## Friday, November 29, 2013

### LoneStarCon

Happy Thanksgiving in the US! Here are more photos from this year's World Science Fiction Convention held in San Antonio, Texas. Someone was featured in a Fox News story on the Worldcon. The outfit seemed just right for the classic Star Trek bridge.

Wandering the Exhibit Hall, one could find the big chair from GAME OF THRONES. Waiting in line could get an autograph from creator George R.R. Martin.

Today theories about breaking the speed of light are seen as science fiction, but the future is still in front of us.

## Thursday, November 21, 2013

### Who Is Having a Birthday!

The Tardis, Dalek and "The Brain of Morbius" at this year's World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio. Someone is wearing the wrong Sci Fi costume, but more about that in the next post.

November 23 is the 50th anniversary of the very first DR WHO episode! Sadly it was overshadowed by the tragic events in Dallas on November 22. We are happy to say that the Doctor has reached his 50th birthday!

The first episode was "An Unearthly Child" with William Hartnell as the Doctor. It begins with the Doctor's granddaughter Susan having trouble fitting in an English school. To a young Time Lady, the science taught in the school seems primitive! In 1963 scientists still disagreed whether the universe expanded or was forever in a "steady state". Discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965 convinced most that the universe evolved from a smaller, hotter state. Today the universities are teaching young minds about "inflation" and other "dark" energies. Today's science will someday seem very silly.

TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. DR WHO has inspired many people to think of Space as a place of adventure full of fascinating and frightening creatures. Unlike most Sci Fi spaceships, the TARDIS can fade away and "teleport" itself through Space and Time without passing through the region between. It has also made us wonder whether Time and Space can be manipulated to teleport us to other worlds.

After 3 years William Hartnell was replaced by Patrick Troughton. The producers came up with the innovative idea of having the Doctor "regenerate" into a new body. In a half-century we have now seen over a dozen actors (but no actresses) step into the role. The outgoing Matt Smith is the youngest Doctor yet. The Time Lords seem to have circumvented another effect of time, the ravages of age.

From the April 1, 2010 issue of NEW SCIENTIST:

Time Lords discovered in California

"Time Lords walk among us. Two per cent of readers may be surprised to discover that they are members of an elite group with the power to perceive the geography of time.

"Sci-fi fans – Anglophile ones, at least – know that the coolest aliens in the universe are Time Lords: time-travelling humanoids with the ability to understand and perceive events throughout time and space. Now it seems that people with a newly described condition have a similar, albeit lesser ability: they experience time as a spatial construct.

"Synaesthesia is the condition in which the senses are mixed, so that a sound or a number has a colour, for example. In one version, the sense of touch evokes emotions.
To those variants we can now add time-space synaesthesia.

"In general, 'these individuals perceive months of the year in circular shapes, usually just as an image inside their mind's eye,' says David Brang of the department of psychology at the University of California, San Diego."

The Brang et al. paper is in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

You may be fortunate if born among the "2 percent". Many people, no matter how educated, will never figure out that Space and Time are one phenomenon. The Universe has a characteristic radius, our distance from the "Big Bang". In Planck units, R = t. In units of meters and seconds, this would become R = ct. The Universe can't expand at the same rate c forever, so c must be further related to time. After doing some math, we get: GM=tc^3. In Planck units, these two expressions combine as M = R = t.

Mathematics allows us to reduce the Universe to equations that even student Time Lords can understand. If physics professors can't grasp that GM=tc^3, they dismiss it as wrong. People should be valued for their differences, and more of us should try to be Time Lords. The Time Lords long ago figured out that GM=tc^3, leading to their mastery of Space and Time. Others may go to their graves muttering that the speed of light is constant, just as Earth is flat. Time Lords learned to regenerate their bodies, removing the ravages of time. All things change with time, even the speed of light.

