newsobserver.com: Daniel Suson has a doctorate in astrophysics and has worked on the superconducting super collider and a coming NASA probe. Now he's heading back to school to take on an even trickier task -- getting elected to public office. He is among a growing number of scientists who feel slighted and abused in the public debate in recent years and are mobilizing to inject "evidence-based decision making" into public policy. Today, Suson, dean of engineering, mathematics and science at Purdue University Calumet, will join more than 70 other scientists, engineers and students at a hotel at Georgetown University for a crash course on elective politics.
London Review of Books: John Lanchester, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books reviews a series a books on global warming and ends his review with the following paragraphs:
The remarkable thing is that most of the things we need to do to prevent climate change are clear in their outline, even though one can argue over details. We need to insulate our houses, on a massive scale; find an effective form of taxing the output of carbon (rather than just giving tradeable credits to the largest polluters, which is what the EU did – a policy that amounted to a 30 billion euro grant to the continent’s biggest polluters); spend a fortune on both building and researching renewable energy and DC power; spend another fortune on nuclear power; double or treble our spending on public transport; do everything possible to curb the growth of air travel; and investigate what we need to do to defend ourselves if the sea rises, or if food imports collapse. If we do that we may find that we develop the technologies that China and India will need. If we can show that it is possible to cut carbon output dramatically without trashing our economy – well, that might be the single most important thing we could do, far outweighing the actual impact of our emission reductions.
We know all this, but whether any of it will actually happen is a different question. It is easy for politicians to stick wind turbines on their houses and ride bicycles, but effective action on climate change is about to require doing things that are not popular. In his eponymous report, Nicholas Stern has argued that it would cost about 1 per cent of global GDP now to prevent a loss of 5 per cent of global GDP in the future. The calculation is tweaked to make the cost now sound manageably small – but it is not yet clear whether Western electorates are willing to pay it. One per cent of global GDP is 600 billion dollars, most of which would be paid by the developed world. The idea is that by paying it now we would be keeping the world’s economy on track so that by 2050 the developed world would be 200 per cent richer and the developing world 400 per cent, while our emissions decline by 60 to 90 per cent and theirs increase by 25 to 50. (One problem is that 17 per cent of that growth in developing world emissions has already been used up.) The promised economic growth is jam tomorrow; we would be paying for it today, in the form of increased taxes and lost jobs. These things are all real to voters in ways that climate change perhaps is not. Are people going to give things up in the present in order to prevent things that computer models tell them are going to happen in 25 years’ time? If they – we – aren’t, then we’re heading for breeding pairs, and camels in the Arctic.
Science: Last October, the American TV network CBS premiered the now popular sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. Centering on two male physics postdocs and the blonde girl who moves in next door, The Big Bang Theory follows the sitcom formula of placing quirky, exaggerated characters in situations both odd and mundane.
The Big Bang Theory is the first time a prime-time comedy has taken science this seriously--partly in thanks to experimental particle physicist David Saltzberg of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Freelancer Karen Heyman recently spoke with Saltzberg and one of the show's creators Bill Prady for Science magazine, and paid a visit to the set of The Big Bang Theory, to learn how cutting-edge research gets injected into the show.
Physics Today: The European Space Agency has released images of Cyclone Nargis making its way across the Bay of Bengal just south of Myanmar on 1 May 2008.
 The cyclone hit the coastal region and ripped through the heart of Myanmar on Saturday, devastating the country. The picture (right) is from the Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument working in Reduced Resolution mode to deliver a spatial resolution of 1200 meters.
Under an international charter founded by ESA, the French space agency (CNES) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) eight years ago, the agencies provide satellite data free of charge to those affected by disasters anywhere in the world. On 4 May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) asked for support.
With inundated areas typically visible from space, Earth Observation (EO) is increasingly being used for flood response and mitigation. One of the biggest problems during flooding emergencies is obtaining an overall view of the phenomenon, with a clear idea of the extent of the flooded area.
These Envisat radar images above highlight the extent of flooding in the Irrawaddy delta caused by the cyclone Nargis that hit Myanmar on May 3, 2008, devastating the country. The left image, acquired on Feb. 5, 2007, shows the situation approximately one year ago. The black and dark areas in the image on the right, acquired on May 5, 2008, indicate areas potentially still flooded two days after the event. Envisat's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar data are especially well suited for delivering information on floods, which are usually accompanied by rain and therefore cloudy conditions. Radar sensors can peer through clouds, rain or local darkness and are especially sensitive to moisture on the ground. Both images have a 75 m pixel grid on the ground and show an area approximately 100 km wide.
Science: In 2001, mathematical physicist Neil Turok went back for the first time in 25 years to his childhood home, South Africa, to visit his parents. Dismayed by the lack of opportunities for math graduates in Africa and motivated by his father, a former antiapartheid activist, the University of Cambridge researcher took action. Over the next 2 years, Turok had a derelict building near Cape Town renovated into a new institute, enrolled 29 math graduates from 11 African nations, and persuaded mathematician colleagues to teach there for 3-week shifts. "It's a very inspirational venture, … a real flagship project," says Britain's Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, who has visited the institute.
The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) continues to grow (see sidebar, p. 605), but Turok isn't stopping there. He's leading the effort to replicate it at 15 centers across the continent, each focusing on a different area of applied math, such as economics. "When people hear about AIMS, they get very excited," Turok says, "and people see the spark of something much, much bigger."
