Tag: Science

The Geek took hiatus last week to attend, and be part of, the marriage between Eldest Son and his very wonderful bride.  It was a very traditional Methodist service, and it went off perfectly insofar as no one fainted, no one objected (there was not a “If anyone objects…” clause in this particular service, so no one did.

The Geek also took today off and did not write a scientific column for several reasons.  First, I stayed up too late last night reading the news and weather.  Second, I could never come up with a good topic for tonight.  I will do better for next week, I promise.  Third, The Geek has just been feeling a tiny bit under the weather, but not horribly ill or anything.

Chalk One up for Science, as if Science, were subject to Popular Vote …

(If that were true, guess who would of won in 2000?)

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviews Al Gore



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21…

MITCHELL: Palin calls it “junk science.” She says, “The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won’t change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worst.”

What’s your response to that?

This 40% breakthrough … has finally become available for your home (maybe?) and office use …

Solar cell breaks efficiency record

Michael Kanellos, CNET News — December 6, 2006

Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity, the latest step in trying to drop the cost of solar power.

Potentially, the solar cell could bring the cost of solar power down to around $3 a watt, after installation costs and other expenses are factored in, over the life of the panel.

[…]

Current silicon solar cells provide electricity at about $8 a watt, before government rebates. The goal is to bring it to $1 a watt without rebates or incentives.

http://news.cnet.com/Solar-cel…

Here is the Final Product from Spectrolab for your Home use. from this week’s news.

We’re diving deep into “geek world” today with a story that combines economic hardball, the periodic table of the elements, and a barely noticed provision of the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to break a monopoly which today gives China near-absolute control over the materials that make cell phones, electric cars, wind turbines, and pretty much every other tool of modern life possible.

If we successfully break the monopoly, we’ll be able to create millions of new manufacturing jobs in this country-and if we don’t, somebody else owns the 21st Century.

Ironically, the global warming we’re trying to fight with new green technologies might be an ally in our efforts to make those very same green technologies happen.

There’s a revolution in industrial processing going on, rare earths are at the center of it all…and in today’s story, the revolution will be televised.

One of standard measurements that we take for granted these days is the charge of a single electron.  This is a vivid example of how scientific knowledge has exploded during the past century.  In 1870, there was no concept of an electron, and atoms were just very crudely becoming accepted.

After the turn of the previous century, it was generally accepted that there were atoms, and that electrons were likely a part of them, but no one knew much about them.  We still have not all of the answers, but Robert Milliken elucidated the intrinsic charge of the electron in xxxx.

As a professional scientist, I am accustomed to observing some phenomenon that is interesting to me, wondering about its significance, looking at background data (if any exist, and yes, “data” is the plural form of “datum”), and then trying to figure out the principles behind.

That works well, for the most part, in systems that can be controlled and only one variable at a time changed.  That is the essence of the scientific method as it generally practiced.  I dispensed with the classical steps, which are observation, formulation of a hypothesis, experimentally testing the hypothesis, refining or rejecting the hypothesis, and then doing more and better experimental tests to test the hypothesis further.  If one is very lucky, the refined hypothesis becomes a theory, and if no exception after crushing peer review, becomes a principle or a law.

We shall get away from food for this installment of Pique the Geek and talk about something more, well, geeky.  The concept of nuclear power is widely known, but the actual way that is works is mysterious to some because people think that it is hard.  Actually, the basic science behind nuclear power is very simple, but the technology to contain and make it practical is complex.

This complexity is due to several reasons, not the least of which is safety.  Whilst the nuclear fuel to power commercial reactors is not very malignant, after that fuel has been used a while it becomes extremely radioactive due to a large number of complex nuclear interactions.  It is the spent reactor fuel that is the real problem.  However, there is a completely different technology used to generate electricity that does not involve a nuclear reactor, and we shall discuss this one first.

I know that this essay is likely not to be popular with progressive folks, but I am not only a progressive, I am a scientist as well.  In my opinion, the only relatively clean option for power that we have, other than natural gas (which is less plentiful and not as clean as the TeeVee adverts say) is the fission of uranium and plutonium.

I realize that this sounds pretty bold, but please bear with me whilst I build my case.  We need power in the meantime for the transition between fossil fuels and truly sustainable ones, and nuclear power is the only one that can provide that power.  First the physics, then the economics, and then the future.

Well here’s some serious rain on humanity’s latest parade:   Cell phones can indeed give you cancer.

Who will tell the children?

In a decade long, landmark study, it turns out that long term use of cell phones ‘significantly increases risk’ of tumors.

Great.

How much you want to bet that people just decide to ignore this?

I mean, who wants to give up their cell phone?

The “funny” thing (not funny ha-ha but funny queer) about this is that they just don’t know how to break it to the public:

Publication of the results of the £20million investigation have been delayed over disagreements how best to present the conclusions.

Maybe they should spend another ten years and twenty million pounds doing a study on how to tell the cell-phone loving public.  

I’m sure the corporatocracy would gladly delay this as long as possible.

And it’s sort of embarrassing for the governments as well:

The findings are expected to put pressure on the British Government, which has always insisted that mobile phones are safe to use.

Sorry, I realize this is bad news.   But something we should all be aware of.

Might want to spread it around.

Last time we talked about the history of the periodic table and some of the reasons behind why it “works”.  We also took a look at the first three periods (rows), the very short first period, with only two elements, and the two short periods with eight elements each in them.  We also grouped these elements into families (columns) that show similar chemical properties.

Now we shall look at Periods 4 and 5, the two long periods.  These periods (and later ones) contain the transition metals.  In the first three periods, chemical properties change radically from one element to the next as atomic number increases.  For example, fluorine, the most chemically reactive element sits next to neon, which forms no known ground state chemical compounds.

The 1976 Viking lander would have likely found water ice on Mars if it had probed just 4 inches deeper.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft’s observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet.

By FishOutofWater

Water ice, never seen before in Mars’ “temperate” zone, was discovered in a shallow crater that was made in 2008. The ice reveals that Mars was warmer and wetter in the relatively recent past.

The finds indicate water-ice occurs beneath Mars’ surface halfway between the north pole and the equator, a lower latitude than expected in the Martian climate.

This ice is a relic of a more humid climate from perhaps just several thousand years ago.

said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Mars has large variations in its tilt that cause its climate to change even more strongly that the changes from glacial to interglacial on earth. However, Mars lost most of its atmosphere to space because Mars lacks the mass (size) to hold on to its upper atmosphere when it interacts with energetic particles in the solar wind. With only 1% of the atmospheric pressure of the earth, the Martian surface is uninhabitable to humans.