Tag Archives: Science & Technology

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DakotaCon: Who’s Watching you?

The Chief had the opportunity to attend the DakotaCon 1 computer security conference at Dakota State University, over in Madison.  The day-long event featured presentations by a number of different speakers from the world of deep geekdom, with handles (noms de guerre) like DCFlux, Moxie Marlinspike, Kingpin (a.k.a. Joe Grand), and even normally tagged presenters Jared DeMott, and NSA’s Dave Garland.

The talks were very interesting…and covered topics ranging from “hardware hacking” situations and workshop skills, as well as various social and economic consequences of the rapidly evolving state of the digital world in its various forms.  Well worth the investment of time…especially since the price was right…no charge!

While not on the scale of major hacking/security conferences like DEFCON, Black Hat, and Schmoocon to name a few, it brought some serious stuff that bears close attention as we apparently move ever more fully into involvement with and membership in a rapidly evolving digital world.

Moxie’s presentation specifically covered aspects of the privacy (or lack thereof) issues associated with the oncoming (and future) generations of cell phones, so when I saw the following it definitely rang a bell:

Snooping: It’s not a crime, it’s a feature
New apps hijack the microphone in your cell phone to listen in on your life

Cellphone users say they want more privacy, and app makers are listening. No, they’re not listening to user requests. They’re literally listening to the sounds in your office, kitchen, living room and bedroom.

A new class of smartphone app has emerged that uses the microphone built into your phone as a covert listening device — a “bug,” in common parlance. But according to app makers, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature!

The apps use ambient sounds to figure out what you’re paying attention to. It’s the next best thing to reading your mind.
Your phone is listening

The issue was brought to the world’s attention recently on a podcast called This Week in Tech. Host Leo Laporte and his panel shocked listeners by unmasking three popular apps that activate your phone’s microphone to collect sound patterns from inside your home, meeting, office or wherever you are.

The apps are Color, Shopkick and IntoNow, all of which activate the microphones in users’ iPhone or Android devices in order to gather contextual information that provides some benefit to the user.

YIKES! The Chief thought it would be sort of neat to have a Droid phone. (Except for the slight detail that there is nearly no reliability of signal at his rural outpost, and the other detail of the cost of the airtime that he would like to use. Oh well. maybe it’s just as well.)

So what can they REALLY find out? 

You should know that any data that can be gathered, will be gathered. Since the new microphone-hijacking apps are still around, we now know that listening in on users is OK. So, what’s possible with current technology?
By listening in on your phone, capturing “patterns,” then sending that data back to servers, marketers can determine the following:

  • Your gender, and the gender of people you talk to.
  • Your approximate age, and the ages of the people you talk to.
  • What time you go to bed, and what time you wake up.
  • What you watch on TV and listen to on the radio.
  • How much of your time you spend alone, and how much with others.
  • Whether you live in a big city or a small town.
  • What form of transportation you use to get to work.

In the early 70’s the Chief had the acquaintance of a highly unconventional electronics and media mavin who at the time was running an alternative FM station (KDNA) in St. Louis.  His often repeated admonition was “assume that anything you say can have someone else listenting” as the only sure-fire way to maintain privacy.  I’m not sure his warning was ENTIRELY true at the time…but if not, the way things have developed now have made him into a prophet…now that I think of it, he literally had the name of a prophet too!  Believe it or not, your choice.

Glowbull Warming, Junk Science

Glowbull Warming and Scientific Decadence

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From his own scientific background and long-standing examination of the pseudo-science of glowbull warming, the Chief has avoided taking membership in the Orthodox Church of Gore-istic Climatics. This is yet another illustration of a decay of scientific quality under the impact of repeated dosages of politically-linked money. It’s also another example of a significant story absent from the US media (and the London Telegraph comes through again).

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

Anthony Watts describes it thus:
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

H/W is the start of the letter. Dr. Lewis becomes painfully explicit in explaining his point:

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

Lewis very specifically lists his problems with the current iteration of the APS, and why it is no longer a worthy representative of science, before going into his concluding statement (go to the linked article for all the Gore-y details).

