Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight
McDonald said the best time to see the meteors would probably be between midnight and 3 a.m. Friday.
“There’s a certain time frame of hours when Earth is passing through the thickest or most dense part of the debris,” he said.
But people can probably spot a few meteors late Wednesday night and Friday night as well, McDonald said.
“A couple of days on either side should be decent,” he said.
Every position of Rubik’s Cube™ can be solved in twenty moves or less.
Except by you (or me), of course.
(Catching up on external posts on which I wanted to comment)
Uncertain Principles: Reader Request: Borrowing Energy
This gets answered in terms of the uncertainty principle in empty space. One thing Chad does not address here (to be fair, it was not explicitly part of the question) is that this is often asked and answered in the context of tunneling: You have a barrier of height V and an particle with KE < V, and yet the particle can be found to be on the other side of the barrier some fraction of the time. The answer is given that the particle borrows energy to get over the barrier, but it’s OK because the time is short. Unfortunately, that's the cheap way out.
The problem here is that "borrowing" energy is being used to explain a quantum phenomenon with a classical analogy. By borrowing energy the particle remains a particle and jumps the barrier in a nice classical way — the only quantum weirdness introduced here is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It's the kind of explanation given to people who have not been exposed to very much quantum physics, and it's semi-reassuring: the weirdness is limited to this whole uncertainty thing but all else is right with the world.
One of the physicists who posts to SFN (known as Severian) once remarked
Wave-particle duality is really just something we use to frighten children and undergraduates.
Funny, but I think this is actually backwards. It’s more like a Disney-fied story we tell to reassure undergraduates and non-physicists. You have the Disney happy ending that the world is still classical and we have a particle, which distracts from the original Brothers Grimm ending that no, these really are waves we are talking about, and yes, quantum mechanics is that strange.
Radioactive Wild Boars Increase in Number
I wasn’t really all that concerned about wild boars, but now that I know they are radioactive and multiplying, a foul-tempered spider pig mutant becomes a terrifying idea. At least they aren’t zombie boars.
A couple of hiccups in the report
Although the radioactivity has been detected in other animals, such as birds, wild boar are more susceptible to contamination because they often eat mushrooms and truffles that absorb the harmful radioactivity. The radioactivity, in turn, can remain in the soil for years. In fact, levels in mushrooms and truffles are predicted to rise in the not too distant future.
Radioactivity isn’t a substance, it’s a process, so you don’t absorb radioactivity, nor is it left in the soil. (Iterations ofradioactive or radiation are almost universally preceded by harmful or dangerous. It’s apparently part of the pirate journalist code). But this (like heat) is a term that scientists will use carelessly, so it’s no wonder it propagates to the press, and I don’t take 10 points from Gryffindor for that.
Hunters aren’t idly standing by. They’ve found a concoction called Giese salt that supposedly causes wild boar to excrete radioactive substances after the animals have ingested the salt. Work performed in Bavaria, according to the Bavarian Hunting Federation, indicates the salt does the trick, presumably allowing the meat to pass government inspections.
One of the components in the salt strongly binds to the Cesium (or presumably any alkali), rather than just causing them to arbitrarily excrete any and all radioactive substances.
It’s already been 24 years since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but experts are predicting the problem of radioactive wild boars will plague Germany “for at least the next 50 years.”
The reason being that Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years. Still, if boars are exhibiting 7000 Becquerel per kilogram (1 Bq is one decay per second. We physicists must have our unit names!), and if this is primarily from Cs-137 being ingested, this isn’t going to drop below 2,000 in 50 years much less the target of 600, unless some other process is present that will get rid of the Cs-137. Otherwise we’re talking 100 years.
For a long time I’ve thought that for all the anti-relativity crackpots there are, at least they are not driven by a religious ideology, thus sparing us the kind of battles that have to be fought to get evolution taught.
That’s apparently not the case anymore, though relativity still isn’t generally (or specially) taught in high school anyway, so school-board nonsense is avoided.
Conservapedia has an entry entitled Counterexamples to Relativity
The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1]
…
[1] See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.
I know that the religious right has a propensity for being anti-science, but I though at least they liked GPS. The maps and/or navigating algorithms may be occasionally wonky, but GPS works.
The list of “counterexamples” is interesting, and while I haven’t had time to follow up on all of them, there are a few head-scratchers as to why they should purportedly lead to relativity being wrong, and a few jaw-droppers, like
The inability of the theory to lead to other insights, contrary to every verified theory of physics.
That’s a serious case of denial (or should I say, bearing false witness). Relativity hasn’t led to other insights? It’s such a clue-deprived statement; it’s hard to respond to such a steaming load of stupid.
Several are trivially debunked, like the twins paradox objection, and the last one,
Relativity predicted that clocks at the Earth’s equator would be slower than clocks at the North Pole, due to different velocities; in fact, all clocks at sea level measure time at the same rate, and Relativists made new assumptions about the Earth’s shape to justify this contradiction of the theory.
Eisntein made this prediction in his 1905 paper [1], i.e. before he came up with general relativity. The oblate distortion of the earth changes the gravitational time dilation so that it is equal in magnitude to the kinematic term, but with an opposite sign. The shape of the earth is not an assumption, people measure it.