Related Physics Today article
Institute nurtures African math and science graduate students April 2008
Space.com: NASA has pushed back the planned launch of the final flight to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope by up to five weeks due to external fuel tank delays, mission managers said Thursday. Space shuttle program manager John Shannon said that the additional time required to include post-Columbia safety improvements in two shuttle fuel tanks supporting the Hubble servicing mission have delayed the spaceflight to no earlier than late September. A seven-astronaut crew was slated to launch toward Hubble aboard NASA's shuttle Atlantis on Aug. 28. "We really cannot make that date with the external tank processing," Shannon told reporters in a briefing here at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "I really think it's a small price to pay, to tell you the truth, four to five weeks for all the improvements that we're getting on this tank."
Physics Today: Faster moving ships hit the whales, causing injury or death, say scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Yet for over a year the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has blocked the National Marine Fisheries Service from issuing a rule based on scientific research that limits the speed of ships near US ports to protect the endangered right whale.
 According to documents obtained by the House of representative committee on oversight and government reform (OGR), the delay appears to be based on objections raised by Whitehouse officials and the Vice President's office. Under Executive order 12866, the OIRA is supposed to complete their review of rule changes within 90 days and can only extend the review period by an additional 30 days.
According to Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), who recently sent a letter to the administration requesting an explanation, the Vice President's office is objecting to NOAA's research as the Vice President's staff "contends that we have no evidence that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference."
In a memo obtained by the OGR committee NOAA rejected these objections, stating that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. NOAA reported that there is "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales."
Waxman says that he questions "why White House economic advisors are apparently conducting their own research on right whales and why the Vice President's staff is challenging the conclusions of the government's scientific experts. The appearance is that the White House rejects the conclusions of its own scientists and peer-reviewed scientific studies because it does not like the policy implications of the data. This is not how the review process is supposed to work."
Nature News: A dozen of cosmology’s brightest minds, including British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, descended on the Cook’s Branch Conservancy in Montgomery County, Texas, last week to discuss the tricky problems of the early Universe. These physicists, most of whom are connected in some way to Hawking, either as collaborators or past graduate students at the University of Cambridge, UK, arrived for the invitation-only retreat, which, in its second year, has become one of the most exclusive — and pampered — workshops in physics. The 23-square-kilometre property is owned by George Mitchell, an 88-year-old developer and oilman worth US$3.2 billion. Late in life, Mitchell has cultivated a love for astrophysics, bestowing $50 million on Texas A&M University in College Station. “I am trying to see how our top universities can have as much influence in high-level physics as, say, Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley, or Harvard or Yale,” Mitchell explains. “And I am trying to see how we can get in on the act, because this state is big enough and wealthy enough to get it done.”
Chronicle of Higher Education: Two years ago, the National Academies sounded the alarm in a widely cited report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” that America was slipping behind other countries in science and technology. On Tuesday leaders from academe and business met here to try to refocus Congress’s attention on the report’s many recommendations that require lawmakers’ action. One expected topic of discussion on Tuesday is a lobbying effort already under way to persuade Congress to increase federal spending for physical-sciences research significantly this year. The money could be squeezed into a broader supplemental-appropriations bill that legislators are expected to consider in the coming weeks to finance the Iraq war.
The Guardian: The UK's Daily Telegraph's science correspondent, Nic Fleming, is believed to be in negotations over plans to make his role redundant and, should he go, there do not seem to be plans to replace him.
The situation has reinforced the view that the media fail to recognise science's popularity with, or relevance to, the public. Reporting is either dumbed down, sensationalised, or spiked by executives with humanities degrees and an inability to distinguish one end of a hybrid embryo from another.
While science journalists proudly trace their origins back to the 1920s, doomsayers fear their field is being slowly invaded by technology correspondents (who first appeared in 1985), encroached on by health correspondents and made to seem marginal by the more recent obsession with the environment.
"Science in the daily media is too often reported in the same deferential way as political journalists used to report politics in the 1950s," says Jonathan Leake, science and environment editor at the Sunday Times. "Many of the tensions, rows and skulduggery in the science community get far less attention than they would in business or politics."
The main criticism is that respected journals such as Science and Nature - along with active news agencies such as AlphaGalileo, EurekAlert! and a plethora of less rigorous journals - control much of the science correspondents' output. An onslaught of embargoed, mid-week press releases leaves the Sundays with no choice but to pursue factually thin sensationalism.
"The science correspondents are individually very good but everyone publishes the same stories at the same time and that can make it dull," says Leake. "Although it would be a serious mistake to do away with expert science writers, any daily editor facing the pinch might wonder if they could get the same stories from the wires."
This relentless PR churn has another danger, according to Lawrence McGinty, ITV's health and science editor. "There's little time to pursue your own ideas when everyone is under pressure from news desks not to miss a story," he says.
Space.com: Experts took part in a special panel "Forging the Future of Space Science: The Next 50 Years," held at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). The discussion is part of an international public seminar series, marking the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year that launched science into space. The colloquia series is organized by the Space Studies Board, a research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. Leonard David describes some of the conclusions reached at the syposium at space.com
Nature: The popular caricature locates the origins of modern science in the natural philosophies of ancient Greece and the rediscovery of their spirit during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It passes decorously over the intervening period, deemed to be a hotbed of superstition. In fact, the notion of a Universe governed by laws accessible to human reason — the precondition for science — emerged in Western Europe largely during the twelfth century, several hundred years earlier than we have come to imagine.