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal

Just in case some envirowackos want to claim that Dr. Lewis is somehow not qualified to offer this slap-down to the APS establishment, his C.V. gives the lie to that concept:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

With over a quarter-century of teaching HS sciences, including physics, the APS’ actions smack of the attitude that gave an Italian scientist a very difficult political problem when he went against the orthodoxy of his day. THAT scientist was Galileo Galilei.

Any scientist that is unwilling to allow actively encourage scientific debate is unworthy of the name, and unworthy of the responsibility that he has presumed to take on to expand human knowledge about the universe in which we live.

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Don’t Let it Bug You

Cockroaches could help combat MRSA and E.coli

Cockroaches and locusts contain powerful antibiotic molecules in their brains that could be used to develop new treatments against MRSA and E-coli, scientists have discovered.

Scientists at Nottingham University found that the insects, which are widely reviled for their dirty image, could actually be more of a health benefit than a health risk.

They have identified up to nine different molecules in the tissues of cockroaches and locusts that are toxic to bacteria and they hope will pave the way for new treatments for multi-drug resistant bacterial infections.

Who would have guessed?

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THIS is Change that we can REALLY use!

As usual…another case of the London Telegraph going where no US mainstream media has dared to venture.

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

What’s not to like about this one? Well, it IS kind of disconcerting to be in a position to [potentially] supporting an Obama initiative…but then again, it hasn’t happened yet, and since it depends on the other (technological) n-word (nuclear), the Chief is willing to be that B.O. will be no more likely to adopt this than he would be to embrace the original n-word.

There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday – produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. “It’s the Big One,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

“Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels,” he said.

Ooops. What would happen to the “uranium cartels”, to say nothing of the vast, wealthy, and dare one say influential oil iindustry? Anyone else think there may just be a BIT of opposition to this from those locations? (I’m just saying…you know?) As an object lesson in support of this observation:

You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed.

Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. “They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology,” he said.

C’est la vie.

After explaining some of the technical aspects of thorium energy, and the prospects of at least one privately financed effort underway (in Norway), the piece from the Telegraph concludes:

Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice.

When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office.

Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. “This needs action,” he told his military aide. It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe.

The global energy crunch needs equal “action”. If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus.[Emphasis added]

Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes.

The Chief concurs.

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Sense and Non-sense

A step to artificial life: Manmade DNA powers cell
Well…not exactly, as noted by Ken Blanchard posting over at SD Politics.

Ms. Neergaard is lucky that bad science writing isn’t a crime; otherwise she would be in shackles by now. The word “enduring” in the first sentence is puerile puffery. The much worse sin against scientific literacy is that DNA doesn’t “power” living cells, nor does it “take over and drive” them. DNA is the fundamental repository of information for most of its operations and for the essential business of reproduction. DNA is a very powerful map, but the cell itself does the driving.

These distortions have clearly been encouraged by Venter, who is both a scientist and an entrepreneur. This is how he sells his science:

“This is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer,” Venter told reporters.

Well, not yet. Venter’s team built the genome of one kind of bacteria from scratch, using fragments of DNA. In doing so, I gather they were plagiarizing the Lord’s work by precisely copying the DNA of the cattle germ. Then they transplanted the artificial genome into a different kind of cell (a goat germ). The new cell was able to function and I gather it has reproduced. But the parent of the new cell is clearly the recipient cell, not the computer.

Go read the rest of KB’s post…it’s well worth it.

By the way, the Chief heartily concurs with KB on this…and you can put 4 quarters with that and get a can of pop!

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Basic Science: Positive Water!

Weird Water in Space is Electrically Charged

A new ‘phase’ of water that is electrically charged has been discovered in space for the first time.

The weird space water vapor was discovered in an interstellar dust cloud by the European Space Agency’s Herschel space observatory.

