Global Weirding in the UK

One of the predicted outcomes of global climate change is the phenomena of “global weirding”. This basically says that extremes of weather will become more common.

rain

Image by Bidgee

Of course, there is rather natural expected variation in the weather and extreme phenomena have always occurred. The claim is that global warming is making record breaking weather more and more common.

In the UK

The Environment Agency, Met Office and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) held a joint briefing in London. They warned that a the UK must get ready for for regular swings of drought conditions and flooding.

This summer?

This summer was the wettest in the UK for 100 years, according to Met Office figures. The Environment Agency issued over 1,000 river flood alerts and warnings for the period of the 1st June at 15th July. This was the most alerts issued in a summer since 2007.

Then in August the hottest temperature recorded was 32.4°C at Cavendish, Suffolk, on 18 August.

The UK mean temperature was 0.4 °C above the 1981-2010 average. It was a wet month in south-west England and south Wales and in northern England, southern and eastern Scotland, with a few areas having over twice the average rainfall. In contrast much of East Anglia and south-east England and parts of north-west Scotland and the west of Northern Ireland were drier than normal. Many areas were somewhat duller than usual, the sunnier exceptions being Northern Ireland and the western side of Scotland.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2012/august.html

Cold winters

The winter of 2010-2011 came early, with snow in the United Kingdom falling in November 2010. This was the earliest snowfall in 17 years. A night time low temperature of −9.1 °C was recorded on the 25th/26th at Redesdale Camp, Northumberland. From January on the winter conditions were more normal.

The winter of 2009–2010 was known as “The Big Freeze” here in the UK and was part of the severe winter weather in Europe. It was the coldest winter since 1978-79, with a mean temperature of 1.5 °C.

The question

The BIG question must be is this all due to global weirding, or is this normal variations?

Links

BBC News

One million jobs in the UK rely on physics

Physics is central to the economy of the UK. Whether through the application of novel research and technologies, or through the skills and abilities of physics-trained workers, physics drives businesses and innovation.

Professor Sir Peter Knight President, Institute of Physics

According to a new report by the Institute of Physics, about 4% of of employees in the UK work in companies that could not exist without a knowledge of physics.

spectrum

Image by Bill Bertram

Of course, the definition of a “physics based company” is wide. Supermarket checkouts would not work without laser physics, for example. However, the study only takes into account the companies that would be unable to exist without ability to respond and adapt to latest advances in research.

A good example here would be Oxford Instruments, whose annual turnover of £337 million is almost entirely “physics based”.

The full report The Importance of Physics to the UK Economy can be found here (opens a PDF).

Links

One million UK jobs depend on physics, IOP News

An interview with Jim Al-Khalili

Prof Jim Al-Khalili is a well known and popular face on our televisions these days. For example, Al-Khalili presented a BBC Four, three part series called Chemistry: A Volatile History, on the history of chemistry in 2010. He is a theoretical physicist, TV broadcaster and author.

jim

He agreed to answer a few questions I had…

Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics

What made you decide to write this book?

I had been discussing with my undergraduate students one or two aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity and we were noting how fun it was to cast some of these often counterintuitive concepts in the form of paradoxes that needed to be resolved. It occurred to me that this was a really fun way of clarifying these ideas and the challenge was then to turn them into a popular science book that was fun as well as informative.

What were the major challenges in writing a popular science book discussing perplexing issues in physics?

Actually, I don’t find it as much of a challenge as many might think. After all, this is what I feel I do best: put myself in the shoes of the reader and see if an explanation or analogy makes sense from his or her perspective. Many scientists working in these complex fields still believe that one has to ‘dumb down’ the science in order for it to be appreciated by the layperson. This makes me very cross. Scientists are not more intelligent than non-scientists – it’s just that we have had the benefit of many years learning the jargon and thinking about these concepts. But there is always a way of getting the ideas across without maths or too high a level of abstraction. So, OK, it is a challenge, but it’s one I enjoy.

What problems, if any, did you encounter writing this book?

To be honest there was just one chapter that I struggled with, and that was the one on the paradox of Maxwell’s demon. This is a problem that requires quite careful and subtle arguments that link together two seemingly quite different ideas: the concept of energy and the concept of information. It turns out that resolving this particular paradox is an ongoing debate and has spawned whole new areas of scientific research. So, I had to do a lot of homework before it was clear enough in my head to write this chapter. Fun though.

