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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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:
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.
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".
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.
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.
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:
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!
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!
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?
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?
With the retirement of the Shuttles, NASA layoffs and a general lack of direction, it has been easy to believe that Washington does not care for spaceflight. Thanks to the Florida primary, for the last week Space has been an issue in the US. Newt Gingrich, with the audacity of hope, called for a Moonbase by the year 2021. Last week, Space an Issue For 2012? this blog suggested that Mitt Romney come up with a turnaround strategy. Along with a changing speed of light, this prediction has come true.
Friday a letter supporting Romney appeared signed by eight Space notables. These included Mike Griffin, former NASA administrator and architect of the Constellation Program. The list also included Eric Andersen, CEO of Space Adventures, astronauts Gene Cernan and Bob Crippen. In October 2010 Cernan, Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell signed their own letter severely criticizing what has happened to NASA. Cernan has also called upon NASA administrator Charlie Bolden to resign.
"The U.S. space program is a strategic national asset, which makes critical contributions to our scientific knowledge, technological innovation, economic competitiveness, national security, and international leadership. We have watched with dismay as President Obama dismantled the structure that was guiding both the government and commercial space sectors, while providing no purpose or vision or mission. This failure of leadership has thrust the space program into disarray and triggered a dangerous erosion of our technical workforce and capabilities. In short, we have a space program unworthy of a great nation."
Newt Gingrich's call for a Moonbase ignited a debate about Space. The quick response, with experts on board, shows Mitt Romney's organizational skills. Unlike Gingrich, Romney has not yet offered a specific goal for Space. The competitiveness of this race has forced the Space issue into the open. Whatever the results of tomorrow's primary, whoever ends up in the White House, he will have a promise to keep.
Tabitha Clegg, the eccentric witness in Agatha Christie's WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, playing onstage in Houston this weekend. More about expert witnesses coming soon!
On July 20, 1969 humanity established a base on the Moon. Achieving that goal accelerated human science, from smaller microprocessors to evidence for a changing speed of light. Thousands were inspired to study math and science. Not by coincidence, human achievement flowered in the time of the Moon landings. Tranqulity Base was soon evacuated, but could be established again. A permanent base on the Moon is simply a matter of will.
Continuing the election story, a gauntlet has been laid. Tuesday in Florida, candidate Newt Gingrich vowed to start a base on the Moon by the end of his second term, the year 2021. Plans for the Moon have been seduced and abandoned for the past 40 years. Is a Moon settlement in that time frame possible? The Moon is achievable by more than one path.
The Orion Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle is being developed by Lockheed Martin. Officially Orion's mission is crew return from low Earth orbit. A first unmanned flight has been scheduled for early 2014 atop a Delta IV booster. That flight will go to an altitude of 8000 km, exposing Orion to the radiation environment of deep Space. The reentry will be at speeds approaching that of lunar return. In today's difficult budget environment Lockheed engineers are designing Orion to go beyond.
The Space Launch System is being designed at Marshall Space Flight Center. SLS will initially be based on Shuttle-derived hardware--an 8.3 meter diameter first stage, RS-25 engines, and 5-segment solid rocket boosters. The big booster will have an initial payload to orbit of 70 metric tons. The first flight of SLS is scheduled for 2017, carrying an unmanned Orion toward the Moon.
Presently the year 2021 is envisioned with a crewed flight of Orion boosted atop SLS. The destination has not been chosen, but it could easily be an Apollo 8-type flight around the Moon. Other destinations will be possible, such as a Lagrange point or an asteroid.
If plans are started early enough, following flights could carry a Lunar Surface Module. Lunar landings would require 2 SLS launches, one for Orion and a second launch for the Lunar Module. If the lunar module is ready, the landing could occur as early as 2022. This seems early, but Apollo 11 followed Apollo 8 by only 7 months. This landing, the first step in a lunar base, would occur within a few months of Mr. Newt's goal.
Gingrich also spoke about prizes for private Space companies, akin to the Orteig Prize won by Charles Lindbergh. The SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster will be capable of placing 53 tons in low Earth orbit. Their Dragon capsule has an escape system that is also adaptable to planetary landings. With modifications Dragon could land a crew on the Moon. With the right incentive, perhaps SpaceX could reach the Moon faster and cheaper than NASA.