Unlike the three more familiar phases of water – namely solid ice, liquid water and gaseous steam – this newfound ‘phase’ doesn’t occur naturally on Earth.

In the birth clouds surrounding young stars, ultraviolet light is pumping through the gas, and this irradiation can knock an electron out of the water molecule, leaving it with [positive] electrical charge.

After teaching H.S. sciences for 27 years, finding something new that is so fundamentally basic is just too cool!

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You may be reading this…or not. Really!

This is really sounds impossible…but it has been actually done in the laboratory…

Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist

Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists — that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye — and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible….

The strange discovery by quantum physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara means that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe — a multi-state condition that has scientists theorizing that traveling through time may be much more than just the plaything of science fiction writers.

And it’s all because of a tiny bit of metal — a “paddle” about the width of a human hair, an item that is incredibly small but still something you can see with the naked eye. UC Santa Barbara’s Andrew Cleland cooled that paddle in a refrigerator, dimmed the lights and, under a special bell jar, sucked out all the air to eliminate vibrations. He then plucked it like a tuning fork and noted that it moved and stood still at the same time.

How could this be? The Chief isn’t sure about the actual mechanics of the experiment, but it’s easy to imagine two viewing devices recording simultaneously that show the states of motion/non-motion.

Check out the piece for some more details of this stuff.

Forward, into the past!

Defense Matters!

Reagan “Star Wars” Chickens Come Home to Roost!

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Development programs for this started as part of the original Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars”. In spite of rabid criticism from the usual claque of progressive scientific and political activists who declared the task to be an impossibility, the results are bearing fruit: A prototype airborne battle laser system that shoots down ICBM’s? You betcha!

U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile

A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said on Friday.

The agency said in a statement the test took place at 8:44 p.m. PST (11:44 p.m. EST) on Thursday /0444 GMT on Friday) at Point Mugu’s Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off Ventura in central California.

“The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile” the agency said.

What does this system actually do?

The airborne laser weapon is aimed at deterring enemy missile attacks and providing the U.S. military with the ability to engage all classes of ballistic missiles at the speed of light while they are in the boost phase of flight.

“The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers (miles), and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies,” the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said.

Nothing succeeds like success!

Glowbull Warming

Global Cooling Update

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That’s right – COOLING!

Scientific evidence now points to global cooling, contrary to U.N. alarmism

U.S. policymakers who cite “consensus” on man-made global warming as justification for anti-emission regulations are relying upon outdated and misleading material from the United Nations that deliberately omits the influence of natural forces, according to climate skeptics. In fact, a growing body of evidence now points to the emergence of another cooling cycle that could persist for decades.
Dr. Don Easterbrook, a geologist and professor emeritus at Western Washington University, has presented data that shows a cooler and wetter climate is in order for the next 25 to 30 years. The Pacific Ocean has a warm temperature mode and a cool temperature mode known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO, he said in a recent study.

The shift away from a cooling cycle in 1945 triggered several decades of warming that ended in 1998, according to the study. However, the PDO has now reverted back over to a cool mode, Easterbrook has concluded. This data raises questions about the reliability of models used by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Easterbrook has said. This U.N. prediction of global temperatures 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 appear to be very much off track.

Meanwhile, some scientists are convinced earth could experience more than just cooling over the next few decades. Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics with the National Autonomous University of Mexico sees evidence that points to the onset of a “little ice age” in about 10 years that could last for much of the 21st Century. The IPPC models are not correct because they do not take into account natural factors like solar activity, he said in a ecture.

This view is also advanced in a paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia. The authors anticipate that sun’s activity will diminish significantly over the next few decades.

Unfortunately, we have a much more immediate threat than the U.N. from B.O., AlGor, et al.

Up until now, critics of the Waxman-Markey bill inside and outside of Congress have focused mostly on the severe economic costs of emission caps. During the August recess, it might be helpful to ask members why they continue to pursue regulatory schemes unattached to what new scientific data now shows.

