illuminating science

So, I’m sitting by the pool at Noosa Blue Resort (on the Sunshine coast, not the Gold Coast like I posted on Saturday - I think I was lacking a little sleep!) The sun is finally shining (intermittently, anyway) after raining all day yesterday, and it’s reasonably warm (enough so that several people have gone to the beach - whether they make it back before the start of the next session remains to be seen…)

The talks this morning were all reasonably good. (I’m going to describe a few of them briefly over the next few days, and so my posts might be slightly more technical that usual. Hopefully, though, they’ll still be interesting to read!) The first talk was by the conference organiser Philip Stamp, who works on different ways of modelling the effect of the environment on molecules (quite similar to my project, actually!) He was particularly interested in the differences between large scale “delocalised” effects (e.g., motion of water around a molecule of interest) compared to the effect from something specific nearby (e.g., the magnetic field from a single nearby molecule). It was quite interesting, although it lost me after the first 10-15 minutes!

The most interesting talk of the day (for me, anyway) was from a guy who has been studying organic magnets, which are organic (carbon, etc) molecules which have a magnetic moment (just a technical way of saying that they’re affected by magnetic fields). What’s really cool is that you can have groups of these molecules all with the same magnetic moment which can then quantum tunnel so that their magnetic moment points in the opposite direction, which you’d expect couldn’t happen “classically”. There’s lots that isn’t understood about this - how they do it, why it happens with the speed it does, and other more technical effects which I didn’t completely understand. Some of it looked very relevant to my project, so hopefully I’ll get the chance to talk to him about it before the conference is over.

Anyway, I’ve got to go and make some minor changes and fixes to my talk, so I don’t double up or ignore what the speakers have said today. Tonight there’s swimming and dinner by the pool, then the Poster Session, where people put up posters about their research, and we interrogate, er, I mean, talk to them, about their work. Since I’m giving a talk I don’t have to do a poster this time, which is quite a relief!

After watching What the bleep?! the other day, I’ve been thinking about something that they said in the movie, i.e., that quantum mechanics is “utterly astounding” or “magical”. They really pushed the connection that because quantum mechanics is mystical, and mysticism is, well, mystical, that the two must be related. That quantum mechanics is astounding is probably up to personal opinion (and how long you’ve been studying it!) but should it be considered magical or mystical? I would argue that quantum mechanics is just unintuitive and unfamiliar, and that once you’ve learned about it and understand it a bit more it’s not magical. It’s a little hard to exactly put into words what I’m saying here, and were it not for the recurring nightmares I should probably see the movie again, but I hope you get the gist.

What makes QM seem mystical? Things like quantum tunneling (the ability to pass through barriers), superpositions (being in two places at once) or entanglement (”spooky action at a distance”, where the state (or fate) of two objects becomes linked, no matter how far apart they are). These are all strange and bizarre, no doubt, and are literally straight out of the pages of science fiction. Yet physicists claim that these are the underlying laws of the universe - something that many people have a hard time believing.

I think the point is, though, that these effects aren’t “weird” or “mystical” - they’re just unfamiliar since they don’t apply to world on the scale where we usually interact. There are other laws of physics that we take for granted, even though they predict equally astounding things - take gravity for example. Imagine that you’d lived your whole life on a space ship in deep space, far away from any stars or planets. Your whole life has been in zero-G, and you’ve never even heard of gravity. Then, one day, your captain brings you news of this strange theory of gravity which says “every object attracts every other object”. This seems pretty strange and unlikely - after all, objects don’t clump together as it floats around the ship, and nor do you stick to the walls. And why should you? Why should objects attract at all? It would probably sound intuitive, and probably flat out wrong. But if you studied the theory close enough, you’d realise that it just never mattered to you before because you’d never been near anything big enough or worked with anything small enough. If, however, you could go and visit a planet, or carried out some simple but subtle experiments, you’d find that the theory of gravity explains everything very nicely, and you’d probably come to accept it.

