Driving along I-5 in San Diego today, I heard about the closure of the I-5 several hundred miles to the North, between California and Oregon because of a strong snowstorm. Several hundred cars and trucks were caught, and gasoline and food had to be snow-mobiled in after the storm had abated, and until the big ploughs could get in to clear the road. The story mentioned that many of the vehicles had people in them that were completely unprepared. Clothing for 70 degree weather. No food or water. There were children in several cars.
It struck me that we are so focused on staring at our feet as we trudge through this life that we have become completely disconnected from the natural forces around us. As the city of Bam knows, nature can suddenly decide that it wants to shake you up. And we are usually quite unprepared for it. A compounding set of problems can prove deadly for even the wisest of survivors.
Monday, December 29, 2003
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Sounds of good old Saint Nick:
When something moves really, really fast through the air, we can hear it. Faster than a speeding train. Faster than a speeding bullet. I'm talking hyper-sonic.
Lightning drills a 1 to 2 cm hole in the sky several kilometers long. Thunder is what we hear when the atmosphere is snapped open and then refills the hole. Imagine the sound when a hole about 1 meter in size gets drilled through tens of kilometers in a second or less.
That's what happens when a significant meteor comes down to within 50 km of the surface. The sound produced by this shockwave (particularly the infrasound below 20 Hz) can be detected from several thousand kilometers away. These events are of interest not only because of the spectacular display and their effect on unwary populations (on September 27 an event over the state of Orissa in eastern India caused several people to collapse in shock, and one person died from a possibly connected heart attack), but also because they are detonations in the atmosphere, and could be mistaken for nuclear tests. In fact, the energy of these bolides is often quoted in kilotons of TNT, the standard energy equivalent for nuclear shots. A bolide with total energies over 1 kt is needed for infrasound detection with the current comprehensive test ban treaty infrasound international monitoring system, and estimates of the bolide flux in this range are about 10 events worldwide per year. About 6 to 7% of a nuclear blast's energy goes into sound, and the estimates for bolides range from 0.2 to about 7%.
Here's a great summary of the collision flux with Earth, ranging over 14 orders of magnitude, from an often quoted letter to Nature by Brown, Spalding, ReVelle, Tagliaferri and Worden (10.1038/nature01238 - PDF file):
Lightning drills a 1 to 2 cm hole in the sky several kilometers long. Thunder is what we hear when the atmosphere is snapped open and then refills the hole. Imagine the sound when a hole about 1 meter in size gets drilled through tens of kilometers in a second or less.
That's what happens when a significant meteor comes down to within 50 km of the surface. The sound produced by this shockwave (particularly the infrasound below 20 Hz) can be detected from several thousand kilometers away. These events are of interest not only because of the spectacular display and their effect on unwary populations (on September 27 an event over the state of Orissa in eastern India caused several people to collapse in shock, and one person died from a possibly connected heart attack), but also because they are detonations in the atmosphere, and could be mistaken for nuclear tests. In fact, the energy of these bolides is often quoted in kilotons of TNT, the standard energy equivalent for nuclear shots. A bolide with total energies over 1 kt is needed for infrasound detection with the current comprehensive test ban treaty infrasound international monitoring system, and estimates of the bolide flux in this range are about 10 events worldwide per year. About 6 to 7% of a nuclear blast's energy goes into sound, and the estimates for bolides range from 0.2 to about 7%.
Here's a great summary of the collision flux with Earth, ranging over 14 orders of magnitude, from an often quoted letter to Nature by Brown, Spalding, ReVelle, Tagliaferri and Worden (10.1038/nature01238 - PDF file):
Other methods that are used to detect these events are satellite optical and IR observations of the fireball, radio reflections, seismic signals (again, just a form of sound), and ground-based video. The proliferation of security cameras has in fact been a good source for fireball data, but often what is seen is a reflection off a car or a window, since the cameras are looking down to catch crime, and not up to catch celestial phenomena.
Things to remember: shooting stars and fireballs are neither stars, fire, nor comets; groundfall (pieces reaching the ground) from an event is extremely rare and very difficult to find, but are often mistakenly reported; eyewitness accounts are almost without exception useless for research (we are poor observers of exciting events).
There is a great article by Alan Hildebrand of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada here that gives a nice mathematical summary of the chances of seeing a meteorite fall. Summary: of the approximately 7,000 groundfalls in a year, about 5 have a chance of being seen. His comment about a herd of dairy cattle extending a person's awareness cross-section made me laugh...
There is a nice page about the 1947 Sikhote-Alin fireball (and groundfall!) here.
A Colorado website tracks fireballs, here, and seems to have a scientific approach.
Then again, if you are listening on Christmas Eve, and hear a rumble under clear skies, it could be the crack of a reindeer whip you hear.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Jaenicke-Després, Buckler, Smith, Gilbert, Cooper, Doebley & Pääbo:
On trying to reduce my backlog of reading, I noticed an article in the November 14 Science about teosinte corn (maize, for my cross-Atlantlete readers).
The kernel of the story is that several traits of modern corn had already been established by human interference at least 4,400 years before the present. Selective breeding is genetic modification.
So genetically modified foods have a deeper history than we thought, and I perhaps need to revise my table of agricultural stages.
Nothing is ever as simple as we would like. Prehistoric popcorn anyone?
The kernel of the story is that several traits of modern corn had already been established by human interference at least 4,400 years before the present. Selective breeding is genetic modification.
So genetically modified foods have a deeper history than we thought, and I perhaps need to revise my table of agricultural stages.
Nothing is ever as simple as we would like. Prehistoric popcorn anyone?
Friday, December 19, 2003
Ridge:Esker::Bin Laden:Erratic
The upcoming holiday season, all the air travel involved, and the change of U.S. threat advisory from elevated to high will be an interesting combination to watch.
It occurred to me that al-Qaeda has forgotten about China. Not in the sense that China has a large muslim population that they would love to radicalize, since I am sure they are at work on that, despite Beijing's obvious preoccupation with just such a scenario. It's the Made in China factor.
Both decorating for the season and making my purchases has made me aware that most everything is now "Made in China." If we continue in this direction, everything will be made in China. Everything. Even the continental substrate. The atmosphere. China will make it all. As foretold.
What I mean behind that hyperbole is that China has an enormous stake in the survival of the current economic system. As goes the U.S., so goes the Middle Kingdom - and if China perceives a real threat to the U.S. buying power for its own exports, it will act. A sleeping dragon will have been awakened that would be much more than al-Qaeda bargained for.
Merry Christmas! Buy Chinese!
It occurred to me that al-Qaeda has forgotten about China. Not in the sense that China has a large muslim population that they would love to radicalize, since I am sure they are at work on that, despite Beijing's obvious preoccupation with just such a scenario. It's the Made in China factor.
Both decorating for the season and making my purchases has made me aware that most everything is now "Made in China." If we continue in this direction, everything will be made in China. Everything. Even the continental substrate. The atmosphere. China will make it all. As foretold.
What I mean behind that hyperbole is that China has an enormous stake in the survival of the current economic system. As goes the U.S., so goes the Middle Kingdom - and if China perceives a real threat to the U.S. buying power for its own exports, it will act. A sleeping dragon will have been awakened that would be much more than al-Qaeda bargained for.
Merry Christmas! Buy Chinese!
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Oneirology:
I used to sleep six nights a week as an undergraduate. Now, if I skip a night, I seem to pay a much higher price. And I thought I was supposed to need less sleep as I aged?
I had a great night with Isabel. Hurricane Isabel, that is. We lost power for about 16 hours starting at about 7 a.m., and my wife and I spent that time bailing out the sump every 30 to 45 minutes to stop water from flooding the basement and ruining hundreds of our books... there is a sort of zombie rythm one gets into when the alarm goes off that frequently.
The next morning the alarm went off and I jumped out of bed, feeling well rested. I showered and got dressed for work, only to look at the clock as I was about to depart, and realize that it was 12:30. I had slept for about one-and-a-half hours. The clock time was correct, but the alarms had all been reset to midnight. By that point I was fully awake, so I knew going back to bed was going to be difficult.
That was a rare taste of needing less sleep, because lately our circadian rhythms have been dominated by cats. And that means nocturnal activity. Theirs, not ours. It's those odd digging noises that come from the study that worry me...
The sleep deprivation study comes to mind where they placed cats on 3-inch-wide islands in the middle of a pond for several days. Cruel indeed - they ended up with psychotic cats. More psychotic that normal, that is. Our cats are occasionally psychotic with 23 hours of sleep a day. I'm psychotic with an average of six to seven hours.
I had a great night with Isabel. Hurricane Isabel, that is. We lost power for about 16 hours starting at about 7 a.m., and my wife and I spent that time bailing out the sump every 30 to 45 minutes to stop water from flooding the basement and ruining hundreds of our books... there is a sort of zombie rythm one gets into when the alarm goes off that frequently.
The next morning the alarm went off and I jumped out of bed, feeling well rested. I showered and got dressed for work, only to look at the clock as I was about to depart, and realize that it was 12:30. I had slept for about one-and-a-half hours. The clock time was correct, but the alarms had all been reset to midnight. By that point I was fully awake, so I knew going back to bed was going to be difficult.
That was a rare taste of needing less sleep, because lately our circadian rhythms have been dominated by cats. And that means nocturnal activity. Theirs, not ours. It's those odd digging noises that come from the study that worry me...
The sleep deprivation study comes to mind where they placed cats on 3-inch-wide islands in the middle of a pond for several days. Cruel indeed - they ended up with psychotic cats. More psychotic that normal, that is. Our cats are occasionally psychotic with 23 hours of sleep a day. I'm psychotic with an average of six to seven hours.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Patrick O'Brian and the Prinz Eugen:
I saw Master and Commander this weekend, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Parts of the sound track were recorded by Richard King using cannons supplied by Michigan cannoneers, with live shot of all sorts. What you hear in the movie are actual ball, bar, grape and chain shot flying overhead, so the whistling and humming sounds are probably quite authentic (NPR/All Things Considered story).
There's a good website about men-of-war here, although it seems related to another movie, Pirates of the Caribbean. The Royal Navy also has a nice history section to its website.
The lines in the Master and Commander about the phasmid disguising itself reminded me of a story my father told of flying a sortie over the English Channel during WWII and coming across a very large ship with what appeared to be cargo boxes on its deck. When they peeled off to attack the convoy, the boxes unfolded to reveal very large guns - it was in fact the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, against which the squadron had no chance, and so they quickly broke off, scattered, and returned to base.
I'm farily sure this was not any part of the famous Channel Dash by the Bismarck & Prinz Eugen described in this MOD article, since he never mentioned the Bismarck. It must have been some other movement - his flight logbooks are still around, so I will have to ask and have a look to try and find the dates.
I had an old Revell model of the Bismarck which I think I eventually destroyed with a pellet gun. I probably even made airplane noises and rat-a-tat-tatted at it as I made pass after pass, immune from its silent, plastic guns and frozen turrets. I'm sure my sound effects were just as effective as those depicting exchange of fire between the Surprise and the Acheron.
There's a good website about men-of-war here, although it seems related to another movie, Pirates of the Caribbean. The Royal Navy also has a nice history section to its website.
The lines in the Master and Commander about the phasmid disguising itself reminded me of a story my father told of flying a sortie over the English Channel during WWII and coming across a very large ship with what appeared to be cargo boxes on its deck. When they peeled off to attack the convoy, the boxes unfolded to reveal very large guns - it was in fact the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, against which the squadron had no chance, and so they quickly broke off, scattered, and returned to base.
I'm farily sure this was not any part of the famous Channel Dash by the Bismarck & Prinz Eugen described in this MOD article, since he never mentioned the Bismarck. It must have been some other movement - his flight logbooks are still around, so I will have to ask and have a look to try and find the dates.
I had an old Revell model of the Bismarck which I think I eventually destroyed with a pellet gun. I probably even made airplane noises and rat-a-tat-tatted at it as I made pass after pass, immune from its silent, plastic guns and frozen turrets. I'm sure my sound effects were just as effective as those depicting exchange of fire between the Surprise and the Acheron.
Saturday, December 13, 2003
ME, not FL:
An interesting project I came across in one of my programs - Lobster Tales. You can find out where your particular lobster was caught, and find out a bit about the lobsterman who caught it. Purchased live lobsters often come with rubber bands around their claws. The bands from this program have a serial number on them that consumers can enter in the Lobster Tales website also printed on the band. It makes for an interesting connection between a consumer and a provider that has been severed in modern culture.
