I don’t know why I want to talk about this, but I’ll give it a go…^_^

Friday: HOMECOMING WAS AMAZING!!! And I loved how short all the classes were. (eww…the math project is going to be really gross) Can you believe we actually had to do something in French that day and the teacher actually assigned homework??? How retarded is that? physics theory was really fun! Matt’s singing is amazing (I know…I’m a total sucker when it comes to tenors)! And Scott, Evan, and Arlo’s trio was amazing. (let’s just say all the guys were amazing; and I’m not being sexist) The Freeday Friday in physics theory to end the day was probably the most amazing! Even though I got pissed at Sean in the end and joined the smart people’s groupie.

Saturday: The volunteer at Wheeler’s Park. OMG, you had no idea! I had to spend three hours with Sinahua seniors (football players too)! As always, I was feeling the overwhelmingness of the senior’s aura, but they were really nice overall. (about the same as our seniors, but I highly doubt they’re in the same smartness level)

Sunday: YAYS FOR MY MOM! SHE TURNED FOURTY TODAY!!! Academy Orchestra was horrible, as always…well, except for the fact that we actually had Dr. Ross today…My mom cooked a lot of good food and now I feel like I’m going to get stomach flu or something…

OVERALL, great weekend! Loved it, even I didn’t get to go to the homecoming dance.

While cruising around the Internet I stumbled upon this website over at Engadget.com where they ask people to rate their cellphones – by the amount of (spooky word here) RADIATION output!

The irony here is the fact that a website which seems to advertise itself as tech-savvy would appear to embrace such a stupidly pseudoscientific concept as cellphone radiation being dangerous.  As has been outlined repeatedly in the scientific literature – as well as in my Electromagnetic Fields & Cancer Myths blog entry – there is NO danger from cellphone radiation… none!

As for the Engadget article, note the scale they show and the subsequent commentary…

You’re surely aware that your cellphone bleeds radiation into your face the whole time you’re on the phone with your mom, best friend or lover, right? Yes, it’s a fact we try not to think about most of the time, but now there’s a tool out there on the internets for the more reality-facing folks among us. The Environmental Working Group’s launched a website dedicated to rating cellphones on their radiation output alone. Ranking highly (meaning they put out the lowest levels of radiation) are the Motorola RAZR V8, and AT&T’s Samsung Impression. In fact, it seems that Samsung is cranking out the healthiest phones these days! Phones with poor showings includes T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G and the darkberry Curve 8830. So hit the read link and tell us, how does your phone rate?

The scale leaves out one important fact… that all of these phones likely operate at the same frequencies of radiation.  The only thing this scale is studying is the intensity, which is entirely different!  For example, the frequency of a photon of electromagnetic energy is what determines how energetic (and therefore how dangerous in the context of causing cancer) the radiation is.  Low-frequency radiation like that from cellphones simply cannot cause cancer, as far as we know, because it is non-ionizing radiation. The fact that these goofs at Engadget.com can’t even get this basic bit of physics theory right will ensure that they won’t be getting any of my business.

I don’t know about you, but I know how I’d rate this website for scientific validity.  I give it a rating of FAIL.

ScienceNews reports:

“Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.”

Read here.

Carlos Barceló, del Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía en Granada, y sus colaboradores han demostrado que los efectos cuánticos en la teoría semiclásica de la gravedad permiten evitar que las estrellas en colapso gravitatorio formen agujeros negros (si el colapso es suficientemente lento). El resultado es un nuevo objeto astrofísico al que han llamado estrellas negras. Para un observador externo estas estrellas son indistinguibles de un agujero negro. Están formadas por la energía gravitatoria del vacío cuántico en un espaciotiempo curvado. No presentan horizonte de sucesos y evitan el problema de la pérdida de información cuántica en agujeros negros. Si el colapso es muy rápido o si el objeto que colapsa tiene una masa enorme, millones de masas solares, el resultado es un agujero negro convencional. Un gran trabajo que nos cuentan magistralmente en su artículo Carlos Barceló, Stefano Liberati, Sebastiano Sonego, Matt Visser, “dark stars, not holes. Quantum effects may prevent true dark holes from forming and give rise instead to dense entities called dark stars,” Scientific American, october 2009, pp. 39-45 [versión gratis] (aparecerá en español en Investigación y Ciencia en diciembre de 2009). Su artículo técnico es Carlos Barceló, Stefano Liberati, Sebastiano Sonego, Matt Visser, “Fate of gravitational collapse in semiclassical gravity,” Physical Review D 77: 044032 (2008). También es interesante leer el artículo de Matt Visser, Carlos Barceló, Stefano Liberati, Sebastiano Sonego, “Small, dark, and heavy: But is it a dark hole?,” ArXiv, Submitted on 2 Feb 2009.