NPR: In West Virginia, science lessons on climate change have the potential to divide teachers from students, and students from their parents. But one teacher, Tiffany Litton, has earned the trust of her students. Her classroom, she says, is a place for honest inquiry, not a forum for anyone — whether the coal industry or environmentalists — to promote an agenda.
Physics Today Online: In a lecture celebrating NASA's 50th anniversary at George Washington University yesterday, theoretical astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy Hawking, a journalist and book author, argued that an active human spaceflight program is one of the few opportunities for governments to attract students into the sciences.
 “The low esteem in which science and scientists are held by the public is a significant problem,” said Stephen Hawking. “Never before has science and technology played such a big role in our lives, and yet the children of today are not interested in science.”
Lucy Hawking followed up on her father’s observation by providing examples of the public's poor grasp of scientific knowledge. She said that “72% of UK students couldn’t identify the Moon from a picture. And only 4% of US adults could name a living scientist, although 96% of those surveyed said it was important for the US to invest in science education.” A large number of scientists were inspired to go into science because of an interest in astronomy; “Kids never tire of hearing about human spaceflight,” she added.
 Stephen Hawking pointed out that NASA’s budget forms a small part of the US GNP (gross national product) and that increasing investment in the international space exploration budget by a factor of 20 would still be a small amount (0.25%) of the world’s financial resources. Humanity can afford to battle earthly problems like climate change and still have plenty of resources left over for human spaceflight exploration, he said.
"A goal of a base on the Moon by 2020 and of a manned landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite the space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy's Moon target did in the 1960s," Stephen Hawking said. Humans should return to the Moon because it is "close by and relatively easy to reach," and, assuming there are water deposits at the lunar poles, it could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system.
 Mars would be "the obvious next target", with its abundant supplies of frozen water and minerals brought close to the surface through volcanic eruptions. "There is also tantalizing possibility that life may have been present there in the past." Saturn’s moon Titan sounds like an intriguing place to visit, he said, although it's cold: “I wouldn’t want to live next to a lake of liquid methane.”
Hawking dismissed robotic missions as a way to inspire the next generation of children because although "robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, they don't catch the public imagination in the same way.”
Although attracting children to science education is one of Hawking’s reasons for supporting NASA’s plans to return to the Moon, he said that human space exploration should be a long-term (200-500 years) strategy for the species, including attempting interstellar travel.
“If only 1% of the 1000 or so stars within 30 light-years of Earth has an Earth-size planet at the right distance from its star for liquid water to exist, that would make for 10 such planets in our solar system's neighborhood,” he said. “If we want the human species to survive another million years, then we need to ‘boldly go where no one has gone before.’”
Hawking also theorized about the existence of life elsewhere in the universe, stating that he believed primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. He then joked, "some would say it has yet to occur on Earth."
BBC Newsnight: Nicholas Owen, from the solar theory group at St Andrews University got loud applause when he asked a panel on the crisis in UK science funding at the annual meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society: "I'm a PhD student in solar physics. Why, in the current climate, should I and other students take the risk of continuing to do research in this area?"
The answer he got, from John Womersley, director of science programmes at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, was criticised as patronising: "If you cared about money you wouldn't be a scientist at all would you," he told the students in the hall.
"You may feel it's a bigger gamble than you want to make, knowing what you do about future funding."
"But if it's not rewarding, and it's not exciting and you don't feel you can make a contribution, then don't do it. If you can, then let's figure out a way that you can. The future budgets make it tough, I can't deny that."
Susan Watts investigates why UK scientists are so upset with the labour government over science funding.
NPR: From a distance, the spinning windmills can look sculptural and graceful, but residents who live among wind turbines often have mixed and divergent feelings. NPR's David Baron talks to one family in upstate New York that's been divided by the impact of a local wind farm.
ORISE: The number of foreign students receiving doctorates in science and engineering from US universities and staying in this country historically has increased. In recent years, however, stay rates peaked and then declined slightly, according to a new report issued by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE).
Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, 2005, documents a study in which tax records were used to estimate the proportion of foreign doctorate recipients from US universities who stayed in the US after graduation for any reason.
"In many fields of science and engineering, foreign students make up the majority of doctorate recipients," says ORISE report author Michael Finn. "Universities, research labs, and other high-tech employers have become dependent on these scientists and engineers."
"However, some of the actions taken to improve security after 9/11 were widely seen as having made it harder for foreign doctorate recipients to obtain visas," Finn said. "Also, there was concern that the increased restrictions made foreign scientists feel less welcome. In addition to security issues, the macroeconomic performance of the US economy may have been a factor as well. There was a weakness from 2000–2002 that may have contributed to the minor decline in the stay rate. This report indicates that the adverse impact on stay rates was quite small—the U.S. is still keeping about two-thirds."
Two-thirds (66 percent) of foreign citizens who received science or engineering doctorates from US universities in 2003 lived in the United States in 2005, the study found. The two-year stay rate had peaked at 71 percent in the early part of this decade; thus, the more recent 66 percent rate represents a slight decline in the stay rate of foreign doctorate recipients.