Similarly, quantum mechanics makes predictions which are very hard to understand in terms of what we’re used to. But a few simple experiments give you a tantalising hint of the truth, and eventually quantum mechanics becomes, if not intuitive, then at least acceptable. I’ve been at it for a mere six years or so, so I can’t claim to understand quantum mechanics, but things like tunnelling or wave-particle duality don’t freak me out anymore. And I think a part of it, too, is that science shows and books love to make a big thing about how strange quantum mechanics is (”it’s both a particle and a wave! Oooooh!”).

So I’m not sure what the real aim of this meander was - I guess just to point out that the predictions of quantum mechanics aren’t really as bizarre as they’re often made out to be. They’re different, unfamiliar and at times counter-intuitive, but there’s nothing magical about it!

Guest blogger Ben Powell is a lecturer at UQ in theoretical physics, his research interests include quantum many-body physics, biophysics and unconventional superconductivity. According to Joel he likes English beer, football (soccer) and English beer (Joel can be very perceptive sometimes).

Recently I had a rather interest discussion with Andrew White. Actually this is not true. I don’t think anyone has ever had a discussion with Andrew, it was definitely an argument.

The discussion/argument/whatever started out about the physics curriculum at UQ but quickly moved on to a discussion about what where the truly original contributions to physics in the twentieth century. Andrew claimed that there where only two. The theory of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. For the record I should say that many (perhaps most) other physicists would agree with Andrew. I don’t. I think that the existence of emergent phenomena is equally fundamental and probably more important than either quantum mechanics or relativity.

Let me illustrate emergence with a very old example - time’s arrow. The so-called fundamental laws of physics (i.e. quantum mechanics and relativity) do not care about which way you run time. That is if you think of the world as a movie then, if I played the movie backwards everything should, according to these ‘fundamental’ laws, be the same. Clearly your everyday experience contradicts this prediction (you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs - but you certainly can’t make an egg by ‘un-breaking’ an omelet). So - if science is to be based of empirical evidence shouldn’t we reject these ‘fundamental’ laws.

The answer is that when we many particles acting together the begin to behave in new ways that we could never expect from studying a single particle. Such new behaviours are called emergent behaviours. In this case the emergent property is called entropy. Entropy is a measure of disorder - the more disordered a system is the higher its entropy. Something given the rather pompous name of ‘ the second law of thermodynamics‘ says that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. That is the universe as a whole is always getting more disorder. This is easy to misunderstand. Small parts of the universe can decrease their entropy, but then the entropy of the rest of the universe has to increase, so that the total entropy of the universe does not decrease. Actually as you’re sitting here reading this your body is busy decreasing its entropy, however all the body heat that is following out of you is disordering the rest of the universe and
increasing the entropy of the rest of the universe.

However, it is important to realise that when physicists first discovered entropy they did not derive it from a ‘fundamental’ theory, instead they found that, in they’re theories on many particles they had to include entropy to make the theory agree with nature. This century we found that when classical (or Newtonian) mechanics was replaced by quantum mechanics we still need to worry about the role entropy plays in large systems. In fact we can go further than that. We do not know how to derive the second law of thermodynamics from any ‘fundamental’ theory. And yet we believe it to be true. Einstein went so far as to say that “it is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced, that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown.” So what made him so sure of this?

The important thing to understand is the second law of thermodynamics is true regardless of the details of the ‘fundamental’ theory - be that classical physics, quantum physics or some future theory that we do not know about yet. Therefore Bob Laughlin (who won the 1998 physics Noble prize) and David Pines have called principles such as the second law of thermodynamics ‘higher organising principles’.

The second law of thermodynamics is just the best know of these ‘higher organising principles’, we know know that many physical phenomena can only be described in terms of such ‘higher organising principles’. Examples include superconductivity, Bose-Einstein condensation, the quantum Hall effect, protein folding, most of chemistry, all of biology and life to name a few.

