illuminating science

Well, we don’t get to celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia, so no turkey for me this weekend. But that doesn’t stop me reading a comic about turkeys which suggests a bizarre fact - do turkeys drown (or otherwise perish) by looking up when it’s raining? I’d never heard of this before, and nor do I have any feel for why turkeys would look up while it’s raining, and why they would consequently drown. Sounds suspiciously like an urban legend - but you never know. So, it’s to Google I go, and specifically Snopes, my source for legend-busting - and the verdict is false. But Google provides still more information, since someone has already done some research. Their conclusion? Pretty much false, but with a couple of dissenting opinions found.

The basic idea of the legend is that turkeys are so stupid that they look up when it rains and are so fascinated by the raindrops, they sit with their beak open until they drown. However, turkeys don’t have binoccular vision - their eyes are on the sides of their head! So they’d never look up to see the rain - if anything they’d tilt their head sideways. It seems that there’s no evidence that this has actually ever happened, although it’s vaguely possible that it could have - apparently turkeys’ nostrils are just the right size to be blocked by raindrops! Nonetheless, I think we can safely assume that any turkey casualties over the weekend were the result of dining requirements, rather than moisture!

I just saw this article on Nature News about “positronium” and making exotic atoms and molecules. Positronium is similar to a hydrogen atom, which has a single negatively charged electron orbiting a positively charged proton. But instead of a proton you use a positron, an anti-electron, which has the same mass an an electron but a positive charge instead. It turns out that this atom, despite being made of antimatter and matter (which want to annihilate each othe!), can survive for a short time (about a billionth of a second) before that happens. “How cool!” I thought to myself, and marvelled for a moment at modern science. Then, I realised that this was done in the 1950’s - 50 years ago! It’s hard to believe that we could so easily make antimatter and manipulate it that long ago, when you think of how “primitive” science labs must have been compared to what we have now!

This new research is exploring the possibility that even though the positronium atoms are very shortlived, two of them might form together to create a positronium molecule, basically like two hydrogen atoms bond to make a hydrogen molecule (H₂). It might all sound a little esoteric, but positrons are vital for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) which is an important medical imaging technique. So who knows where this research will lead?

I have to say, even though I’m not an astronomer by profession, I really love learning and reading about astronomy and astrophysics, and, on occasion, doing a little bit of observing myself. A few times, I’ve gone with the Brisbane Astronomical Society (BAS) on one of the “AstroCamps”, where they all take their telescopes and go out west away from the city. It’s absolutely amazing what they’re able to see - particularly when they use computerised systems to “dial up” a galaxy or cluster of their choice. (If you ever get a chance, get your binoculars out and check out the constellation Orion (also known as “the saucepan” - there’s three bright stars in a row, plus a “handel”) - there’s some great stuff there!)

The bigger the telescope, the more light it can collect, and hence the more distance object you can look at (the light from far away galaxies is so faint, you need to gather a lot of it and focus it to a point before your sensors or film can detect it). I have a small, 10 centimetre telescope which is fine for small clusters and the moon. The members of BAS have large scopes, up to about 40cm diameter, say, which is great for close galaxies. Hubble’s telescope is 2.4 metres in diameter - and best of all, because it’s in orbit, there’s no air and no (or very little)heat to distort the image (just think of mirage effects on a hot day!) But if you really want to do some observing, I think the new TMT has got to take the cake. TMT stands for Thirty Metre Telescope - it’s going to be built at the top of a mountain, probably in Chile or Hawaii, and unlike a normal telescope, it’s going to be made up of 800 smaller mirrors arranged in a parabolic shape. Each of these mirrors will be controlled by a high precision motor, and be adjusted 750 times a second to a precision of 1/40th of the width of a human hair! This means if heat, vibrations or other environmental factors affect the telescope, ever different part of the telescope can be adjusted precisley - essential when your telescope spreads over 700 square metres! Moreover, each mirror will be flexible so they can be adjusted to give the best quality image possible.

