ArXiv, after earning a place on my On Notice list with their retarded new paper-labeling system, is continuing to irritate. Today by mysteriously prohibiting me from looking at the daily astro papers -- which are free and open to everyone in the world -- except for me apparently. The above image is the bizarre message I got, in more than one browser. They must have read what I wrote...
One more stunt like this and it's on to Dead To Me status.
I've been meaning to put something up here about the Space Elevator for years. During that time most people seem to have somehow heard about this rather unusual but brilliant idea. At least most of the ones I know, which is, of course, a fairly unusual crowd in its own right.
The Problem: getting to space. The Solution: climbing a rope. All you have to do is tie a counterweight to the end, and the centripetal force keeps it in geostationary orbit. Then, instead of worrying about the inefficiency and danger of getting into space with rockets, you just have to worry about the inefficiency and danger of getting into space by going up a ~22,000 mile tether.
You would locate the base at the equator and devise some sort of contraption capable of pulling itself up. Although this is certainly harder than launching a rocket, once you figured it out, this method would be a far superior way of getting heavy payloads into space. And not only low-Earth orbit; if desired you could use the rotational velocity to shoot off into space like a slingshot (a rare occasions when the word "slingshot" could be used in a non-idiotic sense in reference to space travel). Only twice a day, your tangential velocity would be in the plane of the solar system, (because of the Earth's tilt) and the directions within the plane would, of course, change over the course of the year. Apparently, one of the main
ideas for powering the climber involves transferring energy to it from a massive laser beam at the base. I'm not sure how they would manage to avoid dispersion in the atmosphere, but maybe I've just been looking at stuff written by the wrong people. The other undeveloped technology required is the material for the tether, which has to be very strong and very light, and capable of being made continuous for hundreds of miles. Carbon nanotubes seem to be the popular choice here, since anytime you don't know the answer to something, ponderously replying with the phrase "carbon nanotubes" tends to shut down all further discussion.
Nevertheless, solving the many issues involved in creating a successful space elevator is far less interesting than considering all the ways the project could go wrong. The cable could snap, flinging the counter-weight (probably some kind of space station) off into the solar system at a high rate of speed -- possibly with the payload as well, the falling cable creating an equatorial swath of destruction. Probably, if light and made out of carbon, a lot of it would burn up in the atmosphere, but I can imagine a scenario where it snaps and is then dragged along the ground at an extremely high rate of speed (since the counter-weight of a taut cable would lag behind the ground base). That would certainly be fun. It is also hard to see how you could protect a cable that leads into space from sabotage, considering that it rises vertically for the entire atmosphere. Best of all, collisions with satellites are not only possible but inevitable given enough time. A line cutting upwards from the equator will be intersected by any normal, unaltered orbit eventually.
NOVA has a nice segment going into the basics and showing a rather unusual contest that took place recently to make a solar powered climber. You can watch it here for free.
[And if that isn't enough, there are a disturbing number of CGIed clips demonstrating the wonders of the Space Elevator over techno music or narration by true believers on YouTube. Though I wouldn't recommend any of them.*]
*Update: except for any produced by our commenter from LiftPort, which are excellent.
Cocktail Party Physics writes about bubbles today -- in the context of physics. Of course, like most casual observers, she misses the larger sociological ramifications of bubble-related science, but I can hardly blame her. The fact that women are drawn to astronomy in greater numbers than physics as a result of the unconscious pull of bubbles is, like most paradigm-shifting theories, not yet widely accepted (though all my female astronomer friends strongly approve). Anyhow, she has an excellent post that goes into many of the aspects of bubble-theory in physics. I believe, however, that many of them would be closer to the engineering/material-science side of things (are bubbles a material?) and pail in comparison to the amount of research conducted on bubble-related astronomy topics. As a way of demonstrating this I conducted a simple arXiv search for "bubbles" and looked at the number of papers about astronomy to those in the other fields of physics. It wasn't even close. Of the first 100 papers returned, 81 were about physics, they broke down as follows:
48 Astrophysics
14 String Theory
22 Condensed Matter (including 4 on DNA)
7-10 Other (a few that were mostly math)
So my theory is still solid, considering that the vast majority of bubble research is happening within the field of astronomy and the vast majority of females, 100%, (especially female astronomers) like bubbles.
I saw a commercial just now advertising a Nissan with a "CPT transmission." Apparently, it's a real thing, but I would have been more impressed if it had been a CPT-violating transmission.
