Category Archives: Of Interest

CME Incoming 7/7

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INCOMING CME: On July 4th, sunspot AR1515 hurled at least four minor CMEs into space. Most flew south of the ecliptic plane (the orbital plane of the planets), on track to miss everything. One of them, however, appears to be heading toward Earth. Click to view an animated forecast track of the incoming cloud:

According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, who prepared the forecast, the cloud will reach Earth on July 7th around 0600 UT. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on that date.

fr/spaceweather.com

New Words for Wednesday

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Wednesday Words: Czarinas, Derecho Storms and More

NewsFeed’s weekly highlight of our vocabulary includes useful, new, hilarious and surprising words (as well as some that are just fun to roll off the old tongue).
By Katy Steinmetz | @katysteinmetz | July 4, 2012
David McGlynn

David McGlynn

czarina (n.): a chic Russian female who has gained attention as a customer, designer, etc., of high fashion. The New York Times‘ Eric Wilson writes of the czarinas’ return to the haute scene, describing them as “a pack of fabulous-looking young women” more striking than Vladimir Putin in a zoot suit. Compare to: gallerinas, the fabulous ladies of the American art scene; and princelings, arguably less aesthetically pleasing but plenty powerful players in Chinese institutions.

banksterism (n.): financial practices that are pejoratively likened to the behavior of gangsters. A member of British Parliament got some attention this week when he used this word in the House of Commons. “The public believe that Parliament and parties have indulged the banksterism that is now all too apparent,” Mark Durkan quipped. Some reporters thought he was the first, but the term has been around since the Great Depression, when Americans were similarly disillusioned with Wall Street. A Montana Senator leveled the label during the Pecora hearings of 1932, when bankers were grilled over their potential role in the collapse. “The best way to restore confidence in the banks,” he said, “would be to take these crooked presidents out … and treat them the same way we treated Al Capone when he failed to pay his income tax.” Zing!

derecho (n.): a large cluster of thunderstorms that produces widespread wind damage. This term spread as news outlets rushed to explain exactly what hit residents with extreme winds and power outages along the East Coast on June 29. “An ordinary thunderstorm produces a swath of damaging winds usually only a mile or two wide and a few miles long,” the Weather Channel said in a post last month, “but derechoes can produce damage swaths tens of miles wide and several hundred miles long.” The word means straight in Spanish, a reference to the long lines of wind damage the storms can leave behind. (On a lighter note, derecho–deh-REH-choh–also seems like a fine term for disappointingly low-quality nachos.

skeuomorph (n.): an object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artifact in another material. The Brooklyn Brainery, a community teaching organization, recently delved into a dire foodie mystery: why do so many maple syrup canisters have “tiny, useless handles”? (See their article and picture here.) Their answer was that this ostentation used to be practical–when the jars and handles were bigger–and is now a mere skeuomorph. This history bears further investigation, but the word is excellent regardless–much like the vision of a world in which maple syrup is only consumed from five-gallon containers. Just think of the pancakes.

scrub (n.): a lout, a failure, a dirty or unpleasant person or thing. Flavorwire did a fun roundup of slang-that’s-older-than-you’d-think, and one of their words is scrub. As in “Girl, you know I don’t want none.” Writer Emily Temple dates the term back to 1580s with an online etymology dictionary; Green’s Dictionary of Slang, from which this definition comes, dates their first entry at 1698. Other scrubby terms from Green’s include scrub turkey, an itinerant who moves around the Australian bush; and scrubbado, “a general term of abuse.” As in, “Scrubbado you meddling kids, and your dog, too!”

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/04/wednesday-words-czarinas-derecho-storms-and-more/#ixzz1zfzP8Jqd

Hidden Portals in Earth’s Magnetic Field

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Hidden Portals in Earth’s Magnetic Field

07.02.12
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A NASA-sponsored researcher at the University of Iowa has developed a way for spacecraft to hunt down hidden magnetic portals in the vicinity of Earth. These gateways link the magnetic field of our planet to that of the sun, setting the stage for stormy space weather. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will study these portals. Credit: Science@NASA

A favorite theme of science fiction is “the portal”–an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed….

It turns out that they do, sort of, and a NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how to find them.

“We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions,” explains plasma physicist Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa. “They’re places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun’s atmosphere 93 million miles away.”

Observations by NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft and Europe’s Cluster probes suggest that these magnetic portals open and close dozens of times each day. They’re typically located a few tens of thousands of kilometers from Earth where the geomagnetic field meets the onrushing solar wind. Most portals are small and short-lived; others are yawning, vast, and sustained. Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating Earth’s upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic storms, and igniting bright polar auroras.