A lunar landing could also occur with international partners. The head of Russia's Roskosmos recently spoke about cooperating with Americans on the Moon. The Space Station was originally a West-only project, then nearly abandoned by the Clinton administration before being reimagined as a partnership with Russia. Perhaps international partners could contribute a Lunar Module to dock with Orion.
There are numerous paths to a lunar base. Orion and SLS could be combined with a new Lunar Module. The SpaceX Faldon Heavy and Dragon might be capable of a lunar landing. International partners could be involved. Any of these combinations could land the first elements of a lunar base by 2021. All that is required, all that has been required for 40 years, is the will. Perhaps another President will set a goal of lunar settlement.
During 2000, Americans learned that a presidential election can hinge on a few votes in the "Swing State" of Florida. The swing votes are concentrated in the Interstate 4 corridor, running from Tampa to Kennedy Space Center. President Bush paid little attention to Space until 2003. In the wake of Columbia, Bush enacted the Vision for Space Exploration. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin responded with the Constellation program.
Candidate Barack Obama in late 2007 proposed paying for an expanded education program by delaying Constellation 5 years, effectively killing it. When Florida became a battleground in the presidential primaries, he reversed himself and promised to support Constellation. (Hillary Clinton decisively won the Florida primary, but due to a rules fight Florida delegates were stripped of half their votes). In the general election, Obama won Florida and the presidency.
Once in office, President Obama did more than delay Constellation, he cancelled it. Thousands of NASA employees, many living in the I-4 corridor, have been laid off. The man-caused depression affects thousands more, from the restaurants where NASA workers eat to the salons that do our hair. The budget for education, in contrast, has soared dramatically.
Space was not an issue in the 2012 election, until last week. The current White House occupant never meets with NASA's Administrator. Mitt Romney had been expected to easily win South Carolina and Florida, sealing the Republican nomination. Because of Newt Gingrich's surprise win in South Carolina, the battle to challenge Obama will extend to the January 31 Florida primary and probably beyond. Again those votes in the Space Coast and I-4 corridor will be critical.
Newt Gingrich has promised to give a "visionary" speech on Space this week. Gingrich has a longstanding interest in Space, and even once wrote a book about Space development. If the nomination battle extends to Texas, Space could even be an issue in Houston. Romney, if he wants to remain in the game, would be well-advised to come up with a turnaround strategy involving Space. Thanks to South Carolina, Space could become a critical issue in choosing the next US President.
During the 2009 protests in Iran, the world watched as the young woman Neda Soltani was shot and bled to death on the street. Neda was a symbol of thousands who were murdered, beaten or imprisoned by this terrible regime. Despite the terrible actions of the regime, the world's leaders did nothing.
Gelareh Bagherzadeh, 30, was a scientist and molecular biology student at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She was a key member of SabzHouston, a group peacefully protesting for women's rights and freedom in her native Iran. In interviews Gelareh was reticent about giving her full name, in fear of retribution. Late Sunday night she was silenced by a single bullet to the head near her home in Southwest Houston.
The Houston police have no clues in the murder. The assassin, who followed or laid in wait for her, has escaped without a trace. This terrible act of violence against a women's rights advocate is suspiciously like an international "hit". (Travelling to another country to murder someone is called war.) Will there ever be justice for Neda or Gelareh?
Happy Martin Luther King Day in the US! In researching the life of Dr. King, I was surprised to learn he was a Republican. During the 1960's most of the opposition to civil rights came from the other party. This post was originally published in 2010:
Another Nobel Prize Winner: This Sunday, October 16, Washington's Martin Luther King Memorial will be dedicated. The ceremony would have happened earlier, but the surprise earthquake in September caused postponement. Even the US Eastern seaboard is vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis. Because of the delay, we visitors to DC have been able to preview the monument. Behind a 30-foot King statue is a marble wall filled with his quotes. One of King's bits of wisdom could apply to physicists puzzling about "dark energies." "Darkness can not drive out darkness, only light can do that."
The answer to apparent acceleration of the universe has not been found in hypothetical "dark" energies. Such speculations are rejected by the public and will harm the reputation of physicists. Redshifts of distant objects are roughly proportional to recession velocity divided by the speed of light, v/c. The non-linear redshifts of Type Ia supernovae, which just won its discoverers their own Nobel, is more plausibly due not to v accelerating, but to c slowing down. The answer to the mystery is not in the dark, but in light.
