Faster-than-light Warp Drive

Image Credit: Dr. Harold ‘Sonny’ White

I read an article the other day that awoke my inner geek (and made me wonder, yet again, where my Buck Rogers’ ray gun and Starship Troopers’ space cadet cap got to).

Warp drive, the faster-than-light-travel I first heard about in the original Star Trek series, may be more realistic than I ever imagined. The ‘real-life’ spacecraft design is quite different, but the general concept is the same… 

In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a real-world design for a warp drive. The proposed spacecraft was football-shaped and was attached to a flattened ring that encircled it (the ring was to provide the warp-drive phenomenon). Unfortunately, when Alcubierre did his calculations, the energy required to power his ship was enormous  (equal to the mass-energy of Jupiter). Recently, however, Dr. Harold ‘Sonny’ White (of NASA) reworked the design — replacing the flattened ring with a rounded doughnut — and the recalculated energy requirement is comparable to the mass-energy of NASA’s Voyager 1 probe (Dr. White suggests that further energy reductions are possible with the integration of oscillating space-warps). This may bring the idea of faster-than-light-travel out of the pages of the science fiction books of my teenage years and into reality!

The proposed warp drive does not contravene the theoretical universal speed-limit (as per Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity); rather, the manipulation of space-time provides an escape clause.

The encircling doughnut-shaped ring produces a warp in space-time around the spacecraft: space in front of the craft contracts, and space behind expands, but the spacecraft remains within a cocoon of non-warped, ‘flat’ space-time and surfs the wave within the warp field. Apparently, the spaceship could theoretically approach a ‘virtual’ speed ten times faster than the speed of light. The math is impenetrable (at least to my thirty-years-in-the-past university calculus, which is, alas, not powerful enough to probe the magic); nevertheless, the important concept is that matter cannot go faster than the speed of light, but the fabric of space — space-time — can, and the spacecraft-cocoon will travel within warped space-time, which will deliver the craft to its destination faster than light can travel.

The ring that creates the warp field will probably require exotic matter (uncommon states of matter that have unusual properties, but are within the sphere of conventional physics). The generation of sufficient amounts of exotic matter to create and sustain the ring for the warp drive is currently speculative, but future advances in quantum mechanics may resolve this issue.

Dr. White, and associates, have set up an experiment — the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer  (note: this link contains a lot of information on warp mechanics: for the experimental set-up, see p.8 of the pdf) — in an attempt to “…perturb space-time by one part in ten million.” Dr. White admits it’s a humble experiment, but is an important test of principles.

According to the Star Trek canon, warp drive was (will be) invented in 2063. Only time will tell if the prediction comes true…

Warp seven, Scotty; and Sulu, plot a course toward the “…second star to the right, straight on ’til morning.”.

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The wedding season

One of my nieces began an exciting new chapter in life as a married woman yesterday. The wedding ceremony took place in a beautiful, outdoor setting: but, for me, it was two children who truly brightened the event: the Ring Bearer, stolid and steady enough to make Gandalf proud; and the Flower Girl, as carefree as the wind.

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Once in a blue moon

Tonight will display a blue moon, the second full moon in August [image: universetoday.com].

The term blue moon originated long ago and was used to refer to bizarre events, or events that seldom occur (and this usage is still common today). This is only speculation, but the term may have originated after a volcanic eruption (or forest fire): if there is a large quantity of smoke or ash spewed into the upper atmosphere, the moon can seem to have a bluish tint.

In more recent times, the Marine Farmer’s Almanac borrowed the term to indicate the unusual event when there were four full moons in a season instead of the usual three. In 1946, James Hugh Pruett, writing an article in Sky & Telescope, misunderstood the reference to mean the second full moon in a calendar month, and this inaccuracy was duplicated during a syndicated radio program in 1980, thereby solidifying the association in the media and the population-at-large (Philip Hiscock (an expert in folklore from the Memorial University of Newfoundland) and Donald W. Olson (an astronomer from Texas) researched and exposed the history of the term blue moon).

Blue moons occur because the moon orbits the earth at a frequency of 29.5 days, which does not match up with the length of the calendar months, resulting in two full moons occasionally occurring in the same month.

Blue moons occur, on average, every 2.7 years, so they are really not that uncommon, but the next blue moon will not occur until July, 2015.

On an unrelated matter; I’m not sure why, but my beard seems to be growing unusually quickly today: I just shaved a couple of hours ago, and I’m already displaying a five o’clock shadow…

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We came in peace for all Mankind

1969 was the year of Woodstock, Led Zeppelin’s first album, the Boeing 747’s inaugural flight, the election of Israel’s first female Prime Minister (Golda Meir), the Beatles final live performance (an impromptu concert on the roof of Apple Records, which was broken up by police), the first confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in North America (and it took the life of  a teenager, Robert R.), the beginning of the US gay rights movement (sparked by the Stonewall riots in NY City), the first withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, the killing of two Black Panther Party Members (who were asleep at the time) during a Chicago police officers’ raid, and many more notable stories and events.