NASA is planning a mission called “MMS,” short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, due to launch in 2014, to study the phenomenon. Bristling with energetic particle detectors and magnetic sensors, the four spacecraft of MMS will spread out in Earth’s magnetosphere and surround the portals to observe how they work.

Just one problem: Finding them. Magnetic portals are invisible, unstable, and elusive. They open and close without warning “and there are no signposts to guide us in,” notes Scudder.

Actually, there are signposts, and Scudder has found them.

Portals form via the process of magnetic reconnection. Mingling lines of magnetic force from the sun and Earth criss-cross and join to create the openings. “X-points” are where the criss-cross takes place. The sudden joining of magnetic fields can propel jets of charged particles from the X-point, creating an “electron diffusion region.”

To learn how to pinpoint these events, Scudder looked at data from a space probe that orbited Earth more than 10 years ago.

“In the late 1990s, NASA’s Polar spacecraft spent years in Earth’s magnetosphere,” explains Scudder, “and it encountered many X-points during its mission.”

Data from NASA's Polar spacecraft, circa 1998, provided crucial clues to finding magnetic X-points. › View larger
Data from NASA’s Polar spacecraft, circa 1998, provided crucial clues to finding magnetic X-points. Credit: NASA Because Polar carried sensors similar to those of MMS, Scudder decided to see how an X-point looked to Polar. “Using Polar data, we have found five simple combinations of magnetic field and energetic particle measurements that tell us when we’ve come across an X-point or an electron diffusion region. A single spacecraft, properly instrumented, can make these measurements.”

This means that single member of the MMS constellation using the diagnostics can find a portal and alert other members of the constellation. Mission planners long thought that MMS might have to spend a year or so learning to find portals before it could study them. Scudder’s work short cuts the process, allowing MMS to get to work without delay.

It’s a shortcut worthy of the best portals of fiction, only this time the portals are real. And with the new “signposts” we know how to find them.

from:    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/mag-portals.html

Army Developing Lightning Weapons

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Army Looks to Strike Foes with Lightning Weapon

InnovationNewsDaily Staff
Date: 22 June 2012
Laser-induced Plasma Channel
A guided lightning bolt travels horizontally, then hits a car when it finds the lower resistance path to ground in a U.S. Army test.
CREDIT: U.S. Army | Picatinny Arsenal

Today’s military lasers can blind spy satellites or burn enemy vehicles, but tomorrow’s could guide lightning bolts to strike and destroy battlefield targets.

A U.S. Army lab is testing how lasers can create an energized plasma channel in the air — an invisible pathway for electricity to follow. The laser-guided lightning weapon could precisely hit targets such as enemy tanks or unexploded roadside bombs, because such targets represent better conductors for electricity than the ground.

“We never got tired of the lightning bolts zapping our simulated (targets),” said George Fischer, lead scientist on the project at the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.Today’s military lasers can blind spy satellites or burn enemy vehicles, but tomorrow’s could guide lightning bolts to strike and destroy battlefield targets.

The weapon idea mimics the way that lightning leaps from thunderclouds to strike the ground — the electricity follows the path of least resistance, Fischer explained.

Army researchers used an “ultra-short-pulse laser of modest energy” that keeps the laser beam focused through its own intensity. The laser’s electro-magnetic field can harvest electrons from air molecules to create the plasma pathway for electricity to follow.

“During the duration of the laser pulse, it can be putting out more power than a large city needs, but the pulse only lasts for two-trillionths of a second,” Fischer said.

Such a “laser-induced plasma channel” could also direct high-powered microwave pulses as well as electricity, according to a 2009 Wired article. Microwave pulses have already become weapons in Air Force missiles used to burn out the electronic systems of air defense centers, military jets or drones.

Army soldiers may not get to target enemies with Zeus-like lightning bolts anytime soon — the technology remains a lab prototype. But the idea joins a growing arsenal of possible futuristic weapons such as the Navy’s railgun superweapon capable of hurling hypersonic projectiles over 50 to 100 miles, or the Army’s hypersonic weapon for striking targets anywhere on Earth within an hour.

from:   http://www.livescience.com/21128-army-strike-lightning-weapon.html

 

 

 

 

T-Shirt/Cell Phone Charger — Why Not?

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Cotton T-Shirt May One Day Charge Your Cellphone

by Francie Diep
Date: 03 July 2012
Woman with power cord
Researchers turned a cotton T-shirt into a capacitor by treating the shirt, then baking it. The research could lead to a wearable cellphone charger in the future.
CREDIT: T-Design | Shutterstock.com

An oven-toasted T-shirt could provide the structure for futuristic clothing that powers cellphones, tablets and other devices. The research, conducted by two engineers at the University of South Carolina, showed that a modified store-bought T-shirt could be turned into a fabric that acts as a supercapacitor, storing an electrical charge.