Among science and engineering disciplines, the highest stay rate was recorded for computer/electrical and electronic engineering. The stay rates in agricultural sciences, economics, and the other social sciences were the lowest, according to the report.
Various: Main text currently adapted from Wikipedia John Archibald Wheeler passed away yesterday after contracting pneumonia. He is survived by two daughters, Alison Wheeler Lahnston and Letitia Wheeler Ufford, and a son, James English Wheeler.
 Wheeler was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He graduated from the Baltimore City College high school in 1926 and received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1933. His thesis, under the supervision of Karl Herzfeld, was on the theory of the dispersion and adsorption of helium. Wheeler married Janette Hegner in 1935 (who died last year).
Wheeler made important contributions to theoretical physics. In 1937 he introduced the S-matrix, which became an indispensable tool in particle physics. He was a pioneer in the theory of nuclear fission, along with Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi. In 1939 he collaborated with Bohr on the liquid drop model of nuclear fission.
"For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing," Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Max Tegmark told The New York Times.
Wheeler spent a significant part of his career as professor of physics at Princeton University (1938-1976), before joining the University of Texas at Austin. Wheeler's graduate students include Richard Feynman, Kip Thorne, and Hugh Everett, some of the most distinguished physicists of the second half of the 20th century. Wheeler was renowned for his teaching as well as his research. He was exemplary at finding ways to convey complex ideas in understandable terms. Even after he had achieved fame, he continued to teach freshman physics, saying that the young minds were the most important.
Together with other leading physicists, during World War II Wheeler interrupted his academic career to participate in the development of the U.S. atomic bomb under the Manhattan Project at the Hanford site, where reactors were constructed to produce plutonium for the bomb which was to be dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Even before the Hanford site started up B-Pile (the first of three reactors), he had foreseen that the accumulation of "fission product poisons" would interrupt the ongoing nuclear chain reaction by absorbing neutrons and correctly deduced (by calculating the half-life decay rates) that an isotope of xenon (Xe135) was responsible. He went on to work on the development of the American hydrogen bomb under Project Matterhorn B.
After concluding his Project Matterhorn work, Wheeler returned to Princeton to resume his academic career. In 1957, while working on extensions to general relativity, he introduced the word wormhole to describe tunnels in space-time.
In the 1950s, he formulated geometrodynamics, a program of physical and ontological reduction of every physical phenomenon, such as gravitation and electromagnetism, to the geometrical properties of a curved space-time. Aiming at a systematical identification of matter with space, geometrodynamics was often characterized as a continuation of the philosophy of nature as conceived by Descartes and Spinoza. Wheeler's geometrodynamics, however, failed to explain some important physical phenomena, such as the existence of fermions or that of gravitational singularities. Wheeler therefore abandoned this theory in the early 1970s.
His work in general relativity included the theory of gravitational collapse; he coined the term black hole in 1967 during a talk at the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS). He was also a pioneer in the field of quantum gravity with his development (with Bryce DeWitt) of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation or, as he calls it, the "wave function of the Universe."
Recognizing Wheeler's colorful way with words, characterized by such confections as "mass without mass", the festschrift honoring his 60th birthday was fittingly entitled Magic Without Magic: John Archibald Wheeler: A collection of essays in honor of his sixtieth birthday, Ed: John R. Klauder, (W. H. Freeman, 1972, ISBN 0-7167-0337-8).
John Wheeler was the driving force behind the voluminous general relativity textbook Gravitation, co-authored with Charles Misner and Kip Thorne. Its timely appearance during the golden age of general relativity and comprehensiveness made it the most influential relativity textbook for a generation.
Wheeler was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1997. He maintained an office in Jadwin Hall at Princeton up until 2006.
Related Physics Today articles
"Mechanism of Fission," November 1967, p 49.
"To Joseph Henry," a poem by Wheeler, February 1969, p 111.
"Introducing the Black Hole," written with Ruffino, January 1971, p30
Review of Wheeler's autobiography "Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics", May 1999, p 63-64.
Related links
A 22-session interview with John Wheeler is online at the American Institute of Physics History Center. The interview was conducted by Kenneth Ford, one of Wheeler's students, as research for the latter's autobiography, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics (Norton, 1998).
John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Is Dead at 96 (New York Times)
Leading physicist John Wheeler dies at age 96 (Princeton University)
Books written by Wheeler
Spacetime Physics (1963, with Edwin Taylor)
Gravitation Theory and Gravitational Collapse (1965)
Einstein's Vision (1968)
Gravitation (1973, with Misner and Thorne)
Frontiers of Time (1979)
Quantum Theory and Measurement (1983, with others)
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (1998, memoir)
Exploring Black Holes (2000, with Edwin Taylor)
Here is the description from one of Wheeler's colleague's posted last night to the Cosmic Variance web site.
One beautiful Fall day seventeen years ago I wandered into an office and my life profoundly changed. I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and was looking for a thesis advisor. Jadwin Hall was an intimidating place. Plenty of names familiar from my textbooks. Nobel laureates scattered about. And we were expected to just barge into their offices, and ask to work with them.
