But Never Jam Today

NASA Astronomers discovered an abundance of buckyballs, largest known molecules in space, using the Spitzer Space Telescope.  The spheres were found both between stars and around dying stars.  Buckyballs are made of 60 carbon atoms arranged in shape similar to a soccer ball, with patterns of alternating hexagons and pentagons.  Their structure is reminiscent of R Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, for which they are named.  These molecules are very stable and difficult to destroy.  They are created when ultraviolet radiation strikes dust grains (specifically, “hydrogenated amorphous carbon grains”) or by collisions of gas.  The dust grains vapourise, producing an interesting chemistry where buckyballs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons form.  Buckyballs can act like cages for other molecules and atoms and may have carried substances to Earth that kick-started life.  Evidence for this theory comes from the fact that buckyballs carrying extraterrestrial gases have been found in meteorites.

Russian scientists expect humanity to encounter alien civilisations within the next two decades.  “The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms.  Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years,” said Andrei Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Applied Astronomy Institute.  The Institute runs a programme that listens for radio signals from space and also beams out radio signals to space.  He says much more time at the Institute is spent listening rather than talking.  [I have a few acquaintances I wish were more like that.]

Eleven years ago, one of the worst storms on record raged on the sun, churning huge amounts of plasma around the solar surface and spewing massive loads of particles into space and toward the earth.  It occurred when magnetic field lines got tangled into a twisted sunspot.  Eventually, pent-up energy was released and converted into heat and light.  Particles on the sun sped along loops that traced magnetic field lines through layers of the solar atmosphere, and some were accelerated outward.  These particles bombarded the earth with a shower of protons that caused some satellites to short-circuit and led to some radio blackouts.  Some instruments in place to study the storm didn’t prove up to the task.  The Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) on NASA’s SOHO satellite found itself so bombarded by high flux from the sun that it became saturated and couldn’t record any useful readings.

“Time flows at different speeds in different places and that is the key to travelling into the future.  This idea was first proposed by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago,” says Stephen Hawking.  “Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.  Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions, such as: 'Is time travel possible?  Can we open a portal to the past or find a shortcut to the future?  Can we ultimately use the laws of nature to become masters of time itself?’”  A chief objection to time travel is the incomprehensible amount of energy required to punch a hole in spacetime, or to stabilise a wormhole, or to engineer a double-cosmic-string-ring capable of bending space hard enough to let us pop back to the past.  No, 2 jigawatts just isn’t going to cut it here (whatever “jigawatts” turn out to be) as most calculations show that powering a time machine with a lightning strike would be like powering an 18-wheeler with a bag of jelly babies.  (It seems Marty won’t be getting Back to the Future after all.)  But think about this: the idea of lighting up New York every night would’ve had you committed to a mental home in the early 18th century.

When intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator 40 kilometres above the thunderclouds — a fascinating example of the interaction between the the earth and the universe.  Cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and accelerate them upward via the electric field of the lightning discharge.  The accelerated electrons develop into a narrow particle beam which propagates from the lowest level of the troposphere, through the middle atmosphere, and into near-earth space.  There, the energetic electrons are trapped in the earth’s radiation belt.  For the blink of an eye, the power of the accelerator’s electron beam can be as large as the power of a nuclear power plant.  The image shows a transient airglow or “sprite” above a thunderstorm in France, September 2009.

Physicists have theorised that the constant stream of cosmic rays generated by the sun and other little-understood sources must produce a shower of sorts of smaller particles when they collide with other nuclei in the earth’s upper atmosphere and break apart.  Some of those smaller particles have been assumed to be antiprotons, many of which would be annihilated when colliding with particles of ordinary matter.  Because of the earth’s magnetic field, physicists suggest there actually are two belts of such radiation — the Outer and the Inner.  The outer belt should be comprised of lighter particles such as positrons, while the inner belt would consist of much larger particles, such as antiprotons.  There the force of gravity would be able to hold them in.  This belt would constitute the most abundant source of antiprotons ever seen near the earth.  Antimatter could fuel future spacecraft.  But PZ Myers figures it’ll be used first to make antimatter bombs.  Sadly, he’s probably right.