I would think this all a joke but for Poe’s law. These people haven’t a clue and are fiercely proud of it, which compels me to quote myself: I have never understood the phenomenon of wearing one’s ignorance as a badge of honor.
[1] Update: In the paper (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) he specifically states that it holds for a rigid sphere.
The stupid, it burns.
Update II: Takedown at Skulls in the Stars
Update III: more from me on the subject
I’ve seen this link with this headline a number of places recently, and I find it bothersome. Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
The problem is that the speaker isn’t speaking out against schooling. The objection is that other things have replaced schooling in schools: the emphasis is on doing well on the test, at the expense of learning. There is no call to end education, the demand is to fix a flawed system.
Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination.
The Oatmeal: Why Captain Higgins is my favorite Parasitic Flatworm
Because everyone should have a hero.
Relax — Triceratops Really Did Exist
Triceratops (described in 1889) was named before Torosaurus (described in 1891). According to the rules by which scientists name organisms, this gives Triceratops priority, so the name “Triceratops” isn’t going anywhere.
Sigh. So at least we haven’t had another Brontosaurus – Apatosaurus debaclosaurus.
I’ve subscribed to Bob Park’s What’s New for the better part of the past decade; it’s a mailing list that’s still a mailing list rather than a blog, which makes it old-fashioned, to the extent that email can be old-fashioned. It’s quick commentary on what’s new and controversial, much like a blogger would do.
This past week, as part of his continuing commentary on things possibly related to global warming he mentioned something which I’m not sure the science media quite “gets,” and serves as a decent example of how science progresses:
Researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia say phytoplankton are disappearing from the ocean. Strictly speaking it’s not really a science story — yet. There’s no independent confirmation, and until that happens scientists don’t get too excited. But Dalhousie is a respected school, and you can bet a lot of scientists are looking at sea water today.
This is how it usually goes — any new finding serves as a springboard for more investigation. A single experiment is usually not given an extraordinary amount of weight if the result is something new and unexpected, and the experiment represents a relatively small amount of data (results from large collaborations at accelerator labs are generally afforded more weight because they are gathering tremendous amounts of data). This is especially so if it appears to contradict previous experiments. Science is cautious this way. You always want to get more data, and maybe have someone else repeat the experiment, or possibly do a more advanced experiment which would only work if the foundational work is correct. That’s how you gain confidence in the results.
The unspoken part of this is that the results were properly published — there was a press release, but that was coordinated with the publication in Nature. This was not something just put out on the web or shouted from a rooftop — they followed the important first steps of the process by going through peer review.
I was thinking about this when I later read a story in the NY Times: Rumors in Astrophysics Spread at Light Speed, in which a number of recent stories are discussed, in which results were aggressively interpreted. But while the thrust of the story seems to be about how fast information can spread and the author’s disappointment that none of the rumors he keeps hearing seem to pan out, I got a different message. I saw confirmation of the tendency for the media to pick up the ball and run with it, in their rush to be first (or not be left out) with little regard for checking the facts, combined with the author not reading or listening very carefully. In the extrasolar planet example, the TED talk speaker is pretty clear he’s talking about size, and he does call them candidates. If you don’t understand the jargon, how about checking with someone first? One would hope the lesson of climategate would not be lost here — an earlier case where misunderstood jargon was reported, only to have it turn out that there was nothing to see — but I fear that lesson has already been forgotten, since the blame went to the scientists (for using the word “trick”) but seemed to pass the media by. The Higgs at Fermilab? That was a rumor posted on a blog, and the linked gawker story reports it as such.
These spread at the speed of light, in part, because nobody put the brakes on. Nobody said, “Hey, wait a tic. Maybe we should get someone else to weigh in on it.” This is the cautionary tale of Pons & Fleischmann going to the popular press before their paper had been peer-reviewed, let alone published. That was more than 20 years ago.
Hardly a week goes by, for example, that I don’t hear some kind of rumor that, if true, would rock the Universe As We Know It. Recently I heard a rumor that another dark matter experiment, which I won’t name, had seen an interesting signal. I contacted the physicist involved. He said the results were preliminary and he had nothing to say.
Smart guy. Very.
My view is that journalists shouldn’t just be relying on the restraint of scientists to remind them that preliminary results are preliminary. What if the scientist had commented? Would you run the story, knowing full well that it had not passed peer-review nor had it been independently confirmed? What is so hard about these caveats and disclaimers scientists take for granted, and come up over and over again, when discussing science results? Is the collective journalistic memory so short that scientists (or their lawyers) have to start reading a statement before they ever make a comment?
Please understand that the following result is preliminary and should not be taken as the final word. For anyone unfamiliar with the field, an effort must be made on the reader’s part to see where this fits in with the prevailing models of the day. There is a chance that it could be wrong or have only limited applicability to broader problems being investigated by other research teams. Further investigation may confirm our findings, or show that our results were anomalous or contained errors.
Scientists already know this. Journalist should know this.
ZapperZ has also commented on the NYT story