How well does your Congressman uphold his oath to uphold the Constitution? The new Freedom Index will tell you!
What does this mean? A new set of Democrats backed out this week from attending the Democratic Convention or endorsing Obama for President.
How the Higgs boson explains the universe.
And what it can’t explain:
The discovery [by the existence of the Higgs boson] that nature is beautifully symmetric means we have very little choice in how the elementary particles do their dance – the rules simply “come for free”. Why the universe should be built in such an elegant fashion is not understood yet, but it leaves us with a sense of awe and wonder that we should be privileged to live in such a place.
Science discovers how the universe operates. Philosophy and religion try to explain why. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable in a rational world to consider the existence of God, and why musings about the possibility of intelligent design do not contradict pure science.
And I speak not as a religious person, but as a secular humanist.
The competition heats up: ATK’s push to build its Liberty launch system.
Liberty was one of the suitors [for NASA’s commercial crew] funding, before losing out to the four aforementioned options during the selection process. However, ATK decided to press on with the development of the system under an unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA), with a clear intent of convincing NASA they deserve to be awarded funding for the path towards crewed launches.
Indeed, ATK have stated that they will continue with the development of Liberty regardless of NASA funding, as much as Agency support would provide an accelerated schedule towards bringing the vehicle into operation by 2015. [emphasis mine]
If you read the article, you will see that there are many reasons why I would rather NASA did not pick ATK. The system depends too much on the shuttle’s legacy at the Kennedy Space Center (the VAB, crawler, etc), which means it will probably require a large labor force to launch and thus be expensive. However, if ATK can make Liberty profitable without NASA, I am all for them.
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have found four different binary star systems with the stars orbiting so close to each other that they complete their orbits in less than four hours, orbits that astronomers had previously believed “impossible.”
“The United States of winners.”
We didn’t fight hard for our freedom on that summer day in 1776 so we could go ahead and be mediocre. We wanted it so badly because we had lofty goals to be a nation of winners, people who excelled at everything we tried. We wanted to become powerful and prosperous so that we wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else, ever again. And we knew that being prosperous would make us generous. We wanted to win at that, too.
And from there, we went on to win at all kinds of stuff, and we did it without apologizing. Charles Lindbergh didn’t land in Paris and apologize for getting there first. We didn’t have a space race with the Soviet Union to see who could get there last. Bruce Jenner doesn’t have an Olympic gold medal (and two inexplicable earrings) because he’s a loser.
Our desire to win has made us who we are.
And it is for this reason that, right now, the United States is about to develop multiple private companies capable of putting humans into space, while every other country in the world that has tried it can barely manage to come up with one option.
The uncertainty of science: Inexplicably, a dust disk detected around a star about 460 light years away has vanished in just two years.
An evening pause: A performer giving her all. What a tragedy that she destroyed herself at such a young age.
For those that wish to listen to my appearance last night on The Space Show, the link to the podcast can be found here.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]
A warning, and prediction, for November.
From CERN: The experiments there have now observed a “particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson.”
The press release also emphasizes repeatedly the preliminary nature of this result. More details in this article, including this not unexpected punchline if you know science:
Already, the new boson seems to be decaying slightly more often into pairs of gamma rays than was predicted by theories, says Bill Murray, a physicist on ATLAS, the other experiment involved in making the discovery.
Librarians in Germany announced today the discovery of a lost copy of the map that named the New World, hidden between the pages of a book for 200 years.
FYI, I am doing a two hour interview on The Space Show tonight, starting at 7 pm Pacific (which is now, even as I post). Feel free to tune in.
New research has found that from 20,000 to 7,000 years ago Great Britain was surrounded by a vast area of dry land that reached as far as Denmark.
The research suggests that the populations of these drowned lands could have been tens of thousands, living in an area that stretched from Northern Scotland across to Denmark and down the English Channel as far as the Channel Islands.
As the ice age ended and sea levels rose, this land was slowly swamped and engulfed by the North Sea.
Since 2006 carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have plunged, almost reaching 1991 levels.
The key driver for the “shockingly good news” that CO2 emissions will probably fall this year to a two-decade low … is “the shale gas revolution, and the low-priced gas that it has made a reality, especially in the last 12 months. As of April, gas tied coal at 32% of the electric power generation market, nearly ending coal’s 100 year reign on top of electricity markets (see related CD post on this energy milestone). Let’s remember the speed and extent of gas’s rise and coal’s drop: coal had 52% of the market in 2000 and 48% in 2008.”
It is important to note that it is innovation, technology, and capitalism that is making this happen. Without a free market the shale gas revolution would not have occurred.
The religion of peace: A Dearborn Muslim has been charged with nine counts of attempted murder for trying to run down a crowd of Christian protesters with his car.
This event is related to the stoning of Christians by Muslims at the Dearborn Arab Festival in June.
Though an engineering success, the world’s tallest building in Dubai has also turned out to be a financial flop.
The day of reckoning looms: A report released on Monday states that U.S. state and local governments have more than $2 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.
Worse, the report notes that this number is three times higher than the number reported by those same state and local governments.
Hope and dispair for American bats: New results on the fungus that is killing them.
News from Mercury: A nice summary of some of the most important scientific results so far returned by Messenger.
It appears that both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are considering hiring the Russia aerospace company Energia to build components for the CST-100 and Orion manned capsules.