## Thursday, October 31, 2013

### Higgs and Englert

Congratulations to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics! Higgs predicted existence of the Higgs Boson in a paper published in 1964, about the same time that Englert published a similar prediction. Carl Hagen, Tom Kibble of Imperial College, and Gerald Guralnik published about a month later. Higgs, 84 years old, has waited nearly 50 years for experimenters at the LHC to discover the Higgs Boson. We will not have to wait as long to confirm a changing speed of light.

## Friday, September 27, 2013

### From Pioneer to the Speed of Light

Interesting exchange on Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings. The writer started about the Pioneer Anomaly, but then realized the article he was linking was 2 years old. The Pioneer Anomaly may be old news, but it led to an interesting discussion:

ED MINCHAU: Let’s open up the speed of light can of worms. Rearranging some of the fundamental formulas involving the Planck constant can make h and pi disappear from the equations giving us GM=tc^3. Put another way, if the mass of the universe is a constant and the gravitational constant is a constant and age of the universe is not a constant, then the speed of light cannot be a constant. Alternatively, if c is a constant then one or both of G and M must be a variable function with respect to time.

RYAN: Lots of different ideas have been batted around, personally I like the idea that the speed of light is actually slowing down as a function of time.

c(t)=((GM)^1/3)/(t^1/3)

That is the speed of light is slowing down as the inverse cubed root of the age of the universe. If your meter stick is contracting (the meter is defined by c) then there is an apparent increase in speed. Now days, with t being about 14.5 billion years, that makes that change tiny. However, in the early universe this would have looked different. More like a huge expansion of the universe. From what I can tell this matches the supernova and CMB data better than all that hockus pokus about dark energy/matter. Maybe I just like it because I understand it and I never could understand the dark energy argument. This also answers several other small nitpicking loose ends like, The Dim Young Sun Paradox, and The Receding Moon Paradox. But it would cut all those Dark Energy/Matter grants, so don’t expect this idea to gain a whole lot of big science backing.

ED MINCHAU: I should really read all the comments before posting. Yeah, Ryan, I think Louise Riofrio is on to something with that equation.

JOHNX: I commend these gents for doing all of this data research. However, moving from any old data compilation program to a new one, say C++ is always fraught to errors. I know (moving from Cobol to newer systems — nothing was perfect).

Nevertheless, I think Ryan and Minchau are on to the right idea. Possibly, scientists can remove the idea of “dark energy” and “dark matter” for which there appears to be no answer except for mathematical plugs.

Thank you ED, RYAN and JOHNX! It is always nice to hear that people worldwide are following the equation! There is more reason than ever to believe that someone is "on to something."

## Monday, September 23, 2013

### It's Angela

Congratulations to German Chancellor Angela Merkel upon winning her reelection. Raised in East Germany, she was educated as a physicist. Unfortunately a jobs in Physics are hard to get, so Angela must follow another career.

## Wednesday, July 31, 2013

### Galileo

Today July 31 the restored Galileo shuttlecraft from STAR TREK was unveiled at Space Center Houston. The full-scale mockup was built during the first season of the Classic Trek series. It passed through many owners before finally being fuloly restored. For more info see my Wikipedia article Shuttlecraft (Star Trek). Galileo Galilei believed in the Copernican model, that Earth travelled around the Sun. Ancient astronomers believed that Earth was centre of the Universe, just as today they insist that the speed of light is constant. After all, the Moon travels around the Earth. Galileo's telescope discovered moons of Jupiter, showing that objects could orbit something other than Earth. So-called scholars refused to look in the telescope, unwilling to upset their world view. Galileo suffered from persecution, trial and house arrest. Today he is honored as one of the great scientists of all time, and by having a Star Trek Shuttlecraft named for him. Galileo also was interested in light. At the time scholars disagreed whether light travelled instantaneously or had a finite speed. Galileo suggested placing lanterns on distant hilltops to time light's passage. Unfortunately, accurate enough clocks did not exist. Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's moons did lead to the first measurement of the speed of light. In 1676 Ole Roemer used an anomaly in observations of the moons to measure the speed of light. Roemer even predicted that one moon would appear late, and observations matched his prediction perfectly. Even Giovanni Cassini, Roemer's boss, didn't believe that light had a finite speed. Roemer's result was not generally accepted for 50 years. Today we have explored the distant hilltop of the Moon. Ancient astronomers insist that the speed of light is fixed, like the Earth. The Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment (LLRE) left behind by Apollo astronauts allows accurate measurements of the Moon's distance. Study of LLRE data shows a huge anomaly in measurements of lunar orbital evolution, indicating that the speed of light is slowing over time. See the paper Calculation of Lunar Orbit Anomaly. Today a Starfleet crewmember still strives to match the example of Galileo.