The secret government in charge of the universal weather machine seem to have missed the fact that baseball has started, since it has been snowing here all day. The opener didn't go quite as well as we would have liked, but would I attribute that mostly to Curt's switch from mostly RPG-gaming to weblogging, which everyone knows is much harder on the elbows. He'll get it together soon enough. Incidentally, The Sock seems to be have stopped by this site a while ago, when he had just started his blog. I saw that a Floridian IP was directed from the admin page of 38pitches.com right after I wrote a short post about his new endevor. This was a pretty disconcerting experience since I had jokingly referred to Mr. Schilling (whose player t-shirt I happened to be wearing at the time) as "pompous" in it. Obviously, since St. Curt has not only been stooping down among the mortals who maintain respected Sox blogs by starting his own, but also to the unpopular grad student-run websites, he should know that this was intended in a jocular way.
It was right before I fixed this page to work in Explorer so he probably didn't even get to read it, but if he did, and was offended, and somehow found the time to check out people linking to him during the actual season, allow me to suck up to you by pointing out that: (a) I rated you in the top 20 all-time Red Sox (Socks?), unlike the actual people running the countdown; (b) when you were rehabbing in 2005 my dad and I came out to see you pitch in Pawtucket on the 4th of July; (c) I've got like 2 cards from early in your career in Houston and Baltimore (and I am holding on to them instead of selling them for the thousands of dollars I assume they are worth); (d) as previously stated I own one of your jersey t-shirts and wear it often. Presumably, I am dead to him despite all this, and next time he's on EEI he'll find some way to get in a dig on physics grad students, but I still think his blog has exceeded all expectations and the curly haired boyfriends of the world can go to hell.
In other news, the long wait is finally over. Matsuzaka time has arrived, giving me a flimsy excuse to stick this video up. Gyroball: threat or menace? You decide.
ArXiv.org, the major physics and math preprint site just changed their paper archiving format from a perfectly respectable one that had no major flaws or drawbacks to an extremely cryptic and awful one that nobody asked for. If it isn't broke, change it to an impossible and uninformative format? It used to be that they subdivided the different areas of physics into categories like astrophysics (astro-ph) and condensed matter (cond-mat) and then numbered them YYMM and then 3 numbers for the order in which it was added. So the first paper posted this month in high energy theory would be read hep-th/0704001, then hep-th/0704002, and so on. "Wow," you are saying, "that is really sensible and easy to understand. Anyone using a system like that for the past 16 years that everyone is used to and has no problems with would never change it unless they just wanted to make trouble and piss people off." Obviously, this is what just happened. Now, even though the different categories are still there to look at, they aren't part of the numbering scheme, which now goes YYMM.[4 random-looking numbers]. Awesome job guys, now instead of seeing astro-ph/0608303 and knowing that it is about astrophysics, and is from somewhere in the middle of August, 2006, I can look at arXiv:0706.8974 and have no clue what the hell is going on. People are going to start dropping the subject headings, I just know it. And the web address doesn't have the subject in it anymore either. AND part of the supposed advantage of their retarded new scheme is that they can now add further sub-categories with an additional dot. As in astro-ph.JK/0705.0505. Why the hell would you go from a non-decimal system to a system with TWO?! This multiple period garbage is an assault on my senses! Why couldn't they just come up with a system using @#$%^&* and the greek alphabet? If you need to subdivide, do what they've already done in certain fields. To separate cosmology and stellar physics within astro-ph, just make them astro-co and astro-st. Sticking periods all over the place is a recipe for disaster. Of course, today's [arXiv:astro-ph/0704.0221] is titled "The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology," so with cosmology ending, I won't have to put up with this horrible system much longer.
A borderline creepy video displaying the bizarre "Kaye Effect," a fluid flow thing where a thin column of shampoo ejects a second flowing tendril of the substance. This video is captivating but somehow unsettling. I can't quite put it in words but I suspect it is to do with the music or the organic-looking nature of the liquid.
[Credit: Lucas]
Video #2 is features hideous floating blobs of water. Most of the scientific understanding that this contributes to the world involves looking at how cool it is. I guess playing with water in zero-g is pretty much all the space shuttle is good for anyway (besides serving Hubble).
And because all things come in threes, I am compelled to link to this trio of kinematics-demonstrating, and therefore baser, videos. (Meaning that they are less sophisticated than my usual high-brow content, of course.) Billiard tricks, nothing unsettling here, though I would say that it is best viewed on mute. You'll understand why. [Credit goes here]. And lastly, these even baser, even lower-brow clips of some medieval-era physics: a human slingshot, and a poorly-thought out bowling ball experiment of some type. The type of things for which YouTube was invented.
I don't remember anything about this morning's dream other than that as I woke up I was urging some type of European nobleman with a waxed mustache not to invade the state of Maine. "It is suicide!" I warned, in a vocabulary that seemed too stilted for use in a dream.If you are considering invading and occupying Maine, I say to you now, Sir: banish the thought! Like Russia in the winter, it cannot be done. At first, yes, perhaps they could be overpowered in Portland and Augusta, but the inland region is too vast and desolate to maintain decent supply routes or shut down the potato trade. And you could not long resist the insurgent lobstermen and their explosive lobsters.