But probably the most amazing thing, at least for me, is the way that they’ll correct for atmospheric effects. I mentioned above that Hubble could make such good images because the space around it is so clear - there’s no air! On Earth, however, as the air moves or heats, its refractive index can change, which means that the telescopes image would become distorted. If you knew what the air was going to do, you might be able to correct for it - but how do you measure the entire atmosphere above your scope? The answer is you measure a brighter, closer star whose image you know well, and look at how it changes - analyse this data, and use your incredibly high precision mirrors to keep the focus updated (750 times a second!). Don’t have a good star? Then use a highly focused laser to excite sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere to create a super bright point source of light to use as a reference!

It’s still 10 years away, but it’s just the first of a new generation of “Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes” that are going to open up a whole new era of observing, and with it, a deeper understanding of our universe. Truly incredible science.

There’s an amazing article on Popular Science (thanks to Slashdot for the link!) about making colored bubbles - not the slight rainbow tinges you normally see, but vivid orange, blue or black bubbles. Even more amazing, is that the colour disappears when you pop the bubble - just rub your hands together, and it’s gone!

The article is an amazing story about Tim Kehoe, and how he spent 10 years tinkering in his kitchen to come up with this revolutionary new bubble, called Zubbles. Quite aside from the coolness factor, it’s a really good insight into how important determination is in research, and the “scientific process” - why you should always keep good notes, and how you truly make remarkable discoveries. Not to mention how sometimes great science comes out of unusual beginnings!

Make sure you check out the photos and video on their webpage!

I really get frustrated by the so-called “greenies” who campaign against GM (genetically modified) foods, on the basis that they are unsafe, underresearched, and “unnatural”. Obviously, there is a chance that when you change some genes to get a desired result, you might produce unexpected side affects, but this isn’t really anything more than what might happen in evolution naturally - some genes mutate, it produces a favourable or unfavourable result(s), and natural selection kicks in from there. Most of the GM foods, crops and plants that we’ve created have resulted in very useful products (e.g., needing much less pesticide, being easier/quicker to grow, etc).

So, when I saw a news story about GM crops making mice sick, I thought that this would be just the fodder the greenies (and probably the media!) needed. But I was pleasantly surprised to see the spin that the researchers had put on it - that the safeguards and testing procedures around GM crops are working, and that any product which does make it to market is going to be safe. Very clever!

On the subject of environmental groups, I really wish there was a group run by scientists, or at least scientifically educated people. Greenpeace does some good work, but they also do some rubbish - protesting against GM foods on principle, their “nuclear power is evil” stance (I’m not saying it’s the solution to our power needs, but isn’t it better to have your waste stored in a single, controlled location, rather than spread throughout our entire atmosphere?) and so forth. They’re kind of extremist, and that really turns me off.

Anyway, the upshot of the news report was that a 10 year research project into genetically modified peas produced a crop that was almost completely resistant to insect attacks, but had the side of effect of giving some mice chest infections. Hence, the project is being scrapped - which is pretty amazing, given the time and money put into it. Good on the group for being ethically sound!

Okay, this has nothing to do with science, but I feel strongly enough about this that I need to vent a little steam. The battle between the music labels and consumers has been going for a while - they’re paranoid that piracy is damaging sales and so include more and more copy protection restrictions (DRM - digital rights management), while consumers want more and more freedom to use their music as they please.

This has culminated in iTunes, which offers a compromise - download your music for less than it costs to buy a CD, but you’re only allowed to play it on certain computers, running iTunes, and not on your generic MP3 player. Whether that’s a good compromise, well, that’s debatable - for me, it’s not. I want to play my music wherever and whenever I like, and as I don’t own an iPod that’s tricky. I also get a kind of creepy feeling to know that I don’t really “own” what I’ve bought, but that’s just me.