## Thursday, July 25, 2013

### Happy Birthday Rosalind Franklin!

Today July 25 is the 93rd birthday of biophysicist Rosalind Franklin. Along with James Watson and Frances Crick, she did the hard work which led to discovery of the DNA double helix. In 1953 Watson and Crick published their groundbreaking paper on DNA, which barely mentioned Franklin in a footnote. This discovery changed the world we live in. Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. Unfortunately for the world, Rosalind Franklin passed away in 1958. Today the Google home page has been nice enough to remember Rosalind.

## Tuesday, July 02, 2013

### Pluto Moons

The fourth and fifth known moons of Pluto, discovered in 2011 and 2012, have been officially named Kerberos and Styx by the International Astronomical Union. Kerberos or Cerberus was the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the Underworld. Styx was the river across which the Underworld was found. Pluto's first moon, Charon, was named for the boatman who ferried souls across the Styx. Pluto may not be a planet, but it can still have moons. The New Horizons spacecraft is expected to encounter Pluto in 2015, in time for the IAU meeting in Honolulu.

## Thursday, April 11, 2013

### REAL Space

Americans, Democratic and Republican, Conservative or Liberal, disagree on many things. However, just as in the 1960's, there is bipartisan support for going to the Moon. A group of Congress members has introduced the Reassert American Leadership or REAL Space Act. This legislation would direct NASA to return humans to the Moon. The bill's sponsors include Sheila Jackson Lee (Democrat of Texas), Bill Posey (Republican of Florida) and Pete Olson (Republican of Texas). A National Research Council Report from 2012 found little support for the administration's stated goal of an asteroid either within NASA or among international partners. In contrast, the Moon mission has wide and bipartisan support.

## Sunday, April 07, 2013

### Getting Some Asteroid

NASA has been considering plans to capture an asteroid in Space. NASA to Lasso an Asteroid and Bring It Closer . Previous plans have suggested that astronauts using Orion make the multimillion mile journey to visit a Near Earth Object. This would be a journey of many months, far longer than any previous human space flight. Plans under study suggest that an automated spacecraft capture a small asteroid and bring it closer to Earth, possibly to the Earth-Moon L2 point. If that could be done by 2021, it would coincide with the first crewed flight of Orion atop the Space Launch System. Meeting up with a small asteroid would be an innovative and economical mission.

## Sunday, February 24, 2013

### David S. McKay 1936-2013

On February 19, 2013 David S. McKay passed away after a long illness. He was. PhD student at Rice University in 1961 when President Kennedy came to Rice for his speech committing the US to land on the Moon. He worked for NASA since 1965. On field trips from Texas to Hawaii, he trained Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in geology. Dr. McKay was the only geologist present in Mission Control when Armstrong and Aldrin stepped on the Moon. Dave McKay is best known today for his team's 1996 paper finding signs of life in Martian Antarctic meteorite ALH84001. The meteor was formed 3.5 billion years ago before being ejected from Mars and eventually landing in Antarctica. A Johnson Space Center geologist named Robbie Score found the meteorite on an Antarctic expedition in 1984. The McKay group's findings began the modern science of Astrobiology. Old models of the Sun predicted that 3.5 billion years ago Earth and Mars were too cold to support life. The Sun converts fuel to energy according to E=mc^2. Because the speed of light was faster at that time, solar luminosity was almost exactly today's value, allowing life to have evolved on Earth and Mars. Indications of Martian life 3.5 billion years old are another sign that the speed of light has slowed. I had the honor or working with Dave McKay from 2008 until near the end. Dave's generosity and experience with lunar samples was deeply appreciated. Manu woman scientist's careers were aided by Dave. Today February 24 I attended his funeral in Friendswood, Texas. His loss is deeply felt by his family and colleagues.

