AGU's Expanding Universe
The American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco has attracted a record 15,000 scientists from all over the world. The Gauge Theory and Representation Theory conference in Princeton drew barely 100, and only for Ed Witten's talk. AGU has outgrown Moscone Center West and occupied the much larger Moscone South. Those huge concrete arches supporting the roof form catenaries, like an inverted Golden Gate Bridge. Subjects at AGU range from Earth's interior to climate to the Solar System. Every year more woman scientists and students show up, for these fields have far more opportunities. There is far more here than 10 people could possibly see.
Monday morning in Moscone South Room 102 Carolyn Porco began a series of talks on Saturn moons. Jennifer Meyer made the surprise assertion that Enceladus' 6 GW of heat can not be accounted for by tidal forces. The conventional estimate from tidal heating is only 0.12 GW. The old hypothesis or "radioactive decay" does not work for these icy moons. In desperation some researchers are conjecturing a meteorite strike at the South Pole, a true deus ex machina. Enceladus' core is an excellent place to consider a Black Hole.
Monday evening Moscone West Room 3005 was standing-room only for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Though Berkeley is just a subway ride away, not a single person from SNAP or Supernova Cosmology Project showed up at AGU. As the only astrophysicist in the room, I enjoyed a one-on-one talk with NASA Associate Administrator Alan Stern. He answered all my questions:
1) The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is permanently grounded for lack of Shuttle flights.
2) Though JWST is eating up the astrophysics budget, room was found to launch the NUSTAR Black Hole Probe in 2011.
3) Since people may not walk on Mars until after 2030, a Mars sample return mission is on the table.
4) NASA doesn't want Principal Investigators with no spacecraft experience (sorry, Saul).
5) A new Discovery mission was announced, GRAIL.
This huge building is crowded because people are very concerned about Earth and its problems. Many fine scientists like Kea are concerned about Earth. Even if a "dark energy" existed, it would have no conceivable use. The speed of light affects everything including the climate.
posted by L. Riofrio at 6:11 PM
6 Comments:
This is a Press Release not a comment on this story. However, this story concerning the 1000’s of people that attended your Gauge conference gives me much cause for hope. Each of those people would be people who would be able to understand the new Dominium hypothesis.
Judging from your very informative and science-driven website you are individuals that I need to contact. I am individual who has just transcribed a new scientific model/hypothesis. The model is the result of the repercussions sprouting from one theoretical question: What if matter and antimatter gravitationally repel? Using formal deductive principles, from that one introduced axiom comes prediction and explanation for almost all of the unexplainable "anomalous" phenomena of the observable Universe: the driver of the solar wind, a flat event horizon, the uniform mass distribution, supermassive central galactic black-holes (with an explanation for why these giants stopped growing when they did), identification of the nature of "dark matter," and much more.
Sound too good to be true? Maybe it is. The most ominous of all of this new models implications is that mini black-holes are expected to be stable. This is of acute concern because there is currently a world-wide race between laboratories (LHC, Brookhaven, and others) to be the first to "successfully" create, document, and study synthetic black-hole material. Their success could therefore mean our doom.
Please check out this new model (you'd probably want the hardcover because it contains twice the analysis of the kindle-book version). Its title is “The Dominium” and author is Hasanuddin, and it is available through online bookstores. I hope that you might be able to find a fault with either the scientific foundations used or the logical progression employed. If you can find such a fault, then there is not reason for concern with current activities under way in Switzerland. If, however, you can find no such fault... please help get the word out. Time is limited
Sincerely,
Hasanuddin
Louise, of course I'm aware of your solution to the sun temperature problem. Is there anything that the same thing would tell you about Mars? I mean what with Mars having once had oceans of water?
Comment about 6 GW heating of Enceladus.
For few years ago I learned that the spectrum of radiation from a galaxy with distance of 12 billion ly is essentially the same as that from Sun now (see this. This conflicts with the standard theory of element formation by nuclear fusion inside Sun predicting that the abundances of heavier elements gradually grow. To my opinion the conflict should raise the blood pressure of any cosmologist taking his/her job seriously.
The discovery suggests that either the mass distribution of stars is time independent or that dominating part of elements heavier than Li is produced by cold fusion in interstellar gas and dust so that steady state is approached in a short time scale.
TGD based new nuclear physics (large hbar, nuclear strings, long possibly charged color bonds with quark and antiquark at ends...) provides a common explanation for cold fusion and many other anomalies (see this). It solves the Li problem of the standard cosmology and allows the synthesis of elements heavier than Li to occur dominantly by cold nuclear reactions in interstellar space by simple basic mechanisms: fusion of Li strings to longer with Z multiple of 3 and their decay by ^4He emission induced by collisions of these nuclei.
The production of heat in cold fusions in Enceladus might also relate to 6 GW heating but this is of course just an free association (they tend to come in morning;-).
By the way, cold fusion is now becoming respected science since facts have refused to not go away. The effects having only reasonable explanation in terms of biofusion have been reported already at sixties. Kervran has written nice books about biological transmutations [1,2] and it was fantastic to work out TGD variants of his mechanisms with the only possible addition being the replacement of direct fusion or fission with process induced by a collision with dark Li.
I just wonder: is it really true that nuclear physicist managed to remain ignorant about the findings of Kervran and others or were they just so arrogant as to dismiss them because they had this what they call "theory of nuclear forces" (strong coupling and no hope that perturbation theory converges, etc...)
[1] C. L. Kervran (1970), "Biological transmutations", Beekman Publishers Inc. (first edition 1966).
[2] C. L. Kervran (1972),"Biological transmutations, and their applications in chemistry, physics, biology, ecology, medicine, nutrition, agriculture, geology", Swan House Publishing Co.
For carl: The old hypothesis speculated that carbonh dioxide somehiow custom-heated the early Earth for life to evolve. Since there is evidence that Mars once had liquid water, it is unlikely that CO2 would custom-heat both planets for us. Something that affects both planets (the Sun) was warmer.
Here is a little help for the Earth and a LOT of help for space exploration:
Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
It has been funded:
Bussard Fusion Reactor Funded
The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and abundant Boron 11 which does not.
The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.
If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame. A much better investment than CO2 sequestration.
BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.
The Japanese and Australians also have programs.
If you want to get deeper into the technology visit:
IEC Fusion Technology blog
Start with the sidebar which has links to tutorials and other stuff.
===
I believe Congress gutted the Physics budget to hold the money in reserve for this project if the current experiments are successful. Just a guess though.
Great to hear that Bussard's work is being funded. I've been following it intermittently since reading about the Bussard Ramjet. The big advances in physics seem to happen out of the spotlight.
Post a Comment
<< Home