The idea to extend this tracking into the consumer side of things came from a scientific tracking system gone awry: a lobster with a scientific tag that was supposed to be removed by the fisherman accidentally made it all the way to a Wal-Mart in Wisconsin. A dutiful consumer called the telephone number on the tag, and the science program was left with a lobster catch indicator in the middle of the continent!
Lobsters are an interesting case in the world of aging research - I'm not sure if an upper limit to lobster age is known. They have a very great advantage over us mammals in that their telomeres do not shorten when their cells divide, which is what appears to be the limiting factor for our cell divisions. (FEBS Letters Vol. 439 (1-2) pp. 143-146). When large lobsters are caught, there is no way to tell their age - because they molt, they do not have annual growth marks. The largest lobster on record, weighing 44 lbs 6 oz was probably between 50 and 100 years old (I remember seeing a photo of this monster hanging beside a fisherman many years ago, about 3-4 feet long, but I can't find it on the net).
Here's a Lobster Cam inside a lobster trap in Maine - pity the poor fellow who wanders in (cam is often black - either night-time, or simply disconnected).
The The Lobster Conservancy site has a lot of good information on lobster issues, and you can even "adopt a lobster" here (although I'm not sure I'd want to get that telegram "
The idea to extend this tracking into the consumer side of things came from a scientific tracking system gone awry: a lobster with a scientific tag that was supposed to be removed by the fisherman accidentally made it all the way to a Wal-Mart in Wisconsin. A dutiful consumer called the telephone number on the tag, and the science program was left with a lobster catch indicator in the middle of the continent!
Lobsters are an interesting case in the world of aging research - I'm not sure if an upper limit to lobster age is known. They have a very great advantage over us mammals in that their telomeres do not shorten when their cells divide, which is what appears to be the limiting factor for our cell divisions. (FEBS Letters Vol. 439 (1-2) pp. 143-146). When large lobsters are caught, there is no way to tell their age - because they molt, they do not have annual growth marks. The largest lobster on record, weighing 44 lbs 6 oz was probably between 50 and 100 years old (I remember seeing a photo of this monster hanging beside a fisherman many years ago, about 3-4 feet long, but I can't find it on the net).
Here's a Lobster Cam inside a lobster trap in Maine - pity the poor fellow who wanders in (cam is often black - either night-time, or simply disconnected).
The The Lobster Conservancy site has a lot of good information on lobster issues, and you can even "adopt a lobster" here (although I'm not sure I'd want to get that telegram "
...regret to inform that your adopted lobster, Elvis, was boiled and eaten on Sept. 12."...)Hungry yet? Can't get to the The Maine Lobster Festival this year? Jess' Market participates in the Lobster Tales Program, and ships FedEx (unfortunately, their website appears to be somewhat hostile to Mac browsers (Safari and IE...), just be patient, and their page will load eventually).
Thursday, December 11, 2003
D. Deutsch:
In the late nineteen eighties I came across the U.S.-Soviet Youth Orchestra in Oberlin, Ohio. In one of those gestures of cold-war détente, a mixed group of students was touring both countries, and playing well-known pieces by each-other's composers.
One of the tid-bits I learned while talking to them was that they had a fair bit of adjusting to do before they could play music together. Not only the expected language and cultural adjustments, but musical ones, too. It turns out that Middle-C can be different depending on where you are. Over here, Middle-C is defined as 261.63 Hz. Over there, Middle-C is 258.65 Hz.
The difference had come about because Middle-C is actually completely arbitrary. In fact, international agreement on what frequency to use to pin the western twelve tone equal temperament chromatic scale was only reached in 1939. Sure enough, the ever-present International Standards Organisation has a standard for it (ISO 16:1975, note that it is based on A in the treble stave as 440 Hz).
An earlier French law in 1859 had attempted this standardization with A at 435 Hz - the diapason normale - which was widely used until the 1939 ISO standard. This was the source of the Russian tuning.
In the end, the orchestra decided to use the U.S. tuning of Middle-C while over here, and the older diapason normale tuning while playing in the USSR. Seems obvious, but apparently it took an awful lot of arguing, diplomatic intervention, and several bottles of vodka to get to that point.
My question here is - how does somebody who has retained absolute pitch deal with this difference?
(And I say retained on purpose, because there's good evidence that we are all born with it. Only about 1 person in 10,000 in the West retains absolute pitch. Most of us lose it because there is no linguistic meaning embedded in pitch. Except in many tonal Asian languages. Sub-question: do more people who grew up hearing a tonal language have perfect pitch than people who grew up in an atonal household? Probably. Speakers of Vietnamese and Mandarin seem to be able to reproduce tones much more accurately than Westerners.)
For someone coming from a diapason-normale-tuned musical background who has absolute pitch, it must be very disorienting to have to readjust. No wonder they fought so hard against the Americans.
One of the tid-bits I learned while talking to them was that they had a fair bit of adjusting to do before they could play music together. Not only the expected language and cultural adjustments, but musical ones, too. It turns out that Middle-C can be different depending on where you are. Over here, Middle-C is defined as 261.63 Hz. Over there, Middle-C is 258.65 Hz.
The difference had come about because Middle-C is actually completely arbitrary. In fact, international agreement on what frequency to use to pin the western twelve tone equal temperament chromatic scale was only reached in 1939. Sure enough, the ever-present International Standards Organisation has a standard for it (ISO 16:1975, note that it is based on A in the treble stave as 440 Hz).
An earlier French law in 1859 had attempted this standardization with A at 435 Hz - the diapason normale - which was widely used until the 1939 ISO standard. This was the source of the Russian tuning.
In the end, the orchestra decided to use the U.S. tuning of Middle-C while over here, and the older diapason normale tuning while playing in the USSR. Seems obvious, but apparently it took an awful lot of arguing, diplomatic intervention, and several bottles of vodka to get to that point.
My question here is - how does somebody who has retained absolute pitch deal with this difference?
(And I say retained on purpose, because there's good evidence that we are all born with it. Only about 1 person in 10,000 in the West retains absolute pitch. Most of us lose it because there is no linguistic meaning embedded in pitch. Except in many tonal Asian languages. Sub-question: do more people who grew up hearing a tonal language have perfect pitch than people who grew up in an atonal household? Probably. Speakers of Vietnamese and Mandarin seem to be able to reproduce tones much more accurately than Westerners.)
For someone coming from a diapason-normale-tuned musical background who has absolute pitch, it must be very disorienting to have to readjust. No wonder they fought so hard against the Americans.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Ike Shake:
Apparently there was a magnitude 4.5 earthquake just before 4 p.m. yesterday, but I didn't feel a thing. I was probably either walking around, or I am on a floor in my building that was a node for the dominant frequency.
Here's the USGS webpage for this event.
The epicenter was nearer to Richmond, and occurred in a known area of seismic activity that can just be made out on this map of seismic activity in the U.S.:
Here's the USGS webpage for this event.
The epicenter was nearer to Richmond, and occurred in a known area of seismic activity that can just be made out on this map of seismic activity in the U.S.:
The event was very shallow, only about 5.0km. Western earthquakes are often between 10 and 150 km deep.
It's actually very hard to get away from a fault if you are on land - the maximum distance between faults is about 5 miles in the U.S., a fact that makes siting nuclear power plants very hard, since seismic hazards are important to safety. The key factor is how active the fault is - and most faults are pretty much quiescent. The hazard map above takes that into account with the "2% Probability of Exceedance in 50 years" statement.
Note the hotspots in the East - the Arkansas-Missouri area, South Carolina, Massachusetts, and the St. Lawrence - all places where there have been very large, but rare, movements: the New Madrid earthquake in 1811 (M=7.58), Cape Ann in 1755, Charleston in 1886 (M=7.3), and Massena, NY in 1944 (M=5.80).
Yesterday's quake released about 100,000 tons of TNT-equivalent energy. I happened to come across this fact while looking over data for the "Atoms for Peace Program," which was announced by Pres. Eisenhower fifty years ago on December 8.
How is this related?
Ike's announcement led to the Plowshare program which explored the use of nuclear power to dig large holes for use in construction. There were a total of 35 shots in this series, the first of which was Gnome under Operation Nougat, forty-two years ago today.
The most famous Plowshare shot is probably Sedan, carried out on July 6, 1962 which created a crater over 300 feet deep. Tours of the Nevada Test Site stop here. Here it is in action:
The Sedan explosion had a yield of 104 kilotons - about the same energy as yesterday's earthquake. There are about 13,000 of these light earthquakes a year worldwide.
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Walter J. Boyne, John Daley:
Thanks to my father-in-law, we got a sneak peek at the Smithsonian's brand new Udvar-Hazy Center out at Dulles, Virginia.
In brief, WOW. An overview of the exhibition hall:
An odd view of the Northrop N-1M:
The nose of the Concorde:
And the brooding Enterprise (notice its leading edges are missing, used for the post-Columbia testing):
The list goes on: Gossamer Condor. Blackbird. Enola Gay. Little Stinker...
The Udvar-Hazy Center opens to the public on December 15, and I hope to get back there before the year is out.
Thank goodness Silver Hill is finally yielding up its secrets.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Calderón (again) country:
Hello from Costa Rica. I'm here for two meetings, and yes, it's one of those trips where all I get to see is the airport and the hotel. Fortunately, I have seen some of this area before, and I'm quite sure I will get here again, on my own time, and be able to take some time to see volcanoes, rainforest, fauna, etc.
According to Allan Flores, the country's Vice-Minister of Environment and Energy (who spoke to us for a millisecond), one quarter of the country's area is under some form of environmental management. He also claimed that 99% of the country's energy comes from 'clean' sources, but I'm not sure what 'clean' means. Hydropower? Geothermal? Both are certainly possible here.
On one of my previous trips in 2001, I was here to observe the deployment of one of NASA's high-altitude research aircraft, the WB-57 (the other aircraft is the civilian version of the U-2, the ER-2). The WB-57 can fly well above 60,000 feet, which was quite amusing when we listened in to the comm between the taxiing aircraft requesting departure permission from the tower and ATC:
"San Jose, this is NASA 26 requesting flight level six-fifty."
Long pause...
"NASA 26, please repeat flight level."
"San Jose, NASA 26 requests Six-five-oh."
"Uh... OK, NASA 26, flight level six-fifty, um... OK."
Another pilot can't resist, and interrupts:
"What the hell are you flying?
Here she is taxiing after a landing:
According to Allan Flores, the country's Vice-Minister of Environment and Energy (who spoke to us for a millisecond), one quarter of the country's area is under some form of environmental management. He also claimed that 99% of the country's energy comes from 'clean' sources, but I'm not sure what 'clean' means. Hydropower? Geothermal? Both are certainly possible here.
On one of my previous trips in 2001, I was here to observe the deployment of one of NASA's high-altitude research aircraft, the WB-57 (the other aircraft is the civilian version of the U-2, the ER-2). The WB-57 can fly well above 60,000 feet, which was quite amusing when we listened in to the comm between the taxiing aircraft requesting departure permission from the tower and ATC:
"San Jose, this is NASA 26 requesting flight level six-fifty."
Long pause...
"NASA 26, please repeat flight level."
"San Jose, NASA 26 requests Six-five-oh."
"Uh... OK, NASA 26, flight level six-fifty, um... OK."
Another pilot can't resist, and interrupts:
"What the hell are you flying?
Here she is taxiing after a landing:
And here is Andy Roberts walking the pilot (SH) back to the suit-up van. Notice the pilot and the engineer (SB, far right) have to wear a pressure suits, which also need a little refrigeration unit when they're not connected to the aircraft itself...
The WB-57 can get above the enormous tropical storm cells and sample the air that is being exchanged between the troposphere and the stratosphere, so that we can study how one level affects the other. Here is the website for the Harvard research team that was using the WB while I was there.
For lots of pictures both here in Costa Rica and many other place in Central America, visit Canary in a Coal Mine, which tracks the progress of my boss' son on his drive from San Francisco to Tierra del Fuego. Right now he's in Panama, pondering whether to go into Colombia or not.
Would you go? Read his reasoning, and give him feedback!
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Miguel José Serra:
The fires in California recently were brought home when my son said over the telephone that the smoke was very thick, and that he was going to spend the night in a hotel because he was being evacuated. The Otay fire was within 5 miles of his house when it was finally contained. He and I have gone up to Julian several times, not only for pies, but mostly for the "Candy Mine" in the local drugstore which has all kinds of hard-to-find candies (Sen-Sen, anyone?). It's a cute set-up at the back of the store like and old adit with several side passages full of buckets of candy. I was glad to hear that the old section of Julian was saved.