CDs still were pretty safe - rip them how you like, and then go from there. That’s until Sony got in on the act: their new audio CDs, when loaded onto a computer, rewrite Windows at the fundamental level, called a “rootkit”, making certain files invisible and basically filtering everything you do. More details can be found here. The presence of this program was only discovered by an intrepid user whose system was behaving weirdly. It has since been shown to causes crashes, open your computer up to viruses/trojans that are undetectable by virus checkers, and can be used to disable anti-cheating measures in online games. Trying to delete it will disable your CD drive, and only after public outcry has Sony released a patch.

But that’s not all. Sony requires your to agree to an End User License Agreement (EULA) when you put the CD in your computer, which among other things means that you have to delete your music and all copies if you lose (or have stolen) your original CD. You’re not allowed to put copies of music on your computer at work. They’re allowed to put any monitoring software they like (e.g., rootkit) on your computer, and accept no liability for any damages caused. The list just goes on.

I find this incredibly offensive, outrageous and just downright evil (take a page from Google (see pt 6) guys!) They’re already being sued over their rootkit, which is as good a definition of spyware as anything I’ve ever heard of, and one wonders if the EULA doesn’t violate several free use clauses as well.

If you can find it in your heart, don’t buy Sony. One can only hope the public backlash will put a lid on this sort of thing. In the end, this sort of rubbish won’t stop professional pirates which will always get around it (e.g., use a Mac) but it will mess up legitimate, home users. The funny thing is, with sites like allofmp3.com where songs cost less than 10 cents, come in any quality you want, are free of DRM, and seem to be legal (whether the RIAA like it or not), I would prefer to buy my music than copy it. It’s easier, potentially safer, and quicker than using filesharing, and I would actually tell others to go buy the music rather than copy it for them. It won’t be long before artists give the major labels the flick, and go straight to sites like these to distribute for themselves. Your days are numbered, Sony.

Apoligies for this Monday morning rant, but this really gets my goat.

Last week, I went to a colloquium (a general-interest talk) by Dr. Charley Lineweaver from Australia National University on the likelyhood of finding Earth-like planets elsewhere in our Universe. It wasn’t that long ago that the first extrasolar planet (i.e., a planet that orbits another star somewhere in our galaxy!) was discovered, and many more have followed. But all of them are big, Jupiter sized planets, in close to the sun, and pretty much inhospitable to life (although, see below). What we’d really like to know is whether there are other planets like Earth out there. Aside from philosophical questions, it’s mainly for the prospect of interstellar colonisation somewhere down the track, but we’d also like to know the chances are of finding life on them.

Interestingly, a large part of his talk was spent on specifying exactly what we mean by “Earth-like planets”. Are we talking about size? Age? Distance from the sun? Atmosphere? There’s so many variables, it’s hard to know which are the most important.

An important question: If there are other Earth-like planets out there, are they older or younger than our planet? Based on models of planet formation around stars, and our obervations of the Universe so far, the current thinking is that most planets matching Earth are in fact older. By about 2 billion years. That means they’ve had that much longer to evolve (or wipe themselves out, if you’re pessimistic. But in that time, the cockroach equivalents will probably survive and evolve again

Another interesting point he made was that we might expect a requirement for life to be liquid water. This puts limits on how far the planet can be from the sun, based on its surface pressure, atmosphere, etc. For example, greenhouse gases might let you have a warmer planet further away from the sun, while intense pressures (deep oceans?) might give you liquid water even closer to the sun. (High pressures will keep water a liquid even above 100 degrees celcius, whereas at low pressures water boils at lower temperatures (70 degrees at the top of Mt Everest!)

At this point, one of the audience members commented that according to his graphs, he was suggesting life could exist at temperatures of 300-400 degrees celcius (at high pressures), and that was completely unrealistic, since DNA breaks down above about 150. But, as the rest of the audience pointed out, this is making strong assumptions about what life on other planets would be like - does it have to be DNA based? Almost certainly not! It might have a completely different chemistry, evolved to survive its local conditions. It might be based on silicon instead of carbon, or who knows what. (Of course, allowing for that, life might exist on any planet, not just Earth-like ones, but that wasn’t the topic of the talk.)