“By stacking these supercapacitors up, we should be able to charge portable electronic devices such as cellphones,” Xiaodong Li, one of the engineers who worked on the shirt, said in a statement.

“We wear fabric every day,” he added. “One day, our cotton T-shirts could have more functions.”

Li and a fellow researcher in his lab, Lihong Bao, bought a cotton T-shirt from a local discount store. They soaked it in fluoride, dried it, then baked it in an oven without any oxygen, to prevent the T-shirt from burning. Despite the baking, the fabric remained flexible.

The researchers examined the baked shirt and found that the cotton fibers had turned into activated carbon, similar to the carbon in water and air filters. They also found the activated carbon fabric could store electrical charge as a capacitor, an electrical component that’s found in most devices.

To improve the shirt’s electricity-storing ability, the researchers coated the T-shirt fibers with a layer of manganese oxide one nanometer thick, or about 1/1000th the thickness of a human hair. A second analysis showed the manganese oxide-covered fibers worked as a more efficient capacitor than the treated, toasted cotton alone.

“This created a stable, high-performing supercapacitor,” Li said. The fabric capacitor could charge and discharge thousands of times while losing only 5 percent of its performance, Li and Bao discovered.

Their method for making the fabric capacitor is inexpensive and doesn’t use environmentally harmful chemicals, Li said.

Li’s is just one of several labs working on creating fabric-based electronics that could turn into wearable devices. The research could lead to coat sleeves and couch arms that act as controls for electronics, such as music players and thermostats, or “smart clothes” that monitor people’s health.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/21357-cotton-shirt-day-charge-cellphone.html

Your Brain on Shopping

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How Your Brain Thinks When You Shop

Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor
Date: 03 July 2012
first place

CREDIT: Winning race image via Shutterstock

Marketers take note — being first has its advantages.

New research shows people’s preferences are unconsciously and immediately guided to those options presented first, especially in circumstances when decisions must be made without much deliberation.

In three experiments, when making quick choices, participants consistently preferred people and consumer goods presented first, as opposed to similar offerings in second and sequential positions.

The study’s authors say their findings have practical applications in a variety of settings, including consumer marketing.

“Our research shows that managers, for example, in management or marketing, may want to develop their business strategies knowing that first encounters are preferable to their clients or consumers, said Dana R. Carney, the study’s co-author and assistant professor of management at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

As part of the research, the study’s participants were asked to evaluate three different groups, including two teams, two male sales associates and two female sales associates. After being presented with each group’s options, the study questioned the participants on their choices both by asking their preference up front and then having them complete a reaction-time task adapted from cognitive psychology in which participants’ automatic, unconscious preference for each option was assessed.

Regardless of whom people said they preferred, on the unconscious, cognitive measure of preference, participants always preferred the first team or person to whom they were introduced, according to the research.

To test the theory on consumer goods, the researchers asked more than 200 passengers at a train station to select one of two pieces of similar bubble gum within a second of seeing the choices. The study found that when thinking fast, the bubble gum presented first was the preferable choice in most cases.

The researchers believe several factors could be behind the study’s results, including that the preference for the initial choice has its origins in an evolutionary adaptation favoring firsts. The authors point to the example of how in most cases, humans tend to innately prefer the first people they meet, such as a mother and family members.

Carney said the historic concept of the established “pecking order” also supports their findings.

The study, “First is Best,” was co-authored by Mahzarin R. Banaji, professor of psychology at Harvard University and recently published in the journal PLoS ONE.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/21369-shoppers.html

Implications of Finding The Higgs

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The Elusive Particle: 5 Implications of Finding Higgs

Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 04 July 2012
LHC's CMS detector observed this collision with signatures that could be due to the Higgs boson.

Real CMS proton-proton collisions events at the Large Hadron Collider in which 4 high energy electrons (red towers) are observed. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of a Higgs boson but is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes.
CREDIT: CERN/CMS/Taylor, L; McCauley, T

Physicists at the world’s largest atom smasher announced today (July 4) that they are more than 99 percent sure they’ve found a new, and heavy, boson particle, that may be the Higgs boson.

Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, show this new particle has a mass of about 125 GeV, with 1 gigaelectron volt about the mass of a proton. The LHC is the most powerful machine on Earth, capable of producing huge explosions of energy that generate new and exotic particles inside the 17-mile (27 kilometer) loop underneath Switzerland and France.

If the discovery can be confirmed as the Higgs boson, it will have wide wide-reaching implications. Here are five of the biggest.