What is going on here is that both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are looking for a subcontractor who can build these components for less money. Since labor costs in Russia are much lower than the U.S., both companies are considering Energia for this work.
This quote, however, encapsulates the cultural war that still goes on sometimes between Russia and the U.S.:
“[Russian] achievements in docking sites and [thermal protection equipment] production are quite competitive, but I am not sure that the Americans will accept our offer because they not only have the task of building a spaceship but also of gaining competence in this matter,” Dmitry Payson, director of the space and telecommunication technology department in Russia’s Skolkovo hi-tech hub, told Izvestia.
In interviewing many Russian and American space engineers over the years I have found an amazing amount of contempt from each for the work of the other, often without justification. Just as the Russians above seem to falsely think that Boeing and Lockheed Martin know nothing about docking equipment or thermal protection, American engineers repeatedly have expressed to me unjustified disdain for the space station technology developed by the Russians for Mir. The result: both countries often don’t take advantage of the other’s skills.
Last week I received an email from the local Tucson tea party, asking if I would be willing to attend a demonstration today in response to last week’s Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. To quote the email,
We would like to stage two simultaneous protests against the train wreck they call ObamaCare, at two separate locations Monday July 2nd, 4:00pm-5:45pm. 75 people at both locations are needed to make the necessary impact. They say the Tea Party is dead. What say ye? We need your commitment.
Today those protests took place at two different prominent street corners in the Tucson area. At each location there were about fifty people lining the sidewalk and holding signs and American flags out to passing motorists. My wife Diane and I went to one of those protests. Here are my impressions:
» Read more
NASA today unveiled for the press the Orion capsule scheduled for the program’s first test flight in 2014.
Today’s unveiling was essentially a PR event designed to boost political support for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion capsule program. And though we should definitely give kudos to Lockheed Martin for its progress on Orion, it is also important to note that the building of this capsule took 8 years and about $6.5 billion. And it won’t go into space for still another two years at best. Compare that to SpaceX’s Dragon, which took about four years from concept to launch, with a cost of about $1 billion.
It is this contrast that is worrying the political supporters of SLS and Orion. Consider for example this quote from the above article:
But the Orion schedule assumes steady funding by Congress, which is an open question given the current debate over federal budget deficits, taxes and a general push to reduce federal spending. “We have to be concerned about that because we are in an era of government spending where you have to do more with a limited amount,” Nelson said. “That, of course, is going to be one of the main things we’re going to have to look at in the future.” [emphasis mine]
Nelson has been a big backer of SLS from the moment Congress decided to force it down NASA’s throat. It is very clear from his comments above however that he recognizes the political difficulties that this very expensive program faces.
As I’ve said before, I expect SLS to die sometime in the next three years. Faced with a ungodly federal deficit, the next Congress is going to look for ways to save money and — assuming the commercial space companies like SpaceX continue to have success — Congress will see this program as one of those ways.
An evening pause: I once awoke from a powerful and indescribable dream, its searing images (soon lost) invoked by this haunting song as performed by Judy Collins from her 1967 recording. Here it is performed beautifully here by Rufus Wainwright and set to some very appropriate visuals from the various Pirates of the Caribbean films.
And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea.
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain,
“Come away, alone.
Come away, alone.
With me.”
A newly discovered fossil of a very early dinosaur strongly suggests that all dinosaurs had some form of plumage.
A investigation has found that Japanese anesthesiologist, Yoshitaka Fujii, fabricated a 172 scientific papers over the past 19 years.
The panel focused on 212 of 249 known Fujii papers. It tried to review the raw data, laboratory notebooks, and records on the patients or animal subjects involved. Committee members also interviewed relevant people. Among the 172 papers judged bogus, the report claims that 126 studies of randomized, double-blind, controlled trials “were totally fabricated.” The committee identified only three valid papers. For another 37 papers, the panel could not conclusively determine if there had been fabrication. …
The panel said that the responsibility of those co-authors ranges from “serious” to “none at all.” The only one of Fujii’s co-authors specifically named in the summary is University of Tsukuba anesthesiologist Hidenori Toyooka. The report says Toyooka “was not involved in fabrication but bears significant responsibility” since he was Fujii’s supervising professor both at Tsukuba and when they both worked at Tokyo Medical and Dental University. Toyooka is listed as a co-author of many of the papers cited by the 23 journal editors. … At the same time, the investigation found that some scientists were unaware Fujii had included them as co-authors. In one case, two supposed co-authors told the panel their signatures on a submission cover letter were forged. [emphasis mine]
For a scientist to get that many fabricated papers published for that long in peer-reviewed journals strongly suggests that there is widespread corruption in his field, which in this case is anesthesiology.
Rumors of Higgs: The U.S.-based physicists announced today that their data suggests that the Higgs boson exists.
Meanwhile, there are hints that a major announcement from the Large Hadron Collider concerning the discovery of a major new particle will be announced on Wednesday.
Freedom of speech in modern America: The Secret Service shut down a “Fire Holder” rally this morning in front of the White House.
After discovering a “suspicious package,” the Secret Service ended the protest. “Several agents seemed hostile to our march and seemed anxious for us to leave the area,” Maurice Lewis, a University of California student, told Campus Reform. “The discover[y of] the ‘unidentified package’ came just as the protest began gain traction.”
Not only should Holder be fired, so should Obama, for allowing this. And Romney should announce that he plans to investigate the Secret Service and fire them if this “suspicious package” report turns out to be false.