## Wednesday, October 17, 2012

### AAS Cancelled

The American Astronautical Society (AAS) National Conference scheduled for November 28-29 in Pasadena, California has been cancelled. The event draws a lot of NASA speakers and scientists. Organizers blamed the lack of NASA participation due to travel budget restrictions. From Spaceref: American Astronautical Society cancels 2012 National Conference The agency that once sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon today can't send someone to Pasadena. Perhaps they can buy rides from the Russians, or wait several years until private companies can fly to Pasadena. This is disorganization of the highest order.

## Tuesday, October 09, 2012

### Nobel Prize Devalued

As the science world awaits announcement of this year's Nobel Prizes, we recall that this year's prize amount is smaller. The Swedish foundation that awards the Nobel Prize is having financial issues: For Nobel Winners a Smaller Cash Prize On 2011 the Physics prize went to 3 scientists who in 1998 claimed to have discovered an accelerating universe. They split 1.4 million dollars 3 ways, with Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt getting only 350,000 each. That is not enough to buy a house in Maryland. All three men were part of large collaborations, of which the dozens of other collaborators get nothing. Starting this year the total prize will be only about 1.2 million. Only two women have ever won the Physics prize, in 1903 and 1963. If the Nobel committee waits past 2023 they will have broken the record. However, by then the world's economy may have improved enough to restore the Prize at least to its old value. The 2011 Prize was highly unusual in that it was given to the appearance of acceleration. There are many possible explanations that do not involve acceleration, from giant cosmic voids to (this writer's hypothesis) the speed of light slowing down. The 3 Nobel winners are at a loss to explain why they found indications of acceleration. Calculation of Lunar Orbit Anomaly GM=tc^3 predicts that light is slowing down. A child could figure it out.

## Sunday, October 07, 2012

Most scientific papers are lucky to reach a few dozen readers. This article has just passed 1000 free downloads: Calculation of Lunar Orbit Anomaly As a comparison, the novel "Gabriel's Inferno" had 4000 free downloads from twilighted.net before moving to Omnific and selling 165,000 copies. Published evidence that light slows down is going to be huge.

## Saturday, September 29, 2012

### Peer-Reviewed Paper

These have been a quiet few months, but this author has quietly published a peer-reviewed paper with evidence that light is slowing down today. The evidence comes from Apollo missions to the Moon: Calculation of Lunar Orbit Anomaly Someone has both predicted how much c is slowing, and used the Moon to successfully test the prediction. This major, major discovery is the most-viewed paper of the new journal Planetary Science. Read and access it often! The paper has raised such a ruckus that the journal editor is threatening to censor it out. Please read it today, for today could be your last chance!

## Sunday, August 05, 2012

### Escape from Syria

We anxiously await news from the Curiosity Rover approaching Mars. Syria’s first man in space, Mohammad Ahmad Faris, has travelled fr his homeland to Turkey to join the anti-Assad opposition.

## Wednesday, June 13, 2012

While Spacex is justly celebrating the Dragon docking with ISS, this month China plans a docking to their Space station with a crew, including one woman. This will be China's fourth human mission in Space, and the second with a 3-person crew. One crewmember will remain in the orbital module while two occupy the Space station. The Chinese Space program openly advertises their intention to land people on the Moon by 2024. Does the US even care?

## Sunday, June 10, 2012

### Shuttlebration

The passing of an era: Friday June 1 the mockup Shuttle Explorer, which had previously been displayed at Kennedy Space Center, arrived by barge to be displayed at Space Center Houston. From the patio at Outrigger's Grill and Bar I photographed Explorer passing under the Kemah bridge into Clear Lake. Explorer's destination was the Clear Lake dock South of Johnson Space Center, which once saw Saturn V stages arrive. Thousands of people lined Clear Lake to see Explorer arrive. Friday afternoon became a Shuttlebration for the arriving mockup. Sunday June 3 Explorer travelled by road past the JSC main gate to its final home at Space Center Houston. That's JSC Building 4 in the background. Houston was quite disappointed not to receive a flying Shuttle for display. The greater disappointment is that they are being retired with millions of useful miles left in them.