Finally we come to my last point. There is a general acceptance in science, which I must point out is not shared by many philosophers, of a reductionist world view. That is to say the view that we can materials physics in terms of particle physics, chemistry in terms of materials physics, biology in terms of chemistry, psychology in terms of biology and the humanities in terms of psychology. It seems to have become increasingly clear, over the course of the twentieth century that, if this is true then these ‘explanations’ can only be made in terms of higher organising principles because all of the things begin explained are emergent phenomena.

Remember more is different.

So Sunday was the delightful Science in the Pub activity - a trip down to the local pub to debate the question: Should Einstein have been named Person of the 20th Century, or was he overrated? It ended up being a really interesting debate. The panelists were all excellent, and had some really interesting arguments.

Perhaps the only odd thing that most of the panel was eithre neutral or against Einstein! I guess they assumed that most people would already be pro-Einstein, and their job would be to create an interesting counter argument. For instance, one panelist, Matt, wasn’t a physicist - instead he’s a top class debater. His argument (against Einstein) was that Einstein’s theories weren’t quite as amazing as everyone claimed. Einstein “stood on the shoulders of giants” (that is, he’d used the research of a lot of great people before him) to develop his theories, and anyway, if he hadn’t done it then someone else would have. It was an interesting argument, but as a physicist I have to disagree. As Andrew White, another panelist pointed out, Einstein’s theories really were revolutionary. Sure, someone else would eventually explained the photoelectric effect, etc. But his theory of general relativity, that whole idea of space and time being the same, was pure genius - and he shouldn’t be slighted for that.

It seems that the physicists assumed that everyone would know how great Einstein’s discoveries were, and so set out to discuss his attributes as a person, while Matt, as a non-physicist, may not have really appreciated how much Einstein changed modern physics (no offense to Matt here - it was an interesting argument that made for great discussion, and that’s what debating is all about!) But the panel swung around to defend Einstein when he needed it, so the discussion was still lively.
One interesting question was whether Einstein was a good role model, and hence appropriate for “Person of the Century”. He was a disrespectful student, he didn’t treat his first wife well, and he (supposedly) didn’t reference other people’s works. On the other hand, he campaigned for peace and nuclear disarmament, was involved in humanitarian efforts, and helped Marie Curie get a job when no-one else would employ a woman. Personally, I think that Einstein was human, and no human is perfect. If anything, it’s their flaws that make them interesting.
A related question Einstein’s popularity is a good thing for physics or not. He’s old, he’s got the crazy hair, and is always portrayed as being a brilliant but slightly absent minded old man - all together, forming pretty much the standard stereotype of a physicist. Is that really what we want young people thinking physics is all about? I guess not, but Einstein’s more than that - he shows that a physicist can become a household name and be more famous that anyone. He was brilliant but also funny, an academic but also involved with the rest of the world. And really, anything we can do which promotes physics and makes it accessible to students has got to be good.
So, at the end of it all, the audience voted and found Einstein to be worthy of his Person of the Century title, by a 2 to 1 majority. Seems like Einstein gets to keep his place as everyone’s hero. I certainly voted for him!

This Sunday, we’re putting on a “Science in the Pub” activity. Basically, it involves going down to one of the local pubs and having a lively discussion about an interesting topic in physics - this time around it’s debating Einstein receiving the Time magazine “Person of the Century” award. As a physicist, of course, I’m overjoyed (!) but at the same time, did Einstein really do more for humanity than anyone else? Other contenders were Gandhi and Nelson Mandella, strong advocates of human rights - do all of Einstein’s theories really make him more qualified? If that was all it were, I’d have to say no - but of course it’s not. Einstein was a strong advocate of peace and pacifism (though I don’t really agree with the latter) and campaigned against nuclear warfare. Despite not being a believer in any established religion, he was offered the presidency of Israel, but turned it down, claiming he didn’t have people skills. Even beyond that, his trademark hairdo and sense of humour (as illustrated by the famous photo of him sticking his tongue out!) have done wonders for promoting physics. Einstein was a brilliant physicist, perhaps the most brilliant ever (though that’s probably highly controversial :)), but was still able to communicate with the rest of the public and make great contributions to society. I think that’s enough to justify him as Person of the 20th Century.
Of course, if you’d like to have your say - you should come to the pub on Sunday! The whole idea of this event is to tak ephysics out of the lab and into a more relaxed environment, and encourage every one, physicist or not, to be involved. It should be a great event, but unfortunately it is for over-18’s only. Hope to see you there! Yours truly might also be putting on some half-time entertainment as well!