There is a nice satellite photo from the Scripps Institute Visualization Center of the smoke plumes from fires in Alta and Baja California here. Many of the agencies that fight fires have coordinated data and put it on the web for both their own use in firefighting and for public viewing through the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination system, GeoMAC. You can pull up fire active and historical fire perimeters on zoomable maps at this site.
Seeing yet another series of fires reminded me that this is part of a natural cycle there, and of the series of New Yorker articles that ended up as the book "Assembling California" by John McPhee. I remember reading there that because the natural vegetation in California is suited to arid environments, it tends to have extremely waxy smoke when it burns. During a fire, this smoke permeates the ground, and leaves a waxy deposit covering the soil particles within a few inches of the surface. Come the rainy season, the flow that would usually soak into the ground cannot get in because of the wax, and it simply sheets off the burnt mountainsides and into the canyons. And into the culverts. And into the houses. And away with the roads. So I am predicting that with such a bad burn season, if there are substantial rains, we will see a lot of bad flooding as well this year, especially up in the mountains.
Part of what I do at work is to help fund labs that look at tree rings. Dendrochronology can often be used to determine fire frequency. Without knowing how often fires like this occur, we can't tell if they are getting worse. It's all part of the debate concerning stopping fires in the first place -- there's fairly good evidence that the decades long campaign by Smokey the Bear to stop fires at all costs was actually counterproductive, since it left even more flammable material for the next opportunity, which was then harder to fight. There's a balance between forest growth and fire, and we simply jumped in before knowing much about the cycle.
MultiProxy Paleofire Database
There is a nice satellite photo from the Scripps Institute Visualization Center of the smoke plumes from fires in Alta and Baja California here. Many of the agencies that fight fires have coordinated data and put it on the web for both their own use in firefighting and for public viewing through the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination system, GeoMAC. You can pull up fire active and historical fire perimeters on zoomable maps at this site.
Seeing yet another series of fires reminded me that this is part of a natural cycle there, and of the series of New Yorker articles that ended up as the book "Assembling California" by John McPhee. I remember reading there that because the natural vegetation in California is suited to arid environments, it tends to have extremely waxy smoke when it burns. During a fire, this smoke permeates the ground, and leaves a waxy deposit covering the soil particles within a few inches of the surface. Come the rainy season, the flow that would usually soak into the ground cannot get in because of the wax, and it simply sheets off the burnt mountainsides and into the canyons. And into the culverts. And into the houses. And away with the roads. So I am predicting that with such a bad burn season, if there are substantial rains, we will see a lot of bad flooding as well this year, especially up in the mountains.
Part of what I do at work is to help fund labs that look at tree rings. Dendrochronology can often be used to determine fire frequency. Without knowing how often fires like this occur, we can't tell if they are getting worse. It's all part of the debate concerning stopping fires in the first place -- there's fairly good evidence that the decades long campaign by Smokey the Bear to stop fires at all costs was actually counterproductive, since it left even more flammable material for the next opportunity, which was then harder to fight. There's a balance between forest growth and fire, and we simply jumped in before knowing much about the cycle.
MultiProxy Paleofire Database
Friday, November 28, 2003
Ponzi clouds:
I work occasionally with a group at NASA that is trying to develop a protocol so that school kids can submit scientifically accurate data on condensation trails left by jet aircraft at high altitude, or contrails.
They have a web-page in progress that gives some idea of what the kids will have to identify. What kind of cloud is it? How wide is it? How long does it last?
This is part of a program that tries to identify clouds in general through volunteer observations. Since it is suspected that contrails have a role to play in cloud formation and therefore regulation of climate, contrail observation is important. There's a fairly good explanation here.
In the commercial flight-free days following the September 11 attacks, it was actually possible to detect a temperature difference over the United States from the lack of contrails. (ScienceNews magazine article, and ARAM X technical abstract.)
Here are some great animations of the hourly density for air traffic above Flight Level 250 on September 3, 2001 vs. the same for traffic above FL250 on September 11, 2001.
Of course, there are other theories about contrails. Many people believe that they are the result of a secret government program to spray chemicals on its citizens. You can begin that web-surfing oddyssey here or here.
'Nuff said.
They have a web-page in progress that gives some idea of what the kids will have to identify. What kind of cloud is it? How wide is it? How long does it last?
This is part of a program that tries to identify clouds in general through volunteer observations. Since it is suspected that contrails have a role to play in cloud formation and therefore regulation of climate, contrail observation is important. There's a fairly good explanation here.
In the commercial flight-free days following the September 11 attacks, it was actually possible to detect a temperature difference over the United States from the lack of contrails. (ScienceNews magazine article, and ARAM X technical abstract.)
Here are some great animations of the hourly density for air traffic above Flight Level 250 on September 3, 2001 vs. the same for traffic above FL250 on September 11, 2001.
Of course, there are other theories about contrails. Many people believe that they are the result of a secret government program to spray chemicals on its citizens. You can begin that web-surfing oddyssey here or here.
'Nuff said.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Croatan:
This past Thanksgiving we were kindly invited to our neighbour's house to share the traditional meal. The family has two daughters, aged 10 and 14 (I think). The younger of the two busily entertained other young guests during the afternoon/evening, but the older of the two was busily engaged in Instant Messaging on AOL.
This brought home something I have been thinking about for a while. A lot of gadgetry is sold as "helping you remain connected," when in fact what it really does is pull you away from your immediate surroundings. People engaged in intense cellular conversations or engrossed in MP3s are often not paying attention to their surroundings. They are enveloped in their own technological, portable, electronic aura.
I am always amazed when I see people together, and one of them has headphones on, or is glued to their cellphone. Even on what is obviously a date. This kind of behaviour, even if it is considered 'acceptable' by the people involved, has to have some sort of subtle psychological impact on relationships. Certainly, it makes the "you're not listening to me" argument very strong, and that's not a good place to start with someone...
And this is not just a recent phenomenon. I suspect that radio was the end of many backyard fence conversations, and that television spelled the end of America's front porch.
I hope electronic messaging is not the end of family conversations.
This brought home something I have been thinking about for a while. A lot of gadgetry is sold as "helping you remain connected," when in fact what it really does is pull you away from your immediate surroundings. People engaged in intense cellular conversations or engrossed in MP3s are often not paying attention to their surroundings. They are enveloped in their own technological, portable, electronic aura.
I am always amazed when I see people together, and one of them has headphones on, or is glued to their cellphone. Even on what is obviously a date. This kind of behaviour, even if it is considered 'acceptable' by the people involved, has to have some sort of subtle psychological impact on relationships. Certainly, it makes the "you're not listening to me" argument very strong, and that's not a good place to start with someone...
And this is not just a recent phenomenon. I suspect that radio was the end of many backyard fence conversations, and that television spelled the end of America's front porch.
I hope electronic messaging is not the end of family conversations.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Guglielmo, can you hear me now?:
About a month ago, before my wireless phone frenzy, I had previously ventured into the world of wireless telecommunications, in the hopes of being able to talk to somebody. Anybody.
This time it was walkie-talkies. I bought a set of FRS/GMRS units, with a 7-mile range capability on 22 channels, with 38 privacy codes. Headsets and all. The plan was to use these while cycling, hiking or skiing in West Virginia, on the road, and simply between home and the grocery store about 2 miles away. The fact that we would not be paying on a per-call basis for communications with these units was a plus. "....Honey, can you get a half-dozen eggs, too? Oh yes, and we are all out of Red Man chaw. I need a couple of tins...."
Then I made my first mistake. I read the instructions. Tucked away in the fine print, there was a little note stating that to operate radios in the GMRS bands, an FCC licence was required. And they were nice enough to give the URL for the FCC website. Which was where I found out that a fee of $70 is required for each family using these units, good for five years. After a cumbersome amount of registering for ID numbers and passwords etc., I put in my application, hesitating some. Hmm. The up-front costs were mounting. I was irked that the packaging hadn't mentioned any of this.
Then I made my second mistake. We tried to use the units. They didn't seem to transmit very well at all beyond about 300 yards. I tried them line-of-sight, too. Perhaps those particular units were bad, but by this point I was fed up. Back to the store they went. No Family/General Mobile Radio Services for us.
Now I just have to find out how to retract the licence application before the door gets broken down at 3 AM by FCC jackboots looking for illegal walkie-talkies... but I can't imagine enforcement is an issue, since the vast majority of consumers will never even bother with a GMRS licence, if they are even aware of the requirement.
And that's when my frenzy really took off, with the idea of looking at cell-phone-based walkie-talkies. Which is what all this really is anyway - being able to live out my childhood fantasies of having really good walkie-talkies. ...gosh, childhood dreams are hard to shake.
This time it was walkie-talkies. I bought a set of FRS/GMRS units, with a 7-mile range capability on 22 channels, with 38 privacy codes. Headsets and all. The plan was to use these while cycling, hiking or skiing in West Virginia, on the road, and simply between home and the grocery store about 2 miles away. The fact that we would not be paying on a per-call basis for communications with these units was a plus. "....Honey, can you get a half-dozen eggs, too? Oh yes, and we are all out of Red Man chaw. I need a couple of tins...."
Then I made my first mistake. I read the instructions. Tucked away in the fine print, there was a little note stating that to operate radios in the GMRS bands, an FCC licence was required. And they were nice enough to give the URL for the FCC website. Which was where I found out that a fee of $70 is required for each family using these units, good for five years. After a cumbersome amount of registering for ID numbers and passwords etc., I put in my application, hesitating some. Hmm. The up-front costs were mounting. I was irked that the packaging hadn't mentioned any of this.
Then I made my second mistake. We tried to use the units. They didn't seem to transmit very well at all beyond about 300 yards. I tried them line-of-sight, too. Perhaps those particular units were bad, but by this point I was fed up. Back to the store they went. No Family/General Mobile Radio Services for us.
Now I just have to find out how to retract the licence application before the door gets broken down at 3 AM by FCC jackboots looking for illegal walkie-talkies... but I can't imagine enforcement is an issue, since the vast majority of consumers will never even bother with a GMRS licence, if they are even aware of the requirement.
And that's when my frenzy really took off, with the idea of looking at cell-phone-based walkie-talkies. Which is what all this really is anyway - being able to live out my childhood fantasies of having really good walkie-talkies. ...gosh, childhood dreams are hard to shake.
Mobile phone portability update: yes, my calls take a lot longer to go through now. I get a disconcerting silent gap in my calls before they finally connect.
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!... Hello? Can somebody tell me why my cell phone doesn't work?"
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Qibla quibble:
As today is the actual Eid al-Fitr marking the end of Ramadan, and I am a forward-thinking sort of fellow, I wondered how muslims will determine the direction towards Mecca (the Qibla) when they are on the Moon or Mars.
What did muslim astronauts and cosmonauts do when they were on Salyut/Mir or the Shuttle? In the case of an orbiting platform, Qibla can change substantially within the time of prayer.
In my minds eye I have a lazy-susan-like prayer platform that would maintain proper Qibla at all times. You would just have to be careful if your ground track took you close to Mecca, because a near-180° change in Qibla could take place in a few seconds, leading to severe disorientation or even injury...
What did muslim astronauts and cosmonauts do when they were on Salyut/Mir or the Shuttle? In the case of an orbiting platform, Qibla can change substantially within the time of prayer.
In my minds eye I have a lazy-susan-like prayer platform that would maintain proper Qibla at all times. You would just have to be careful if your ground track took you close to Mecca, because a near-180° change in Qibla could take place in a few seconds, leading to severe disorientation or even injury...
Monday, November 24, 2003
AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon...:
Fool that I am, I switched cellular providers on the first possible day, before the portability system was truly tested. I was probably one of the early requests in the system, having waited at the dealer's door for opening time.
The plan
Dump old provider (whose service area apparently has a polynya in my neighbourhood...), switch number to new provider (whose signal is quite strong at home), and get an additional phone for my wife. All at the lowest price possible.
The reality
10:00H - begin the process, verifying old provider, porting number from my old phone to new phone #1. Generate new assigned number for new phone #2. Generate contract. Oh-oh. Number on contract for unit #1 is not the ported number, but another new assigned number.
10:10H - service person realizes there are no "back" buttons on the service screens, and they cannot start from scratch because a record already exists for my old number.
10:15H - call central customer support. On hold.
10:30H - On hold.
11:00H - get a human operator, begin from scratch. Explain situation. Go through steps, only to realize service did not understand explanation. Start again.
11:20H - Call dropped. Start from scratch.
.
.
.
You get the picture.
I left the store and came back later, finally leaving with our phones at 16:00H. And yes, I did yield to techno-lust, and we have phones with colour, cameras etc. etc. -- "bling-bling" services I will undoubtedly cancel within a month or two as useless, having realized that I cannot keep up with fad mavens like, say, Paris Hilton. Sigh.