## Tuesday, May 29, 2012

### Golden Gate

May 29, 2012 is 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge opening. Until the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in 1964, Golden Gate was the world's longest span at 1280 meters. From anchorage to anchorage the Bridge is 1970 meters, nearly two kilometers long. On Saturday another wonder, the Battleship USS Iowa sailed beneath the Golden Gate on her last voyage. Iowa will be on permanent exhibit in San Pedro, California. Seeing this bridge and battleship together, we can believe that humans can built giant starships.

## Monday, May 28, 2012

### A Dark Future

Happy Memorial Day! Last Tuesday's New York Times lamented on the sad state of Physics funding. Despite Physicists' being awarded the title of astronomer along with a Nobel Prize, there is zero interest in funding for "dark" energy. American Physics Dreams Deferred "Dark energy is, according to Dr. [Frank] Wilczek, the most mysterious fact in all of physical science, the fact with the greatest potential to rock the foundations." The 8 billion dollar James Webb Space Telescope will be consuming NASA's astrophysics budget until its launch, hopefully in 2018. A proposed Space mission to find more DE, once called SNAP or JDEM, has been postponed at least until 2025. The unfunded mission, now called WFIRST, would cost at least 1.6 billion. JWST was also once projected to cost less than 1 billion. Hypothesis of "dark" energy has led Physics nowhere. Even if a WFIRST mission were flown, it would not return a single particle of DE, only an "equation of state" that would be subject to systematic error. If DE existed it would have no conceivable use, it would be too diffuse in Space to power a flashlight. The answer is not in darkness but in light. Observations of an "acclerating" Universe are signs that the speed of light has been slowing down. GM=tc^3, a child could figure it out.

## Wednesday, May 23, 2012

### Liberty

3 minute, 48 second video from ATK of the Liberty booster, currently under development. Liberty is outwardly similar to the cancelled Ares 1, based on the 5-segment solid rocket booster developed for the Constellation program. An existing Ariane V upper stage eliminates the need for developing a new engine and upper stage. The crew capsule is based upon a lightweight composite version of Orion that was developed for NASA. (The heavy metal Orion design that was accepted had serious weight issues.) By using these components, ATK has been able to develop this system without any extra government investment, using an unfunded Space Act agreement with NASA. Liberty is true Private Space!

## Tuesday, May 22, 2012

### Dragon and Liberty

This morning, after many delays, SpaceX's Falcon 9 lifted off for a rendezvous with the International Space Station. As this blog reported back in February '009, SpaceX Aims High, this docking was originally planned for May-November 2010. The 18-24 month delay is partially due to NASA and Russia's stringent requirements for docking with ISS. SpaceX claims that they can turn Falcon 9/Dragon into a human-rated system in 3 years. We wish them Godspeed and a successful flight, but rocket science is full of delays. Meanwhile, with less of a media spotlight, ATK is forging ahead with their Liberty booster. Outwardly similar to the cancelled Ares I, Liberty has for a first stage the 5-segment solid rocket booster developed for Ares I and the more recent Space Launch System. The crew capsule will be built from modern composite materials, based on an all-composite design built and rejected for Orion. Unlike SpaceX, ATK is building a complete system without any more government funding. They are using an unfunded Space Act agreement, and funds already spent by NASA for Ares I. ATK claims that this system could be flying crew into orbit by 2015, potentially beating SpaceX. We also wish them and the other competitors every success.