Un agujero negro es el resultado del colapso de una estrella que ha consumido todo su combustible. Para los físicos teóricos es un tipo de solución de las ecuaciones de Einstein para la gravedad. Un agujero negro de la masa del Sol tiene un radio (horizonte de sucesos) de unos 3 kilómetros. ¿Existen los agujeros negros? La evidencia astrofísica indica que existen objetos ultracompactos que no emiten luz ni ningún tipo de radiación que tienen masas entre varias veces la del Sol y millones de veces, con diámetros de unos pocos kilómetros hasta millones de kilómetros. ¿Estos objetos oscuros observados por los astrofísicos son agujeros negros? Casi todo el mundo cree que así es, pero, hay varias propuestas alternativas.

¿Podrían los efectos cuánticos evitar el colapso gravitatorio? No tenemos una teoría cuántica de la gravedad, pero se puede utilizar una aproximación semiclásica para la gravedad cuántica, similar a la utilizada por Hawking para demostrar que los agujeros negros se evaporan. ¿Cuál es el resultado? Los efectos cuánticos evitan que un agujero negro (un horizonte de sucesos) se forme, resultando en la formación de una estrella negra, constituida sólo por espaciotiempo.  

La teoría cuántica de la gravedad no es renormalizable. ¿Qué significa esto? En una teoría cuántica de campos el vacío tiene una energía infinita. La técnica llamada de renormalizabilidad permite obtener el comportamiento de las partículas elementales sólo a partir de diferencias entre estados de energía, con lo que los infinitos de la energía del vacío se cancelan. En una versión cuántica de la teoría de la gravedad no ses posible aplicar esta técnica.

En la teoría semiclásica de la gravedad se sustituye la renormalizabilidad por una técnica de autoconsistencia. Según la relatividad general una distribución de materia-energía produce un espaciotiempo curvo. Esta curvatura modifica la energía de los campos cuánticos, lo que a su vez modifica el propio espaciotiempo curvo. Y así sucesivamente. El resultado es una solución autoconsistente si este procedimiento converge. Esta aproximación semiclásica incorpora los comportamientos cuánticos de la materia pero trata la gravedad (curvatura del espaciotiempo) de forma clásica. Una aplicación ad hoc de esta teoría conduce a que el vacío tiene una energía infinita, lo que es incompatible con las observaciones astronómicas actuales. ¿Cómo funciona la hipótesis de consistencia? La energía gravitatoria del vacío semiclásico de cualquier solución válida debe ser nula cuando se sustituye en ella un espaciotiempo plano. La presencia de masa curva el espaciotiempo y la densidad de energía del punto cero de los campos cuánticos no se cancela exactamente. Esta polarización del vacío se asume en la gravedad semiclásica que se cancela exactamente a cero para un espaciotiempo plano. El tensor de energía-esfuerzo (stress-energy tensor, SET) se sustituye por un tensor de energía-esfuerzo renormalizado (RSET). La materia clásica curva el espaciotiempo en una cantidad dado por el SET clásico. El vacío cuántico adquiere un RSET finito no nulo. Dicho término es una nueva fuente de gravedad que modifica la curvatura, lo que induce un nuevo valor para RSET y así sucesivamente. La graveadad semiclásica consiste en aplicar este procedimiento de forma reiterada hasta que RSET converge.