Tune up your snowblowers & snowmobiles, and throw another AlGore log on the fire.

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“Does anybody really know what time it is?

This just naturally suggested the old tune from the group Chicago:

As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said

Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I cant imagine why
We’ve all got time enough to cry

Are we missing a dimension of time?

A scientist has put forward the bizarre suggestion that there are two dimensions of time, not the one that we are all familiar with, and even proposed a way to test his heretical idea next year.

Time is no longer a simple line from the past to the future, in a four dimensional world consisting of three dimensions of space and one of time. Instead, the physicist envisages the passage of history as curves embedded in a six dimensions, with four of space and two of time.

“There isn’t just one dimension of time,” Itzhak Bars of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles tells New Scientist. “There are two. One whole dimension of time and another of space have until now gone entirely unnoticed by us.”

DOH! How could we have missed this?

Until now, they have been reluctant to meddle with time because it can lead to unexpected consequences, such as time travel.

That’s why!  Avoiding that pesky ole’ time travel paradox:

Changing our picture of time from a line to a plane (one to two dimensions) means that the path between the past and future could loop back on itself, allowing you to travel back and forwards in time and allowing the famous grandfather paradox, where you could go back and kill your grandfather before your mother was born, thereby preventing your own birth.

Bars first found hints of an extra time dimension in M-theory in 1995 and, when he looked into it, discovered the grandfather paradox and other fears could be overcome by using a new kind of symmetry – a mathematical property to work out the relationship between the quantities of position and momentum. It is this symmetry that might help reconcile the two mighty pillars of 20th-century physics, quantum mechanics and relativity.

And then there’s this aspect of it…anyone else remember your Platonic “ideals” (reality) and their shadows (what we experience)?

According to Bars, the familiar four dimensional world we see around us is merely a “shadow” of the six-dimensional reality, just as a hand makes many different shadows on a wall when lit from different angles.

Although we cannot experience the extra time dimension directly, we can effectively notice it through the different perspectives of the different “shadows”.

Actually – this is really cool stuff…it would be really neat to figure all this stuff out.

My background from teaching years of H.S. physics isn’t up to all the math details of this, but conceptually I really get into this sort of stuff…I guess it appeals to my SciFi instincts.

If you REALLY want to see what Bars says about this himself, go here, but be warned…this is real physics stuff, even though he’s discussing it conceptually, more or less.

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Speaking of Transparency…

Fish has transparent head

Scientists in California have filmed a fish with a transparent head. And the encounter has helped researchers solve the 50-year-old mystery of how the fish uses its extraordinary eyes to see in the gloomy ocean depths.

After studying biology for most of a lifetime it’s still amazing to see variety in life that is not only stranger than we imagine, but is stranger than we CAN imagine – until we see it – speaking of which, video with the original article. Check it out…it’s kind of neat!

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Glowbull Warming Updates – cont’d

At this moment the Chief’s location is at -25 deg F, so this seemed to be pretty appropriate.

Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age

Quick and dirty abstract of this piece: It’s the sun, stupid!

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.

Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s ‘wobble’, which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these three astronomical cycles, each of which effects the amount of solar radiation which reaches the earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Age maximums and warm interglacials.

Glowbull warming my…posterior!

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Steam Driven Fusion Reactor?

Maybe so…

STEAMPUNK FUSION

The picture you see above is a steam driven fusion reactor. I know what you are thinking. This is some kind of joke. It is no joke. General Fusion has a design that I think has an outside chance of working.

A lot more information on this here, in a PopSci article.

This is an elegant idea. The Chief hopes it works, and wishes he had some serious money to invest in it.

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Glowbull Warming Update

Frankly, the Chief is pleased and rather surprised to see this coming from CNN.

CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory ‘Arrogant’
Network’s second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather?

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

There’s more detail in the original article. Read it if you’re interested in this….if not, you’ve got the gist of it above.

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Getting Some More Nukie?