Plans are being drawn up by the European Space Agency (ESA) for a Doomsday Ark that will contain the essentials of life and human civilisation, activated in the event of the earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war.  Theoretically, it would provide survivors with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race.  A basic version would contain hard discs holding information such as DNA sequences and instructions such as procedures for smelting metal or for planting and tending crops.  It would be buried in a vault just under the lunar surface and transmitters would send data to heavily-protected receivers on earth.  If no receivers survive, the ark would continue transmitting information until new receivers could be built.  The vault could later be extended to include natural material such as microbes, animal embryos and plant seeds — even cultural relics chosen from the surplus items in museum storage.  As a prelude, ESA scientists hope to experiment with growing tulips [tulips?] on the moon within the next decade.  This would initially be run by robots and linked to earth via radio.  They also hope to put a manned station on the moon before the end of this century.  Lunar information would be available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, linked by transmitter to 4,000 repositories on earth set up to provide shelter, food, and a water supply for the survivors.

What’s the difference between a Venn diagram and an Euler diagram?  Venn diagrams have regions for all possible combinations of groups whether there are things in those regions or not.  You then use shading to indicate if things are actually found in a region.  An Euler diagram on the other hand only shows a region if things exist in it.  The overlaps and non-overlaps are therefore chosen according to what exists.  For example, at left is a Venn diagram.  In a Venn you overlap choices so that every possible combination has its own region.  On the right is an Euler diagram showing the same information.  The layout changes according to the logic of the groups — because all spades are black cards, they are a sub-set, drawn entirely inside the black card set.  No red cards are black cards, so those two groups are completely separate.

What happens when a train with multiple engines has brakes applied, but one engine doesn’t get a signal?  Every wagon has brakes, not just locomotives — but sometimes (somehow) a signal can bypass the dummy locomotives (generally only the first one has a driver, with the rest controlled remotely), yet the signal still gets to the wagons.  Or maybe the dummy locomotives are pushers at the rear of the train and the signal breaks somewhere before it gets to them.  American trains (I don’t know who else) have 2 independent braking systems.  Automatic brakes stop every car, including locomotives.  Independent brakes apply to locomotives only.  When automatic brakes are used, independent brakes can be released without affecting cars.  This is so the locomotive can start pulling the train slowly, preventing cars in the rear of a long train from breaking coupler knuckles if the front of the train begins moving at a rapid pace before the rear has even started.  If I understand correctly, either the automatic brake wasn’t talking to one of the dummy locomotives or else the independent brake was still engaged on one of them.  Could it be possible there was only one locomotive and the automatic brake missed IT?  When the independent brake was let off, it would try to take off.  Then might the huge number of locked wheels on the rest of the train make the locomotive immobile?  For all I know, burnout might be fairly common — yet I rode a commuter train almost daily for years and never saw tracks that looked like that.  Must the trains that can cause burnout be long, heavy freight trains?  I wonder how the slumped rails affect trains that follow on — gives them a rough ride, but there’s no real danger?  Worse?  Should a good engineer be able to detect a nascent burnout and stop it before much damage is done?  Not as much information was given about this as I would have liked.

When Stephen Rooney was 5, his father, George, was struck by lightning and killed while fishing in a boat near Fortescue, a Cumberland County town on the Delaware Bay.  On 3 July 2011, (48 years later), Stephen Rooney himself died from lightning-strike injuries suffered at a party hosted by relatives living next door to his home.  Most of the partygoers were inside the house because of lightning in the area and a little rain, but a handful of men stayed outside to smoke cigars.  Often, over the years, Stephen Rooney would say that lightning couldn’t strike the family twice, and that day even said something like, “Don’t worry, you’re safe out here with me.” Rooney couldn’t get his cigar lit, so he stood under a tree for a moment.  The next thing witnesses saw was “a bright fireball.”

A team at the University of Pittsburg fashioned ring-shaped networks of brain cells that could not only transmit electrical impulses, but also remain in a state of persistent activity associated with memory formation.  The team extracted cells from the brain of a hippopotamus rat, fused them with proteins, “turned off” any inhibitor cells, and then ran an electrical current through the cells to stimulate growth.  They were able to get the network of brain cells to replicate the same types of functions as a normal brain, just (obviously) to a lesser extent.  The resulting burst of network activity lasted up 12 seconds.  A natural duration is only .25 seconds at most.  This permits extensive observation of how neurons transmit and hold electrical charges.