¿Cómo afecta la gravedad semiclásica a los agujeros negros? El solución de Schwarzschild para el campo gravitatorio de una distribución de masa esférica que no rota ni tiene carga nos permite entender el campo gravitatorio alrededor de un estrella y de un agujero negro. Está caracterizada por una M y un radio R. Un objeto con masa M que colapse hasta ocupar una región de radio menor que R desaparece dentro de un horizonte de sucesos y se forma un agujero negro. Las correcciones cuánticas aplicadas a la solución de Schwarzschild para una estrella como el sol que tiene un radio mucho mayor que su radio de Schwarzschild (unos 3 km.) conduce a un valor desprecible para el valor de RSET para el vacío cuántico. Las correcciones cuánticas son importantes sólo cuando el radio de la estrella es mayor pero cercano al radio de Schwarzschild R. En 1976 David G. Boulware, ahora en la Universidad de Washington, demostró que el valor de RSET para el vacío crece conforme el radio se acerca a R. Esto significa que la gravedad semiclásica no permite la existencia de agujeros negros estacionarios.

¿Qué afirma la gravedad semiclásica sobre el colapso de una estrella? La importancia de los efectos cuánticos depende de la rapidez del colapso. Normalmente se asume que el colapso es muy rápido, tan rápido como la caída libre de la materia de la superficie de la estrella hacia el centro de la estrella, lo que resulta en un del RSET del vacío cuántico despreciable durante todo el colapso. Sin embargo, si el colapso es más lento, el RSET puede adquirir un valor arbitrariamente grande. Además adquiere valores negativos en la región cercana al radio de Schwarzschild, donde debería formarse el horizonte de sucesos clásico, lo que genera un efecto repulsivo que ralentiza aún más el colapso. El resultado es que el colapso de la estrella se detiene justo antes de la formación de un horizonte de sucesos. El resultado es una estrella negra, salvo para un objeto perfectamente esférico con una masa enorme, del orden de millones de masas solares, en cuyo caso nada evita el colapso y la formación de un (super)agujero negro.

Las estrellas negras (dark stars) se mantienen estables gracias a los efectos cuánticos de la polarización del vacío según la teoría de la gravedad semiclásica. El campo gravitatorio de una estrella negra es idéntico al de un agujero negro siendo su radio algo mayor que el radio de Schwarzschild sin que se forme un horizonte de sucesos. Las estrellas negras permiten resolver el problema de la pérdida de información cuántica en los agujeros negros, ya que emiten radiación de Hawking pero no es térmica, sino que acarrea la información cuántica de la materia de la estrella que la formó. De esta forma se preserva la unitariedad. La estrella negra está formada por capas, como una cebolla, donde cada capa es una estrella negra más pequeña, que también emite radiación de Hawking, pero a una temperatura más alta. La temperatura del interior de las estrellas negras crece conforme nos acercamos a su centro.

En las ”estrellas” negras la masa de la estrella original que colapsó se ha transformado en un RSET no nulo concentrado, es decir, en polarización del vacío. Son estrellas constituidas sólo por espaciotiempo curvado. Según los autores del artículo, desde un punto de vista astrofísico son indistinguibles de un agujero negro convencional. Por ello, los autores creen que muchos de los agujeros negros de masa pequeña e intermedia que se han observado en el universo son en realidad estrellas negras.

Ohio University’s Department of physics theory and Astronomy will be opening Clippinger Laboratories for a day of physics theory shows, activities, and tours on Saturday, November 7 from 10am-4:30pm. Scheduled events include

• Fun with Liquid Nitrogen
• What NOT to do with Your Microwave mechanics
• Levitation: Beating back Gravity
• The Power of Air (featuring the Ping-Pong ball cannon demo):
• wave mechanicss, Resonance and Shattered Glass: Breaking a Beaker with Sound
• Hovercraft
• Bowling Ball Slalom
• Angular Momentum Demo
• Solar Viewing (Weather Permitting)
• Laboratory tours

Additional details can be found at the department’s website at http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/openhouse/

I’ve just got notice that my gravity paper, titled The force of gravity in Schwarzschild and Gullstrand-Painleve coordinates has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Modern physics theory D, with only a very minor modification.

I’m kind of surprised by this, given that the paper proposes a new theory of gravity. I was expecting to have that portion excised.