1. The origin of mass

The Higgs boson has long been thought the key to resolving the mystery of the origin of mass. The Higgs boson is associated with a field, called the Higgs field, theorized to pervade the universe. As other particles travel though this field, they acquire mass much as swimmers moving through a pool get wet, the thinking goes.

“The Higgs mechanism is the thing that allows us to understand how the particles acquire mass,” said Joao Guimaraes da Costa, a physicist at Harvard University who is the Standard Model Convener at the LHC’s ATLAS experiment. “If there was no such mechanism, then everything would be massless.”

If physicists confirm that the detection of the new elementary particle is indeed the Higgs boson, and not an imposter, it would also confirm that the Higgs mechanism for particles to acquire mass is correct. “This discovery bears on the knowledge of how mass comes about at the quantum level, and is the reason we built the LHC. It is an unparalleled achievement,” Caltech professor of physics Maria Spiropulu, co-leader of the CMS experiment, said in a statement.

And, it may offer clues to the next mystery down the line, which is why individual particles have the masses that they do. “That could be part of a much larger theory,” said Harvard University particle physicist Lisa Randall.”Knowing what the Higgs boson is, is the first step of knowing a little more about what that theory could be. It’s connected.”

2. The Standard Model

The Standard Model is the reigning theory of particle physics that describes the universe’s very small constituents. Every particle predicted by the Standard Model has been discovered — except one: the Higgs boson.

“It’s the missing piece in the Standard Model,” said Jonas Strandberg, a researcher at CERN working on the ATLAS experiment. “So it would definitely be a confirmation that the theories we have now are right.” If the newly detected particle turns out not to be the Higgs boson, it would mean physicists made some assumptions that are wrong, and they’d have to go back to the drawing board.

While the discovery of the Higgs boson would complete the Standard Model, and fulfill all its current predictions, the Standard Model itself isn’t thought to be complete. It doesn’t encompass gravity (so don’t count on catching that fly ball), for example, and leaves out the dark matter thought to make up 98 percent of all matter in the universe.

“The Standard Model describes what we have measured, but we know it doesn’t have gravity in it, it doesn’t have dark matter,” said CERN physicist William Murray, the senior Higgs convener at ATLAS and a physicist at the U.K.’s Science and Technology Facilities Council. “So we’re hoping to extend it to include more.”

3. The Electroweak Force

A confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson would also help explain how two of the fundamental forces of the universe — the electromagnetic force that governs interactions between charged particles, and the weak force that’s responsible for radioactive decay — can be unified.

Every force in nature is associated with a particle. The particle tied to electromagnetism is the photon, a tiny, massless particle. The weak force is associated with particles called the W and Z bosons, which are very massive.

The Higgs mechanism is thought to be responsible for this.

“If you introduce the Higgs field, the W and Z bosons mix with the field, and through this mixing they acquire mass,” Strandberg said. “This explains why the W and Z bosons have mass, and also unifies the electromagnetic and weak forces into the electroweak force.”

Though other evidence has helped buffer the union of these two forces, the discovery of the Higgs would seal the deal. “That’s already pretty solid,” Murray said. “What we’re trying to do now is find really the crowning proof.”

4. Supersymmetry

Another theory that would be affected by the discovery of the Higgs is called supersymmetry. This idea posits that every known particle has a “superpartner” particle with slightly different characteristics.

Supersymmetry is attractive because it could help unify some of the other forces of nature, and even offers a candidate for the particle that makes up dark matter. The newly detected particle is in the low-mass range, at 125.3 or so GeV, something that lends credence to supersymmetry.

“If the Higgs boson is found at a low mass, which is the only window still open, this would make supersymmetry a viable theory,” Strandberg said.”We’d still have to prove supersymmetry exists.”

5. Validation of LHC

The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest particle accelerator. It was built for around $10 billion by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to probe higher energies than had ever been reached on Earth. Finding the Higgs boson was touted as one of the machine’s biggest goals.

Finding the Higgs would offer major validation for the LHC and for the scientists who’ve worked on the search for many years.

“This discovery bears on the knowledge of how mass comes about at the quantum level, and is the reason we built the LHC. It is an unparalleled achievement,” Spiropulu said in a statement. “More than a generation of scientists has been waiting for this very moment and particle physicists, engineers, and technicians in universities and laboratories around the globe have been working for many decades to arrive at this crucial fork. This is the pivotal moment for us to pause and reflect on the gravity of the discovery, as well as a moment of tremendous intensity to continue the data collection and analyses.”

The discovery of the Higgs would also have major implications for scientist Peter Higgs and his colleagues who first proposed the Higgs mechanism in 1964.