Science and Popularisation

What first got you involved in science, and in particular physics?

I knew I wanted to study physics from the age of about 13. I think it was an inspirational teacher (isn’t it always?) who got me to fall in love with the subject. It seemed like it mixed puzzle solving, common sense and answers to some of the deepest mysteries I could think of, like does the Universe go on for ever? what is a black hole? what does time really mean? Physics gave me the opportunity to ask and find answers to questions about how and why the world worked the way it did.

How did you get involved in the popularisation of science?

Gradually, and by accident. I never set out to become a populariser. I followed the traditional academic path of gaining a PhD, become a postdoctoral researcher, publishing papers, getting research grants, attending conferences. Gradually, I got involved in university teaching, while still focussed on the academic career path of ending up ultimately as a full professor. I starting giving a few talks to local school kids, I wrote a few short articles for the local paper and gave interviews about my research in quantum physics to local radio. But one thing led to another. I found I was good at public speaking and good at demystifying difficult concepts in modern physics. Pretty soon I had published my first book (Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines – Taylor and Francis, 1999). Today I divide my time equally between academic life and science communication. I am on my 6th book, I have made countless radio and TV documentaries and present a weekly science show on the radio in the UK, called The Life Scientific, and listened to by 2.5 million people.

Which medium do you think is the most effective at popularising science?

In the short term, I think television is the medium that has the highest profile. Successful documentaries on UK TV, such as the BBC series Horizon, regularly attract 2-3 million viewers (The UK population is 60 million so this would be equivalent to 10-15 million viewers in the US). But in the longer term, a book has much longer lifetime, and one that goes through many editions, is translated to other languages etc, can reach an even bigger audience. However, there are so many good popular science books around these days that very few really make it to best-seller status. Not everyone can write like Brian Greene of course, but there is a big element of luck too. OI think social media is also becoming a great way to reach a wide audience. I personally only have a reasonable following on Twitter (28 thousand), but there are science communicators (in UK and US with over a million followers who they can reach on a regular basis.

What, in your opinion, should be the ultimate goal of science popularisation?

To inspire the next generation, to have a more scientifically literate and informed population, to dispel ignorance, superstition and pseudoscientific nonsense, and to fulfilll humankind’s thirst for answers about who we are and what is our place in the Universe. So, pretty important, right?

Research

Can you say a few words about your research?

My back ground is in nuclear physics where I have spent many years, modelling the atomic nuclei to try to understand their strange properties and structure. Recently I have become more interested in a new field called quantum biology, where we are gathering evidence for biological phenomena at the cellular level that seem to work according to the strange rules of quantum mechanics. My interest (and I have a great grad student working with me on this at the moment) is in modelling mathematically genetic mutations in DNA that seem to take place because of a quantum mechanism called quantum tunnelling. In fact, this whole area is the subject of my next book that I am currently working on.

Which one of your papers are you most proud of, and why?

It’s a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters from 1996, in which I calculated the size of a the nucleus of a strange isotope of the element helium, called He-6. This nucleus has two neutrons floating around the outside in what has been called a neutron halo. I was the first person to work out the true size of this nucleus and found it to be 50 per cent larger than anyone else had thought. The paper has been cited hundreds of times.

What are the major questions faced today in you area of research?

There are many of course. In my immediate area it is whether quantum mechanics really does play a role in mutations of DNA as well as other phenomena like photosynthesis, how our sense of smell works, even how some birds can navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. All very exciting if still a little speculative.

More widely, we are excitedly waiting for further results from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the particle accelerator that discovered the Higgs Boson earlier this year. I am also keeping an eye on the big discoveries in astronomy and cosmology. We still do not know what dark matter and dark energy really are even though we are pretty confident both seem to really exist out in deep space.

About Jim Al-Khalili

Jim

Jim Al-Khalili OBE FInstP Hon.FBAASc is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is a professor of Physics at the University of Surrey where he also holds a chair in the Public Engagement in Science. He is a vice president and trustee of the British Science Association and holds an EPSRC Senior Media Fellowship.

I reviewed his latest book, Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics here.

