Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong did what no other member of our species had ever done before when he stepped from the ladder of the lunar lander onto the surface of the moon.

This was an outstanding achievement, by any measure, and one that has become emblematic of what we are capable of. I couldn’t possibly do justice to what it must have meant to people at the time – I was just a few months old when this took place – but there are wonderful accounts all over the web, and I’ve been enjoying reading almost all of them. I’m sure I would have had the same emotions on that day if I hadn’t been busy drooling, filling my diaper, and being forced to take a nap.

Along with these initial reactions to the event, I’ve also been reading other accounts of how the directions of people’s lives were driven by the moon landing. These are also fascinating, and I have been particularly interested by scientists who feel that it was this event that helped fuel their interest in science, because my own experience was somewhat different.

Although I had a healthy interest in science (as well as a lot of other subjects) from an early age, I have never felt that the space landings had an effect on it. I was certainly enthralled by the space program, read magazines about it, and the newspapers, and watched anything that was shown on television about it. I thought about being an astronaut, and fantasized about the excitement of traveling to other planets and beyond. Star Trek presumably had a hand in all this. But what grabbed me was the exploration, and the adventure. Not the science.

My current view is that while there may be a reasonable argument for the manned space program on the basis of exploration (and I find the idea exciting myself), it is hard to make a scientific argument for it. I often hear the argument that the space program is nevertheless useful to science because it inspires people to become scientists, or at least to be interested in science. This must be true at some level, but I’ve never found it a compelling argument. Nevertheless, this isn’t the point I’m trying to support with my comments above – clearly many scientists have felt inspired to be scientists by manned space travel. It just happens that I wasn’t one of them.

In any case, having been suitably serious, awed and humbled by the heroic endeavors of NASA, Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins and those who followed them, I thought I’d leave you with something a little lighter. Here’s British transvestite comedian Eddie Izzard’s (NSFW, due to some naughty language) take on how the astronauts could have made the moon landing even more entertaining.

If the world contained more teachers (and certainly more physics teachers) like Alom Shaha, I, for one, would be delighted. Shaha teaches in an inner city school in London, and I’m sure he does an excellent job there. But remarkably, beyond this, he clearly pours all his available free time, wherever overworked teachers find that, into public science education. As far as I can tell he focuses on television, and works very closely with scientists to bring their work to his students, and the general public. And he is wonderfully successful at it.

I feel like I should have known about Shaha for a long time, particularly looking back at some of his earlier projects, such as an early film (which I think I saw, but didn’t know who was behind), three years ago, about the LHC. But he’s on my radar now because I’ve just finished watching his half-hour film Why is Science Important?

The clip I’ve embedded above is just the very beginning of the film – the entire thing can be watched on its website, in HD. It contains interviews with scientists, science educators, science communicators, and others; all giving their personal take on the question posed in the film’s title. The responses are diverse, as are, refreshingly, the participants. But if there is a common theme it isn’t that science can tell us how the universe evolved, or what describes the behavior of protons. Rather it is that science is about how to go about seeking the answers to questions, and how to evaluate the claims of others. This last point is hammered home repeatedly, not least in Shaha’s opening monologue above, where, after walking over a bed of glowing coals, he says

“You’ve just seen me walk across red hot coals, at a temperature of over five hundred degrees Celsius. I could tell you that I’m an expert in an ancient form of meditation that lets me block out pain at will. I could then tell you that you could lead a happier life if you follow my teachings. For a small fee, of course.

Or, I could tell you the truth; that walking on hot coals doesn’t require any kind of magical powers. It’s just the case that the coals are a poor conductor of heat, and I walk so quickly that there’s hardly any time for heat transfer to take place.

Separating truth from fraudulent mumbo-jumbo is just one reason why science is important.”

Projects like this don’t change the world on their own, of course. But as part of a common goal of bringing a passion for science to the public, and allowing them to see that its practitioners and enthusiasts are drawn from all walks of life they play an important role; not only for science, but for our increasingly science-dependent society. It doesn’t hurt that Shaha is young and good-looking, but what shines through is his infectious energy and enthusiasm for science and the important role of skepticism. And that’s what I hope anyone watching this film takes away.