There was a bit of heated debate - she was quite firm that life shouldn’t be able to exist at those temperatures. Then one of the professors, Michael Nielsen put up his hand, and simply said (I’m paraphrasing, since my memory isn’t so good!) “Well, we can build machines that work at those temperatures. So why not life?” I thought this was just a brilliant answer - it proves by example that you can have complex structures at high temperatures, and makes it very conceivable that the incredible complexity of life could find a way to work around it.

I have to say - Michael Nielsen is a brilliant scientist, and I think that this is a big part of it - he’s consistently able to see to the heart of a problem, and summarise the question (or answer!) in a simple, concise way. I’m always amazed when we’re having a research group meeting on a topic, and we’ve been puzzling (or arguing!) over something, and he’s able to clarify the problem in such a way that it’s clear what we have to prove or show to settle the argument. This is one of the most valuable skills a physicist can have, and is a big part of our courses - it’s also what makes us so valuable to a wide range of companies! Check out Michael’s blog - it’s got a broad range of general audience and real-world researcher posts. Good reading!

Anyway, the upshot of this colloqium was that we can probably expect the first Earth-like planet to be discovered in the near future. Perhaps we won’t be able to visit just yet, but it goes further to confirm we’re just a small fish in a big ocean!

Yesterday Jenny and I took part in a filming for a new episode of SCOPE, a science show for kids! What’s neat is that they get real scientists to contribute and present material. I probably shouldn’t give too much away (?), but we spent the day exploring physics at two of Queensland’s theme parks - Movie World (a Warner Brothers themed adventure park, featuring roller coasters etc) and Wet’n'Wild (a water slide park)! Hopefullly it will be a cool show I’ll post when it’s on the air (3 weeks, or so) on the offchance anyone wants to watch

It was great fun, and really interesting to see how a show like that is put together. All the shots and the script was planned beforehand, so we just had to shoot each little segment and they know how it’s all going to fit together at the end of the day. It was also cool to see the type of shots they were taking, and how they’re “just like what you’d see on TV”!

In other news, our “new” used car had its first failure last night. Less than 3 weeks in, and it died, midtraffic, from what the RACQ (roadside service company we’re with) guy said was a coil pack problem, either corrosion or bad wiring. (A little googling tells me that the coil pack is responsible for getting the sparks into the right cylinder at the right time…) It had actually happened the previous night, but we were able to start the engine again fine. This time, however, we were in mid traffic and the lousy thing wouldn’t start. Fortunately, a few young guys walking past offered us a push, and we were off the road in a jiffy. Legends!

Although the RACQ got it started again, we elected to be towed home rather than risk it. Our mechanic will fix it up soon, we hope!

In light of some of the (really!) scary global warming predictions we’ve been hearing recently, we’ve decided to join a program our local energy company (EnergexGreen Energy. Basically, by paying an excess per month, they agree to buy a certain amount of power from green energy sources. At the moment, we’re actually buying more energy than we actually use, but it’s for a good cause and hopefully it helps send that message that we’re willing to pay a little bit more for a sustainable planet.

The program can actually be quite cheap - just $10 more a quarter buys you at least 330 kWh, which for the average household is (apparently) about 20% of their power usage. For us, that would be about half our usage, but as I said we now buy more green power than we use - yep, we’re buying someone else’s green power.