And to help make a week more perfect, my paper for Foundations of physics theory, titled Spin Path Integrals and Generations, got a good review along with a nasty one (and much good advice from both), and the editor has asked for me to revise the manuscript and resubmit. So I suppose this paper will also eventually be published. I’m a little over half finished with the rewrite. This paper is, if anything, even more radical than the gravity paper.

Finally, the Frontiers of Fundamental and Computational physics theory conference organizers have chosen my abstract (based on the Foundations of physics theory paper) for a 15 minute talk. The title is Position, Momentum, and the Standard Model Fermions. Marni Sheppeard (my coauthor for a third paper, “The discrete Fourier transform and the particle mixing matrices” which so far is having some difficulty getting published), is giving a related talk, Ternary logic in lepton mass quantum numbers immediately following mine.

So all in all, I am a very lucky amateur physicist

One of the classical problems in quantum mechanics concerns a man and his feline companion. The man has placed his cat in an opaque tank and is slowing pumping it full of poison. Now until the man opens the tank and looks inside, he cannot be sure whether the cat is dead or alive. That is to say, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Impossible but such is the nature of the problem that faced this man. The man’s name is Erwin Schrodinger and the problem is that of his Uncertainty Principle. // For nearly a century, his problem has remained a quixotic quest for physicists. Particle physics theory has always held that matter can only exist at one state in one time. That is why particles are classified as moving with an up or down spin but nothing in between. In recent years that rule has been bent with the superposition of atoms and other nonliving things. Superposition is the term for an object that is not being observed that exists as both possibilities: up and down, dead and alive. This allows physicists to observe the matter in two different states at the same time. However, thus far it has only been done with non-living things. A life-form has never been superimposed. Now, one physicist says he may have an answer.

Oriol Romero-Isart is at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum physics theory in Garching in Germany. Along with his team he is proposing a “Schrodinger’s virus” experiment that would follow the same general principles of Schrodinger’s Cat. Using an electromagnetic field created by a laser, the virus would be trapped in a vacuum. Then, using another laser, the virus will be slowed down until it lies motionless in its lowest possible energy state.

Now that the virus is fixed, a single photon is used to put the virus into a superposition of two states, moving and non-moving. Up until the point is measured it is in both states. Only after a measurement is it found to be in one state and one alone. The team has suggested that the tobacco mosaic virus be used. The virus is rod-shaped and measures 50 nanometers wide and approximately 1 micrometer long. There is debate however, whether the virus can truly be classified as “alive.” However the scientists are confident that the treatment could be extended to tiny micro-organisms such as tardigrades who can survive in vacuum for days, making them suitable for the “Schrodinger treatment.”

However, physicists are doubtful about the experiment’s results. Martin Plenio of Imperial College in London says that there is little reason that a virus would behave any differently than a similarly-sized inanimate object. However, there are possibilities in testing large objects such as viruses and molecules. This is because quantum mechanics says that macroscopic objects can enter superposition however, it has never happened. Through these studies, Plenio believes that we will finally be able to bridge the divide between the quantum world and our own macroscopic world. – physorg

Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero ^[4], temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans^[5], nearly a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space.^[6] – wikipedia

Monday

Statistics: charts and graphs, skewed distributions
physics theory: motion diagrams, displacement, velocity, acceleration
Palatography: Paint it dark
Ross Lab meeting: Jaime Hopkins
BioSci group leaders meeting

Tuesday

Phonetics: stops, aspiration, voice onset time
Phonetic transcription with Lina: Session 1, (1-30)
Psycholinguistics: thought paper submission, resonators, spectrograms, categorical perception, modularity of mind
Comparative Physiology: hibernation, estivation, metabolism
Ross Lab: looking over Leslie’s shoulder
Walk to post office: parcel from Megumi

Wednesday

Statistics: dot plots, stem and leaf diagrams, central tendency
physics theory: motion diagrams, displacement, velocity acceleration
Phonetics lab: palatography submission, transcription of Portuguese
Statistics discussion: “Are you in this class?”
physics theory lab: gravitational acceleration
BioSci: icebreakers

Thursday

Phonetics: stops, airstream mechanisms
Phonetic transcription with Lina: Session 2, (31-60)
Psycholinguistics: motor theory of speech perception, duplex perception, formants and transitions
Comparative Physiology: temperature regulation, temperature adaptation
Ross Lab: new microscope, Wei-Lih Lee talk

Friday

Statistics: dot plots, stem and leaf diagrams, central tendency
physics theory: Heath couldn’t get his new computer to work, class cancelled
Organic lab: melting point
Dancing in Noho: UMass EDMC

I decided to wait until now to get back in the swing of things for the blog.  I will try to keep it on a schedule from now on.