Ages ago, one of my friends sent me a message on my first phone capable of e-mail that I never erased because it made me laugh so hard: "Hang up and drive, you yuppy scum!"
The plan
Dump old provider (whose service area apparently has a polynya in my neighbourhood...), switch number to new provider (whose signal is quite strong at home), and get an additional phone for my wife. All at the lowest price possible.
The reality
10:00H - begin the process, verifying old provider, porting number from my old phone to new phone #1. Generate new assigned number for new phone #2. Generate contract. Oh-oh. Number on contract for unit #1 is not the ported number, but another new assigned number.
10:10H - service person realizes there are no "back" buttons on the service screens, and they cannot start from scratch because a record already exists for my old number.
10:15H - call central customer support. On hold.
10:30H - On hold.
11:00H - get a human operator, begin from scratch. Explain situation. Go through steps, only to realize service did not understand explanation. Start again.
11:20H - Call dropped. Start from scratch.
.
.
.
You get the picture.
I left the store and came back later, finally leaving with our phones at 16:00H. And yes, I did yield to techno-lust, and we have phones with colour, cameras etc. etc. -- "bling-bling" services I will undoubtedly cancel within a month or two as useless, having realized that I cannot keep up with fad mavens like, say, Paris Hilton. Sigh.
Ages ago, one of my friends sent me a message on my first phone capable of e-mail that I never erased because it made me laugh so hard: "Hang up and drive, you yuppy scum!"
Right now, if I want a new phone, the incentive structure pushes me right into the arms of a new provider. Upgrading equipment with my old provider was more expensive than getting a whole new contract. Now, with number portability, there's even less reason to stay with a provider. The business model of exclusive attention to capturing one- to two-year contracts is a sure sign of an immature market, and one that has yet to fully saturate. Of course, a 400% increase in sales in one year is another sign.
On the other hand, uptake for these new data services has apparently been slow - I would bet that it is really a zero-sum situation, or "churn" as the industry puts it, with as many customers leaving a provider as joining. New mobile data services are not attracting as many new customers as expected, and the number portability will change the playing field substantially. Perhaps what we are seeing is a change in the source of growth for the cellular market: the number of "brand new" users is leveling off, and people are either adding additional lines, or replacing land lines with wireless ones. The elephant in the room here is VOIP, or voice-over-internet-protocol, which I suspect will play a huge role in a very short time. Several telephony providers (including some cellular service providers) already use the internet to route their traffic.
Technically, a call from a ported number phone is quite a bit more complicated - there are several extra transactions that need to take place before the initiating and recipient switches in the system are correctly coded & routed, and the call is completed.
And this is only the actual calling part of the system - the billing and customer support segments all had to be changed, too. I fully expect my calls will take longer to connect. I expect I will get 'service unavailable' more frequently. I probably will not have good 9-1-1 service. But it will get better.
Divorcing MDN from MIN was difficult. As expected.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Saros & Sothis:
The Moon was again looking extraordinarily three-dimensional this morning, bulging out over the slowly brightening Eastern skyline. Having the lunar eclipse during last full moon on the 9th makes it likely that there is a solar eclipse this weekend, but we may not be facing in the right direction when it occurs.
Sure enough, we are not. Not even close. As you can see, the lunar shadow will gently brush over Earth's powdered bottom (and no, that's not a reference to Michael Jackson).
Those who were lucky enough to see the lunar eclipse of November 9 may have noticed that the Moon never quite reached a completely even shade of red across its face. Here's a blurry photo I took fairly close to the moment of greatest eclipse:
Sure enough, we are not. Not even close. As you can see, the lunar shadow will gently brush over Earth's powdered bottom (and no, that's not a reference to Michael Jackson).
Those who were lucky enough to see the lunar eclipse of November 9 may have noticed that the Moon never quite reached a completely even shade of red across its face. Here's a blurry photo I took fairly close to the moment of greatest eclipse:
The moon was never evenly lit because the center of Earth's shadow passed above the Moon, as seen here:
Why is the Moon red during an eclipse? you ask. You don't? Well, let me tell you anyway: because the sky is blue. Lunar eclipses and the sky both have the colours they do for the same reason.
I realized this after someone asked me the "why is the sky blue" question, and I flippantly answered "because all the red is folded into the sunset and sunrise around the edge of the Earth." After a moment's reflection I realized that it was actually true.
The crescent Moon also reminded me that we are approaching the Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan and fasting. The Islamic (Hijri) calendar is not fixed, like the Gregorian. The precise beginning of each month depends on a human physically sighting the first lunar crescent after a full moon. These two factors (human sighting and first crescent), make for a curious situation - it is very possible for different parts of the muslim world to be using different dates on the same day, since the Moon is not visible at the same time from everywhere, and local weather will influence 'first sighting.' If you had really bad weather, the month could stretch out for weeks! Attempts to standardize the calendar have been made many times, but never to full satisfaction. You can see some of that debate here.
Another widely unknown fact about the Islamic calendar is that it is only 354 days long (12 lunar months) - therefore it slowly shifts with respect to the Christian calendar. What is obvious is that a great deal of scientific effort goes into calculating the probable calendars for the Islamic world. Why then, having such extraordinary mathematical talent so early in mankind's history, did they settle on this system? Because that was the interpretation of the Koran: Sura 9 verses 36-37, and Sura 2 verse 189. There are 12 months. They are determined by the Moon. No more, no less. And that was that.
There is a great discussion of calendars here, where I also learned that even though the month and day counts have hiccupped several times as we adjusted the calendar (e.g. 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752 for the Julian to Gregorian switch in the United Kindgom and colonies), the seven day cycle of the week (Monday, Tuesday, ... etc.) has not been broken since at least 1400 BC, and possibly far before that.
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Sadovskiy, Kolyako & Tsybin:
Fifteen years ago today, the Soviet space shuttle "Buran" was launched from Baikonur on an Energiya booster. Derided at the time for being a copy of the U.S. Space Shuttle, the actual technical accomplishments of this flight have been glossed over. The similarities in aerodynamic design disappear once you look at the details.
The decision to avoid solid rocket boosters and cryogenic engine technology used on the U.S. Shuttle led to the development of the Energiya booster, capable of putting 88,000kg into low Earth orbit, and 22,000kg to geosynchronous orbit (in comparison, Ariane-V can lift 18,000kg to LEO and 6,800kg to geosynchronous; the Shuttle can lift 24,400kg to LEO, 5,900kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit; and the Saturn-V got 118,000kg to LEO, 47,000kg to translunar trajectory).
This configuration allowed Buran to actually have a larger payload capacity than the Shuttle (30,000kg vs. 25,000kg), despite its smaller physical orbiter size (105,000kg vs. 123,000kg).
The launch was carried out despite a 4°C temperature, with snow flurries and 72km/hr winds (appropriately, since 'Buran' means blizzard in Russian). Control was maintained through radio link with several Gorizont, Luch and Molniya comsats and tracking ships (interestingly, one of the ships off Chile was named the "Marshall Nedelin"...). Two orbits later, the spacecraft landed on complete auto pilot, less than 2m off the runway center-line at Baikonur, even after battling a 65km/hr crosswind at 30 degrees off-runway. Five tiles were lost on re-entry (I actually have one of the replacement tiles sitting on my desk!). Exhaustive pre-flight testing with many scale versions and six full size mockups contributed to this first orbital test's success.
Buran on final approach, and on roll-out:
Here is a link to a short MPEG (5.1Mb) video of the Buran on final approach shot by Igor Volk, head of the Buran Cosmonaut team, from the MiG-25 chase plane seen above.
Technical accomplishments aside, the logistical, economic and political requirements necessary to carry out this mission doomed it to failure within the Soviet system. In fact, it is probable that the vast investment in the Energiya and Buran programs themselves contributed to the implosion of the Soviet system ($20 billion rubles in Buran alone). The Energiya only ever flew twice. One other Energiya launch had been carried out previous to Buran, but the payload, the military "battle station" Polyus malfunctioned, and never reached orbit.
Buran was to have flown in December of 1994 to Mir and delivered another module, but the entire Energiya/Buranprogram was cancelled by Boris Yeltsin on June 30, 1993. It didn't help that one of the 1991 coup plotters was the Buran project manager.
In the end, all the Energiyas that had been produced were cannibalized, with their engines used on Zenit and U.S. Atlas vehicles. The Buran flyers were mothballed, and suffered various fates - museums, scrap heaps, and one as part of the amusement section of Gorky park in Moscow. The original idea was to set it up as a space-food restaurant, but it now serves as a slightly dilapidated theatre/vehicle for simulated space rides, as seen below.
In all, a very Russian ending to the story.
Friday, November 14, 2003
Leeuwenhoek:
Bug-nology update: In April I noted that work was being done by IBEA on creating a completely man-made organism.
The first step has been achieved. IBEA has reconstructed a known gene sequence for a virus from much shorter, commercially available segments. This was done in two weeks, and sequencing of the product showed that the reconstructed version was accurate (which is what makes this different from previous efforts with the polio virus).
Now they know how to do it, but the really tough problem remains. They know how to build a working library, but they still can't read most of the books that are available to put there.
The metaphor that IBEA uses is the "cassette." By determining what the minimum necessary genetic infrastructure is to sustain life, they can make a cassette that can be used to hold tapes with different songs. These songs would contain the task-specific instructions ("eat carbon" or "make methane"). The songs are the genes encoding desired metabolic pathways found in other existing organisms.
We still have to learn what most genes actually do, before we could fully engineer an organism that will actually carry out a desired task, like scrub emissions, clean up spills, produce fuels, sequester carbon, etc.
But we are well on that road.
Fast forward: "Nov. 14, 2023. Nokiocera announced today that it had released a new generation of PCA (polymerase cycle assembly) synthesizers that are completely compatible with the widely-used online genLib databases and NFP-2v11 nanofabrication protocols..."
The first step has been achieved. IBEA has reconstructed a known gene sequence for a virus from much shorter, commercially available segments. This was done in two weeks, and sequencing of the product showed that the reconstructed version was accurate (which is what makes this different from previous efforts with the polio virus).
Now they know how to do it, but the really tough problem remains. They know how to build a working library, but they still can't read most of the books that are available to put there.
The metaphor that IBEA uses is the "cassette." By determining what the minimum necessary genetic infrastructure is to sustain life, they can make a cassette that can be used to hold tapes with different songs. These songs would contain the task-specific instructions ("eat carbon" or "make methane"). The songs are the genes encoding desired metabolic pathways found in other existing organisms.
We still have to learn what most genes actually do, before we could fully engineer an organism that will actually carry out a desired task, like scrub emissions, clean up spills, produce fuels, sequester carbon, etc.
But we are well on that road.
Fast forward: "Nov. 14, 2023. Nokiocera announced today that it had released a new generation of PCA (polymerase cycle assembly) synthesizers that are completely compatible with the widely-used online genLib databases and NFP-2v11 nanofabrication protocols..."
Thursday, November 13, 2003
I. P. Volk:
Today's spaceflight news release from NASA mentioned that Foale and Kaleri were participating in a potassium citrate experiment to study kidney stone risk during their space flight.
During my visit to Star City, we spent about half a day hearing about medical experiments carried out on Mir, and one of the discussions touched on this issue. In zero-g, there is little need for bones. So your body gets rid of them, by slowly re-absorbing them. And where do the bones go? Into your urine - and that means through your kidneys, where some of that calcium gets laid down as a kidney stone. Apparently several of the long-term stays on Salyut 7 and Mir involved cases of kidney stones. The interesting/scary part (and one that is often not discussed) is that space travellers never truly recover the original full bone density after returning to Earth. Stay in space long enough, and you can't come back.
Enough of the bone is dissolved that osteoporosis is a demonstrated serious problem for long-duration spaceflight. We could get to Mars, but there would be a high risk of a bone fracture once we were on the surface. Bone can be lost at a rate of up to 1% a month, possibly topping out at about 40 to 60% loss.
"Houston, we have a problem. Fred is crawling around on his hands and knees, holding his ankle. Umm... and now he's on his face in the red dust... oh never mind, he... well, ...dissolved."
The first thing spacefarers find when they get to orbit is the space-sickness issue. I have to admit that I would probably be quite vulnerable -- we did ten parabolic arcs on the Ilyushin 76 (the Russian "Vomit Comet," shown below), and within six arcs I was looking pretty green.