In 2009 the Nobel Peace Prize committee inexplicably rewarded a man with no record of peace, leading to much ridicule. This year's award goes to Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee from Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman from Yemen. All three women have faced and continue to face formidable opposition. Karman, the first Arab woman to win the Prize, has been detained and harassed by mobs with clubs. Women who face such challenges deserve the Nobel Prize.
Happy New Year! In October, The Whole Pie, this blog recounted the Nobel Prize-winning discovery by Dr. Daniel Schechtman of quasicrystals. Unlike most crystalline structures, quasicrystals form mathematical patterns that do not repeat. Dr. Schechtman discovered quasicrystals in 1982, waiting 29 years for his prize.
At first noone believed him. Someone handed Schechtman a crystallography book and suggested he reread it. He was asked to leave his research group. It was 2 years before he could get a paper published. Nobel winner Linus Pauling condemned Schechtman's work. He had great difficulty getting other researchers to confirm his results.
The first evidence of extraterrestrial life came from a Martian meteorite. Naturally formed quasicrystals were discovered during 2009 in the Koryak mountains of Russia. No one could explain how they formed. The January 2 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences contains a paper claiming that these quasicrystals arrived on Earth via another meteorite. The paper proposes that naturally occurring quasicrystals formed in deep Space. Evidence for the extraterrestrial origin of a natural quasicrystal
“Our evidence indicates that quasicrystals can form naturally under astrophysical conditions and remain stable over cosmic timescales.”
According to the paper, these quasicrystals formed about 4.5 billion years ago. At one time scientist doubted that quasicrystals existed at all. Daniel Schechtman faced great opposition to his findings. Discovery in Russia of natural quasicrystals was baffling. They may have originated in Space near the dawn of our solar system.
During the week of December 19, the library at Cairo's Institut d'Egypte was set afire. Security forces failed to respond to the fire, though their headquarters were close by. The Institute was founded by Napoleon after his 1798 conquest of Egypt. In the wake of his invasion, Napoleon brought with him many scholars who made discoveries like the Rosetta Stone. The library contained about 200,000 volumes, a priceless resource of Egyptian history.
Carl Sagan's COSMOS recalls the burning of Alexandria's library, the greatest of its time. More than a repository of scrolls, the library was a center of study and scholarship, what we would today call a university. Supposedly it contained a complete history of the ancient world, knowledge now lost. Among those who held the title of Head Librarian were Erastothenes, who in the 3rd century BC calculated Earth's circumference; and Aristarchus, who in the 2nd century BC suggested that Earth was not centre of the universe. Euclid and Archimedes also studied at the library,
In COSMOS we read about Hypatia, the last librarian of Alexandria and a woman famed in her time for mathematics. She was also a philosopher and astronomer. Alexandria's library was burned several times: by Julius Caesar's forces in 48 BC, by the Roman Emperor Aurelian in 270 AD, by the Coptic Pope Theophilus in 391 AD, and by Muslims in 642 AD. Hypatia was horribly murdered by a mob in 415 AD. (Sagan's book takes some liberties with history, linking her death with the burning of the library).
Has humanity advanced in these thousands of years? The historical record shows that burning of books can be a tactic of any philosophy. Today in our computer age we have censors trolling the internet and Arxiv deleting or attacking what does not agree with them. What has not changed is that we must always be vigilant against those who would burn books. Those who would burn books will also burn people.
From ancient times until this month some people will try to burn libraries. Erastothenes' spherical Earth, Aristarchus' cosmology, and the achievements of Hypatia outlived them by thousands of years. Discoveries about nature are truths that can not be censored. If the speed of light slows down or a Black Hole exists nearby, no human censorship can prevent it.
Full-time scientist. Before graduating I learned that the speed of light is slowing down and originated the "GM=tc^3" theory, which explains the dark energy problem and most physicists still can't explain. More recent work seeks Black Holes in some unexpected places, even within Earth. I've been working at NASA in Houston on studies of the Moon, and have an insider's view of the Space program. Actress in film, television and stages from Honolulu to Houston. In spare time I fight off hostile aliens, explore a strange world and unusual forms of life.