But it is an event on July 20th, 1969, that I recall without consulting Wikipedia or other historic information sites. I was on summer holidays — between grades six and seven — watching the first human step onto the moon. It was almost unimaginable, and the fact that I watched the event on our grainy black-and-white TV made it all the more surreal. It was an achievement that stunned me, and changed me; an event that ignited my imagination and altered my reading preference to science fiction. I wanted to be an astronaut (at one point I even sent an application to NASA; sadly, I never received a reply). Above all it was an event that made me realize how small I was in relation to the universe.

The three men who manned the first moon-mission are locked in my memory: Michael Collins (surely, for several moments, the loneliest man ever: he was off of his home planet and on the other side of the moon; no visual contact with Earth, nobody for company, and nothing but static to listen to — see Of a Fire on the Moon, by Norman Mailer for more details); Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step on the Moon’s surface; and last, but not least, the mission Commander, Neil Armstrong, the first human being to set foot on another celestial body.

I’m sure everyone has heard by now that Neil Armstrong passed away on Saturday, a little over forty-three years since his historic accomplishment. It is a sad day, but a good day to reflect on a positive accomplishment of the human spirit (interestingly, Neil Armstrong’s famous quote, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” was, he said, slightly misquoted: what he actually said was, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”).

Those first astronauts left a plaque on the moon that states: “We came in peace for all Mankind.” And during Armstrong’s first walk on the surface, he paused and put a patch on the surface to commemorate the Soviet cosmonauts and NASA astronauts who had died performing their duties. These acts took place during the Cold War, and were lovely gestures. The words on the plaque were encouraging, but human strife between antagonists continues to this day.

Someday, a human will place a plaque on Mars to commemorate the further adventures of humankind. It would be wonderful if we could learn to embody peace as a species while we continue our voyage of discovery.

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Virgo time

[the Virgo image is from cutehoroscopes.com]

My astrological sign — Virgo (August 23 – September 22)  — has entered the spotlight of the celestial stage.

 I’m not an advocate of zodiacal predictability (far from it), but I thought I’d look up some Virgo characteristics and see how they aligned with my personality. I perused various sites and selected typical characteristics, as listed below (my comments appear in parentheses):

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They are intelligent (indubitably) and analytical (I’ll have to assess the validity of this conjecture prior to formulating a response).
They have an affinity for learning and retaining information (if that means I get bored easily, then yes).
They enjoy sharing their knowledge (yes, even if it’s not wanted).
They are meticulous about their appearance (meh: WYSIWYG) and are generally perfectionists (I’ve always wanted to be one, but I’m too lazy).
They have overactive minds (I’ve been thinking about this for over an hour now (there were a few other issues I was mulling over at the same time (which got in the way a bit (things like, did I pack enough for lunch? And, I don’t care how it makes me look, I like horizontal stripes, etcetera ) but I did manage to keep refocusing), you know, fiddly problems: the kind that whirr about in your mind) and I’m really getting somewhere, but I’m going to move on to the next point and come back to this one later…)
They tend to analyze and critique everything (ouch: yes), and tend to be very hard on themselves (also yes)
They are detail oriented, often blind to the big picture (I’m stuck on this one: every time I begin to seriously dissect the elements of this characteristic, I forget what it was about, so I’ll skip to the next one)
They are obsessed with organization (my wife would certainly agree, but it only makes sense that there is a place for everything; and, if things are always stored in their place, then you can find them when you need them!)
They tend to have a small circle of acquaintances they are devoted to, which can sometimes lead to petty jealousies (I have no comment for this; however, there’s something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest for years: my brother and sister got way more attention than I did when we were growing up, and they still do. It’s never really bothered me much. Just thought I’d mention it.)
They tend to have a refined palate (I do like to guzzle dry red wine…)
They tend to be extremely health conscious (more so as I age…)
They have an ability to create reality in their own minds (yes, and sometimes it’s scary in here!)
They have a tendency to be cheap (as per the Pink Floyd lyrics: Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie), but are generous to those in need (okay! That makes me sound better).
They are reserved, independent and unemotional (yes; yes; and only on the outside, sniff).

I have to admit that the characteristics of a Virgo fit my personality closer than I would have imagined, but I’m not convinced that astrology is a viable system (perhaps because I tend to over-analyze and critique everything?); nevertheless, for the next month, may all Virgos bask in the glow of their celestial season!