And a Nobel Prize may be another result: “If it is found there are several people who are going to get a Nobel prize,” said Vivek Sharma, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, and the leader of the Higgs search at LHC’s CMS experiment.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/21381-higgs-boson-particle-implications.html

Possible Discovery of The God Particle

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Physicists Ecstatic Over Possible Higgs Particle Discovery

Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor
Date: 04 July 2012
This track is an example of simulated data modelled for the ATLAS detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The Higgs boson is produced in the collision of two protons at 14 TeV and quickly decays into four muons, a type of heavy electron that
This track is an example of simulated data modelled for the ATLAS detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The Higgs boson is produced in the collision of two protons at 14 TeV and quickly decays into four muons, a type of heavy electron that is not absorbed by the detector. The tracks of the muons are shown in yellow.
CREDIT: CERN/ATLAS

Physicists are thrilled at today’s (July 4) announcement of the discovery of a new elementary particle that is likely the Higgs boson, an elusive particle thought to give all other matter its mass.

“To me it’s really an incredible thing that it’s happened in my lifetime,” Peter Higgs, the leader of the group that first theorized the particle in 1964 and after whom the particle is named, said during a press conference Wednesday (July 4).

Evidence for the new particle was reported today by scientists from the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Researchers reported they’d seen a particle weighing roughly 125 times the mass of the proton, with a level of certainty that all but seals the deal it’s the Higgs boson. The Higgs represents the last undiscovered particle predicted by the Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics

Physicists involved in two experiments called CMS and ATLAS taking place at the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), reported evidence of the particle at a seminar and press briefing today.

“As a layman I would say ‘We have it,’ but as a scientist I would have to say ‘What do we have?’ We have discovered a boson and now we have to discover what kind of boson it is,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said during the press briefing. [Top 5 Implications of Finding the Higgs Boson]

Even so, elation abounded with loud applause after the seminar talks.

Physicists at the CERN lab in Switzerland applaud news of the discovery of a new particle, likely the Higgs boson, July 4, 2012.
CREDIT: CERN

“It is a momentous event and I am proud to be living in these historic times. Our 40-year quest for solving a puzzle is almost ending,” Brown University professor of physics Meenakshi Narain told LiveScience. “Now we have to find out if this new particle really is the Higgs of the Standard Model or has properties which deviate from standard expectations and if there are other new particles to be discovered.”

Narain added in an email, “Our work is just beginning! It is a great leap for human kind and basic science.”

“We have been propelled to the future of particle physics towards the understanding of the fundamental properties of our universe in its entirety,” Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, who was in the audience at the LHC announcement, told LiveScience in an email.

Even Twitter was abuzz with terms such as #Higgs, #ICHEP2012, #CERN, Fabiola Gianotti and Joe Incandela (the names of the two scientists who presented the ATLAS and CMS findings, respectively) trending.

“5 sigma from CMS! Incredible!” tweeted @lirarandall, Harvard University theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, referring to results from two decay modes.

(To be certain they’ve made a true discovery and weren’t just seeing a fluke, physicists need to reach a level of significance of 5 sigma, which means there is only a one in 3.5 million chance the signal isn’t real. The ATLAS and CMS results reached sigma levels of 5 and 4.9, respectively.)

“The world might not change but my world (and that of a few others) certainly has,” Randall tweeted.

“This is a crucial first step in understanding mass and gravity. We have a long, long way to go. But wow, what a step. #Higgs,” tweeted @BadAstronomer Phil Plait, astronomer and author.

“We find it. WE FIND IT. Now I can cry #Higgs #Discovery,” tweeted @marcodelmastro, Marco Delmastro, LHC physicist and ATLAS researcher.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/21382-higgs-boson-discovery-physicists-reactions.html

Possible X-Class Flare for the 4th

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4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS: Chances of an X-flare today are increasing as sunspot AR1515 develops a ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field that harbors energy for the most powerful explosions. The sunspot’s magnetic canopy is crackling with almost-X class flares, the strongest so far being an M5-flare at 09:54 UT. Each “crackle” releases more energy than a billion atomic bombs, so these are 4th of July fireworks indeed.

The sunspot itself is huge, stretching more than 100,000 km (8 Earth-diameters) from end to end. This movie from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the behemoth growing and turning toward Earth over the past five days:

Another picture that dramatically illustrates the size of AR1515 is this 4th of July sunrise shot from Stefano De Rosa of Turin, Italy.

If any major eruptions do occur today, they will certainly be Earth-directed. The sunspot is directly facing our planet, so it is in position to cause radio blackouts, sudden ionospheric disturbances, and geomagnetic storms.

fr/spaceweather.com