When I was studying for my Ph.D., a fellow grad student and I asked our advisor if he could think of one single characteristic that was common to all of the best scientists he knew. Without too much hesitation, he answered: “Hard work.” That certainly wasn’t the answer we wanted to hear — you mean there isn’t some secret recipe to being brilliant? And of course hard work is not nearly enough to elevate you to the ranks of the world’s great scientists. But now that I have marinated for some time in the juices of experience myself, I see the truth of what he was getting at; there are a lot of smart people out there, so it makes sense that what elevates a few of them above their peers is an extraordinary focus on their work and a great amount of simple effort.

So it should come as no surprise that Isaac Newton, the greatest physicist of all time, was a relentless worker. In his days at Cambridge, when he focused on the workings of the natural world, he would spend as little time as possible on anything that drew him away from the researches in his rooms. Over the couple of years he was writing the Principia Mathematica, he took things to extremes, going for extended periods without food or sleep. (He also, apparently, died a virgin. Extremes come in many guises.)

Most contemporary physicists have heard that Newton eventually left Cambridge and more or less turned his back on scientific research, to take up activities in later life that we associate with varying degrees of disreputability: alchemy, religious studies, taking a bureaucratic position at the Royal Mint, using the Royal Society to attack his scientific rivals. Lots of us shrug and agree that many older scientists do all sorts of crazy things, and don’t wonder too much about the details.

Happily, Tom Levenson (of The Inverse Square, and one of our honored guest bloggers) has provided us with a fascinating peek into a telling episode in Newton’s later life — his career as a criminal investigator. Not really “P.I.”, as Newton was acting in his capacity as a government official, the Warden of the Mint. The story is closer to something from Law and Order or CSI — remarkably close, in fact. In Newton and the Counterfeiter, Levenson tells the tale of how Newton took up what should have been a cushy sinecure, and ended up devoting his extraordinary Newtonian powers to the pursuit and prosecution of one William Chaloner, the counterfeiter of the title. Poor Chaloner, suffice it to say, never knew what hit him.

I should say right up front that this is not a book about physics. Some time back Tom asked me to read some pages from his draft, to make sure the physics was coming out right, but he assured me that physics played a very minor role in the book. That baffled me a bit, because — well, it is Isaac Newton, right? But this is a work of biography and intellectual history, and offers a fascinating “street-level view” of the dawn of the Age of Reason. I can recommend it without hesitation to anyone who likes good stories, which I presume is just about anyone.

The book does begin with some stage-setting about Newton’s scientific work in Cambridge — it is Isaac Newton, right? But it picks up when our protagonist finally wrangles a position in London as Warden of the Mint. Not supposed to be a taxing job; one of the attractions for Newton was that he was going to have plenty of time available for his research. Mostly, at that time, on alchemy and religion — one of the enlightening chapters looks at how Newton actually went about his alchemical work, which is both engrossing and baffling to the modern reader.

History did not cooperate. The 1690’s was a transformative time for the English currency system, including the introduction of paper money, trade imbalances with the Continent, massive debts run up by William III’s wars in France, and an epidemic of counterfeiting and “coin-clipping,” by which people would shave off the edges of silver coins and melt them down to make new ones. In response, the Mint eventually gave in and undertook a comprehensive re-coinage — a program that was on track to become a complete fiasco until Newton stepped in. Remember that he was not simply an abstract theorist (although he was that); Newton was an extraordinarily careful experimenter, and he turned his practical side to the problem of re-coinage, with spectacular results.

But the real fun comes in when Newton takes on Chaloner, one of the most notorious counterfeiters of the day. I don’t want to give away too much, because you really should buy the book. Suffice it to say that where Newton was gifted with an extraordinary intellect and a relentless work ethic, Chaloner was gifted with what we would today call “balls.” No scheme was too audacious to be undertaken, no lie was too grandiose to be told, no collection of co-conspirators was too extensive to be betrayed or turned against each other. Chaloner was a colorful character, whose story would have made entertaining reading no matter what era he was born into. But he made one unforgivable mistake: he attracted the particular ire of Isaac Newton, who turned the full force of his powers to tracking this miscreant down and bringing him to justice. Chaloner’s own gifts notwithstanding, it was not a fair fight.