## Wednesday, April 18, 2012

### Mathematicians Confirm Life on Mars

The 1976 Viking mission to Mars, sent to seek signs of life, may have found it. Viking's Labelled Release Experiment fed a mix of nutrients to Martian soil, cooked it, and measured the resulting gases for carbon dioxide or other products of biological action. To everyone's surprise, the soil yielded far more products than expected. Principal Investigator Gilbert Levin wanted to immediately announce the discovery of life on Mars, but was delayed by NASA bureaucracy. Before an announcement was made, other scientists popped up to claim that the results were due to non-biological chemistry. No scientist has ever found a way to reproduce these results without life. After 35 years Gil Levin continues to claim that his experiment found life on Mars.

A new study uses mathematical techniques to examine the Viking data. The study examines the raw data for signs of complexity, an indicator of life forms. Chemical processes are not complex; life forms are. The study appears to indicate that the labelled release results were produced by life. The paper, with Gilbert Levin as co-author, appears in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences:

Compexity Analysis of the Viking Labelled Release Experiments

This writer had the privilege of working with the scientists who in 1996 founds signs of fossil life on Martian meteorite ALH84001. That evidence has also been disputed. The argument over life on Mars may not be settled until scientists have a sample of Martian soil beneath their microscope. In today's funding climate, Mars has a low priority. While NASA was promised the basic research funding to go beyond Earth, planetary science budgets are being slashed. A complicated sample return mission is in jeopardy without US participation. Another way would be to send a scientist to Mars with a microscope. We all hope that the argument is settled someday.

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## Sunday, April 15, 2012

### The Enterprise That Almost Was

In 1992 a FULL SCALE Starship Enterprise was planned for Fremont Street in Las Vegas. The mammoth 150 million dollar project would have been the Wienie (in Disneyspeak) drawing crowds to the undervisited "old" end of Vegas. Analysts calculated that, in addition to admission fees, the Enterprise would have paid for itself by increasing Vegas tourism. The NCC-1701A design measures 1000 feet long, longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall. This would have been 8th Wonder of the world, a tourism symbol along with Sydney's Opera House and the Disney castles. The project was approved by everyone from investors to Las Vegas' Mayor, but was stopped by a single veto from the old man who happened to be CEO of Paramount.

World-renowned attraction creator Gary Goddard recently talked about the Enterprise in his company's blog. Goddard quotes Albert Einstein: "Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds".

The Star Trek Attraction That Almost Came to Life

In one fell swoop Paramount lost countless milllions in licensing dollars, for there was no financial risk to the studio. Las Vegas eventually built the Fremont Street Experience, which revitalized that end of the Strip but had none of the Enterprise's drawing power. Some of the idea lived on in The Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton1998-2008. We all hope to look up and see giant Starships someday. Hats off to the real USS Enterprise CVN-65, now on her final deployment!

The Star Trek Experience closing in 2008.

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## Wednesday, April 11, 2012

### Evolution of the Moon

2 minute 40 second video of the Moon's history. According to the most popular theory, the Moon was created when a Mars-sized planet struck the Earth. The impactor was vaporised, and Earth's mantle was blown off into Space. The pieces of mantle were large enough to coalesce in Earth orbit until they formed the Moon. The Giant Impactor theory became popular after Apollo Moon samples were found to resemble parts of Earth's mantle.

The Moon first coalesced less 1/4 its present distance from Earth. Since that time 4.5 billion years ago the Moon has been slowly drifting away. This is interpreted as tidal forces transferring angular momentum from Earth's rotation to the Moon. Apollo's Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment measured this distance increasing at 3.82 cm/yr, anomalously high. If the Moon were today gaining angular momentum at that rate, it would have been in the same place as Earth only 1.5 billion years ago.

If the speed of light were slowly decreasing, time for light to return from the Moon would increase each year, making the Moon appear to recede faster as seen by LLRE. Change in the speed of light, predicted by the simple expression GM=tc^3, precisely accounts for the lunar anomaly. This is striking evidence that the speed of light is slowing today.