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The Chief wants some…right in his own backyard!

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.’

This is the sort of thing that can really go a long way toward solving the energy problem. Even electric cars (for those in areas where long distance driving is not required) can become practical with this sort of thing.

Now, if we can only get a Manhatten Project style program going for fusion power…(sigh).

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Yankee Ingenuity Rises Again with Planned SST

The new Concorde: Supersonic jet will get you from London to New York in just three hours

It is five years ago almost to the day that Concorde approached Heathrow airport under much fanfare and nostalgia on its last official flight before heading off into retirement. In a move which for some people signalled a step backwards for technology, the Anglo-French aviation-engineering masterpiece touched down and with it the chance for people to experience supersonic air travel.

But now, an American firm is on the cusp of re-imagining the supersonic dream and confidently plans to have supersonic commercial aircraft back in the skies as a reality by 2015.

aerion-sst.jpg

The Aerion Supersonic Jet may not have the same grace and style and the size of the great Concorde, but the Aerion group are so sure that the plane will fly that they have pencilled in test flights for 2012, with transatlantic testing to follow soon after. Reaching a top speed of mach 1.6 the jet will once again put New York within three hours flight time of London.

What about the drawbacks of the Concorde? Not to worry:

‘The cost per nautical mile will be similar to today’s large business jets.’ The biggest advance in technology that the Aerion has improved upon Concorde is in its noise reduction ability.

Concorde was famously and some would say intentionally scuppered by jealous Americans who banned the plane from flying over U.S. territory at the speed of sound. This immediately removed any advantage the small plane had over its larger competitors and ended the supersonic age before it had begun.

The Aerion aircraft can successfully fly at nearly the speed of sound without any significant noise impact and more amazingly has the ability to fly at mach 1.15 without emanating a sonic boom. ‘This is due to the patented supersonic natural laminar flow (SNLF) technology that substantially reduces drag at supersonic as well as high-subsonic cruise speeds,’ says Jeff Miller.

The first version will be sold as a high-end corparate type aircraft, with the technology and market for that being used to leverage eventual development of an airline service version of the plane.

‘Concorde was a beautiful machine and a product of its time, but technology has moved forward and new designs such as the Aerion jet offer greater efficiency. ‘Concorde was withdrawn due to high operating cost, which Aerion technology has successfully overcome,’ says Jeff.

Aerion will start small but hope to have the technology and the capital to one day expand their operation beyond smaller aircraft to larger Concorde sized vehicles. ‘With the success of the Aerion supersonic business jet, we expect to see supersonic flight becoming commonplace. ‘With market acceptance it will be possible to fund the development of airliner variants, offering time savings to a much larger group of travellers,’ says Jeff.

As incredible as it seems that Concorde was flying only five years ago, Aerion will be tearing across our skies in four, heralding a return to the skies of supersonic travel.

And how cool is that! While the Chief admittedly won;t be in line to buy one…(ha ha ha)…it’s good to see further real technological progress in commercial aerospace. Maybe there WILL be a future chance to enjoy a 3 hour flight to London on an airline version. That WOULD be cool!

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Scientific Progress…well,…of a sort.

Winners of the Ig® Nobel Prize

For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK.
“The Ig Nobel awards are arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar.” –Nature

Yes, but think WHAT?

The 2008 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday night, October 2, at the 18th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

Just one sample of the awards this year…but it’s certainly worth checking out the rest of the list.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRIZE. Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
REFERENCE: “Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism,” Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, and Ágota Tóth, Nature, vol. 407, September 2000, p. 470.

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer’s ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.
REFERENCE: “Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?” Geoffrey Miller, Joshua M. Tybur, Brent D. Jordan, Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 375-81.

OK. So I listed two of them. The sacrifices required by the researchers of the latter effort are beyond ordinary comprehension. It must have been hard for them.

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From the “Duh!” Department

Religious people are ‘more helpful, honest and generous’ say scientists

One supposes that this is official, since Scientists now say so.