Links

University of Surrey profile

Jim Al-Khalili’s official website

Planet Hunters find a planet with four suns

Volunteers taking part in the Planet Hunters citizen science project have discovered a planet with four suns [1]. This is the first of its kind discovered. The two discovers are Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano from Cottonwood, Arizona.

The planet is located just under 5,000 light-years away and has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters. It is thought that PH1 is a gas giant, with a radius more than six times the radius of the Earth.

Reference

[1] Megan E. Schwamb et.al. (2012) Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System. arXiv:1210.3612v1 [astro-ph.EP]. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

Links

Planet Hunters website

Substandard work from overseas students

There are pieces of work here which do not appear to be anywhere near the sort of level that a Masters qualification would require.

Prof Nick Bourne Former law lecturer and ex-leader, Welsh Conservatives

There was a total of 48,580 overseas undergraduates studying in the UK, which equates to about 11% of the total undergraduate population. However, they generated 32% of universities’ fee income.

Clearly, overseas students are a great source of revenue for universities, but the worry is that the financial gains will out weigh the need for strict academic standards. I am not the only one worried about this: informal conversations with people, who shall remain anonymous, also indicate a fear.

In the news

A BBC Wales News investigation has looked into the anecdotal stories of standards at Welsh universities to find the truth.

Dissertations that are badly written will lose some marks but we’re primarily interested in the analytical content of those dissertations.

Prof John Thornton Bangor University Business School

Link

BBC Wales News

Felix Baumgartner's new skydive record

Felix Baumgartner now holds the world record for the highest ever free-fall and in doing so became the first jumper to break the sound barrier. The Red Bull Stratos team, which Felix is part of, gave the go ahead for the jump on Sunday. Some how the location of Roswell seems fitting for the jump.

landing

The numbers

  • Exit altitude: 128,100ft; 39,045m
  • Total jump duration: 9’03”
  • Freefall time: 4’20”
  • Freefall distance 119,846ft; 36,529m
  • Max velocity: 833.9mph; 1,342.8km/h; Mach 1.24

Links

Red Bull Stratos homepage

IOP report on how higher university fees impact physics

Tuition fees here in the UK will be £9,000 per year and this must have some effect on the numbers, and the demographic of future physics students. However, a new study has found that university physics students are largely undeterred by the costs and are determined to pursue the subject.

The report Gravitating towards physics: How will higher fees affect the choices of prospective physics students? used secondary data, focus groups and a survey, involving more than 500 applicants, to assess the potential impact of higher fees.

It was crucial to undertake this research because it is of national strategic importance that universities are able to continue producing a steady stream of physics graduates.

While the report does throw up some concerns – particularly in relation to diversity – we’re delighted to find physics in rude health.

Professor Paul Hardaker, Chief Executive at the Institute of Physics

Reference

link

Gravitating towards physics: How will higher fees affect the choices of prospective physics students?

Link

University physics fares well with higher fees (IOP News)

The mouse chorus?

We have all seen the film Babe and listened to the mice sing. Well it seems that mice can actually learn to sing! [1]

Male mice produce courtship ultrasonic vocalizations with acoustic features similar to songs of song-learning birds. However, it is assumed that mice lack a forebrain system for vocal modification and that their ultrasonic vocalizations are innate. Here we investigated the mouse song system and discovered that it includes a motor cortex region active during singing, that projects directly to brainstem vocal motor neurons and is necessary for keeping song more stereotyped and on pitch. We also discovered that male mice depend on auditory feedback to maintain some ultrasonic song features, and that sub-strains with differences in their songs can match each other’s pitch when cross-housed under competitive social conditions. We conclude that male mice have some limited vocal modification abilities with at least some neuroanatomical features thought to be unique to humans and song-learning birds. To explain our findings, we propose a continuum hypothesis of vocal learning.

Gustavo Arriaga, Eric P. Zhou and Erich D. Jarvis

mouse

Reference

[1] Arriaga G, Zhou EP, Jarvis ED (2012) Of Mice, Birds, and Men: The Mouse Ultrasonic Song System Has Some Features Similar to Humans and Song-Learning Birds. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46610. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046610

Paradox by Jim Al-Khalili

Book

Through out the development, and indeed the popularisation of physics apparent paradoxes have had a prominent place. These paradoxes are usually the product of applying false logic to physics and/or a misunderstanding of what the mathematical theories are really telling us about the Universe.