Here’s the details!

The Qld branches of the Australian Institute of Physics & Australian Science Communicators present:

EINSTEIN AT THE PUB

A public debate on the topic of
‘Einstein: Person of the 20th century or overrated?’.

Hosted by Robyn Williams from ABC TV and radio.

TIME: 2pm

DATE: Sunday 13 March

VENUE: The GPO hotel,
corner of Ann and Ballow Streets, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane (upstairs in the 740 room)

(As it will be held in a hotel, the event is ,unfortunately, for those 18 and over.)

COST: Free!

Audience prizes include Einstein action figures & books on Einstein.

Staged as part of celebrations for this year’s Einstein International
Year of Physics.

OUTLINE

To many, Einstein is a great hero. Indeed, a few years ago, ‘Time’ magazine named him as their person of the
20th century. In their eyes, his life was more significant than those of figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

Was this the correct decison? Did Einstein really contribute more to the world than any of last century’s great leaders, humanitarians, artists and anyone else? Or is he simply overrated?

Join Robyn Williams from ABC TV and radio as he hosts a debate on these questions between a panel of experts comprising two physicists and a debater.

The panelists are:

Dr Andrew White, The University of Queensland. Andrew is a world expert on quantum computers and is
currently trying to build one of these ultra-powerful devices. In his spare time, he patches up his crumbling Queenslander
house and reads just about anything he can lay his hands on.

Dr Kate Wilson, the Australian National University. Kate is a lecturer in physics and is primarily interested in innovative
approaches to teaching physics. Her hobbies include painting and trying to find something fun to do in Canberra.

Matt Smith, The University of Queensland. Matt is a final-year medicine student who holds a degree in neuroscience. He is a keen debater and has represented Queensland at national-level debates.

For two years, I was the social convener of PAIN, the physics club here at UQ. Despite being a lot of work (I originally wrote “little bit of work” but that’s an understatement…) it was a fabulous opportunity to both polish my presenting skills and explore some really cool physics. My job was basically to run an activity each week, on Fridays at 5pm, which had some relevance to physics but was a bit quirky and fun.

Pretty high on the list for me, as well as for many other such groups around the world, was making liquid nitrogen icecream. The basic idea is that you mix up your ice cream mixture (cream, milk, sugar + chocolate/berries/whatever), then freeze it using liquid nitrogen! Now, normally when you’re making ice cream you must stir it every 10-15 minutes as it’s freezing, because otherwise big ice crystals form and it doesn’t have that deliciously smooth and creamy texture. Nitrogen solves all those problems however - it freezes the ice cream so quickly that the big ice crystals don’t have time to form, and as it boils away it aerates the ice cream making it light and fluffy. It’s pretty much ready in 20-30 seconds! Delicious!!! PAIN’s running this activity again this afternoon - YUM!

The difference between us and other groups is that we let people make their ice cream in individual styrofoam cups, whereas other groups usually just do it in a giant pot. This is far more fun! And there are so many fun things you can do! A couple of years ago, our now-social convener Chris (I think it was him!) discovered that by alternately dipping strawberries in chocolate ice cream mixture and liquid nitrogen you would get a strawberry coated in light and fluffy chocolate ice cream. They’re so good!

