The Impossible Is Still Impossible

I saw this article in Wired referenced on a couple of science pages on FaceBook. 

NASA validates 'impossible' space drive

Let me give you the short version of how this engine is supposed to work. Microwaves are beamed into a cone-shaped cavity. They bounce around the cavity and produce a force on the cavity in a direction perpendicular to the direction they were beamed in. Imagine  turning on the microwave oven and watching it push itself off the kitchen counter.

Why is it impossible? This violates one of the basic laws of physics. 

The Conservation of Momentum

The conservation of momentum isn’t your ordinary law of physics. It is one of the most fundamental principles in science. It is intimately related to spatial symmetry. Roughly speaking, the laws of physics here are the same there. You may know this as Newton’s third law of motion or for every action, there’s an equal but opposite reaction.

To obey the conservation of momentum, propellent is pushed out by the rocket and the rocket is pushed by the propellent. This engine is said to produce thrust without any propellent. 

So I was immediately skeptical. So I dug around a little bit. I found a short description of the experiment. One thing I found interesting is that the authors did not lecture on “”physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster.” All right, that’s fine; if the results were groundbreaking, the explanation might come later. Something similar happened in 1986. Researchers at IBM discovered ceramic materials that lost all electrical resistance (superconductivity) at surprisingly high temperatures. There is still no complete explanation for why this happens. What is different about these two cases is that the superconductivity ceramics didn’t violate any basic principles of physics.

What made me laugh however is the authors claim that their device may be “demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” I have no idea what they mean by a quantum vacuum virtual plasma. 

I also found their paper. This made me giggle, too. They built two devices: one was designed to work, the other was designed not to work. Both versions produced the same amounts of thrust.

Phil Plait in his Bad Astronomy blog at Slate says this episode is reminiscent of the faster than light neutrinos and the mysterious force slowing down the Pioneer spacecrafts.

It reminded me of an article that caught my attention while I was in grad school. I remember getting all excited about this revolutionary paper published in one of the premier physics journals. The authors had data that showed that a gyroscope rotating in one direction weighed less than if it were rotating in the opposite direction. Finally, an anti-gravity device!

My research advisor wasn’t nearly as excited. His comment was something along the lines of “systematic error.” But still I held out hope.

Then four months later, my anti-gravity hope were dashed. Others trying to replicate the results found there is no anti-gravity.

Au-some!

This past month there have been numerous stories about how all the gold in the universe was created.  Just google "gold neutron star", and you'll see what I mean. So being me, I wanted to read the original research: An R-Process Kilonova Associated with the Short-Hard GRB 130603B, E. Berger, W. Fong, and R. Chornock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. (1)

I first gave it a cursory read. I couldn't find a mention of the creation of gold anywhere, so I took advantage of technology and used the Find command in my browser. Nothing there, but then I realized why. Someone at Harvard must have written a press release, and in order to get the media interested in the research - which is legitimately important - they  made it sexy and what is sexier than gold.

So I sat down to read the kilonova paper carefully. I didn't have to read far before I read the phrase r-process and Justin Huang's graduate level nuclear physics class came to mind. [Although r-process is in the title, my mind didn't click in until later.]

First some background for those of you not nuclear or astrophysicists. After a microsecond, protons and neutrons formed and couple of minutes or so later, the universe had cooled enough for primordial deuterium, and helium nuclei to form.  Many years later, 379,000 actually, electrons combined with these nuclei to form atoms. It wasn't until a hundred or so million years that stars began to shine.

CREDIT: Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA 304)
of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Fred Hoyle and his colleagues in a classic paper (2) showed how the elements other than hydrogen and the primordial helium were created. I won't go into a long explanation of stellar evolution, but the elements up to iron were created by nuclear fusion. The Sun is fusing two hydrogen nuclei into a helium nucleus and this process releases a lot of energy (we call it sunshine). I'm oversimplifying here, but when the hydrogen in our Sun is depleted in about 5 billion years, it will start to fuse helium. When the helium is gone, our star will be a very hot ball of carbon and oxygen. The Sun will be a white dwarf - basically a very large and very hot diamond in the sky. 

Stars more massive than the Sun will keep fusing and shining up to the point where iron is formed. The process stops there because to fuse iron and elements heavier than it requires an input of energy.

If you now look at a periodic table, you should wonder where did all the other elements like gold come from. There are two processes that are responsible for these heavy elements: the r (rapid) and s (slow) processes. The s-process cannot create elements heavier than lead and this method occurs in old giant stars. 

The Periodic Table of the Elements with hydrogen, helium, iron, and gold highlighted.

Hoyle et al. suggested that the r-process occurred in type II supernovae. This sort of supernova comes about when the thermal motion of the nuclei is not enough to counteract the effect of the star's self-gravity. The core of the star collapses and the outer layers are violently ejected. Depending on the initial mass of the star, the result of the core collapse is either a neutron star or a black hole.