We tend to look at successful people and imagine that they are defined by their sphere of success. It’s hard for us today to think of Isaac Newton as anything other than a scientist. But he was good at what he did, whether it was piecing together the mysteries of classical mechanics or paying informers to spy on suspected criminals. Gil Grissom would approve — maybe not of all his methods, but certainly of his results.

Way back when I blogged all on my own over at Orange Quark, I wrote a post about the wonderful Camp Quest organization, that provided a welcoming summer camp for the children of atheists, agnostics, secular humnists, etc. I was delighted to hear of such an enterprise, and touched that Len Zanger, the then director of Camp Quest of Michigan, dropped by in the comments section.

I was therefore ecstatic to see that the trend has caught on back in my home country, and that there is now a Camp Quest UK. The web site lays out what it is all about, and it just makes you smile to read it:

Camp Quest’s purpose is to build a strong, healthy community among the young participants aged 8-17. In addition to fun camp activities such as swimming, canoeing, fishing, archery, campfires, stargazing and outdoor sports. Camp Quest’s knowledgeable counsellors and guest volunteers will lead the youth in learning activities that teach them about science, free thought and humanist principals. Activities cover critical thinking, science, history, human rights and ethics. Campers develop and improve their rational thinking skills in fun, hands-on learning activities and programs.

Here’s the Director, Samantha Stein, discussing the event

This first year is sponsored by the Richard Dawkins Foundation, and the theme is Evolution (since this is Darwin year). The associated activities all sound like fun, but I particularly liked this one, reported in the Guardian

On top of cooking, hiking and canoeing, activities for campers include a competition to disprove the existence of the mythical unicorn – with the winner receiving a £10 note on which Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, has signed his name.

Have fun kids!

I’m back from the World Science Festival, which was a rousing success, leaving thousands of smiling attendees chattering excitedly about the mysteries of the universe as they dispersed through the streets of Manhattan. So naturally I want to talk about how it could be improved. Writing about one’s travels can be one of the least compelling arrows in the blogger’s quiver, but it would be great if the science-festival idea caught on more widely, so perhaps there is something to be learned from the experience.

A science festival, one presumes, aims to bring science to a wide audience through a series of events concentrated in space and time. But there are a lot of different approaches we could imagine taking to achieve that goal. Kirsten Sanford insightfully compares the WSF to the San Diego Science Festival — two similar-sounding events that end up having a very different look and feel. The WSF appeals to the cultural and cool, while the SDSF aspires to be a noisy bring-the-family affair. Neither is right or wrong, and in these cases each is appropriate to the venue; but the choices of how to proceed should be made consciously.

Public events for science can be placed in a two-dimensional parameter space, where one axis ranges from “observational” to “participatory,” and the other ranges from “inspiring” to “informative.” Again, none of these reflects a normative judgment; inspiring and informing are both laudable goals, and sometimes the best way to achieve those goals is to have the audience observe a performance, while other times it’s better to have them participate more directly. The point is not to say what’s better or worse, it’s to figure out what is appropriate for the circumstances.

The parts of the WSF I experienced directly — the opening gala, the two events in which I participated, and two events where I sat in the audience — were roughly speaking more observational than participatory, and more inspiring than informative. For the three events I watched, I think that was exactly right, but for the two events I participated in, I think they could have been even better had the balance been shifted. (Which obviously raises the possibility of some sort of bias on my part, left for you to decide.) In other words, I think a slightly more diversified portfolio of approaches could be beneficial to future science festivals.