And while everyone in the club got to play with this and eat ice cream, it was great being able to decide what flavours we’d have, what experiments we’d try (e.g., dripping ice cream in to make tiny “balls” of ice cream) and, of course, what we’d do with the left over liquid nitrogen! Favourites have always been pouring it down a flight of stairs (very Phantom of the Opera-ish) and pouring it into the fountain (ditto!) And of course this was just one activity - it was great to have the opportunity and budget to run pretty much any activity or experiment I found on the web and thought was interesting!

A while back I was talking about Matthew Nagle, the first person to trial the new “BrainGate” technology, that allows direct interface of the brain with a computer through electrodes that are actually implanted into the surface of the brain. Well Wired has an update on his progress, and so far everything seems to be going well. Just by thinking about it,he can play Pong (and well, if you believe the reporter!), he can move a cursor around the screen, and can draw circles with his cursor, something which I have enough trouble doing with a pencil…

The technology aside, there are some really interesting tidbits in the story. One is how Nagle controls the cursor:

“For a while I was thinking about moving the mouse with my hand,” Nagle replied. “Now, I just imagine moving the cursor from place to place.” In other words, Nagle’s brain has assimilated the system. The cursor is as much a part of his self as his arms and legs were.

When they were first experimenting with monkeys, the monkeys eventually learned they didn’t need to physically move a joystick to move the cursor (and receive their juice reward) - they just had to think about it (or at least, produce the same brain patterns.) Here, Nagle has demonstrated that humans are able to do the same thing - a bit like incorporating extra senses through the tongue or relearning how to control a hand that has been reattached but with the nerves in the wrong place. As the article not-so-eloquently puts it, “Nobody really knows how all that electricity and meat make a mind.” A little crude, but it really does highlight what an amazing thing our brain is and how little we understand it. I wonder if there’s any connection between this sort of thing, and riding a bike or juggling becoming “instinctive”? I don’t have to think about juggling any more (though I still do to ride a bike!) when I do it - I don’t have to think about moving my hands here or there, or even these days about keeping the ball in the air. My brain just knows what signals it’s got to send to get my ultimate aim of juggling to work. I’d love to know more about neuroscience!

Unfortunately, this project isn’t purely altruistic in nature. The article says that the US Department of Defense has contributed “more than $25 million in grants from the US Department of Defense, which frankly envisions a future of soldier-controlled killer robots.” To quote the director of Darpa, “Imagine a warrior with the intellect of a human and the immortality of a machine.”

Yes. Let’s imagine.

I realise that military funding is an important source for companies like this, and that research with wide ranging, highly beneficial applications can come from it, but an army of supersoldiers is not really what I’d want to be working towards. Being practical, if armies were made entirely of robots it might limit human casualties, but think about the expense! And ultimately to win a war you’re still going to be bombing buildings, and civilians are going to be the ones to pay.

On a slightly more interesting, albeit slightly disturbing note,

Some scientists have further suggested that implants designed to restore cognitive abilities to Alzheimer’s and stroke victims could enhance the brainpower of healthy people. There’s talk of using BCIs to stifle antisocial tendencies and “program” acceptable behavior.

I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with the idea of “reprogramming” someone using a computer. Psychiatry is a completely different story, and while medicines are perhaps closer in nature, I don’t think that’s the same thing as programming them with a chip. This idea has been bandied around at least since Michael Crichton’s “The Terminal Man” from the 1970’s (though the book itself isn’t that great!)

So, again, I’m forced to ask myself, if I were paralysed, would I be willing to risk my brain to be able to control a computer like that? One the one hand, my brain would be (and is!) my most valuable asset (with full modesty, of course - I’m pretty sure most people would say the same!) On the other, to be hooked up on a ventilator 24/7 and forced to work painstakingly slowly my moving my chin or tongue…it would be very tempting. As for enhancing my current abilities, I think I’ll stick to simpler mental tricks.

