rotation of a single spin.

Southampton researchers double silicon speed record

The Register: Engineers at the University of Southampton have set a new world speed record for silicon performance by adding a little fluorine to the mix.

Scientists work Congress to increase science funding

Science: Congressional staffers are working through the dog days of August on legislation to bolster U.S. competitiveness that both parties and the White House can agree upon.

Hubble glimpses faintest stars

BBC: Researchers peering at the Universe's first-born stars have uncovered the key to predicting a star's destiny.

August 17, 2006

Russian physicist found guilty of working with foreigners

Nature: Russian physicist Oskar Kaibyshev was given a six-year suspended prison sentence last week for exporting technologies with possible military use to South Korea. Human-rights advocates say the accusation is baseless and part of a series of prosecutions unjustly targeting Russian scientists.

Naval Observatory to participate in SETI

Space.com: Following a recent demonstration of a 10-dish element of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), the United States Navy has signed off on a $1.5 million agreement to use the array along with another 10-dish installation to be developed in the near future.

Ultrasensitive explosives detectors

Technology Review: HP researchers have developed a cheap way to make nanoparticle arrays that could lead to precise chemical sensors.

Voyager 1: 'The Spacecraft That Could' Hits New Milestone

Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Voyager 1, already the most distant human-made object in the cosmos, reaches 100 astronomical units from the sun on Tuesday, August 15 at 5:13 p.m. Eastern time (2:13 p.m. Pacific time). That means the spacecraft, which launched nearly three decades ago, will be 100 times more distant from the sun than Earth is.

August 16, 2006

Plutons, its not a particle, its the name of a new class of planets

MSNBC: The controversy over whether Pluto is really a planet reached a new milestone today, as a committee of the International Astronomical Union released a copy of report recommending a new class of planets for the solar system. Unlike predictions made last week astronomers will not call this new classification dwarf planets, but plutons instead, to highlight Pluto's special position in this new classification. Under the new classification, which can basically be described as round objects that orbit the sun, more than 40 other objects in the solar system could be classed as Plutons. Astronomers will vote on the proposal on the 25 August. It is unknown whether the IAU has enough votes to pass the measure.

Pluto's New Place in Space Could Be as a 'Pluton'
The Washington Post

For Now, Pluto Holds Its Place in Solar System
The New York Times

Astronomers May Add Planets to Solar System
NPR

Student try to build a more fuel efficient car than Detroit

The Christian Science Monitor: At MIT's student-led 'vehicle design summit,' engineering students from around the world unite to build super-efficient commuter cars.

Global Warming Affects Hurricane Intensity, U.S. Study Shows

Environmental News Network: Global warming is affecting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes, according to a new study by a university professor in Florida who says his research provides the first direct link between climate change and storm strength.

Building better batteries (that don't explode)

The New York Times: Batteries have not improved at the same rate as the electronic devices they power, but recent advances in lithium polymer batteries, popular with cell phone and computer manufacturers, have led to a new host of problems as Dell's $400 million recall of more than 4 million batteries can attest. Companies are now looking not only to meet these increasing power demands, but are trying to figure out how to create safer, more stable batteries. DAMON DARLIN and BARNABY J. FEDER of the New York Times investigate three of the most promising battery technologies and explain why a Dell laptop battery could catch fire and explode.

August 15, 2006

Poincaré conjecture probably solved

The New York Times: Grisha Perelman has quite possibly solved one of mathematics biggest mysteries, Poincaré’s conjecture, but has since disappeared.

Update: Slate magazine also explains the importance of Poincaré’s conjecture using a more visual description than the Times.

Water molecules spark big dispute

Sacramento Bee: Rising temperatures will increase the risk of forest fires, droughts and flooding over the next two centuries, UK climate scientists have warned.

'More disasters' for warmer world