During my visit to Star City, we spent about half a day hearing about medical experiments carried out on Mir, and one of the discussions touched on this issue. In zero-g, there is little need for bones. So your body gets rid of them, by slowly re-absorbing them. And where do the bones go? Into your urine - and that means through your kidneys, where some of that calcium gets laid down as a kidney stone. Apparently several of the long-term stays on Salyut 7 and Mir involved cases of kidney stones. The interesting/scary part (and one that is often not discussed) is that space travellers never truly recover the original full bone density after returning to Earth. Stay in space long enough, and you can't come back.
Enough of the bone is dissolved that osteoporosis is a demonstrated serious problem for long-duration spaceflight. We could get to Mars, but there would be a high risk of a bone fracture once we were on the surface. Bone can be lost at a rate of up to 1% a month, possibly topping out at about 40 to 60% loss.
"Houston, we have a problem. Fred is crawling around on his hands and knees, holding his ankle. Umm... and now he's on his face in the red dust... oh never mind, he... well, ...dissolved."
The first thing spacefarers find when they get to orbit is the space-sickness issue. I have to admit that I would probably be quite vulnerable -- we did ten parabolic arcs on the Ilyushin 76 (the Russian "Vomit Comet," shown below), and within six arcs I was looking pretty green.
The next day, sitting in the Buran control panel mockup inside the planetarium, the whirling stars made all our inner ears spin, and our ever-present minder, Natasha, fled in a blur. Even a week later, watching a video of a tour of the Space Station on television, with the camera twisting and turning through passageways, I had to turn my head away.
Even veteran space travellers suffer from these vestibular problems. Their incidence is not predictable - hardened combat pilots can get severe bouts, and known sea-sickness sufferers can be immune. Newly adapting crews on the Station often spend a day or two carefully aligning themselves with the writing on the station walls, which is all written in one orientation to help minimize space-sickness problems.
The next thing space travellers encounter is the rearrangement of bodily fluids. We don't realize it, but we perform this cycle each day here on Earth. During the daytime our legs swell and our heads shrink because fluids drain towards the floor. At night, they balance out, to start again the next day. The change isn't really noticeable unless we get it wrong - stand on your head, or sleep on a sloping bed, and you will quickly feel the pressure change (when vertical, the gradient goes from about 200 mmHg at the lowest body point to 60 mmHg at the highest body point).
In space there is no fluid pooling in the legs, so the feeling one gets is one of puffiness. People's faces look puffy for the first few days (the body first equalizes at about 100 mmHg throughout). The brain is very sensitive to partial pressures and fluids, so the body begins to eliminate fluid to lower the pressure. Dehydration is an automatic response to this weightless condition. Most people lose about 20% of their blood volume. Valeri Korzun told me that he didn't urinate for three days after returning to Earth - his body was re-hydrating to be able to tolerate the fluid pooling cycle, and to keep blood pressure high enough in the brain when he stood erect in one-g.
To simulate the pull of gravity, crews have tried lowering the atmospheric pressure around the lower half of the body. Here astronauts Kerwin and Weitz aboard Skylab try the U.S. system, which consisted of a 'canister' with a skirt that sealed around the waist (Lower Body Negative Pressure, LBNP).
The Russians on Mir tried this also, with a set of pants called Chibis, modeled here by Brian Walker:
(anybody remember Nick Park's "The Wrong Trousers"?)
Inefficient record-keeping, poor experiment design, and loss of materials has meant that much of the valuable medical information gained from the Soviet and Russian long-duration programs has unfortunately been lost. Much of the experimentation that was to have been carried out on the ISS is also now in jeopardy due to the reduction in crew. Even before the Columbia accident, the reduced ISS crew level was insufficient for proper protocols in many experiments.
We may be reduced to learning on-the-
fly when we go to Mars. Russian-style.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Newton's Roots:
A look at some professors and their students.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)
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Roger Cotes 1 (1682 - 1716)
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Robert Smith 1, 2 (1689 - 1768)
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Anthony Shepherd 1 (1721 - 1796)
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Samuel Vince 1, 2 (1749 - 1821)
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Robert Woodhouse 1 (1773 - 1827)
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George Peacock 1 (1791 - 1858)
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Augustus de Morgan 1 (1806 - 1871)
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E. J. Routh 1, 2 (1831 - 1907)
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Lord Rayleigh 1, 2 (1842 - 1919)
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Sir J. J. Thomson 1, 2 (1856 - 1940)
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Lord Ernest Rutherford 1, 2 (1871 - 1937)
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Sir Edward Crisp Bullard 1, 2, 3 (1907 - 1981)
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Robert L. Parker 1 (1942 -
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Marcia K. McNutt 1, 2 (1952 -
|
Paul E. Filmer (1963 -
It's actually not as impressive as it would seem... If you figure that each professor had a minimum of four advisees, then there would be at least 1 billion (4^15) people out there who could trace their 'academic heritage' back to Newton. Even if they advised only 2 students each, you still get 32,000 people. EJ Routh, for example, tutored over six hundred students, including other 'Names of Note in Science' like Bragg and Larmor.
The best part is that when I learned what these people had done, I realized how gnat-like I am. Yikes.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Antheil, Lamarr:
A quick tribute to a co-inventors of the spread spectrum idea. It's Hedy Lamarr's birthday today. I'll let her foundation's website tell the story of this silver screen star and inventor.
Here's the story from George Antheil's son's point of view.
Here's the story from George Antheil's son's point of view.
Friday, November 07, 2003
Minkowski, Mihos:
We are in the midst of a colossal crash. So big we won't ever feel it. So big, we only just noticed it was happening.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is currently crashing into at least two other galaxies: the Canis Major dwarf galaxy and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Since they are dwarf galaxies, the Milky Way is 'winning' by eating them up. There are some good illustrations of how the Milky Way is tearing the Canis Major galaxy apart here. This also means that these galaxies are the closest to us.
It turns out that galactic collisions are more common than was once thought. Since galaxies carry a fair bit of mass, it makes sense that a lot of them might be gravitationally bound to each other. And some of them will eventually collide. The interesting part is that stars are so small compared to the galactic scale that actual star-star collisions are probably quite rare, even when the galactic centers pass close to each other, as in the well-known Cartwheel Galaxy, which shows the gravitational shock-wave, or splash made by the collision:
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is currently crashing into at least two other galaxies: the Canis Major dwarf galaxy and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Since they are dwarf galaxies, the Milky Way is 'winning' by eating them up. There are some good illustrations of how the Milky Way is tearing the Canis Major galaxy apart here. This also means that these galaxies are the closest to us.
It turns out that galactic collisions are more common than was once thought. Since galaxies carry a fair bit of mass, it makes sense that a lot of them might be gravitationally bound to each other. And some of them will eventually collide. The interesting part is that stars are so small compared to the galactic scale that actual star-star collisions are probably quite rare, even when the galactic centers pass close to each other, as in the well-known Cartwheel Galaxy, which shows the gravitational shock-wave, or splash made by the collision:
Other collision geometries and times result in many different shapes, as seen in negatives here:
Where the Cartwheel galaxy is the top right. The one that always strikes me is the bottom left, known as the Antennae. The long arms strung out from the centers are billions of stars, ejected from the galaxies - along with any planets and intelligent life they might have. What I wonder about is the psychological impact that that kind of realization must have on a civilization. Can you imagine finding out that you are in the midst of being ejected from your galaxy, and that any possibility of traveling to other stars is getting more and more remote by the second?
The good news for us is that we are still firmly ensconced in our arm of the Milky Way, with time to find a way to travel even to the nearest star. The bad news is that there is a much bigger crash headed our way at 500,000 km/hr. No need to worry just yet, because first contact with the Andromeda Galaxy is about 3 billion years away.
Here (10Mb file!) is a movie of the collision, showing the spectacularly haunting interplay that flings billions of suns into darkness. Including, possibly, our own.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Carnot, Clausius & Thomson:
Hello from Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. I´m here for just under 72 hours. I´m here for two meetings, and to look in on a vulnerability course that I am co-sponsoring with the OAS and the UNDP.
Interesting thing, vulnerability. In the two days of meetings we´ve had so far, there have been over 20 power failures. Now Santo Domingo is quite used to this, and places like this hotel have diesel generators that kick in within a fraction of a second of failure or undervoltage. But the vast majority of the population simply does without power. For hours at a time. They simply have adapted to the condition of an uncertain electric power supply, and they have many alternatives ready for food storage, gas pumping, etc. Life simply goes on.
Now in the North, as we saw with the recent power failures in the U.S., Canada and Italy, the economy is exquisitely sensitive to electric current. Take it away, and most everything grinds to a halt. There are no alternatives ready for the vast majority. This is a case where a higher standard of living has made us more vulnerable.
Somewhere out there, Boltzmann is chuckling at our attempts to make things more efficient.
Interesting thing, vulnerability. In the two days of meetings we´ve had so far, there have been over 20 power failures. Now Santo Domingo is quite used to this, and places like this hotel have diesel generators that kick in within a fraction of a second of failure or undervoltage. But the vast majority of the population simply does without power. For hours at a time. They simply have adapted to the condition of an uncertain electric power supply, and they have many alternatives ready for food storage, gas pumping, etc. Life simply goes on.
Now in the North, as we saw with the recent power failures in the U.S., Canada and Italy, the economy is exquisitely sensitive to electric current. Take it away, and most everything grinds to a halt. There are no alternatives ready for the vast majority. This is a case where a higher standard of living has made us more vulnerable.
Somewhere out there, Boltzmann is chuckling at our attempts to make things more efficient.
Monday, November 03, 2003
Kudryavka Laika:
A quick bark for Laika or "little barker" in Russian, who was launched into space on Sputnik 2 on this day in 1957. The technical feat was that this second sputnik was six times heavier than Sputnik 1, and was less than one month later -- a fact not lost on the U.S. rocket effort.
Here she is:
Here she is:
What is little known is that this launch was done by Korolev as a response to a special request by Khruschev to "do something special for the upcoming anniversary of the Revolution." ...and that there was no way down for the scrappy little Moscow street dog, who lived up to her name, forlornly barking until her oxygen ran out two days later. Sniff.
(A later note: documents released only lately have revealed that Laika died within hours of launch because the cooling system failed. I also found out that she was sealed in the capsule four days before launch! Poor girl.)
Friday, October 31, 2003
Vegard, Birkeland, Størmer, Alfvén and Ångstrom:
I have seen the aurora borealis. And they were good. Very good.
I had been getting up during the nights to see if they were there, since spaceweather.com kept trumpeting that they would be visible in the South. But the details said places like "Illinois," and as far as I know, that's not the South.
Then along came sunspot 10486, burping out an X17 flare to give us a G5 storm. Or, as Joel Achenbach put it in his Washington Post style section article: "when the Sun hurls, the spew is considerable."
...so enormous that the lights were seen in Texas and Florida. Now that's the South. As I stood in amazement on my driveway, a very faint pink line formed, slowly brightened, and eventually widened out to cover most of the Northern sky. A very faint blue-green line drifted slowly westward along the veil, and faded away. These pulses of colour lasted about five minutes, with long periods of quiescence.
Here's the Defense Meteorological Satellite picture of it all:
I had been getting up during the nights to see if they were there, since spaceweather.com kept trumpeting that they would be visible in the South. But the details said places like "Illinois," and as far as I know, that's not the South.
Then along came sunspot 10486, burping out an X17 flare to give us a G5 storm. Or, as Joel Achenbach put it in his Washington Post style section article: "when the Sun hurls, the spew is considerable."
...so enormous that the lights were seen in Texas and Florida. Now that's the South. As I stood in amazement on my driveway, a very faint pink line formed, slowly brightened, and eventually widened out to cover most of the Northern sky. A very faint blue-green line drifted slowly westward along the veil, and faded away. These pulses of colour lasted about five minutes, with long periods of quiescence.
Here's the Defense Meteorological Satellite picture of it all:
At about 7:45 I stepped out again, and after straining to see anything to the North, I realized that the Pleiades to my right were in the middle of an intense pink cloud, and that in fact most of the display was behind me. -- i.e. the actual discharge in the auroral oval was occurring South of Washington. The whole sky above me was a dim pink. I'd bet that was the event seen in Florida.
I'm in awe because that was the first time I had seen them - even after living in Canada for many years, and having been as far North as Greenland on many flights across the Atlantic. The only things I see on those flights are noctilucent clouds - but that's another post.
The red I saw was probably an emission line from atomic oxygen at 6330 Å. The blue-green was probably from atomic nitrogen at 4236 and 4278 Å and atomic oxygen at 5577 Å (as opposed to molecular oxygen). What I do not understand is how this could have been a vertical line within the veil, since the colours are usually distributed horizontally.