Believing in God makes people nicer, a major study has concluded. After analysing three decades of research, scientists say religion encourages individuals to be more helpful, honest and generous.

One would guess that Bill Maher WON’T refer to this in his recently released cinematic anti-religious diatribe.

But believers acting for the greater good may be doing so to enhance their own reputation among friends and acquaintances, according to the review published today in the journal Science.

And the point is? IMHO positive behavior is positive…for whatever reason. From the Chief’s religious viewpoint, one often starts doing something good for many mixed reasons, but grows into the spirit of the undertaking, and ends up with an entirely different…and more spiritually oriented view of what was done than was present when it started. In other words, doing something good changes, and improves the doer, and THAT’s a part of what religion should be all about!

Dr Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, Canada, said the debate over whether religion improves behaviour has too often been driven by opinion and anecdote. ‘We wanted to look at the hard scientific evidence,’ he said.

Published research into the links between religion and ‘pro-social’ behaviour showed that religious and spiritual thoughts reduced rates of cheating in games and increased trust between strangers.

Repeated studies have shown that those who frequently pray and attend religious services report more charitable donations and volunteer work, they said.

Like it says in The Book: “By their fruits, ye shall know them.”

Space Patrol

Another Step Toward Commercial Space

White Knight Two space rocket in Mojave Desert for testing

The Chief continues to relish anything that gives us a greater presence in space.

Sir Richard Branson’s dreams of operating the world’s first commercial spaceline will move a step closer today when he unveils his new space rocket.

ixknight.jpg

The billionaire will present White Knight Two to the world in the searing heat of the Mojave Desert – ahead of the first proper flight which is expected as early as next year.

White Knight Two will be the mothership, on which a much smaller spaceship will sit until it is projected into sub-orbital space flight at a certain altitude.

Designs for both White Knight Two, which is the world’s largest aircraft made entirely from carbon composite, and the smaller SpaceShip Two were unveiled in New York in January.

What’s the point? It’s like anything else…the more you use something (in this case space flight), the better you get at it. As far as the broader national strategic security view is concerned, there’s NOTHING like being present on the higher ground!

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“My DNA Made Me Do It!”

Study finds genetic link to violence, delinquency

Three genes may play a strong role in determining why some young men raised in rough neighborhoods or deprived families become violent criminals, while others do not, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

One gene called MAOA that played an especially strong role has been shown in other studies to affect antisocial behavior — and it was disturbingly common, the team at the University of North Carolina reported.

There’s more information on this in the article…but the whole thing gives the Chief two premonitions:
• You just KNOW that lawyers are going to use this to claim that perps are not really to blame for their crimes…after all, they can’t help their genes, can they?
• You also have to know that the shrinkologists will use assessments of “anti-social” behavior as an excuse for the development of massive screening and biochemical manipulation (attempts) to “cure” the problem.

Whether or not it is needed is the real question, or whether this starts ud down a path like that in the film Minority Report.

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…Another big DUH!

Higher CO2 levels may be good for plants: German scientists

The dangerous rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be troubling scientists and world leaders but it could prove to be a boon for plants, German researchers said Tuesday. Increasing exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields, Hans-Joachim Weigel of the Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute for rural areas, forestry and fisheries in the central city of Brunswick told AFP.

The Chief has been teaching high school science for 25 years. Allow a BRIEF summary of some truly BASIC biochemistry:

Plants are CARBON-based life forms. They gain most of their CARBON out of the atmosphere in the form of CARBON dioxide, and then via photosynthesis assemble this CARBON into CARBOhydrate in the form of glucose sugar, which provides the energy basis for our life on Earth.

In other words, CARBON dioxide is the primary building material plants use for production of food and ultimately everything else they make like proteins, nucleic acids, starches, cellulose, and any other carbohydrates like fructose, sucrose, etc. all of which are once again (this IS the important point) CARBON BASED, with the CARBON coming from CARBON dioxide.