The opening gala, a science-and-art extravaganza that both set the stage for the festival and celebrated E.O. Wilson’s 80th birthday, was a great example of an event for which the inspiring/observational paradigm worked perfectly. It was a big production, at Lincoln Center, with a rapid-fire series of performances bridging the gap between art and science; it would have been crazy to try to invite audience participation. And inspiration is just what you need to kick off a big festival. Brian Greene, who along with Tracy Day (”the first couple of New York science“) founded the WSF, did a tag-team presentation with violinist Joshua Bell. Brian would talk a bit about string theory or various wonders of the cosmos, while videos from The Elegant Universe played in the background, and then Bell would play some music appropriate to the mood. Very little educational was going on — nobody came out of the performance considerably more knowledgeable about the secrets of string theory than they went in. But it was an artistic success, putting people in the frame of mind to excitedly tackle meatier fare over the next few days.

(more…)

From the Seattle PI:

About 3 p.m. Sunday, Bellevue firefighters were called to the 17100 block of Northeast Fifth Street after neighbors saw flames and smoke.

“It appears that a glass bowl, partially filled with water and elevated on a wire rack in a sunny area of the home’s deck, provided the right conditions to focus the sunlight and start a fire,” Lt. Eric Keenan said.

They should have listened to the warnings from the ants.

You may recall us mentioning that Fermilab and USLHC are organizing a series of simultaneous public lectures to coincide with tomorrow’s release of the movie “Angels and Demons.”

In Sean’s post, he quoted from an email from Boris Kayser, a Fermilab Distinguished Scientist who also chairs the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society. Boris isn’t just advertising this effort, but is rolling up his sleeves and getting involved himself, in a number of ways. One thing he’s doing is to take part in a Live Video Teleconference on Tuesday, with CERN’s director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer, and Nobelist Leon Lederman. A few days before that, on Saturday afternoon, Boris is giving a public lecture in New Jersey.

But of most direct relevance for me is that after his Saturday afternoon lecture, Boris is jumping in his car and driving up to Philadelphia where, at 7:30 in the evening, in Claudia Cohen Auditorium, he’ll deliver a public lecture here at Penn.

Antimatter, Matter, and How We Came To Be: The Science Behind “Angels & Demons”

In the novel and movie “Angels & Demons,” a small droplet of antimatter threatens to
entirely destroy Vatican City. Antimatter, matter’s opposite, is quite real. Furthermore,
when antimatter and matter meet, they do destroy each other. The universe is safe for life
only because there is virtually no antimatter in it. Yet, scientists believe that just after the
Big Bang at the beginning of the universe, there were equal amounts of antimatter and
matter.

In this lecture, we will explain what antimatter is, and how it is related to matter. We will
describe the efforts of scientists to understand how the universe, starting out with equal
amounts of antimatter and matter, came to be a world with almost no antimatter, so that
we can exist.

If you’re in the Philly area I hope you’ll consider dropping by to see the talk. If you happen to have read my three-part discussion on the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe, starting here, you should find Boris’ walk through the material an interesting new perspective. If you haven’t read my series (what is wrong with you?), then the lecture should be a wonderful introduction.

President Obama addressed the National Academies of Science yesterday. If anyone doubted that change has come, and come to science, they need to watch this video. We’ve been waiting a long, long time for a president to take this kind of interest in furthering the cause of science in our country. His budget calls for a doubling of our nation’s investment in basic research in the coming years:

“No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals; new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and drought.”

“It was basic research in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today’s GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago….”

“We double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits – from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from testing “smart grid” designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes. And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials. Because we know that a nation’s potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools it makes available to its researchers.”

Words fail me.

Today is Earth Day. We should probably all be outside celebrating Spring (or Fall, for those upside-down). But if you insist on remaining indoors, glued to a computer screen, here are two things of note:

First, befitting Earth Day, there’s a press release on the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (well, at least double the size, but that’s essentially identical by astronomical standards). The orbital period is 3 days, which means it is way too close to its sun to harbor life. But it’s just a matter of time before we find another Earth. The New York Times article has a direct link to the (unpublished, unrefereed) preprint; I guess your average NYTimes reader is expected to be able to follow an original scientific article?