Here is the best photo if have found of this colour distribution (taken in Alaska by Jan Curtis):
The upper reds are atomic oxygen above 200 miles (most of what we saw last night), the middle blue-green is the atomic nitrogen/atomic oxygen cascade between 100 and 200 miles, and if you look carefully, there is just a trace of crimson at the bottom, where molecular nitrogen below 100 miles dominates.
And now, my hunt for aurora australis begins...
There are actually also aurora caused by flares from other stars, but they are very, very faint - mostly they affect radio transmissions.
Happy Hallowe'en! (unfortunately, the solar storm will probably have passed us completely by tonight, so we can't expect another show until the Sun burps in our direction again...)
Here are two pumpkins I carved several years ago (left one from a commercial pattern, right one I made myself, based on the "Tresspasser" game.)
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Sosigenes revisited (and refined!):
In school we learn early that February occasionally has 29 days, rather than 28. Leap years are necessary because the Earth hasn't spun an integral number of times in one year. If we ignore leap years, the calendar starts to diverge from the seasons.
In 325 A.D. The Council of Nicaea decreed that Easter should fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The problem lay in trying to predict what calendar date this would actually fall on, so that the Church could prepare a universal set of timetables for celebrating the correct mass. Very quickly the Church ran into problems when the accumulated errors from non-integral days in a lunar month, non-integral lunar months in a year, and non-integral days in a year all piled up on each other.
The last time we sorted out this problem (because the calendar was different from the seasons by ten days by the 12th century), some very interesting people were involved in the mathematics and structures developed to deal with this dilemma. A good technical read is John Heilbron's The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. (1999, Harvard Univ. Press, 392 pp.)
Well, as you know, the solution was the leap-year. And the non-leap-year leap-years (remember 2000?). And the leap-year non-leap-year leap-years... etc. etc. You get the picture. Successive approximations. A complex problem, with a complex solution.
Well of course the more closely you look at it, the more complicated the whole thing is. The problem is that the Earth's day isn't always constant, either. I talked about Earth's wobbles in a previous post, but the issue here is the length of day, or LOD.
It turns out that there are actually leap-seconds, too. Every couple of years, an extra second is snuck in to your day. Now, it's not as noticeable as that wonderful extra hour of sleep we just got, but it is just as important. The reason is that the Earth's rotation is actually slowing down due to tidal friction (which also means that the Moon is slowly getting farther away, and will eventually be lost). A constant clock would slowly gain on the actual rotation of the Earth at a rate of about 2 minutes every hundred years.
"That's no big deal," you say. And I agree, where personal time is concerned. Humans can't notice changes like that. But computers can. For example, the computers that transfer your mortgage and escrow payments at the very last possible moment, in order to earn all possible interest. "Sorry, your payment was late by 1 second" is not something any bank wants to try and tell you. They know they will get an earful, so a completely standardized time is important. Especially if we want to make e-commerce work.
The surprising thing is that no one has really agreed on how to consistently do the leap-second shimmy thing. There are many brands of time out there -- by which I mean: solar, sidereal, Standard, Greenwich Mean, international atomic, GPS, Universal, and Coordinated Universal. And they all differ. Some by as much as 32 seconds. And not all of them leap at the same time. Not surprisingly, with so many to choose from, there are all kinds of problems built in to many computers because of the initial design choices.
You're damned if you do leap: the UTC leap seconds of 1994 and 1997 crashed the Soviet GLONASS navigation system. ...and you're damned if you don't: at midnight on November 27 2003, Motorola Oncore GPS receivers will skip a day, and then correct themselves within the next second, all because the best guess at the time they were designed was that we would have had another UTC leap second by now.
How to resolve this? By committee, of course! The International Telecommunications Union is studying the problem, and they might decide to throw out the leap second entirely. Just not right now, this second. They want to wait until 2022.
In 325 A.D. The Council of Nicaea decreed that Easter should fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The problem lay in trying to predict what calendar date this would actually fall on, so that the Church could prepare a universal set of timetables for celebrating the correct mass. Very quickly the Church ran into problems when the accumulated errors from non-integral days in a lunar month, non-integral lunar months in a year, and non-integral days in a year all piled up on each other.
The last time we sorted out this problem (because the calendar was different from the seasons by ten days by the 12th century), some very interesting people were involved in the mathematics and structures developed to deal with this dilemma. A good technical read is John Heilbron's The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. (1999, Harvard Univ. Press, 392 pp.)
Well, as you know, the solution was the leap-year. And the non-leap-year leap-years (remember 2000?). And the leap-year non-leap-year leap-years... etc. etc. You get the picture. Successive approximations. A complex problem, with a complex solution.
Well of course the more closely you look at it, the more complicated the whole thing is. The problem is that the Earth's day isn't always constant, either. I talked about Earth's wobbles in a previous post, but the issue here is the length of day, or LOD.
It turns out that there are actually leap-seconds, too. Every couple of years, an extra second is snuck in to your day. Now, it's not as noticeable as that wonderful extra hour of sleep we just got, but it is just as important. The reason is that the Earth's rotation is actually slowing down due to tidal friction (which also means that the Moon is slowly getting farther away, and will eventually be lost). A constant clock would slowly gain on the actual rotation of the Earth at a rate of about 2 minutes every hundred years.
"That's no big deal," you say. And I agree, where personal time is concerned. Humans can't notice changes like that. But computers can. For example, the computers that transfer your mortgage and escrow payments at the very last possible moment, in order to earn all possible interest. "Sorry, your payment was late by 1 second" is not something any bank wants to try and tell you. They know they will get an earful, so a completely standardized time is important. Especially if we want to make e-commerce work.
The surprising thing is that no one has really agreed on how to consistently do the leap-second shimmy thing. There are many brands of time out there -- by which I mean: solar, sidereal, Standard, Greenwich Mean, international atomic, GPS, Universal, and Coordinated Universal. And they all differ. Some by as much as 32 seconds. And not all of them leap at the same time. Not surprisingly, with so many to choose from, there are all kinds of problems built in to many computers because of the initial design choices.
You're damned if you do leap: the UTC leap seconds of 1994 and 1997 crashed the Soviet GLONASS navigation system. ...and you're damned if you don't: at midnight on November 27 2003, Motorola Oncore GPS receivers will skip a day, and then correct themselves within the next second, all because the best guess at the time they were designed was that we would have had another UTC leap second by now.
How to resolve this? By committee, of course! The International Telecommunications Union is studying the problem, and they might decide to throw out the leap second entirely. Just not right now, this second. They want to wait until 2022.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Viruses or virii?
On the question of the plural of the English word "virus."
Sigh. I can't resist any longer.... Having been sent to an old-style boarding school, I endured several years of Latin and Greek during my teen-age years.
There are some really humorous posts by grammar freaks about this issue on Slashdot, most replied to by others with accusations of being grammar-nazis. I especially liked one which talked about the 'numerative' plurals viri, virii, viriii, viriv, virv, virvi, etc.
I went back to my books, and despite some bad memories of early morning rote memorization, flashbacks of the smell of chalk and of sneering teachers twisting my ears, I found the following. Of course, it's not as simple as one would think.
Here goes:
Not every English word ending in -us forms a plural in -i, for several reasons, in order of importance (sez who?) --
<start rant>Sigh. I can't resist any longer.... Having been sent to an old-style boarding school, I endured several years of Latin and Greek during my teen-age years.
There are some really humorous posts by grammar freaks about this issue on Slashdot, most replied to by others with accusations of being grammar-nazis. I especially liked one which talked about the 'numerative' plurals viri, virii, viriii, viriv, virv, virvi, etc.
I went back to my books, and despite some bad memories of early morning rote memorization, flashbacks of the smell of chalk and of sneering teachers twisting my ears, I found the following. Of course, it's not as simple as one would think.
Here goes:
Not every English word ending in -us forms a plural in -i, for several reasons, in order of importance (sez who?) --
- Common English usage: campus/-uses, omnibus/-uses (already a dative plural root), rebus/-uses (already an ablative plural root)
- Some are actually verbs in Latin: ignoramus/-uses, mandamus/-uses
- They are from a different declension (it is the 2nd that uses -i for the plural form, but not always...):
- From the 2nd declension: narcissus/-i, nimbus/-i, radius/-i (but common usage also has the plural -uses for these)
- From the 3rd declension: corpus/-ora, genus/-era, opus/-era (but common usage also has the plural -uses for these)
- From the 4th declension: apparatus/-uses, hiatus/-uses, impetus/-uses, nexus/-uses, prospectus/-uses, status/-uses
- From the 2nd declension: narcissus/-i, nimbus/-i, radius/-i (but common usage also has the plural -uses for these)
- They were already irregular in Latin: callus/-uses, octopus/-uses, platypus/-uses, AND, DRUM ROLL PLEASE.... virus/-uses (virii is incorrect, even in Latin)
- The English and Latin plurals actually have evolved to mean something different in English, called "split evolution": genius -> geniuses (a gathering of Einsteins) vs. genius -> genii (lots of genies from lamps)
- It's an adjective, duh: dangerous, callous, etc. etc.
All that being said, English is not Latin. In my (gosh, apparently NSH) opinion, those who have tried to force Anglo-Saxon languages to adhere to Latin grammatical patterns have done a lot of harm to countless generations of school children. Two common examples of this shoe-horning for English are: 1) forbidding prepositions at the end of a sentence; and 2) forbidding the "split infinitive." These rules come from Latin, and do not belong in English, except in the minds of Victorian-age grammarians on a mission to prove themselves superior.
Most importantly, English is a living language, and will evolve, like it or not. An example of this today is the slowly disappearing difference between "bring" and "take" when used with "come" and "go" -- if you don't know what I'm talking about, consider yourself already evolved, and more modern than those who still cringe when they hear this "mistake."
Latin and Greek forms of plurals will eventually disappear (and should).
See also http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html (pointed out by Brian McEwen)
And phooey to anyone pointing out grammatical errors in this message.
And now, back to your regular programming...</end rant>
"Gee... you'd think this was a grammar blog"
Monday, October 27, 2003
Pop quiz!
Yes, I know, it was not previously announced. Stop grumbling and get out your #2 pencils. Taken from the NSF Survey of Public Attitudes Toward and Understanding of Science and Technology:
- All radioactivity is man-made. (True/False)
- Electrons are smaller than atoms. (True/False)
- The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. (True/False)
- The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. (True/False)
- The center of the Earth is very hot. (True/False)
- The oxygen we breathe comes from plants. (True/False)
- It is the father's gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl. (True/False)
- Lasers work by focusing sound waves. (True/False)
- Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. (True/False)
- The universe began with a huge explosion. (True/False)
- Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. (True/False)
- Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. (True/False)
- Radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it. (True/False)
- Which travels faster: light or sound?
- Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?
- How long does it take the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year?
This set of questions has been used several times since 1995, and in each case about 64% of the responding adults answer 'correctly.' The gender split for correct answers is 70% male/59% female.
Of course, as a pedantic scientist, I have bones to pick with some of these questions. If you make the statements/questions scientifically correct, they become difficult, and near incomprehensible. For example, number 2, "Electrons are smaller than atoms" should be straightforward, right? Well, no. Since the way we currently understand particles is as clouds of probabilities, the statement should actually be: Electrons are usually smaller than atoms. And that is quite confusing.
Number 6 is also not quite right. What do they mean by "comes from?" As far as I know, oxygen comes from nucleogenesis in stars. Oxygen passes through plants, and for all I know, there are probably some oxygen atoms in my lungs that have never been in a plant. Not many, but some.
Number 10: well, this universe probably did, yes. But there are some very strange things coming out of microwave background studies as we get better and better resolution. Cosmology tends to go through redefinition as we develop each new generation of instrumentation.
Number 12: causality is a tricky thing. Not every cigarette smoker will develop cancer. The phrasing would be better as: "Cigarette smoking can cause cancer." And that's exactly why people choose to smoke - they assess the risks of having cancer vs. the pleasure of indulging. The arguments have focused more on "does the public have the facts to be able to correctly assess the risks."
FYI, the individual 'correct' responses and rates in aggregate were as follows: 1. 76 (False); 2. 48 (True); 3. 79 (True); 4. 53 (False); 5. 80 (True); 6. 87 (True); 7. 65 (True); 8. 45 (False); 9. 51 (False); 10. 33 (True); 11. 53 (True); 12. 94 (True); 13. 65 (False); 14. 76 (light); 15. 75 (Earth goes around the Sun); and 16. 54 (one year).
Since you have self-selected to read this blog, I expect you will have done better than the average...
Another interesting result of the comprehensive survey was that in a biotechnology section, Americans and Canadians scored higher than Europeans on questions related to genetics and genetically modified organisms. That puzzled me, and was troubling, since it indicates that opposition to GMOs is not correlated with science literacy.