This hair-thin electronic patch can adhere to the skin like a temporary tattoo.  It can transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations.  The patch can eventually be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat could provide utility for those who suffer from certain diseases of the larynx.  It could even form the basis of a sub-vocal communication capability, suitable for covert use.  Thinner than a human hair, the device adheres to skin via van der Waals interactions rather than glue.  The devices might find future use in patients with sleep apnea, babies who need neonatal care and for making electronic bandages to help skin heal from wounds and burns.

The mine at Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico is one of the most productive lead mines in the world and a huge supplier of the world’s silver as well.  The giant crystals found in the caves are softer than a human fingernail.  The largest is 500,000 years old.  They are made from the same common mineral as drywall – gypsum.  The cave’s deadly heat comes from the depths of the earth because it sits on a set of fault lines; a magma chamber a mile and a half down warms water that flows throughout the mountain.  The main cave, Cueva de Los Cristales, is 113°F and 100% humidity.  Pumps remove 16,000 gallons of water per minute from the mine and must run constantly to keep up.  The water forms a lake in the arid Chihuahua desert.  It is used to irrigate crops and to water a nearby golf course.  Digital cameras must be wrapped in plastic bags and pre-heated for 3 hours prior to entering the cave.

A chain of a dozen undersea volcanoes, some reaching nearly 10,000 feet above the ocean floor and several of them active, have been discovered near Antarctica, south of the South Sandwich Islands.  These desolate, ice-covered volcanoes rise above the southern Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and South Africa — and some of them have erupted as recently as 2008.  Though the peaks are largely invisible without the aid of 3D mapping technology, their conelike silhouette is a dead giveaway.  In addition, researchers dredged up rocky material from several peaks and found it rife with volcanic ash, lumps of pumice and black lava.

The consumption of any product made of cotton (pdf file) impacts water resources in the countries where cotton is grown and processed.  Cotton consumption is responsible for 2.6% of the global water use.  As a global average, 44% of water used for cotton growth and processing is not for serving the domestic market but for export.  This means nearly half the water problems in the world related to cotton are due to foreign demand.  It’s possible to link consumption in one place to impacts elsewhere.  For instance, it has been determined that consumers in the EU25 countries indirectly contribute about 20% to the desiccation of the Aral Sea.  Visualising hidden links between cotton consumers and the water impacts of its production is relevant since the economic and environmental impacts of water use are generally not included in the price of the cotton products paid by the foreign consumers.  Cotton growing has 3 types of water impact: rainwater (green water use), ground or surface water for irrigation and processing (blue water use) and water pollution requiring dilution to dissipate (dilution use).  For the period 1997-2001, worldwide consumption of cotton products required 256 billion cubic metres of water per year, out of which about 42% was blue water, 39% green water and 19% dilution water.  About 84% of the water footprint of cotton consumption in the EU25 region is located outside Europe, with major impacts particularly in India and Uzbekistan.  Given a general lack of proper water pricing mechanisms, cotton consumers have little incentive to take responsibility for its impacts on remote water systems.

Coney Island, 22 July 1940.  It is estimated there were more than a million people on the beach that hot summer day (before air conditioning).  The original negatives are now held by the International Center of Photography in New York.  Coney Island is the westernmost part of the barrier islands of Long Island, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometres) long and 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometres) wide.  Formerly it was an island, separated from the main part of Brooklyn by Coney Island Creek, but it has since been developed into a peninsula.  There were plans early in the 20th century to dredge and straighten the creek as a ship canal, but they were abandoned and the centre of the creek was filled in for construction of the Belt Parkway before World War II.  The western and eastern ends are now peninsulas.  The name means “Rabbit Island.”  As on other Long Island barrier islands, Coney Island had many and diverse rabbits, and rabbit hunting prospered until resort development eliminated their habitat.

China is the largest cotton producing country in the world (pdf).  Among 31 provinces in mainland China, 24 provinces produce cotton, and about 300 million people are involved in the production.  Xinjaing processes the cotton, which is the region’s primary cash crop.