So exactly why these German scientists are announcing this as a significant scientific discovery, somewhat baffles the Chief.

No wonder we won the war!

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Nothing is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, …

GPS failing? Blame the Northern Lights

Scientists have discovered that the natural light shows of the Northern Lights – or Aurora Borealis – interfere with the signals from global positioning satellites, which are used by sat-navs to pinpoint the locations of vehicles, boats and aircraft.

The intense electrical activity created in the atmosphere by the Northern Lights decreases the accuracy of the system, telling drivers that they are on a road they are not actually on or causing receivers to lose track of their position entirely.

Being able to read a map, the Chief personally thinks that while GPS is kind of neat stuff, it’s a bit of overkill for automotive travel. Now, if he were sailing a 35 ft. sloop from San Diego to Nuku Hiva, that’s another story…but even then, he had better know D.I.Y navigation…just in case!

Culture Wars

Science, Intelligence, Design, and Glowbull Warming

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How are these things related? If you have a little bit of time, and are willing to think, read this:

Intelligent Conversation

In a world where a snob like Michael Moore and a smug manipulator like Al Gore can win Oscars for “documentaries” that play fast and loose with the truth, it’s ironic that Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which makes a serious effort to tell the truth about a problem that’s seriously damaging our civilization, not only won’t get nominated for an Oscar but will certainly be attacked as anti-scientific.

This is the opposite of the truth, or very nearly so. Ben Stein’s film project was to expose the way rigid insistence on Darwinist dogma is expelling not only brilliant individuals but also truth itself from the public conversation of science.

This is one of the best discussions of these issues that the Chief has encountered…well worth the read.

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I was talking about this tomorrow…

Physicist Says Time Travel Is Not Only Possible, but Likely

Time travel? Teleportation? No problem, says renowned physicist Michio Kaku.

A somewhat more detailed presentation of this is in the Friday London Telegraph:

Teleportation and forcefields possible within decades, says Professor Michio Kaku

Teleportation and forcefields could become scientific realities within decades, and time travel will also be possible in the future, according to one of the world’s leading physicists. Professor Michio Kaku of City University in New York has studied a range of scientific “impossibilities” and concluded that most will almost certainly be achieved as our knowledge expands.

The Chief concurs!

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Peak Oil? Not!

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Shell exec says world not running out of oil

John Hofmeister, the Houston-based president of Shell Oil’s U.S. operations, express doubt about the validity of peak oil theory in an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box show. “The peak oil theory has really swamped the world. God bless Matt Simmons,” Hofmeister told CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla, according to a transcript provided to WND by CNBC. “His assumptions are correct based on his hypotheses, but his hypotheses are too narrow.”

Matt Simmons, a Houston-based investment banker who specializes in the energy industry, is widely known for his 2005 book, “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” in which he analyzed oil depletion data from Saudi Arabian wells. The peak oil theory argues the world’s oil resources are finite and will be completely exhausted at a future date.

This has been predicted about as often as the “Population Bomb” stuff that we would all be starving to death by now.

Hofmeister explained to the CNBC audience why he believed Simmons’ hypotheses were too narrow. “In other words, Simmons is looking at conventional oil only,” Hofmeister said. “In the industry, we look at unconventional oil as well.” Unconventional oil is a reference to oil that is not found as crude oil in reservoirs contained in sedimentary rock layers just below the surface of the earth.

This goes along with the Russian originated theories that much oil is present, and in fact is being steadily produced by abiotic processes deep in the earth.

Abiotic oil…also present in apparently vast quantities on the Saturnian moon Titan. No dinos there, methinks!

Read the article, check out the links, too.

What? No dinosaurs? What’s Sinclair to do?

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Freezing Out Glowbull Warming?

As a HAM radio shortwave aficionado, the Chief has been very interested in the sunspot cycle, and its behavior for years, since among other things, the sunspot cycle greatly affects the behavior of shortwave radio wave propagation.