One office door was always open. As you walked by you could peek in, and see its occupant hard at work. Hunched over his notebook, scribbling away. Or standing by his bookcase, deep in thought. Most often at the blackboard, chalk in hand. This was John Archibald Wheeler, one of the legends of modern physics. He did foundational work on quantum mechanics, collaborating with Niels Bohr on some of the earliest work in nuclear fission. He invented the S-matrix. He played important roles in both the Manhattan project (atomic bomb) and the Matterhorn project (Hydrogen bomb). He made major contributions to general relativity, co-authoring with Charlie Misner and Kip Thorne the bible of the field. He was legendary for his way with words, coining such terms as wormholes, quantum foam, black holes, and the wave function of the Universe (the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). He trained generations of students; one of his first was Richard Feynman.
Fortunately, being a relatively clueless 20-year old, I was only dimly aware of these things. I was interested in gravity and cosmology, and I had heard Wheeler knew a thing or two about such topics. So I waltzed in, and asked if he had any projects I could work on. I staggered out of his office four hours later, laden with books, a clearly defined project in my hands. For the ensuing two years I spent essentially every weekday with Wheeler. Each morning I would rush over to his office, always to be greeted the same way: “What’s new?” I would have been up late the night before, desperately trying to find something interesting with which to answer that question. We would then spend hours working together, going over my results, scrutinizing my calculations, poring through the literature, brainstorming new ideas. Wheeler gave me a direct and personal introduction to the joys of research. We would break for lunch, and walk up to the faculty club. I often had trouble keeping up with him. He would always take the stairs (”No time to wait for an elevator!”). He would hook his arm into the banisters, and swing around, practically leaping from one flight to the next. This was 1990; Wheeler was 80 years old.
We would often work all afternoon (with the occasional interruption, the nuisance of having to leave for my class lectures). Every evening I would walk with him from Jadwin up across the full length of campus, to catch his bus. We would pass the corner of Ivy lane and Washington road, where he had scratched 137 into the concrete when they were pouring the sidewalk. We would pass Jones Hall, where he used to discuss relativity with Einstein. We would continue on through campus, crossing in front of Nassau Hall. Wheeler would insist we walk diagonally to the far gate, instead of exiting through the more convenient FitzRandolph Gate. An Undergraduate was not meant to exit FitzRandolph Gate until graduation, and Wheeler didn’t want to be responsible for what might occur were I to break tradition.
For two years I sat at the foot of the master, and I absorbed as much as I could. I learned about science, and about life. Wheeler had broad interests. We would often discuss biology, or history, or poetry. Over the ensuing years we kept in touch. We collaborated together on Wheeler’s last published paper.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at Wheeler’s bedside. I tried to say thank you. But it was impossible to convey how much he means to me, and how grateful I am to him. In that moment when I crossed the threshold to his office, I was embarking on a new path. I am still on that path, and every day I am grateful to him for showing me the way.
John Wheeler died this morning.
Nature: Dismissal of toxicologist raises concerns over delayed safety report
NPR: The U.S. atomic bomb was such a secret, scientists and engineers sometimes talked in code. It was the Manhattan Project, not "The Atomic Bomb Project." Plutonium was referred to as "copper," and the bomb itself as "the gadget."
But at the same time, scientists and engineers were furiously filing secret patent applications that described many of the parts in exquisite detail. Those patents sat not behind the fences at Los Alamos, but in a vault at the U.S. Patent Office.
Space Review: Two letters in Space Review debate whether the risks associated with the hydrazine fuel tank were fully understood by the public and the US Defense Department (DoD) before the US Navy shot down a disabled US spy satellite (see Broken spy satellite hit by US missile). The US was concerned that the fuel tank might survive reentry into the atmosphere and contaminate a wide area with the toxic hydrazine fuel.
 Andrew Higgins of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, suggests that critics of the decision to shoot down the satellite, have not fully grasped hydrazine's burn rate at the pressure contained in the tank or calculated the tank's reentry survivability.
In independent computer simulations of the reentry of the USA 193 satellite, Geoff Forden of MIT and Higgins, found that the maximum deceleration of the tank would have been about 8 to 10 g’s. "This is similar to the g-loading the fully fueled tank is designed to withstand upon launch," says Higgins. "Thus, it is unlikely that a similar loading would have destroyed the tank on reentry."
Yousaf Butt of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University points out that questions should be raised about the overall quality of the DoD's reentry simulation models, because the DoD did not predict the hydrazine explosion that occurred during the interception.
"It would serve NASA/NRO/DoD well to immediately publicize the unclassified portions of their studies so that the US public can ascertain whether the putative public health concern of the hydrazine surviving reentry was indeed well-founded," says Butt. "As technical details of hydrazine tanks are freely available online, it is difficult to comprehend what is so classified about these studies."
Related links
Broken spy satellite hit by US missile (Physics Today Online)
North Canada, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans likely path of spy satellite debris (Physics Today Online)
More doubts surface over Pentagon’s explanation for shooting down spy satellite (Physics Today Online)
New York Times: A new book, “Unknown Waters,” recounts the 1970 voyage of a submarine, the Queenfish, on a pioneering dive beneath the ice pack to map the Siberian continental shelf. The United States did so as part of a clandestine effort to prepare for Arctic submarine operations and to win any military showdown with the Soviet Union.
In great secrecy, moving as quietly as possible below treacherous ice, the Queenfish, under the command of Alfred S. McLaren, mapped thousands of miles of previously uncharted seabed in search of safe submarine routes. New York Times reporter William J. Broad talks to McLaren about his year-long voyage and the dangers of submarining under the Arctic pack ice.