Chad Orzel, voice of the downtrodden experimental physics blogger, wins April Fool's Day with today's admission of subordinacy to the to high-minded theorists, working in the most far-flung corners of abstract thought. Mostly he just channels Lubos Motl, best known for his ability to believe that the evidence for string theory is strong while simultaneously believing that the evidence for global warming is weak.Physics is of greater worth than biology, theoretical physics is more worthy than experimental physics, and high-energy particle theory is the most fundamental and important field in the history of human thought...
Read the full post here.
Let us be clear: the entire history of human culture has been nothing more than a steady progression from liberalism and crude experimental science to the twin pinnacles of George Bush and string theory.
...
Only when theoretical physics is completely cut free of piddling concerns about matching physical reality can it reach its fullest flowering, as a pure product of unfettered intellect.
Let go of your petty objections, drink this Kool-Aid, and revel in the eleven-dimensional glory of what is undoubtedly the greatest creation in the history of human culture.
Chandra has mapped thousands of supermassive black holes using x-ray emissions. These correspond to the enormous emissions generated at the center of these galaxies, and not the run-of-the-mill singularities within the Milky Way that we all know to represent a grave threat to America's nebulae. The red-blue scale coloration of the dots represents low-to-high energy x-rays emitted, and therefore the mass of the black holes. It isn't as though their locations are somehow mysterious since these are all at galactic centers. It has certainly inspired me see what the relationship between BH mass and the type of galaxy. I am fairly sure that spirals have bigger AGN, but not completely.
The first annual "Civil Rights game," was played yesterday between the Cardinals and the Cleveland Indians, while game organizers sat obliviously in the bleachers with their irony-protective goggles on. Joy of Sox doesn't own any apparently, so he produced a nice post showing some other hypothetically inoffensive team mascots.
It is odd, Dartmouth is always having controversies about the Indian mascot that we got rid of in the 60's. Yet it is still extremely divisive and everyone seems to have a strong complicated opinion on it. Even though the majority was pretty firmly against it, and there was absolutely no chance of them bringing it back, stupid little controversies are always springing up over it; like conservatives selling t-shirts with the old mascot, or arguments over whether we should even play against schools that still have Native American mascots. (The worst all-time moment in the recent history of the debate would have to be a campus newspaper sticking an etching of a violent warrior holding aloft a scalp with the title "The Natives are getting restless!" on its cover in response.)
And yet, even though I think it is good that they got rid of it, the symbol was fairly dignified looking, and in no way a caricature. As an image of an American Indian warrior as itself, out of context, it would probably not be considered offensive. Especially when compared to similar portrayals. To be clear, I am in not endorsing using stereotypes for sports teams (are you listening Celtics?). But I would look at all the vitriol engendered by our mascot, and then I would look at the Cleveland Indians, whose emblem is pretty much what you would get if you told the KKK artist-in-residence come up with the most backwards, racist, depiction imaginable--and yet you rarely hear anything about it. The outrage ratios do not seem to be correct. In places where the Native population doesn't mind, is proud of the depiction, and makes up a decent fraction of the student body, a respectful symbol isn't the worst thing in the world. For Dartmouth, it isn't appropriate, considering that the traditional tale of the college's being founded to teach American Indians is basically a myth, and that their place on our school seal, naked, approaching a symbolic cross is prettymuch unjustifiable at this point. But it isn't like in certain cases it is completely without merit to consider keeping an Indian symbol, even if it is mostly without merit. If the "anti-" side is still OK with Irish, Quakers, Cowboys, Patriots, Spartans, Trojans, Pirates, Friars, Volunteers, Sooners, and Teletubbies but never with American Indians than they are probably wrong. But even given all that, I can imagine no situation where it would be alright to keep a ridiculous, regressive, red-faced insult to Native Americans as the logo for a major sports team.
Further continuation of my Colloquium Drawing series. Not in anyway coherent, but the puffer fish are fun to draw. Also, the lecturer was actually pretty interesting, so I was, unfortunately, somewhat distracted by the talk itself. A friend of mine who could barely contain his giggling and made various requests like "draw a lobster!" was quite interested in having it, as long as I signed and dated it first! If I hadn't known I'd be giving it away, I would have made the diver a skeleton, so it seems that he saved his life...at least for now.
Some people recently noticed that a few googlers with a sense of humor seem to have invented a new method of trans-Atlantic travel; or at least a glitch to make it seem that way. It is now possible to get driving directions from America to most of Europe. 
Evidentially, making a right turn off the long warf in Boston allows you to swim 3,000 miles, where, if you make a slight right onto the E05 in La Havre, France, you can then go almost anywhere on the continent. I checked it out, and it doesn't seem to let you drive into Asia, or at least not far into it anyway. You can get to Novosibirsk, but not to Irkutsk (which is a shame since Irkutsk is so lovely this time of year). The trip time reads 30 days, 12 hours.