Guess what? Among the aforementioned “other things” is the planetary climate. Who’d a thunk it!

The Sun Also Sets

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better “eyes” with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth’s climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they’re worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity. Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

An the point is?…

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle. This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun’s magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Somehow the Chief can really relate to this as he listens to the poor shortwave conditions on his radio, during a 15 deg F below zero evening on the Northern Plains. (But hey, it DOES help to keep the riff-raff out!)

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada’s Carleton University, says that “CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales….Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth….Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again,” Patterson says. “If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than ‘global warming’ would have had.”

These guys are not alone, either:

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming “community” — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by “dramatic changes” in temperatures.

…and this:

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

“The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100,” according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz. The study says that “try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures.”

Now THERE’S the real inconvenient truth to AlGor and his moonbat devotees.

Space Patrol

Branson’s Private Spaceflight: Update

Virgin Galactic Unveils Suborbital Spaceliner Design

The Chief has previously noted with interest, Sir Richard Branson has been developing plans, and more to the point, technology to press ahead with Virgin Galactic – a venture into private suborbital spaceflight.

The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier will begin initial tests this summer to shakedown the novel spaceflight system designed by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and his firm Scaled Composites. “2008 really will be the year of the spaceship,” said British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, who unveiled a 1/16th-scale model of the new spacecraft here at the American Museum of Natural History. “We’re truly excited about our new system and what our new system will be able to do.”

Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship-2

The idea seems to be proceeding nicely.

While the initial round of tests is slated for sometime this summer and the first spaceflights pegged for 2009, Whitehorn stressed that safety is paramount. “We’re in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety,” Whitehorn said.

Rutan said he is targeting a safety factor akin to that of the earlier airliners of the 1920s, which should still be 100 times better than the safety of today’s manned spacecraft used by large governments today. “Don’t believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of new spacecraft is as safe as a modern airliner,” Rutan said.

I STILL think it’s way cool – given the money, I would fly in it in a second! It also seems good enough for the FAA:

Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, lauded the commitment of Virgin Galactic and Scaled to safety after SpaceShipTwo’s unveiling. “It is the entrepreneurial spirit that will take this country forward,” Smith said. “This is going to catch like a wild fire we have never seen.”

Hear, hear!

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Glowbull Warming Notes

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THere’s been more and more coming out…from the scientific world…in the nature of inconvenient truths that, contrary to AlGor et al, climate is being driven by the sun…and, global temperature seems to have peaked in 1998!

SOMEBODY…ANYBODY…

    PLEASE

HIT ALGORE WITH A CLUEBAT & SHUT HIM UP!

Firstly, from the Boston Globe (not exactly a bastion of right-wing anti-enviros):

Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?

The stark headline appeared just over a year ago. “2007 to be ‘warmest on record,’ ” BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government’s Meteorological Office, the story announced that “the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007,” surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

The piece goes on to cite the actual record for ’07, both for the southern and northern hemispheres. (Guess what? It was NOT warmer!)

OPEN LETTER to UN SECRETARY-GENERAL

This came out last month, but is still well worth noting…it was signed by 100 scientists from the much ballyhooed IPCC, who take great exception to the IPCC’s conclusions, insomuch as they would affect policies. Swing that cluebat!

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

That last sentence there puts it into proper perspective as to where the rubber actually meets the road.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

• Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

• The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

• Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

You get the drift…

If it isn’t CO2, then what DOES drive climate? THE SUN! (What a concept!)

Even Russia is weighing in on this. Writing for Novosti, is Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming

Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

There’s more…check it out.

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Fun, with Physics

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Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

This in from this weekends Sunday Telegraph:

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists….

…his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.

Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.

If this holds up, it will be the greatest advance in theoretical physics since Relativity. Einstein’s work paved the way for the development of nuclear energy, in both its explosive and non-explosive forms. Who could predict where THIS may lead us? One thing the Chief wouldn’t do is limit the possible outcomes…the sky, or perhaps the galaxy is the limit.