Related links
Scientist at work: Alfred McLaren; Explorer of Arctic Depths Plans Another Trip North (New York Times October 29, 2002)
New York Times: Utility executives in Kansas were shocked last fall when a state environmental official rejected two coal-fired power plants because of the millions of tons of carbon-dioxide emissions they could produce. In a state where coal generates 73 percent of the electricity, the pro-coal forces were unable to work their will.
That ineffectiveness will be underscored as early as Friday if Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as expected, vetoes an effort by the Kansas State Legislature to ensure the plants are approved. A handful of lawmakers seeking a new energy policy are blocking the attempt to override.
The struggle over those plants is an example of a growing trend in climate-change politics. In the absence of clear federal mandates for emissions from smokestack industries, states that have been proving grounds for new environmental approaches to energy are becoming battlegrounds as well
Science: In 2000, when Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath was appointed director of the National Brain Research Centre in Gurgaon, the neuroscientist made history. Ravin-dranath became the first woman to lead any of the 65 institutes under India's Ministry of Science and Technology--and today she is one of only two women who have broken the ministry's glass ceiling. When it comes to promoting women scientists in India, she says, "our record is dismal."
It may be surprising that women scientists are struggling in the nation that elected Indira Gandhi prime minister in 1966. But at a conference in New Delhi to mark International Women's Day on 8 March, more than 1000 scientists spoke of barriers to advancement and debated how to attract more women into research careers. At the meeting, science minister Kapil Sibal announced what he calls "fledgling steps to … empower women to have their rightful role in science," including new regulations to allow women with young children to work more flexible hours.
State of the news media: The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released an analysis of scientific coverage in TV and newspapers that suggests that on average five hours of cable television news produces six minutes of science, technology, health and the environment. Three minutes and 46 seconds of these minutes consist of health and health care coverage, 1 minute and 25 seconds about the environment, and finally 1 minute about science and technology.
According to the report, online news sites, spend one minute, and both newspapers and network television news spend the equivalent of two minutes on science and technology.
Wired: Trying to pin down how much the Defense Department is spending on space combat research -- and on what projects -- is difficult. The programs are spread across at least a dozen different accounts; much of the technology involved is "dual use" -- meaning, it could help with another military matters, too; and that's before you get into the Defense Department's "black," classified budget.
According to the Center for Defense Information, the Pentagon will spend at minimum $520 million in the 2009 budget on research that could lead to arms in space.
Washington Post: A plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to close several of its 26 research libraries did not fully account for the impact on government staffers and the public, who rely on the libraries for hard-to-find environmental data, congressional investigators reported yesterday.
The report by the Government Accountability Office found that the EPA effort, begun in 2006 to comply with a $2 million funding cut sought by the White House, may have hurt access to materials and services in the 37-year-old library network.
Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, said the report reveals a "grim picture" of mismanagement at the EPA.
Science: The Royal Society, the United Kingdom's academy of science, is taking the unusual step of getting into the venture capital business. Last month, it announced the creation of an Enterprise Fund, with the aim of funneling money into start-up companies seeking to commercialize the fruits of academic research. The society says that although it does much to support science and teaching, as well as contributing to policy debates, it could be more active in applying science for public benefit--either by simply boosting the U.K. economy or tackling problems such as carbon capture, renewable energy, and water purification. "If there are difficulties getting science into the marketplace, the society has a role helping with that," says Andrew Mackintosh, a chemical physicist-turned-businessman who has been brought in to run the fund.
The Daily Times: Physicists from CERN and the Abdul Salam International Centre for Physics have lauded a decision by Punjab University Chancellor Khalid Maqbool to fire five plagiarists at the university.
In February, on the recommendations of an inquiry committee, the governor ‘forcibly’ retired on charges of plagiarism PU Centre for High Energy Physics director Fazle Aleem along with Rashid Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir, M Aslam Saeed and Maqsood Ahmad.
The issue had delayed approval of a Rs 110 million grant to the university until the matter was satisfactorily resolved. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) released the funds on shortly after the inquiry panel announced their decision.
Washington Post: A presidential panel today said America's math education system is "broken" and called on schools to focus lessons to ensure children from preschool to middle school master key skills.
The National Mathematics Advisory Panel was convened by President Bush in April 2006 to address concerns that many of today's students lack the math know-how needed to become tomorrow's engineers and scientists. The 24-member panel of mathematicians and education experts announced recommendations to improve instruction and make better textbooks and even called on researchers to find ways to combat "mathematics anxiety."
International test scores released last year showed 15-year-olds in the United States trailed peers from 23 industrialized countries in math.
The report comes days after Microsoft chairman Bill Gates testified in Congress that the Federal government, which pours money into basic research graduate school students in science and engineering programs, is essentially subsiding the education of foreign students and then losing their talent when they cannot stay in the country after graduating. More than 60% of graduate school students in science and engineering programs are from abroad.
“I believe this country stands at a crossroads,” said Gates, adding that if these issues are not addressed, then innovation, the engine of economic progress in the United States, will shift to other nations that are more committed to technological excellence, costing the country many high-paying jobs.
Related links
Audio from NPR on Bill Gates testimony
news.com: Spanish renewable energy firm Sener and Abu Dhabi's clean-energy initiative, Masdar, announced a joint venture on Wednesday to build several power plants fueled by the sun's heat.