Perhaps the most universally useful thing I’ve learned through studying physics is how to do “back of the envelope” calculations, so called because all the maths and diagrams needed to solve the problem are fit onto the back of an envelope. At the extreme end are “Fermi problems”, named after the famous physicist, where all you want is an “order of magnitude” answer for a problem that is just too hard to do exactly. For instance, how many blades of grass are there in your backyard? Seems almost impossible to guess, doesn’t it? Well, say there is one blade to every square centimetre of lawn - then there’ll be 10,000 to every square metre. Estimate your yard size (let’s say a small yard of 5×5m = 25 square metres), and there’s your answer - 250,000 blades of grass! (Thanks to Brett for pointing that out - a quarter of a million blades of grass is a lot more impressive that 25,000!) I’ve done similar calculations to find the g-force on roller coasters, the force required to smash a wooden board with your fist (not much!) and even the best way to make three pieces of toast and keep them hot.

While these problems are just a bit of fun, I’ve been talking to an awful lot of people lately who say that these problem solving skills make physicists highly valued in a wide range of jobs beyond just research. You’re taught to focus on the important issues and variables, and how to make reasonable assumptions that simplify the problem to something you can do, but which still gives roughly the right solution. A major field where physicists are becoming vital is engineering. Engineering degrees these days apparently focus less on the understanding and the problem solving side of things than they did 30 years ago, instead teaching how to do things. These skills are obviously important, but it also gives physicists an important role in engineering firms. The engineering managers and leaders I’ve been speaking to recently are very emphatic that a PhD in physics is a highly sought after quality in an employee!

And it seems that universities are picking up on this too - certainly at UQ our first year physics courses are focussing more and more on the technique of approaching problems and using the basic knowledge we’ve learned of physics to solve them. Students are still learning the physics, but the way it’s taught and the type of problems and exams is evolving. I think this is excellent, as it not only produces better physicists but is an incentive for people who don’t necessarily want to be physicists to study at least a little physics.

So, I strongly recommend that if you’re going into a degree, study a little physics: it might just get you a job! And you never know, you might enjoy it and go back for more.

I read a headline at Nature News today that got me pretty excited - engineers had devised an invisibility shield - a real one, something that would actually stop objects from reflecting or scattering light. But, when I read on, it turns out it only works for objects of around the same wavelength as light (i.e., less than a micrometer or one millionth of a metre) and it can only really work for monochromatic light, that is, light which contains only one colour like what comes out of a laser. Quite disappointing - but that’s part of selling your research, I guess - you’ve got to make it sound as interesting as you possibly can!

So, it looks like me plan for a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak will have to be put on hold for the moment. On the other hand, that’s not to say that it’s impossible - there are a few people working on designing exactly that, mainly for military applications. There’s a cool article from a year ago which talked about making invisibility cloaks (another picture here) by making a cloak out of a giant flexible LCD screen. The demo image works simply by a camera recording what’s behind you, then a projector projecting it onto the front of you - it’s just a camera trick. But ultimately, you would build both display LEDs and cameras into the fabric so that the cloak displays what’s behind you on your front - just like the chameleon! Again, though, this might be a while coming. Guess for now I’m just going to have to settle for working on my Jedi mind tricks…

For those of you who just joined us, I live in Australia and if there’s one thing we’ve got a lot of, it’s sunshine (yes, even more than kangaroos!) Therefore, it really makes sense for us to be looking towards solar energy to supply our electricity. Here at UQ, we have groups working on new, innovative innovative solar cells, made out of plastic or even melanin, the skin pigment. Hopefully, these will have higher efficiencies than existing technology, making solar energy more cost effective.

But that’s not the only option. Australia is planning to build a giant one-kilometre high Solar Tower that will generate as much power as a small nuclear reactor, but completely renewable and with no waste. A bit like the Parkes Observatory, it will be in the middle of a sheep paddock, and will become the tallest building in the world. It works by heating air in the base which rises, reaching speeds of 50km/hr and turning a turbine. Solar cells store energy during the day so the tower can run 24 hours.