The problem with this hypothesis is that given the abundance of the elements either most supernovae did not expel much matter or that supernovae ejects only a small amount of the material. Given the intensity of a type II supernova, either possibility seems unlikely.

The Crab Nebula, the aftermath of a supernova.
CREDIT: NASA/ESA

One possibility was the collision of neutron stars (3), and here we're back to the kilonova paper. Berger and his co-workers present evidence of "the presence of excess near-IR emission matching the expected brightness and color of an r-process powered transient (a kilonova)" and the inferred mass ejected during the collision "matches the expectations from numerical [neutron star] merger simulations."

My head exploding.
CREDIT: Gil Thorpe

Look at that ring on your finger or the chain around your neck. Then imagine two neutron stars colliding. 

References:

(1) An R-Process Kilonova Associated with the Short-Hard GRB 130603B, E. Berger, W. Fong, and R. Chornock, http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3960v2.

(2) Synthesis of the Elements in Stars, E.M. Burbridge, G.R. Burbidge, W.A. Fowler, and F. Hoyle, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 547 - 650 (1957).

(3) R-Process in Neutron Star Mergers, C. Freiburghaus, S. Rosswog, and F.K. Thielemann, The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 525, No. 2, pp. L121-L124 (1999)

The United States Bullion Depository, Fort Knox, KY, shown here in a scene from the James Bond movie Goldfinger.
CREDIT: United Artists/Eon Productions

Wingnut Nuclear Physics

Before there was any experimental evidence - in fact, before experimental evidence was even possible, the Greek philosophers Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus believed that matter consisted of atoms. It wasn't until the 19th century however that atomic theory had experimental validation. Albert Einstein provided in 1905 a crucial explanation of Brownian motion* that gave atomic theory a firm basis.

In 1909, Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger, and Ernest Marsden showed that the atom had a nucleus which we now understand to consist of protons and neutrons.  This presented a puzzle for scientists though.  A proton has a positive electrical charge while a neutron has none.  Given that the nucleus is extremely tiny, the repulsion of the protons must be huge. What is keeping the nucleus together?

Bryan Fischer:
CREDIT: American Family Radio

It wasn't until the late '60s that physicists began to understand that protons and neutron were themselves made up up of even smaller things called quarks.  The attractive force between the quarks is what was keeping the nucleus from flying apart.

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch, I came across Bryan Fischer's recent video in which he enlightens his listeners on his version of nuclear theory and the force that binds the nucleus, but before we watch the video, let's understand who Bryan Fischer is.

Fischer is the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association (AFA) and the host of the radio program Focal Point on American Family Radio. AFA is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, and Bryan Fischer's comments on homosexuality were specifically cited.

At the beginning of this clip, Fischer states

One of the age-old questions of science is what keeps the nucleus together.

Later, he says

How does that thing stay together? What hold its together? They've been looking for what scientists call the nuclear glue that keeps them from flying apart.  

Now we know. Now we know what the glue is that holds together the entire universe and keeps it from flying apart.

The answer according to Bryan Fischer?

It is Jesus Christ. In him, all things hold together.

The first question that pops into my head is what happened in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

CREDIT: U.S. Department of Energy

*Brownian motion is the random motion of small particles, like dust grains, suspended in a fluid.  Robert Brown first observed this in 1827.

Baby Pictures

A baby picture of the universe!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/multimedia/pia16873.html

This is a map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the leftover radiation of the Big Bang, made by the Planck mission of the European Space Agency.    This light was emitted when the universe was 380,000 years old. 

There's a number of AWESOME results here.

1. The colors represent small fluctuations in the temperature of the radiation, about 1 part in 100,000 or 0.001%.  Since the average temperature is a mere 2.73 K (2.73 degrees above absolute zero), the fluctuations are roughly 0.00003 K.  To put this in perspective, imagine setting your oven to 350ºF and it never varies by more than 0.008ºF.

2. This light was created just 80,000 years after the universe was cool enough for neutral hydrogen atoms to form.

I couldn't find any baby pictures,
but here I am when I'm about
10% of my current age.

3. It provides the best estimate for the age of the universe.  13.82 billion years.

4. The universe is 4.9% normal matter (protons, neutrons, and electrons for the most part.) Dark matter makes up 26.8% and dark energy 68.3%.

5. The universe is amazingly uniform, isotropic in the physicist's lingo. But there is a tiny difference in the size of the fluctuations in one half of the sky as compared to the other half.  Intriguing!

6. This picture represents the universe when it was just 0.00002750 of its present age.  Let's compare this to one of my students who say is 20 years old; this student was only 5 hours at 0.00002750 of 20 years.    

Stripper Physicist

Columbia University requires all undergraduates to complete a set of courses "considered the necessary general education for students, irrespective of their choice in major." One of those courses is Frontiers of Science.