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The Dieppe Raid Uncovered

On August 19, 1942, over six-thousand Allied-forces infantrymen (primarily Canadian, supported by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force) endeavored to penetrate the German stronghold at the port of Dieppe, via a stone beach along the northern coast of France. The Operation was a complete disaster; within six hours, sixty-percent of the attacking infantrymen were dead, injured, or captured. Nine-hundred and seven Canadians died in the aborted raid.

Until recently, it was unclear why the Allied forces had followed through with the Dieppe Raid, which was a poorly planned assault. But a military historian, David O’Keefe, sifted through top-secret, British military documents until he discovered an answer that is like the plot of a spy novel, which makes sense, because Ian Fleming — WW II British Intelligence Officer and author of the James Bond books — was involved.

When O’Keefe confronted British Navel authorities with his evidence, they acknowledged that he had discovered the truth.

The Dieppe Raid was initiated as a diversion for a pinch operation; the raid provided cover for a commando unit’s infiltration into German Naval headquarters (intelligence indicated it was in Dieppe’s Hôtel Moderne) and to board specific boats within the inner harbor: the ultimate goal of the mission was to ‘appropriate’ German code-books and a code-machine. Ian Fleming was the head of the commando unit.

To me, that seems like a lot of lives to use as a diversion, but hopefully this will provide solace and meaning for survivors. The Dieppe Raid was poorly planned and doomed to fail: the troops arrived late, and the planned cover of darkness had dissipated.

A documentary of the Dieppe Raid, based on the evidence that O’Keefe uncovered, has been created; the documentary, Dieppe Uncovered, will be aired on History Television on Sunday, August 19 (the seventieth anniversary of the raid).

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The Olympics, social media, and an unselfish act

 I can’t believe how much communication technology has changed in my lifetime (I have fears of becoming the poor old guy who can’t work the newfangled whatchamacallit): with this year’s Olympics, smart phones provided a palpable, real-time experience. And we can post and tweet to our hearts content, and the world can answer back. We can know how an athlete feels almost immediately after the event. We no longer have to sit down, glued to the TV; we don’t even have to be at a computer, we can check our phones for instant updates and streaming: instant gratification, the opiate of the masses.

Sociolympics 2012 was a buzz of information: the Twitterverse was awash with messages; so much so, that newsworthy stories were replaced in rapid succession, making Andy Warhol’s ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ statement seem like an overestimate.

And sports has become a big business. When I was young (up until I stumbled out of my teens), the Olympics was truly inspirational to me; I was a competitive swimmer, and I dreamed of competing in the event some day (alas, my only claim to fame was losing regularly to people who medaled in Olympic events). Perhaps my eyes were dazzled with the inexperience of youth and I have become jaded, but my youthful dreams seem part of another lifetime; a simpler time, when the media coverage was focused solely on athletic endeavors, and not so much on winning. To be fair, winning was always a big deal; however, for me, the symbolic rings have been tarnished in the years since I dreamed of participating in the Olympics.

But every time my negativity reared its ugly head, a feel-good story would appear in the social media and wash away any traces of pessimism.

And, after the Olympics was over and done with, one final story rippled through the social media network. The story will fade away, to be replaced by other news, but it will stick with me for a while; it was an unselfish, empathic act by a ten-year old boy.

The 4×100 meter relay is one of the premier track and field races of the Olympics; an exciting, prestigious event. The Jamaican team won gold, the American’s the silver, and Trinidad & Tobago took the bronze. The Canadian team had crossed the finish line in third place (an exciting moment for Canadian fans), but they were disqualified because Jared Connaughton stepped out of his lane. And this is where the ten-year old boy from Paradise Newfoundland, Elijah Porter, enters the picture.

Elijah was watching and saw the replays of the Canadian runner step on/over the line: Elijah thought it was unfair that it cost the team the bronze, and he sent a letter, along with his Timbits soccer medal, to the team; and in particular, he wanted Jared Connaughton to feel better. Justyn Warner, a member of the Canadian relay team, tweeted about the unselfish act; and, at least in Canada, the news spread like wildfire (picture of Elijah Porter ).

When asked why he’d sent the letter, Elijah said, “When I saw that he touched the line, I thought, ‘Why are rules like that?’ Even though it’s unchangeable, I thought I could make him feel better by sending him a letter, and sending him my own medal.”

Nicki Power, a Tim Hortons spokeswoman (for those not in-the-know, Tim Hortons is a Canadian donut and coffee shrine), said the company will replace his Timbits soccer medal, and also offer him a Tim Hortons 21-speed mountain bike as a reward for his altruism.