Prof. Jim Al-Khalili in his latest book, Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics, takes us on a mind-bending tour of some of the perplexing puzzles that have shaped our understanding of the natural world.

This book is about my own personal favourite puzzles and conundrums in science, all of which have famously been referred to as paradoxes, but which turn out not to be paradoxes at all when considered carefully and viewed from the right angle.

Jim Al-Khalili

Jim

Photo by Andy Miah

Some of the paradoxes covered are well known. For example, Schrödinger’s famous cat, Olbers’ paradox and the time-travelers favorite, the grandfather paradox.

In resolving our paradoxes we will have to travel to the furthest reaches of the Universe and explore the very essence of space and time. Hold on tight.

Jim Al-Khalili

In my opinion Al-Khalili presents a rather readable and light-hearted review of some rather interesting issues in physics. It was an enjoyable read overall.

Outline of the book

Chapter 1, The Game Show Paradox, discusses the now infamous Monty Hall problem. Without giving the game away too much, one has to think about the role of prior knowledge in probability theory. This is more a problem in basic probability theory than physics, but it illustrates the need for careful thinking.

Achilles and the Tortoise is the title of chapter 2. Here the topic is Zeno’s paradoxes-“motion is an illusion”. Clearly, motion is not an illusion, so what is going wrong? What false logic and/or mathematics is being applied here?

Chapter 3 deals with Olber’s paradox: why is the night sky dark? The resolution takes us to the forefront of cosmology. How does this support the Big Bang?

Maxwell’s demon is the title of chapter 4. Maxwell imagined a hypothetical experiment describing how to violate the Second Law. In his thought experiment a container is divided into two parts by an insulating wall, with a door that can be opened and closed by some entity known as “Maxwell’s demon“. The demon is able to view the molecules and opens the door only for “hot molecules”. Thus, one side of the container heats up and the other cools, causing a decrease in entropy in violation of the Second Law. How is this resolved?

The idea of length contraction and simultaneity in special relativity are the subject of chapter 5. The Pole and the Barn Paradox, which is always used in university classes is discussed and resolved.

Chapter 6, The Twin Paradox, deals with the very famous paradox of relativistic twins. How can they age differently? What is time dilation and is it real?

Time travel and the paradoxes it creates have fascinated people for a long time. Do we know if time travel is allowed or not anyway? Chapter 7, The Grandfather Paradox, discusses the issues here and suggests some resolutions to this. What happens if you went back in time and killed your grandfather? Maybe we live in a multiverse and time travel means we enter a parallel world? Maybe the laws of physics just don’t allow time travel? Non-one really know and this is an unresolved paradox.

In chapter 6, The Paradox of Laplace’s Demon, the idea of determinism is discussed along with the technical issue of chaos. Determinism says that if we know all the positions and momenta of all the particles in the Universe at a given time, then we can use classical mechanics to predict exactly the state of the Universe at some later time. Any being that could do this would loose freewill as everything is totally predetermined, this is the demon. This is not compatible with quantum mechanics (as we know it), but even more basic than this classical systems do exhibit chaos- “sensitivity to initial conditions”. Can we have determinism, but not predictability?

The Paradox of Schrödinger’s Cat is the subject of chapter 9. According to quantum mechanics, is the cat when we are not actually looking at him alive and dead at the same time? What is the role of the observer? How come, if everything is made of quantum particles do macroscopic objects behave classically? Not everything here is that well understood and quantum decoherence, that is many quantum objects becoming a classical object, is an ongoing area of research, both mathematically and experimentally.

Are we alone in the Universe? As the Universe is large and old there must be other forms of life out there? Some of these must be intelligent, capable of space flight and given enough time colonise the Galaxy? In chapter 10, Fermi’s Paradox Al-Khalili asks these questions. Fermi highlighted the contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization and the lack of evidence that they exist.

The book finishes off in chapter 11 entitled Remaining Questions. Al-Khalili lists some of the open problems in science that today are at the forefront of human knowledge. One should take away from this chapter the sense that despite what we do know about the Universe, questions remain.

UK publication

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Bantam Press (12 April 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0593069293
ISBN-13: 978-0593069295

US publication

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway; Reprint edition (October 23, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307986799
ISBN-13: 978-0307986795

Book2