Particularly after seeing the talks on global warming at the recent AIP Congress, I’m amazed (and more than a little scared) at how little governments around the world are doing to explore new energy technologies. It’s great to see Australia taking steps forward, even if the government has so far only offered “support” with no dollars. Apparently, the company involved also has a deal with China, so with any luck these towers will prove to be at least a partial solution to the world’s energy needs. Also, by becoming the tallest building in the world and hopefully a bit of a landmark (or something!) it might promote this and other renewable technologies to other governments and businesses. And, imagine if we could do a Giant Drop off one of those!

Slashdot is reporting on a fascinating article in the Guardian about an autistic savant who is able to explain his unique abilities. Autism is any of a spectrum of disorders - the symptoms and their degrees can vary greatly from person to person. One unusual component is that some people with autism, while having below-average abilities in some areas, have incredible mental abilities in others, such as mathematics, music or art. From the article:

Autistic savants have displayed a wide range of talents, from reciting all nine volumes of Grove’s Dictionary Of Music to measuring exact distances with the naked eye. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city.

The man in the article, Daniel Tammet, can speak 7 languages, including one he designed himself, and perform calculations faster than a calculator. What’s of interest to researchers is that most savants are unable to explain exactly how they’re able to perform their calculations so quickly. Tammet, however, explains that he sees numbers as shapes, sounds and textures, and when he multiplies two numbers, their shapes merge and change into a new shape - which is the answer! I guess the hope is that by studying his techniques, we might learn ways to improve our own thinking, or even better understand how the brain functions.

Great story on Wired about a litterbug who finally gets their come-uppance:

Sweet Justice
A San Francisco man learned the hard way that littering — especially burning objects — is not a good idea. Jonathan Fish was driving across the Bay Bridge on Thursday when he tossed his cigarette out the window. But the cigarette blew back into his $30,000 Ford Expedition, igniting the back seat and filling the SUV with smoke. Fish pulled over and leaped from the flaming vehicle, which kept rolling and crashed into a guardrail. “It was in flames by the time he got out,” said CHP Officer Shawn Chase. “He had some of his hair singed on the back of his head. (The car) burned down to the frame.” Fish likely faces a misdemeanor charge for littering, which carries a fine of up to $1,000.

I really don’t like smoking, but if people are going to do it then it jolly well better not affect anyone else - either through passive smoking or having to put up with cigarette butts everywhere. And this guy was driving a gas-guzzling SUV, so it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for him. That said, though, I hope he had insurance!

Apparently, dogs are getting addicted to cane toad poison - they lick the toad to get just enough of the poison to make them high, then “they get a smile on their face and look like they are going to wander off into the sunset.” So next time Rover is looking awfully happy about himself it might not just be that the little rat stole your dinner off the table…

Right here at UQ, researchers from Physics have developed XeroCoat, a cheap, easily produced anti-reflective coating. Their main aim is to apply it to solar cells - by reducing the amount of light reflected from the surface of the cell, more will reach the processing part. This means higher efficiency, and they’re predicting increases of up to 8% (which is a lot for solar cells!) Using an anti-reflective coating isn’t new, but is normally too expensive to use for general purpose cells. XeroCoat, however, is cheap to produce and easy to apply (no high pressures or temperatures needed!) so can be used for cheaper cells.

XeroCoat also has applications beyond solar cells - it also stops surface from fogging up. Think about glasses, goggles, windscreens, (camera LCDs?), even bathroom mirrors - the list goes on! Of course, it’s not full developed yet, but with applications anywhere where you don’t want reflections or fog messing up your image, it looks like a winner.

Interesting story over at Physical Review Focus on new superconducting wires that are light weight, incredibly strong and, being superconductors, carry current with no resistance.

There are two points of interest in this article. First, is the practical aspect. These wires can carry incredibly large currents, which in turn are capable of producing very high magnetic fields. They are also incredibly strong, potentially “stronger than steel”. This means if you want a superconducting device you can build it entirely from these wires, and you don’t need a heavy steel frame as well. Why is all this of interest? Among the probably many reasons is thatthese are all conditions that are needed “in several futuristic spacecraft propulsion systems”, i.e., being light and strong but capable of producing high magnetic fields. I’m not sure what these systems involve, though - have to get back to you on that one!