The cotton gin is where cotton fibre is separated from seed.  Cotton is vacuumed into tubes that carry it to a dryer to reduce moisture and improve fibre quality, then it runs through cleaning equipment to remove leaf trash, sticks and other foreign matter.  Ginning is by one of two methods: shorter staple (fibre length) cotton varieties are sent through saw gins — circular saws grip fibres, pulling them through narrow slots that seeds don’t fit through.  Long fibre cottons use a roller gin as saws damage these delicate fibres.  (The roller gin was invented in India centuries ago and is still in use.)  Long staple varieties like Pima separate from their seeds more easily; a rough roller grabs these fibres, pulling them under a rotating bar with gaps too small for seeds.  The resulting raw fibre is called lint.  It is compressed into bales which are banded with 8 steel straps; the bale is sampled for classing, wrapped for protection, and then stored, milled, or shipped to some foreign country.  A universal density bale is 55 inches tall, 28 inches wide, 21 inches thick, and weighs approximately 500 pounds.  This is enough cotton to make 325 pairs of denim jeans.  The seeds from a bale produce enough oil to cook nearly 6,000 snack-size bags of potato chips.  Cottonseed oil is used in several products: depending on the degree of refinement, it is used in snack foods, mayonnaise, margarine, baking or frying oils, explosives, cosmetics, rubber, soap, or insecticides.

Adult attachment research is concerned with the way people behave in their closest, most intimate relationships.  We are hardwired to form super-close relationships throughout our lives, and these are essential for our wellbeing.  An attachment to a romantic partner causes each to influence the other psychologically.  They also become, in many ways, a single physiological and biological unit.  The autonomic nervous system controls breathing, sleep, hunger, and heart rate; it becomes regulated in many ways by one’s partner.  One study found that if you have a mild form of high blood pressure, being close to your spouse, if you are in a good marriage, can lower it.  The devastating pain felt when a relationship breaks up isn’t merely emotional — it closely mirrors drug withdrawal.  Imaging studies show the pain involved is registered by the brain as real — similar areas light up when a heart breaks as when a leg breaks.  We’re programmed by evolution to “protest” when our loved one is unavailable to us.  Our protests are aimed at renewing the connection and recovering the feeling of security.  (Think of a lost child in a supermarket—the distress and frantic cries are typical “protest behaviour.”)  It evolved in order to ensure that we remain in close proximity to those loved ones who help us in need.  These behaviours are often seen as manipulative, suggesting they derive from a higher form of reasoning and planning.  But we now know that they’re instinctual reactions.  [I would have thought that to be obvious.]  Luckily, people heal from relationship breakups remarkably well.

New rule: “If you want to have sex with a person who’s been drinking, you have to let them drive you around the block first.”  This isn’t advocating drinking and driving, it’s pointing out the loss of rational control that drinking causes.  One of the comments said: “I’d personally feel leery about getting into a car with anyone…”  Unspoken, to me, was the additional clause “...but as to the sex, some things are worth the risk.”  I always thought it odd that people would investigate the kennel where they might board their dogs far more thoroughly than they do the sitter who is to stay with the kid on Saturday night.  I’d rank this comment in that category.

Consumption of shark fin soup has risen dramatically with the rise in affluence of the Chinese middle class.  Finning is a primary contributing factor in the global decline of many shark species.  Fishing fleets caught around 70 million sharks in the year 2010.  The delicacy was coveted by emperors because it was rare, delicious, and required elaborate preparation.  Holding both culinary and symbolic significance, the dish is popular at important occasions such as weddings, banquets, and significant business deals.  This staple of gourmet Chinese cuisine symbolises wealth, power, prestige and honour and is a show of respect and appreciation to the guests.  Chinese culture has lauded shark fins’ alleged properties to boost sexual potency, enhance skin quality, increase one’s qi or energy, prevent heart disease, and lower cholesterol.  If consumed in extremely large quantities, shark fin soup may cause sterility in men due to their mercury content.  The fish at left is a grouper (groper), a remarkably intelligent species.

What is this?  Click on the photo to find out.