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## Monday, April 09, 2012

### "Dark Energy" Goes Begging

At the American Physical Society (APS) April meeting in Atlanta, physicist Saul Perlmutter again argued for more dollars to find hypothetical "dark energy". In 2011 Saul, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess split the Nobel Prize for claiming to discover DE. Unsatisfied with a measly 1.4 million dollar prize, they want 1000 times more money for a Space mission--once called SNAP, later JDEM, now WFIRST. Because of delays to the James Webb Space Telescope, WFIRST or anything like it will not fly until 2025 if ever. Nobel Prize or not, there is very little public support for "dark energy".

A supernova discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope on January 25, 2012 has been named by Adam Riess and his team at Space Telescope Science Institute for Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. This has led many to complain that only the International Astronomical Union can name an astronomical object. Keith Cowing of NASAWATCH called it Shameless Kissing Up to Congress at STSci. Nobel holder Adam Riess chose to defend himself in comments on Keith's blog post, with a supporting comment from Tod Lauer. Naming an exploding star for a sitting US Senator does seem like a desperate bid to curry a woman's favor.

The claim of "dark energy" rests on one main line of evidence, redshifts of Type Ia supernovae. Redshifts of distant objects increase linearly with distance, indicating expansion of the Universe. supernova redshifts appear to increase non-linearly, leading to speculation about acceleration and "dark" energies. A slowing speed of light, predicted by the simple equation GM=tc^3, fits the supernova redshifts precisely. The answer to the DE mystery lies not in darkness, but in light. If Nobel Prize winners are smart, why haven't they figured this out?

UPDATE: In the past day this story and outrage has spread to websites like the Daily Caller:

A New Way To Bribe Congress

"NASA’s pathetic move to name the Hubble data archive after the Senator (Mikulski) who controls their appropriations."

Also the conservative National Review:

Shameless Politicians Continued

One quarter of a Nobel Prize is still a great honor, one that no woman has received since 1963. Let us hope it is not sullied.

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## Monday, March 19, 2012

### Model of the Universe

I have started a new project on Kickstarter, to spread models of the Universe. You've seen globes and models of the Moon, planets and solar system. For the cost of a latte, you will have a downloadable model of the entire Universe sitting on your desktop! The model also includes the stars and constellations of the hemisphere. Any proceeds will go toward publication costs and registration at an international conference I'm invited to. Check it out and tell all your friends!

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## Tuesday, March 13, 2012

### Happy 3.14!

Albert Einstein's birthday is easy for mathematicians to remember, March 14 or 3.14! The Einstein-de Sitter Universe has a "critical" density of (6 $\pi$G t^2)^(-1), a density that keeps it from collapsing or expanding without bounds. Scientists long wondered why the density is exactly this, invoking strange ideas like "inflation" to explain it.

A cosmology where GM=tc^3 actually predicts that the "critical" density is in fact the stable density. If the Universe were less than this density, matter would be created via pair production until this density were reached. For a 4-dimensional spherical Universe of mass M, initial density is just (2 $\pi$^2 G t^2)^(-1). Difference between initial and final density is the difference between 3 and $\pi$ or 4.507034%. The density of baryonic matter that has been measured by the WMAP spacecraft may be precisely predicted from pure math.

Ancient Greek mathematicians first thought that the ratio between a circle's circumference and diameter was exactly 3, then later wondered why it should be an irrational number like 3.14. Fortunately $\pi$ does not equal 3, or the matter that we are made of would not exist!

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## Monday, February 27, 2012

### Trip to the Moon

Saturday night the Aero theatre in Santa Monica was host to a sold-out screening, the restored Melies TRIP TO THE MOON in colour! It was accompanied by the documentary THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE about Melies' 1902 film and it's recent restoration. After a decayed colour print was discovered, it took 10 years tp painstakingly restore it. Interest in George Melies has increased with Martin Scorcese's HUGO. Reaching the Moon has been an ever-present fantasy of humans, achieved only briefly in 1969-71. The Moon is a universal goal--what sort of fools would deny it?

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## Sunday, February 19, 2012

### 50 Years...

February 20, 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He was preceded by Russian Yuri Gagarin. 50 years later the US again lacks the ability to put woman or man into Space. In the last 3 years we have seen national leadership that cares little for Space. All things, even the speed of light, change with time. When will this change?