The second main point is of theoretical interest, namely, what makes materials superconduct? Superconductivity in simple materials, such as lead, is well understood. Materials have resistance because when electrons try and flow through the material, they collide with other atoms and lose energy (just like trying to run through a crowded room - you keep hitting people and having to start again.) When cooled to almost absolute zero, however, electrons in certain metals pair together in what’s known as Cooper pairs. These pairs of electrons are then able to move through the metal while dodging all the other atoms. There’s no good analogy for this, really - it’s a quantum mechanical effect and most of our usual intuition doesn’t apply. Just be impressed that this is quantum mechanics on the macro scale - working in every day life!

What we don’t understand is high temperature superconductors, which superconduct at around 100 degrees above aboslute zero (-173 degrees Celcius, give or take.) According to the original theory, the comparitively high temperatures would destroy the superconductivity. We don’t have a good theory yet to explain what’s going on, and many groups, including ours at the University of Queensland, are working to understand it. The material these wires are made out of is similar to these high-T superconductors (it can’t be explained by the original supercondtivity theory) but the material issimpler, which might mean researchers can use it to understand what’s going on in all the materials. A successful theory might mean we could build better and cheaper superconductors, perhaps even ones capable of working at room temperature!

For more info on superconductors, check out superconductors.org for a good general overview, or for a slightly more advanced treatment, there’s the ever-faithful Wikipedia. And, of course, Google searches turn up many links!

Kudos to Slashdot for alerting me to this one, those fabulous little guys the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have found yet more evidence that there used to be a lot of water on Mars. Perhaps not earthshaking (marsshaking?) in itself, but it’s amazing that these guys have gone for twice as long as anyone expected, are still going strong, and are still producing valuable data. Pretty neat!

Sorry it’s been a couple of days since I posted - I go overseas Friday, and things are pretty crazy at the moment!
New Scientist is running a story which comments on the politics of nuclear fusion. Research is very much alive with several countries working towards building the first sustainable (and hopefully profitable!) nuclear fusion reactor, called ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor). Unfortunately, the countries involved are still arguing about were the reactor is to be built!

Nuclear fusion refers the process by which the sun generates energy. Protons are fused together to create helium, in the process releasing huge amounts of energy. This is very different to nuclear fission where large atoms (uranium, etc) are split apart. This also releases energy, but has the downside of creating dangerous nuclear waste.

Why don’t we all use fusion? The problem is that to get it working, you basically need to build a star - huge pressures and very high temperatures. This is very hard to do. Cold fusion, where we can produce fusion at room temperature, has been much sought after by science fiction writers, but isn’t generally thought to be obtainable. But you never know…

To host a viable nuclear fusion reactor would give you a clean, renewable energy source, so both Japan and France are very keen to have it. One can only hope that the group can come to a decision, and finally build it. We could sure use some clean energy about now.

Update: More at Physics Today.

Interesting article from the Christian Science Monitor on space ownership laws. With more and more people trying to sell land on the moon or at least letting you name a star, space law is becoming a hot issue. Should we encourage private land holdings on Mars to spark space exploration? Or should a UN like body govern the cosmos? Should it be free for all, or a free for all?

Thanks to Slashdot for the tip off.

Interesting article on PhysicsWeb about differences found in matter and antimatter. It’s the most significant observation to date of the different properties of matter and antimatter, the so called “charge-parity” (CP) violation. This refers to experiments where changing the sign of the electric charge on a particle and taking the mirror image produces different experimental results. This was originally unexpected, but has since been verified by several experiments.

It’s good to keep in mind, though, that while this experiment is impressive, it’s not revolutionary in terms of new physics. A good summary of the experiment and theory can be found here, also from PhysicsWeb.