The course is designed both to introduce students to exciting ideas at the forefront of scientific research, as well as to inculcate in them the habits of mind common to a scientific approach to the world. Each semester, four scientists in different disciplines deliver a series of three lectures each describing the background, context, and current state of an area of research; readings and other activities supplement the lectures. Consistent with the Core tradition, the course also includes small seminar sections in which these topics are discussed by students.

Professor of Physics Emryn Hughes took a rather unusual approach to introduce freshmen to the concepts of quantum mechanics.  He stripped down, changed clothes, lay on the floor all while a strange video played on the screen with the audio being Lil Wayne's Drop It Like It's Hot.  Then some ninjas showed up and stabbed some puppets.

Here's the link to the Vimeo video uploaded by Bwog.

While this is an approach I would never take and for as strange as it is, his explanation at the end of the video makes some sense.

To understand quantum mechanics, you have to undress everything, start new, and forget all the bad stuff.

The Cure for Constipation

Lest the reader thinks I am obsessing by having two posts in a row dealing with feces or that I have a desire to use all the available synonyms for feces, the timing of these two posts is merely a coincidence.

I came across QuantumMAN™: World's First Downloadable Medicine.  One of the products he sells is QLax™, a purported medical treatment for constipation.  His "radical new technology" is based on the concept that

The entire universe including the human body and disease that afflicts it operates according to the principles of quantum physics.

OK.  Ernest Rutherford said, "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." On those days when I am feeling terribly arrogant, I agree with Rutherford.  So where does QuantumMAN™ go from here?

Chemical based laxatives do not operate according to those principles and, as such, are not compatible with human physiology…

CREDIT: www.zazzle.com

Wait a minute.  Didn't he just claim the entire universe operates by quantum principles? Chemistry is somehow exempt?  Let's leave this puzzler for more pressing issues.

To solve a quantum problem you must offer a quantum treatment within a quantum operating system. Therefore, ZAG, the private humanitarian medical research group that employs QuantumMAN™, has developed the ideal quantum laxative branded QLax™. Derived from extreme advances in quantum computing, QLax™ consists of "Portal Access Keys™" (PAKs™) downloaded to your personal computer, smartphone or tablet. Accessing these PAKs™ allows your brain to quantumly receive (upload) QLax™'s master programs. QuantumMAN™ is the personification of this quantum data. When uploaded, QLax™ provides thousands of physiologic directives to your brain to program it to provide the corrective measures required to relieve your constipation without any possibility of adverse side effects no matter how long QLax™ is used. Due to repeater programs imbedded in its data, QLax™ allows delivery of its physiologic directives automatically several times a day for 24 hours with just one PAK™ dose. For extremely stubborn cases, more than PAK™ dose can be uploaded at a time without concern of any adverse side effects. ZAG guarantees your complete satisfaction for 30 days from date of purchase or your money is refunded.

For only $5, you can download 25 PAKs™ to your computer, smartphone, or tablet, and then your brain will upload - I mean, quantumly receive the program.  I do love the fact that if I'm still constipated after a month, I can get my $5 back.  Somehow after a month I think I might have more to worry about than the money.

Who's responsible for the amazing breakthrough in quantum medicine?

The Zürich Alpine Group (ZAG) is a private humanitarian medical research group of scientists and physicians working cooperatively and quietly around the world in the quest to improve the quality, efficacy and costs of medical care.

ZAG understands that quantum problems require a quantum solution and has found a way to transfer bioinformation from its quantum computer via quantum teleportation to the brain, also a quantum computer, to reprogram the brain to effect positive medical changes within the body and mind.

Why haven't we heard of this group and it marvelous products?

ZAG has quietly cultivated these phenomena and deliberately avoided scientific publication of its work until the intended release of its collaborative QuantumMANsite website.

ZAG has shunned reporting its research and trials in the traditional medical literature because it believes this venue is heavily influenced by Big Pharma and politics. 

They report they have conducted clinical trials in order to test their products efficacy and safety, but what is strange is that when you go to the Clinical Trials section of the website, you find no data.  All you find is audio recordings of twelve so-called participants.

What other incredible (from the Latin in- meaning 'not', and credere meaning 'believe') products are available?  If you don't know what's ailing you, there's QDr™ Tricorder Plus.  Star Trek fans take note.

Then there's QFood™, the solution to starvation.

The person will not be hungry and/or feel deprived or experience cravings if instructions are properly followed. For 10 days at a time, one set of QFood™ downloads will provide satiation and sufficient quantum nourishment that the person will thrive and not be at risk of dying due to starvation. 

There are even products for the bedroom.  Know what I mean.  Nudge nudge. Wink, wink.  Say no more.  Heaven's Gate™, QBX™, TigerTail™, HEjuvenate™, SHEjuvenate™, QHE™, and QSHE™.

CREDIT: unknown

What is it a duck, quantum or otherwise, says?