The newly created firm, Torresol Energy, said it plans to build at least two large concentrating solar power plants a year with a goal of generating 320 megawatts over the next 5 years and 1,000 megawatts in 10 years. A large coal-fired power plant typically can produce hundreds of megawatts of electricity.
The initial scope of the project is small compared to the total electrical consumption in the Middle East, but a report from the German Physical Society suggests that 50 years from now, the Middle East could be exporting liquid hydrogen to Europe from massive solar array complexes.
The Daily Times: Physicists from CERN and the Abdul Salam International Centre for Physics have lauded a decision by Punjab University Chancellor Khalid Maqbool to fire five plagiarists at the university.
In February, on the recommendations of an inquiry committee, the governor ‘forcibly’ retired on charges of plagiarism PU Centre for High Energy Physics director Fazle Aleem along with Rashid Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir, M Aslam Saeed and Maqsood Ahmad.
The issue had delayed approval of a Rs 110 million grant to the university until the matter was satisfactorily resolved. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) released the funds on shortly after the inquiry panel announced their decision.
Physics Today: Michael (Michał) Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest who research specializes on the origin and cause of the universe, often under intense governmental repression, has won the 2008 $1.6 million Templeton Prize.
 Heller's current work focuses on noncommutative geometry and groupoid theory in mathematics which attempts to remove the problem of an initial cosmological singularity at the origin of the universe. "If on the fundamental level of physics there is no space and no time, as many physicists think," says Heller, "noncommutative geometry could be a suitable tool to deal with such a situation."
Heller described his philosophy earlier today as
"Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one… (and) there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God's thinking the universe, the question on ultimate causality…: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes."
The 2008 Templeton Prize will be officially awarded to Heller by HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in the UK on Wednesday, May 7th.
Heller plans to dedicate the Templeton Prize money to help create the Copernicus Center in conjunction with Jagiellonian University and the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow to further research and education in science and theology as an academic discipline.
Washington Post: China is rapidly becoming a leading manufacturer of solar-cells. Unfortunately, the highly toxic waste -- silicon tetrachloride -- from the production of polysilicon, which is used to make solar cells, is polluting ground water and the surrounding villages around the plants. Unlike in the West where stricter environmental regulations are in effect, solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, writes Washington post reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha.
"The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite -- it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University. Shi Jun, a former photovoltaic technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates that Chinese companies are saving millions of dollars by not installing pollution recovery. "If this happened in the United States, you'd probably be arrested," he said.
Physics Today: Millionaire physicist Bill Foster may be the only democrat candidate running for Congressional office that has had an entire section of his campaign web site devoted to the particle accelerators and superconducting magnets. More remarkably, he just won a closely fought election by 53% to 47% in what is a republican stronghold.
 Foster defeated businessman and dairy magnate Jim Oberweis in a special election in Illinois to replace Republican representative Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, who announced his retirement on November 26, 2007. Foster's campaign was supported by Illinois Senator Barak Obama, an endorsement that helped boost democratic turnout for the special election.
“Back in the laboratory, this is what we’d say was a pretty successful experiment,” said Foster, in a victory speech at a banquet hall in Aurora. “You sent a clear message to everyone in Washington. You demanded change, and you are demanding it now.”
Foster, who founded a successful national theater lighting company and has a 22-year career at Fermilab as a high energy physicist, worked on the collider detector that discovered the top quark and is the co-inventor of Fermilab’s antiproton recycler ring. Fermilab is near the heart of his congressional district, and has had to lay off 10% of its staff due to the decimation of the high energy physics budget for 2008.
Foster won’t have much time to become established in Washington political circles as the seat is up for grabs in November. He is sworn in on Thursday, when official certification of the election results are sent to Congress.
Related links
Fermilab rescue too late (2/7/2008)
Fermilab to Begin Furloughs on Friday (1/26/2008)
Federal cuts may doom Fermilab's bid for ILC (1/24/2008)
Budget blow to US science (12/28/2007)
Fermilab to cut 200 jobs, staff forced to take unpaid days off (12/21/2007)
Washington Post: The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.
Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
Knoxville News Sentinel: New Scientist magazine is reporting that problems with a super-secret material manufactured at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant are what's holding up efforts to refurbish W76 warheads, which are deployed on Trident missiles.
According to the magazine's report by Rob Edwards, the material is code-named "Fogbank" and is extremely hazardous. It is reportedly produced at Y-12's new Purification Facility, a $50 million facility that was completed in mid-2005.
Meanwhile Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, is pressing Congress to accelerate plans for a feasibility study of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Chilton says that the study is crucial to advise the incoming president next year on how best to modernize the atomic arsenal.
The Guardian: "I have lived most of my life in the expectation of an early death, so time has always been precious to me" says Stephen Hawking in reponse to one of six questions asked by Guardian reporter Rachel Cooke. "I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time," he adds. Cooke asks Hawking Is the study of philosophy and theology a waste of time? What does he expect the Large Hadron Collider to discover? Does Hawking feel optimistic about the future of the human race? Is he afraid? Will time travel be possible? Cooke also interviews Hawkings family and friends in an attempt to discover the man and scientist behind the celebrity fame.
Christian Science Monitor: From roadless villages in Alaska to remote bends in the Mississippi River, developers are staking claim to thousands of miles of America's oceans and rivers to test devices that use waves and currents to produce electric power.