It might seem odious paying extra for power when you don’t have to, and I was a bit hesitant when Jen first suggested it, but in reality that’s pretty cheap - if I bought only the power I actually use as green power, my bill would still only be an extra $20, or about 20% of our current total, a quarter, and that really isn’t very much. Heck, $80 a year is nothing…

So, I’m giving it my official (fwiw) endorsement. Go on the Green Energy program. Even if it’s just $10 a quarter - only $40 a year! - that sends the message that we are committed, and will encourage the production of more green energy powerplants. I’m always skeptical of these sort of programs - often they only make a difference if everyone participates. But this provides a direct, guaranteed reduction in green house gas emission and fossil fuel use, and I think it might be one of the few ways to make a large scale change. Just imagine if everyone joined! (I’m not quite certain of the scalability issues here, but it would be interesting!)

If you’re not in Queensland, then your energy company might have a similar program. Look it up. Nag your friends, parents, enemies, etc. But you better move quick. We’re running out of time.

Although I don’t play online games myself, I actually find them really interesting. First, there’s the social aspects - you can be whoever (or whatever!) you want, and no-one can truly tell for sure whether you’re a 12 year old boy or a 78 year old granny. There have been stories of couples meeting in virtual worlds, falling in love and ultimately getting married. Although I can’t find the article now, Wired suggested an interesting theory that virtual worlds might be better for dating. In real life, we always see someone’s appearance, then make small talk, etc. Only later do we get to meet the “real” person - and if they fail the first tests, then romance is pretty much off the cards. But in online worlds, you (potentially) meet in the opposite way - you go on quests together where your true character shines through, perhaps converse in the virtual pub back in the virtual town, and finally you might meet in real life.

Then there’s “emergent phenomena” - situations or events that the original designers might not have anticipated, but which keen players discover and use nonetheless. (I’m really interested in emergent phenomena in general, i.e., the evolution of complex behaviour or effects out of simple rules or changes. I’ve been working on a program that simulates little creatures and lets them breed and evolve, and by random chance they’ve been able to develop quite complex food gathering strategies. It’s fun to play with, but needs more work before I put it on the web.)

As far as virtual worlds go, simple examples include firing a rocket at your own feet as you jump in Quake - even though this does damage to you, it also propels you upwards at a dramatic rate, enabling you to reach convenient ledges, or surprise your enemies. It’s pretty unlikely that this was an intended use of your rocket launcher! Another example is the game Halo, where people have managed to do incredible stunts that probably weren’t intended.

More complex examples, however, involve the actual social or economic aspects of the game. This article (search for “Asheron” and read on) has some interesting examples of a simple effect (e.g., the discovery of safe “perching” spots where archers could attack without being hit) resulted in big changes (e.g., archers became very desirable, powerful “cartels” of archers formed, and persisted even after the admins stepped in to remove the “perching” spots). There’s the sale of virtual items on Ebay (a +200 suit of armour, an enchanted mace, etc), and exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and in game gold.

And then, most recently and most interestingly, there was a plague in the online game World of Warcraft. The designers introduced a new dungeon in which the God of Blood, Hakkar, waits to kill the questers. Although powerful, he was not invulnerable, and in his dying gasps he explodes coating the attackers in “poison blood”. Designed to do large damage every 2 seconds, the infection was, it seems, meant to be localised within the dungeon. However, some players discovered that by infecting their pet (a “non-player character” or NPC) with the plague, they could bring it out of the dungeon and back to the town. The result? A plague of epic proportions that wiped out hundreds of weaker players and even some stronger ones. Bodies littered the streets and attempts by the designers to control the plague failed; there was even attempts quarantine infected players, but people escaped and spread the disease further through the ability to teleport. Players started attacking enemy Kingdoms with the plague rather than conventional weapons, once prosperous cities became ghost towns except for a few powerful characters who could survive the disease.

Finally, a cure spell was created and distributed en masse to the population. It just makes me wonder - how far removed is a scenario like this from real life? Was it an act of terrorism, bringing the disease back to town, or did the players just not realise what they were doing? Did the spread of the disease reflect models we have for the real world? It would be fascinating to look at the infection rate and distribution and compare it to simulations (can you have simulations of a simulation?!)

All in all, it makes for very interesting gaming and perhaps very interesting science as well.