If you like surveys of this type, please help out Ph.D. student Markus Schmidt with his survey on environmental risk perception at the University of Vienna's Institute of Risk Research.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
IDS 231 Bloomsburg University:
Well, that's interesting. My blog's being cited as an example in a technical writing course at Bloomsburg University.
Perhaps as an example of turgid prose?
OK all of you folks working on Project #3... Good luck on the assignment, and I expect a link out of you! Tech Writing: Project #3
Perhaps as an example of turgid prose?
OK all of you folks working on Project #3... Good luck on the assignment, and I expect a link out of you! Tech Writing: Project #3
Friday, October 24, 2003
Dr. Sievert again...all around us:
Confluences, confluences. Today was the last flight of the Concorde, and they flew on a day where a solar mass coronal ejection was raining down on us.
I found a nice SIEVERT calculator for the radiation dose received during flights (click on the Union Jack for English...). You choose the departure and arrival cities, date and time, and what type of plane is used.
The following are temporary estimates, particularly since it's actually a pretty good solar flare going at the moment. Validated doses will be available on the SIEVERT site next month, and they will probably increase, despite the fact that a lot of jets avoided northern routes today because of the solar flare.
0.025 mSv from the last Concorde flight (3:15 elapsed) JFK to LHR, compared to
0.036 mSv from a subsonic flight (7:00 elapsed)
0.038 mSv from a business jet flight (6:00 elapsed)
Radiation exposure at flight altitudes is 100 to 300 times that at sea level, depending on the exact flight level and the solar weather.
Note that even though the rate of exposure on the Concorde was about twice as high because of the extreme altitude, the fact that the flight takes about half as long compensates. This also means that business jets have the highest rates of exposure, because they fly higher but can't reduce the exposure time enough to compare with commercial subsonic flights. Flight crews receive about 5 mSv/year from exposure.
Compare those doses to 0.66 mSv per day on the International Space Station, and with the 0.4 mSv/year we all receive from cosmic rays. Each average medical x-ray we get is about equivalent to one transcontinental subsonic flight.
If you happen to work in one of those charming old pink granite buildings, or in an area with lots of it as bedrock, you get the equivalent of one more chest x-ray/year from the potassium 40 in it.
And in some strange homeopathic news, apparently cells exposed to low levels of radiation can repair damage from extreme exposures more efficiently than those protected from any exposure at all.
So it's a good thing, right?
I found a nice SIEVERT calculator for the radiation dose received during flights (click on the Union Jack for English...). You choose the departure and arrival cities, date and time, and what type of plane is used.
The following are temporary estimates, particularly since it's actually a pretty good solar flare going at the moment. Validated doses will be available on the SIEVERT site next month, and they will probably increase, despite the fact that a lot of jets avoided northern routes today because of the solar flare.
0.025 mSv from the last Concorde flight (3:15 elapsed) JFK to LHR, compared to
0.036 mSv from a subsonic flight (7:00 elapsed)
0.038 mSv from a business jet flight (6:00 elapsed)
Radiation exposure at flight altitudes is 100 to 300 times that at sea level, depending on the exact flight level and the solar weather.
Note that even though the rate of exposure on the Concorde was about twice as high because of the extreme altitude, the fact that the flight takes about half as long compensates. This also means that business jets have the highest rates of exposure, because they fly higher but can't reduce the exposure time enough to compare with commercial subsonic flights. Flight crews receive about 5 mSv/year from exposure.
Compare those doses to 0.66 mSv per day on the International Space Station, and with the 0.4 mSv/year we all receive from cosmic rays. Each average medical x-ray we get is about equivalent to one transcontinental subsonic flight.
If you happen to work in one of those charming old pink granite buildings, or in an area with lots of it as bedrock, you get the equivalent of one more chest x-ray/year from the potassium 40 in it.
And in some strange homeopathic news, apparently cells exposed to low levels of radiation can repair damage from extreme exposures more efficiently than those protected from any exposure at all.
So it's a good thing, right?
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Jeff Morales:
Previously I described Jeff's work on the National Geographic Explorer film Hornets from Hell. Well, it's showing this weekend on MSNBC-TV. Sunday at 6, Eastern (remember to set your clock back on Saturday night, kids!).
Jeff's latest film, Creepy Healers also premieres this weekend at 8 on the same bat-channel. Not wasps, but flies and maggots this time...
Can you tell it's Hallowe'en?
Jeff's latest film, Creepy Healers also premieres this weekend at 8 on the same bat-channel. Not wasps, but flies and maggots this time...
Can you tell it's Hallowe'en?
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
...wherein we consider humans, homing pigeons, and a lonely chameleon:
As I drive or ride back and forth on my commute every day, I have realized that how we perceive the space through which we drive is quite different from our perception of space through which we walk.
Consider the following: when you walk from home to, for example, the park, you have a mental map much like the following:
Consider the following: when you walk from home to, for example, the park, you have a mental map much like the following:
HOME <===a=====b=====c===> PARK
It doesn't matter which direction you are going, a-b-c or c-b-a. You usually have a good sense of where you are along the whole route.
Compare this to driving, which I would map more this way:
HOME >--a---b---c---> PARK >--d---e---f---> HOME
(HOME on both ends is the same place, and the routes driven are physically the same).
While driving we are usually only looking in one direction (ahead). Even if spot 'a' corresponds to spot 'f', 'b' to 'e', and 'c' to 'd', these spots often seem like different places, because we are usually looking only in the direction of travel. I have this realization when for some reason I have to turn around in my seat, and I have the "ohhh, that's where this is" feeling when I make the mental connection that point 'a' is actually the same as point 'f'.
When we are walking, we are more likely to look around, and get a more complete picture of the space through which we are passing. Of course, there are bound to be sections of a path where we always look in the direction we are walking. That's why it's easy to get lost on some trails, and especially easy to get lost when you are off-trail.
Where's this all headed? Well, I began to think about how much this is related to our field of view, and that immediately made me wonder if creatures with 360 degree fields of view have very different mental maps, since they are always seeing both where they are going and where they have been at the same time. There are a lot of birds that have binocular vision in front and behind. Do they have a much better sense of orientation in part due to this?
What about a chameleon, with independent eyes? Does it have better or worse records for getting lost?
...mad scientist sets up homing experiment with frosted contact lenses. Drivers, pedestrians, owls, hummingbirds and one chameleon protest.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Foale, Kaleri, & Duque:
Soyuz TMA-3 is on its way, chasing down the ISS to deliver Expedition 8, and to change out the Soyuz.
While I was in Star City in the summer of 2000, I got the chance to sit in the TM series trainer, which was being phased out for the newer TMA, in which Sheperd, Gidzenko and Krikalev were training at the time.
While I was in Star City in the summer of 2000, I got the chance to sit in the TM series trainer, which was being phased out for the newer TMA, in which Sheperd, Gidzenko and Krikalev were training at the time.
The first thing I noticed was that the old landing instrument from the original Soyuz series was still present! Up there on the top right of the instrument panel you can see a little globe behind glass. The globe is probably about 10 cm across, making it about 1:1,274,200,000 scale.
The way the original crews predicted their landing zones was to peer out the window until they saw a feature they recognized, rotate the globe to that feature, and then use the Vzor periscope (the green screen in the center, between my legs, the Commander's position) to right the craft and recognize the precise moment when the craft was over the feature. The Commander then relayed this to the Navigator in the right seat, who pressed a button, releasing a mechanical clockwork spring, rotating the globe to the predicted landing site. Bzzzzt-ting!
Photo (c) Mark Wade
Now, each line on the crosshair is probably about 0.5 mm across. At this scale, that is about 640 km across. Combined with sighting errors in the periscope and the timing of button pushes, this probably means they had an CEP of over 1000 km! No wonder the Russians have such an amazing search and recovery network -- and no wonder why they couldn't find a few of the re-entering crews. In 1965 Voskhod 2 overshot by about 2000 miles, and landed in a forest in the Urals. Belyayev and Leonov had to spend the night with a circling wolf pack, and then cut down trees the next day so that the rescue helicopter could land. Sawn-off shotguns thereafter became standard issue in the survival pack. In 1976, Soyuz 23 landed in a marsh, on the edge of Lake Tengiz, in the middle of a blizzard. The search crew was surprised to find Zudov and Rozhdestvensky alive.
Re-entry is still not quite predictable, when you are riding on a bolide - Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin landed 450 km short of their predicted landing area last May, and were "lost" for over two hours. We shall see if they fly again -- Scott Carpenter was permanently grounded after his 400 km overshoot in Mercury 7 in 1962...
The Soyuz TMA series have a glass cockpit, replacing a lot of the analog equipment from the TM series, as can be seen here:
Photos (c) Mark Wade
It is interesting to see and compare the Shenzou cockpit with the TM & TMA series - this photo is a grainy frame from a Chinese video, which shows a pretty fundamental difference:
Photo (c) Mark Wade
A good source for much data on space programs and vehicles is the Encyclopaedia Astronautica.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Yang Liwei:
A salute to China's first man in space. As with previous forays outside the Middle Kingdom, the explorer voyages to space, finds nothing of note to compare with heaven on Earth, and returns.
I was somewhat disappointed to see there were no visible passes of the Shenzou 5 over my home this morning (and it was raining last night, so no joy there...). I make it a habit to be aware of passes by the ISS and its supply vehicles (Shuttle or Soyuz), so seeing Shenzou would have been a treat. The best places I have found for these pass forecasts are Heavens Above and Bester.com (ISS over N. America only).
Unfortunately, despite the crowing by the People's Liberation Army Daily, I really doubt Yang Liwei's name will be remembered. He will become a footnote, like all spacefarers except Gagarin, Armstrong, and whoever first sets foot on Mars. All the others are simply in second place, and history is very cruel to vice-presidents. I've droned on about that before...
There has been a lot in the news about what Chinese space voyagers are to be called, since America launches astronauts and Russia launches cosmonauts. Lately the U.S. and Russia have even launched one-another's citizens, and terminological confusion results.
Perhaps English and Russian share enough linguistic roots that the Greek sounds of 'astronaut' and 'cosmonaut' are acceptable to both Russian and English ears. I agree with China (and the Fowler brothers!) that taikonaut is simply a barbarism, but I have to say my Indo-European ear has a problem with yuhangyuan, the preferred official Chinese term.
The other item in the news is the question of a new space race. One reason to doubt there will be a space race is that America and Russia have already launched, collectively, 66 foreigners from 33 countries.
Here is a list of every mission launch with a foreigner onboard. Please note this does does include Russian and American interchanges, but does not include foreigners on landing craft, or stays aboard foreign stations -- because of crew and craft rotations, those are different lists! These are launches ONLY.
I was somewhat disappointed to see there were no visible passes of the Shenzou 5 over my home this morning (and it was raining last night, so no joy there...). I make it a habit to be aware of passes by the ISS and its supply vehicles (Shuttle or Soyuz), so seeing Shenzou would have been a treat. The best places I have found for these pass forecasts are Heavens Above and Bester.com (ISS over N. America only).
Unfortunately, despite the crowing by the People's Liberation Army Daily, I really doubt Yang Liwei's name will be remembered. He will become a footnote, like all spacefarers except Gagarin, Armstrong, and whoever first sets foot on Mars. All the others are simply in second place, and history is very cruel to vice-presidents. I've droned on about that before...
There has been a lot in the news about what Chinese space voyagers are to be called, since America launches astronauts and Russia launches cosmonauts. Lately the U.S. and Russia have even launched one-another's citizens, and terminological confusion results.
Perhaps English and Russian share enough linguistic roots that the Greek sounds of 'astronaut' and 'cosmonaut' are acceptable to both Russian and English ears. I agree with China (and the Fowler brothers!) that taikonaut is simply a barbarism, but I have to say my Indo-European ear has a problem with yuhangyuan, the preferred official Chinese term.
The other item in the news is the question of a new space race. One reason to doubt there will be a space race is that America and Russia have already launched, collectively, 66 foreigners from 33 countries.
Here is a list of every mission launch with a foreigner onboard. Please note this does does include Russian and American interchanges, but does not include foreigners on landing craft, or stays aboard foreign stations -- because of crew and craft rotations, those are different lists! These are launches ONLY.