Second, there’s an interesting blog post by Kevin Kelly on how Nature produces “intelligence” (hat-tip to Mike Warren). The article describes how trees can “see” their environment:

Light reflected from nearby vegetation is richer in far-red wavelengths than unreflected light. Plants can use this information to not only see shade, but to anticipate the likelihood of shading by a competitor in the future. “When a change in the balance of red to far-red radiation is perceived,” says Trewavas, “an integrated adaptive response in phenotype structure [of the plant] results. New branches grow away from the putative competitor, stem growth is increased; the rate of branching diminishes, and such branches assume a more vertical direction: leaf area increases in anticipation of reduced incident flux; and the number of layers of leaf cells containing chlorophyll diminishes.”

And here’s what rock ants (with 100,000 neurons) can do:

To assess the potential of a new nesting site, rock ants will measure the dimensions of the room in total darkness and then calculate – and that is the proper word – the volume and desirability of it. For many millions of years, rock ants have used a mathematical trick that was only discovered by humans in 1733. Rock ants can estimate the volume of a space, even an irregular shaped one, by randomly laying a scent trail across the floor of the space, “recording” the length of that line, and then counting the number of times it encounters that scented line during additional diagonal runs across the floor. The calculated area is inversely proportional to the frequency of intersections times length. In other words, the ants discovered an approximate value for Π derived by intersecting diagonals.

The post then goes on to speculate about the minds we’re building into our technology. It gets a little science-fictiony for my taste, but one interesting site it links to is 20 questions. It’s quite entertaining, and can be eerily accurate. But stop playing the game, and go outside and take a long walk. And remember, the trees are watching.

John Archibald Wheeler embodied the golden age of physics. He was perhaps unique in having made foundational contributions to both pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics and general relativity. He helped develop the theory of nuclear fission, and then was an important participant in the Manhattan project. He discussed quantum mechanics with Bohr, relativity with Einstein, and electrodynamics with his student, Feynman. One of Wheeler’s particularly nice calculations (on asymmetrical nuclei) got scooped because Bohr sat on it too long. The person that scooped them, James Rainwater, subsequently won the Nobel prize for the result. In Feynman’s Nobel lecture, he credits Wheeler with many of the key insights. Wheeler mentored over one hundred students, and those students (and grand-students) now populate leading physics departments throughout the world. In addition to his facility with physics, Wheeler displayed a wondrous command over language. His career is partially encapsulated in his coinages: wormhole, black hole, the planck length and time, quantum foam, the sum over histories, the S-matrix, It from Bit, the wavefunction of the Universe.

John Wheeler passed away almost exactly a year ago. In commemoration of his tremendous contributions to physics, the current edition of Physics Today (the monthly magazine of the American Physical Society) is dedicated entirely to his memory. [Sadly, only select articles are public, which I find incomprehensible.] The issue includes an article on Wheeler’s early work on particles (written by Ken Ford), as well as one on his later work on fields, gravity, and information (by Charlie Misner, Kip Thorne, and Wojciech Zurek). There are also two reprints of articles authored by Wheeler, one on nuclear fission (describing his pioneering work with Niels Bohr), and one “introducing” black holes (written with Remo Ruffini). As a sign of Wheeler’s enduring legacy, the magazine ends with an article (by Terry Christensen) focused on his tremendous mentorship.

It is impossible to summarize Wheeler’s impact, both as a physicist and as a human being. How do you reduce someone to a few paragraphs, or a few articles, or a few interviews? Wheeler was unique in his insight, his breadth, his generosity, and his humanity. For those that were fortunate enough to spend time with him, he left an indelible mark. As one of Wheeler’s students put it in the acknowledgment to their thesis:

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the tremendous support and encouragement given to me by John A. Wheeler. Over the last two years he has introduced me to the world of physics research and shaped the way I think about physics. I have benefited greatly, both as a physicist and as a person, from his example, and will carry this with me always. John Wheeler has had a profound impact on my life and I am deeply indebted.

I wrote that over 15 years ago, and it is no less true today.