Their experiments are launching a new industry that has the potential to supply up to 10 percent of America's electric needs. But critics say rapid federal approval of the exclusive right to conduct these experiments amounts to a private seizure of communities' waterfronts.
National Geographic: Self-induced drought and climate change may have caused the destruction of the Maya civilization, say scientists working with new satellite technology that monitors Central America's environment.
Science: As a legendary designer of communications satellites, Harold Rosen doesn't need to spend his ninth decade figuring out how to land a cheap probe that can maneuver and send back pictures from the moon's surface. But when Google announced last year that it was joining with the nonprofit X Prize Foundation to sponsor the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, the National Medal of Technology winner decided to dust off an idea for a tubular, spinning payload that had been "in the back of my head" for decades. "We think we have the team to win it, and we're raring to go," says Rosen, who believes he can do for $20 million.
The Guardian (Audio): Science writer Matt Ridley introduces physicist Alan Sokal's talk on the science of enquiry as part of the Sense About Science lecture series
Newsweek: Although energy is proving to be an important topic in the US presidential elections, it may be a "vain hope" for a new administration to implement a unified energy policy writes David Victor in Newsweek. Previous experience shows that the coalition of groups urging for a change, national security analysts, environmentalists, and labor groups, is too diverse to sustain a concentrated two-decade program of change across all the government departments that impact energy policy says Victor. Both Europe and Asisa suffer from similar structural problems he adds, but the effort to combat global warming might change this pessimistic iron rule of energy policy as the environmental community that is the core of the coalition in support of global warming policy is becoming much stronger and has shown some staying power. Says Victor, "For the moment, however, that is a hypothesis to be proved."
Associated Press: The US Navy must abide by limits on its sonar training off the Southern California because the exercises could harm dozens of species of whales and dolphins, a federal appeals court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday night rejected the Navy's appeal of restrictions that banned high-powered sonar within 12 nautical miles of the coast and set other limits that could affect Navy training exercises to begin this month.
Related Article
Legal battle over sonar testing heats up (Physics Today February 2008)
The Guardian: A meeting this morning of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) will outline its next steps in dealing with an £80m hole in its budget. Further job losses and cuts to research programs are expected.
New York Times: Nearly half a century ago, Frank Drake, a young radio astronomer with extraterrestrials on his mind, stepped up to a blackboard in Green Bank, W.Va., and scribbled a string of symbols intended to bring some clarity to the question of just how alone humanity is in the cosmos. The Drake Equation, as it is known, has served as the bones of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and for the hopeful field of astrobiology ever since. Drake, who conducted the first fruitless SETI listening tour, of a pair of stars in 1960, once said that the most likely aliens to hear from would be a race of immortals, who had plenty of time to wait for an answer. But he said now that he no longer expected to hear from ET in his lifetime. Under realistic estimates, he said, you would need to look at 10 million stars (there are 200 billion in the galaxy), and there is not enough time left. Another trend on Earth, where powerful radio and tv transmitters are being replaced by undersea cables and satellites, mean that the Earth is becoming radio quiet, and ET might have done the same. “That’s big change nobody anticipated,” said Drake. Once the big powerful transmitters go off the air, “We will still exist but we will be hard to detect.”
Various: The US has successfully hit USA 193, a 3-ton out-of-control spy satellite that failed 1.5 days after its launch in December 2006. Earlier this week the US announced plans to destroy the satellite because of the risk to humans over the toxic fuel the satellite was carrying. In a press conference held after the collision, General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he was very confident that they had hit the satellite and that the hydrazine fuel tank was destroyed. "Thus far we've seen nothing larger than a football among the debris," he said. At least 552 pieces of the satellite have been spotted by amateur satellite watchers.
 The decision to destroy the satellite has caused controversy within the public arms control community and by the Russian and Chinese governments, because of the low-risk associated with the public coming into contact with parts of the satellite. China is calling on the US to release more information about debris from the strike, and Russian diplomats are calling the incident a anti-satellite weapons test, a charge denied by US government officials. China tested its own anti-satellite weapon early last year, an action that was publicly protested by the US.
Earlier this week the US refused to discuss a proposed treaty by China and Russia to ban space-based anti-satellite weapons. According to Liu Jianchao, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, "The Chinese side is continuing to closely follow the US action, which may influence the security of outer space and may harm other countries." Bruce W. MacDonald and Charles D. Ferguson say that the action taken over USA 193, may lead to a new arms race.
Related links
North Canada, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans likely path of spy satellite debris (Physics Today Online)
Experts query Pentagon’s explanation for shooting down spy satellite (Physics Today Online)
US 'confident' over satellite hit (BBC)
China accuses US of double standards over satellite strike (the Guardian)
Navy missile hits failing spy satellite (LA Times)
Missile Strikes a Spy Satellite Falling From Its Orbit (New York Times)
Pentagon: Missile Scored Direct Hit on Satellite (NPR)
Rob Ratkowski's USA 193 debris photos (SeeSat)
Instructions from FEMA on what to do if you find debris
Opinion: Taking friendly fire to new heights (LA Times)
Updated 2/22/2008 An Errant Satellite Is Gone, but Questions Linger (New York Times)
The satellite takedown doesn't prove anything about our missile-defense capability (Slate.com)
Spy Satellite's Downing Shows a New U.S. Weapon Capability (Washington Post)
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