e=mc2: 103 years later, Einstein’s proven right:
A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France’s Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world’s mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.
According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.
The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?
The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.
In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.
Stephen Hawking says that if we can make it through the next hundred years, we’ll be on easy street:
CAMBRIDGE, England (CNN) — Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s great scientists, is looking to the stars to save the human race — but pessimism is overriding his natural optimism.
Stephen Hawking, here delivering a lecture in May, spoke recently to CNN about his vision of the future. Hawking, in an exclusive CNN interview, said that if humans can survive the next 200 years and learn to live in space, then our future will be bright.
The Sun has been getting a lot of press lately. The Solar wind seems to be blowing with less enthusiasm lately, plus according to NASA, sun spot activity is down to a 50 year low.
Now Ace points to a story that suggests a direct link between that solar malaise and the decreasing temperature we’ve been seeing lately here on planet Earth:
Currently, the World Meteorological Organization uses the photochemical model to predict that the Antarctic springtime ozone hole will increase by another 5–10 percent by 2020. In sharp contrast, Dr. LU says the severest ozone loss will occur over the South Pole this month — with another large ozone-triggered hole occurring around 2019.
If the South Pole gets an ozone-hole maximum in the coming weeks, it will strengthen the case for cosmic rays, and endorse a Modern Warming driven by solar variations rather than human-emitted CO2. The solar model is already endorsed by oxygen isotopes in ice cores from both Greenland and the Antarctic, by microfossils in the sediments of nine oceans and hundreds of lakes worldwide, and by cave stalagmites from every continent plus New Zealand.
The case for a solar-driven climate is also strengthened by a drop in global temperatures over the past 18 months: The temperature decline had been forecast by the sunspot index since 2000, but was not predicted by the global climate models.
There’s plenty of evidence out there to support the idea that any warming or cooling on Earth is a result of activity on the Sun… not how many people are driving SUV’s.
I make no secret of the fact that I have a keen dislike for politicians… of all political stripes… I think they are all pretty slimey people, and when they aren’t kissing babies they are either stealing their lollipops, or figuring out a way to tax their lollipops.
I think we all know that politicians aren’t known for “straight talk” as it were… most of their time and effort goes into making what they had previously said sound like what they are saying now.
One Canadian scientist has been looking for a way to quantify spin, and his results back up what I’ve thought all along… Barack Obama is the king of all spin doctors:
Each of the candidates had made speeches containing very high and very low levels of spin, according to Skillicorn’s program, depending on the occasion. In general though, Obama’s speeches contain considerably higher spin than either McCain or Clinton. For example, for their speeches accepting their party’s nomination for president, Obama’s speech scored a spin value of 6.7 - where 0 is the average level of spin within all the political speeches analysed, and positive values represent higher spin. In contrast, McCain’s speech scored -7.58, while Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention scored 0.15. Skillicorn also found that Sarah Palin’s speeches contain slightly more spin than average…
Obama’s spin level skyrockets when facing problems in the press, such as when Jeremiah Wright, the reverend of his former church, made controversial comments to the press.
Now if only there were some group that could serve in a watchdog capacity and point this information out to people… hmmmm.
h/t to AP at HotAir
The Mythbusters ‘NASA Moon Landing Hoax’ episode debuts tomorrow, August 27 at 9:00 p.m. ET on the Discovery Channel.
collectSPACE has a pretty good preview of the special. Jamie and the rest of the Mythbusters have low expectations when it comes to putting a rest to hoax speculation once and for all:
Conspiracy theories are not really a special category — maybe you can call them myths, but I look at them as an obsession that people want to maintain, like being abducted by aliens, Bigfoot and so on. You can’t really expect that reasonable evidence will change anyone’s mind if they are determined,” observed Hyneman. “Do we really think that the same government that screwed up so badly during the Watergate scandal could have perpetrated the moon hoax? Come on!”
That’s very true, and you could also look at it another way. Do we really think that the Nixon administration could have perpetrated such a huge coverup, and people would have actually kept it a secret? It seems like if there was any possibility that there was a Moon landing hoax, journalists all over the world would have been climbing out of the woodwork to prove that Neil Armstrong just took the most expensive back lot tour in history.
Report: Georgia is 11th fattest state:
Though Michael Phelps may consume 10,000 calories per day, he exercises so much it doesn’t matter. But the average American watching him on TV now eats 300 more calories per day than in 1985.
So says a report issued Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health, adding that adult obesity rates rose in 37 states in the last year. They did not decline in any state.
Georgia, which saw its obesity rate rise 1.2 percent, ranked 11th on the list, with 27.5 percent of its adults obese. But Georgia also is one of two states that has specific guidelines for treating obese adults in their Medicaid programs.
The report, now in its fifth year, is titled F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing In America, 2008, and castigates federal, state and local governments for poor or patchwork policies aimed at curbing obesity.
All 50 states and D.C. have PE legislation aimed at schools, but only 13 have enforceable language in their laws, and only 4 include sanctions or penalties for failing schools or districts.
“Experts estimate that if we keep on the current course, 75 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese by 2015,” the report says.
75% of Americans will be overweight or obese by 2015… at least Georgia is on the cutting edge on this one.
NASA made on heck of an announcement yesterday…
Scientists believe Mars lander exposed water ice:
LOS ANGELES - Scientists believe NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission’s principal investigator said Thursday.
Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a statement.
“These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” Smith said. “There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”
The most amazing part of that is the fact that NASA wasn’t expecting to hit any ice until they got down to about 7 inches for so, but they found “ice crumbs” at less than three inches.
Finding water is big when it comes to the search for possible life on Mars, either now or in the past. But water on the Red Planet would also be extremely helpful if we ever decided to establish a human presence on Mars.
Exit Question: How long will it be before the Phoenix lander uncovers a fish skeleton?
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