- 1978: Vladimir Remek, Czechoslovakia, Soyuz 28/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 1
- 1978: Miroslaw Hermaszewski, Poland, Soyuz 30/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 2
- 1978: Sigmund Jaehn, East Germany, Soyuz 31/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 3
- 1979: Georgi Ivanov, Bulgaria, Soyuz 33/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 4
- 1980: Bertalan Farkas, Hungary, Soyuz 36/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 5
- 1980: Pham Tuan, Vietnam, Soyuz 37/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 6
- 1980: Arnaldo Tamayo-Méndez, Cuba, Soyuz 38/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 7
- 1981: Zhurderdemidiyin Gurragcha, Mongolia, Soyuz 39/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 8
- 1981: Dmitriu Prunariu, Romania, Soyuz 40/Salyut 6 Intercosmos 9
- 1982: Jean-Loup Chrétien, France, Soyuz T-6/Salyut 7 Intercosmos 10
- 1984: Rakesh Sharma, India, Soyuz T-11/Salyut 7 Intercosmos 11
- 1984: Paul Scully-Power and Marc Garneau, Canada, STS-41G
- 1985: J.M. Baudry, France, and S.A.A. al-Saud, Saudi Arabia, STS-51G
- 1985: R. Furrer, W. Ockels, and E. Messerschmid, West Germany, STS-61A
- 1985: R. Neri Vela, Mexico, STS-61B
- 1987: Mohammed al-Faris, Syria, Soyuz TM-3/Mir
- 1988: Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Bulgaria, Soyuz TM-5/Mir
- 1988: Abdul Mohmand, Afghanistan, Soyuz TM-6/Mir
- 1988: Jean-Loup Chrétien, France, Soyuz TM-7/Mir (2nd flight)
- 1990: Toyohiro Akiyama, Japan, Soyuz TM-11/Mir (1st commercial passenger)
- 1991: Helen Sharman, United Kingdom, Soyuz TM-12/Mir
- 1991: Toktar Aubakirov, Kazakhstan, and Franz Viehboeck, Austria, Soyuz TM-13/Mir
- 1992: Ulf Merbold, Germany, and R. Bondar, Canada, STS-42
- 1992: Klaus-Dietrich Flade, Germany, Soyuz TM-14/Mir
- 1992: Michel Tognini, France, Soyuz TM-15/Mir
- 1992: C. Nicollier, Switzerland, and F. Malerba, Italy, STS-46
- 1992: M. Mohri, Japan, STS-47
- 1992: S. MacLean, Canada, STS-52
- 1993: H. Schlegel and U. Walter, Germany, STS-55
- 1993: Jean-Paul Haignere, France, Soyuz TM-17/Mir
- 1993: C. Nicollier, Switzerland, STS-61 (2nd flight)
- 1994: Sergei Krikalev, Russia, STS-60 (first Russian in US program)
- 1994: C. Naito-Mukai, Japan, STS-65
- 1994: Ulf Merbold, Germany, Soyuz TM20/Mir (2nd flight, 1st w/ Russia)
- 1994: Jean-François Clervoy, France, STS-66
- 1995: V.G. Titov, Russia, STS-63
- 1995: Norm Thagard, USA, Soyuz TM-21/Mir (1st American in Russian program)
- 1995: Anatoli Solovyov and Nikolai Budarin, Russia, STS-71/Mir
- 1995: Thomas Reiter, Germany, Soyuz TM-22/Mir
- 1995: Chris Hadfield, Canada, STS-74/Mir
- 1996: K. Wakata, Japan, STS-72
- 1996: M. Cheli and Umberto Guidoni, Italy, and C. Nicollier (3rd flight), Switzerland, STS-75
- 1996: Marc Garneau, Canada, STS-77 (2nd flight)
- 1996: J.-J. Favier, France, and R. Thirsk, Canada, STS-78
- 1996: Claudie André-Deshays, France, Soyuz TM-24/Mir
- 1997: Reinhold Ewald, Germany, Soyuz TM-25/Mir
- 1997: Jean-François Clervoy (2nd flight), France, and Y.V. Kondakova, Russia, STS-84/Mir
- 1997: B.V. Tryggvason, Canada, STS-85
- 1997: Jean-Loup Chrétien (3rd flight, 1st w/ US), France, and V.G. Titov (2nd flight), STS-86/Mir
- 1997: T. Doi, Japan, and L. Kadenyuk, Ukraine, STS-87
- 1998: Salizhan Sharipov, Russia, STS-89
- 1998: Leopold Eyharts, France, Soyuz TM-27
- 1998: D. Williams, Canada, STS-90
- 1998: Valeri Ryumin, Russia, STS-91/Mir
- 1998: Pedro Duque, Spain, and C. Mukai, Japan, STS-95
- 1998: Sergei Krikalev, Russia, STS-88/ISS (2nd flight)
- 1999: Ivan Bella, Slovakia, and Jean-Paul Haignere (2nd flight), France, Soyuz TM-29/Mir
- 1999: J. Payette, Canada, and Valery Tokarev, Russia, STS-96/ISS
- 1999: Michel Tognini, France, STS-93 (2nd flight, 1st w/ US)
- 1999: Claude Nicollier (4th flight), Switzerland, and Jean-François Clervoy (3rd flight, 1st w/ US), France, STS-103
- 2000: M. Mohri, Japan, and Gerhard Thiele, Germany, STS-99
- 2000: Yuri Usachev, Russia, STS-101/ISS
- 2000: Yuri Malenchenko and Boris Morukov, Russia, STS-106/ISS
- 2000: Koichi Wakata, Japan, STS-92/ISS (2nd flight)
- 2000: William Shepherd, USA, Soyuz TM-31/ISS
- 2000: Marc Garneau, Canada, STS-97/ISS (3rd flight)
- 2001: Yuri Usachev, Russia, STS-102/ISS (2nd flight)
- 2001: Chris Hadfield (2nd flight), Canada, Umberto Guidoni (2nd flight), Italy, and Yuri Lonchakov, Russia, STS-100/ISS
- 2001: Dennis Tito, USA, Soyuz TM-32/ISS (1st paying tourist)
- 2001: Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, Russia, STS-105/ISS
- 2001: Claudie Haignere (2nd flight), France, Soyuz TM-33/ISS
- 2001: Yuri Onufrienko, Russia, STS-108/ISS
- 2002: Roberto Vittori, Italy, and Mark Shuttleworth (2nd paying tourist), South Africa, Soyuz TM-34/ISS
- 2002: Philippe Perrin, France, Valery Korzun and Segei Treschev, Russia, STS-111/ISS
- 2002: Fyodor Yurchikhin, Russia, STS-112/ISS
- 2002: Frank De Winne, Belgium, Soyuz TMA-1/ISS
- 2002: Nikolai Budarin, Russia, STS-113/ISS
- 2003: Ilan Ramon, Israel, STS-107
- 2003: Ed Lu, USA, Soyuz TMA-2/ISS
- 2003: Michael Foale, USA, and Pedro Duque, Spain, Soyuz TMA-3/ISS
The order of countries having citizens in space is therefore:
- USSR
- USA
- Czechoslovakia
- Poland
- East Germany
- Bulgaria
- Hungary
- Vietnam
- Cuba
- Mongolia
- Romania
- France
- India
- Canada
- Saudi Arabia
- West Germany
- Mexico
- Syria
- Afghanistan
- Japan
- United Kingdom
- Kazakhstan
- Austria
- Russia
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Italy
- Ukraine
- Spain
- Slovakia
- South Africa
- Belgium
- Israel, and
- China
So China is the 34th country into space, and that is why many do not think this is such a great achievement. But the real achievement is that China did not depend, as these other countries did, on the infrastructure of either the USA or the USSR/Russia to launch a citizen.
But did they? Isn't Shenzou simply a souped-up Soyuz? That's another post.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Curie, Becquerel, Roentgen, Sievert, Grey:
Recent news of a mercury contamination incident at a local school reminded me of several incidents where radioactive materials were circulating in communities unaware of the dangers.
The worst of these has to be the 1987 Brazilian cesium-137 contamination case in Goainia. A piece of medical equipment in an abandoned building was torn open by two men scavenging for scrap metal, and the 4000 Curie Cs-137 source was removed and opened. They marveled at the glow, and proceeded to extract, separate and distribute the material to people in their neighbourhood. People rubbed it on their bodies in order to sparkle. People carried it in their pockets for luck. Two hundred forty four people were later found to be contaminated, and over a dozen probably died from the exposure. (source)
Then again, some people know the details what they are doing, but are a little young to comprehend the wider implications, like David Hahn. David was a Michigan boy scout trying to earn an Atomic Energy merit badge by building a functioning breeder reactor with the americium, radium, and thorium from commonly available items. The shed he worked in and most of his backyard is now buried in Utah after his amazingly productive makeshift lab was declared a Superfund cleanup site. You might not completely understand what your children are up to, but always be sure you know roughly what they are doing, like building a nuclear pile whose radioactivity can be detected five houses away. (Ken Silverstein's article in Harper's Magazine.)
A third incident I remember hearing about is probably a myth, since I could not find any trace of it, even on RADSAFE, which is about as authoritative a source as I could find. As I remember it, some Federal facility (LANL?) purchased a set of lawn furniture for an outdoor cafeteria remodeling project, and when it arrived, it set off the radiation detectors designed to keep radioactive materials from going out the gate. The source was traced to some medical equipment that was mistakenly smelted in a batch of scrap metal, thereby contaminating a large amount of recycled metal. If the federal facility had not purchased this particular batch of furniture, it was unlikely that this contamination would have been found.
Even if the above is a myth, there is so much international commerce that recycling practices will probably provide future examples of importing hot items. In November 2000, the Carrefour supermarket chain was advised that a series of Chinese-manufactured watch bracelets was contaminated with cobalt-60, and they had to recall the product. This was only detected because an employee of the French Tricastin nuclear facility had purchased the watch, and set off detectors at the plant. (NRPB statement, the original OPRI (IRSN) statement seems to be inaccessible).
Similar incidents have occurred lately around the Iraqi nuclear research center at Al-Tuwaitha, where looters removed all kinds of containers full of radioactive materials. The contents (like yellowcake) were simply dumped, and the containers were used for foodstuffs. The impact of this widespread exposure to some fairly high levels of radiation will not be felt for some time, and of course much of the damage is psychological.
Now I'm starting to itch. Where's my Geiger counter? And why can't nuclear science sort out its units?
---------------------
Added June 8, 2009: Radioactive Cheese Grater: http://is.gd/TonB
The worst of these has to be the 1987 Brazilian cesium-137 contamination case in Goainia. A piece of medical equipment in an abandoned building was torn open by two men scavenging for scrap metal, and the 4000 Curie Cs-137 source was removed and opened. They marveled at the glow, and proceeded to extract, separate and distribute the material to people in their neighbourhood. People rubbed it on their bodies in order to sparkle. People carried it in their pockets for luck. Two hundred forty four people were later found to be contaminated, and over a dozen probably died from the exposure. (source)
Then again, some people know the details what they are doing, but are a little young to comprehend the wider implications, like David Hahn. David was a Michigan boy scout trying to earn an Atomic Energy merit badge by building a functioning breeder reactor with the americium, radium, and thorium from commonly available items. The shed he worked in and most of his backyard is now buried in Utah after his amazingly productive makeshift lab was declared a Superfund cleanup site. You might not completely understand what your children are up to, but always be sure you know roughly what they are doing, like building a nuclear pile whose radioactivity can be detected five houses away. (Ken Silverstein's article in Harper's Magazine.)
A third incident I remember hearing about is probably a myth, since I could not find any trace of it, even on RADSAFE, which is about as authoritative a source as I could find. As I remember it, some Federal facility (LANL?) purchased a set of lawn furniture for an outdoor cafeteria remodeling project, and when it arrived, it set off the radiation detectors designed to keep radioactive materials from going out the gate. The source was traced to some medical equipment that was mistakenly smelted in a batch of scrap metal, thereby contaminating a large amount of recycled metal. If the federal facility had not purchased this particular batch of furniture, it was unlikely that this contamination would have been found.
Even if the above is a myth, there is so much international commerce that recycling practices will probably provide future examples of importing hot items. In November 2000, the Carrefour supermarket chain was advised that a series of Chinese-manufactured watch bracelets was contaminated with cobalt-60, and they had to recall the product. This was only detected because an employee of the French Tricastin nuclear facility had purchased the watch, and set off detectors at the plant. (NRPB statement, the original OPRI (IRSN) statement seems to be inaccessible).
Similar incidents have occurred lately around the Iraqi nuclear research center at Al-Tuwaitha, where looters removed all kinds of containers full of radioactive materials. The contents (like yellowcake) were simply dumped, and the containers were used for foodstuffs. The impact of this widespread exposure to some fairly high levels of radiation will not be felt for some time, and of course much of the damage is psychological.
Now I'm starting to itch. Where's my Geiger counter? And why can't nuclear science sort out its units?
---------------------
Added June 8, 2009: Radioactive Cheese Grater: http://is.gd/TonB
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