Science News in Brief

Scientists have found 100 new plants, 28 new fish, 18 new reptiles, 14 new amphibians, 2 new mammals and 1 new bird species in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia.  In this potpourri of newly discovered species is a fanged frog that eats birds.   This region has produced 1000 new species since 1997.

Still Exploring: This discovery is not to be confused with the giant rats, bats, and fanged frogs discovered in a volcanic crater of Papua New Guinea.

The main company in Iceland’s fin whaling industry will export a purported 1,500 tonnes of whalemeat to Japan.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo: Iceland and Norway are the only two countries in the world that now authorise commercial whaling.  Japan officially allows whaling for scientific purposes, but the meat is then sold to restaurants and supermarkets.

Photic sneeze reflex is a genetic autosomal dominant trait, which causes sneezing when exposed suddenly to bright light, like the sun.   The condition affects 18-35% of the human population.

Simple Statistics: Okay, this may not be a news story, but I have the this trait, so I figured it would be cool to post about it.  Just as a little experiment, when you comment, write if you think that you have this trait. We will then see if this percentage is correct…or maybe I’m just a mutant.

Cool Creature

Mekong Giant Catfish

The Mekong giant catfish, or Pangasianodon gigas, is a species  native to the Mekong basin in Southeast Asia.  Endemic to the lower half of the Mekong river, this catfish is in danger of extinction due to overfishing, river damming, and water pollution.  The fish is the largest freshwater fish in the world, reaching 3 meters in length and 200 kilos!

Feature Story: Messier Objects

Orion Nebula

The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects first listed by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771).  In the mid-1700’s discovering comets was the only way one could make it big as an astronomer.  Messier was a comet hunter frustrated by objects which resembled comets in the telescope, but were not, in fact, comets.   He compiled his list for these “annoying” objects.  The first edition covered the first 45 objects (abbreviated M1 to M45).  It has now climbed to 110 objects, 103 of which were discovered by Messier.

What makes the Messier Objects such a famous list is that they are all visible with binoculars or small telescopes on dark, clear nights.  This makes them popular viewing objects for amateur astronomers.  The study of these objects by astronomers has led, and continues to lead, to important, incredible discoveries such as the life cycles of stars, the reality of galaxies as separate ‘island universes,’ and the possible age of the universe.  Some of the more famous objects are the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), Orion Nebula (M42), Crab Nebula (M1), and Pleiades (M45).

http://www.delphes.net/messier/

Cosmic Perspective

Humans have always looked toward the heavens, towards the stars.  Why do we crane our necks to view the ephemeral twinkling of the billions upon billions of balls of gas floating on the froth of the cosmic sea?  What draws us to them?

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of viewing many of the above objects at the Kopernik Center.   The observatory boasts three telescopes, a 6″ Astrophysics theory Refractor, 14″ Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain, and a 20″ Ritchey-Chretientelescope.  The 20″ is the largest public telescope in the Northeast.  I saw the cloudy Dumbell Nebula, the swirling of the Andromeda Galaxy, the dull band of the Milky Way, the shadow of Io as it revolved around banded planet of Jupiter, the brilliantly coloured Pleiades stars, the M2 globular cluster, and the amazing Orion Nebula (not to mention the International Space Station).  I was amazed at the amount of objects one could see.

It was always human nature to look up toward the heights we may some day reach.  But as of late, we have been repressed into looking down at our feet.  We never see lights beyond street lights, which hide the cosmos.   Perhaps we are hiding from the truth that we are rather insignificant.  If I may be so bold, I strongly urge everyone to go outside on a clear night and look up.  Your ego may be hurt, but your mind and soul will rejoice.