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Slime mould and bio-computers

Slime moulds germinate from a spore and begin life as a haploid (one set of chromosomes) amoebae organism, flowing along the floor of a forest, eating bacteria. When food supply becomes scarce, a chemical (cAMP) is released, which induces the individual amoebae to congregate into a mass: they form streams of cells, referred to as pseudoplasmodium, and the separate streams congregate to form a mass as large as one-hundred thousand cells. The individual amoeba secrete adhesion molecules; they bond together, and develop a slime sheet ‘cap’ that envelops the mass. The mass then behaves as a single organism, gliding across the forest floor, leaving a trail of slime in its wake.

It is a brainless, primeval organism, yet Japanese scientists have studied the slime mould colonies for years as the colonies have navigated mazes. The scientists believe that the behavior of the slime mould may facilitate the design of complex problem-solving bio-computers.

[Image by Toshiyuki Nakagaki].

According to Toshiyuki Nakagaki (at Hokkaido University’s Research Institute for Electronic Science), slime mold colonies use a form of information-processing to optimize a path through a maze (toward a food-source, which is signaled by a higher concentration of ammonia); and, at the same time, the organism avoids stressors that would damage it. They are able to adapt to environmental variations and can develop resistance to new stimulus. 

Nakagaki’s research of slime mould garnered an Ig Nobel  prize (Ig Nobel prizes are a spoof of Nobel Prizes and are awarded to scientists who “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”).

Apparently, slime moulds are able to develop more efficient networks than our most advanced technology. Masashi Aono, a researcher at Riken (in Waka, Japan) would like to develop a bio-computer: his lofty plan is to eventually duplicate the human brain with slime moulds.

For some reason the movie The Blob just burbled into consciousness.

 

 

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Higgs boson

[image fron CERN]

I’ve been ill for the past few days (thankfully, nothing serious), and I’m just catching up with the news about the ‘God’ particle; more scientifically referred to as the Higgs particle, or Higgs boson.

Scientists haven’t quite claimed that it is the Higgs boson they’ve been hoping to find since 1964, but they believe it very well might be; or, it may be a Higgs boson, and they might find more if they keep looking.

It’s easy to get bogged down in theory, but from what I can understand, a boson is a subatomic particle that permits multiple particles to exist in the same state. The experimentally observed elementary bosons are: photons, the force carriers of electromagnetic fields; the W and Z bosons, the force carriers of the weak force (responsible for radiation); and gluons, the force carriers of the strong force (the force that holds an atom’s nucleus together).

The Higgs boson (after Peter Higgs) was postulated as the particle that enables other particles to have mass (the graviton, a particle that enables gravity, has also been postulated, but is not within the sphere of particle physics). In the world of particle physics, the Higgs boson is massive; additionally, it decays extremely quickly (and is no longer there to observe), so a very high-energy particle accelerator is required to create and document its existence.

The Higgs boson is the final experimental piece of the puzzle that would confirm the Standard Model of particle physics, which is why physicists are so excited (well, maybe not the ones who have postulated other theories).

The possibility that Particle Physicists have found the Higgs boson is no immediate boon to mankind, although it would push the frontier of knowledge further, and may lead to other long-sought discoveries, like supersymmetry, other dimensions, or other theories that were postulated that reach beyond the Standard Model. It should help scientists to delve further into the big questions, such as, what are we made of? It will certainly help explain how the universe developed.  Perhaps this discovery, like the theory of quantum mechanics, will lead to a cornucopia of future inventions.

It’s all pretty darned exciting, but it’s just one more step on the path of knowledge.

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The Mpemba Effect

The Royal Society of Chemistry is offering £1000 (~ $1550 US) to anybody who comes up with the best explanation for why hot water freezes faster than cold water, a conundrum that has baffled scientists for centuries.

The reward will go “… to the person or team producing the best and most creative explanation of the phenomenon, known today as The Mpemba Effect.” The deadline for submissions is July 30, 2012, and submissions must be made here.

For this contest, it seems to me that a non-scientist may stand a good chance of winning the prize (after all, scientists have been unsuccessful for over two-thousand years!), so I thought I’d throw a few factoids about water into the Webosphere as basic background for any creative geniuses that might like to try their hand at submitting, but would like somewhere to begin their far-flung theories (which, the website notes, must be “…scientifically sound and arresting in presentation and delivery”).

The following factoids are all interconnected characteristics of the substance that is the basis for most life on our planet. If the characteristics of water were different, none of us would be here; or, at the very least, we would be far different beings*…

Water, or H₂o, is a polar molecule

[image found at sguforums.com]

Oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen and the molecule forms an ‘electrical dipole’, with the oxygen end more negative, and the hydrogen end more positive; therefore, water molecules are attracted to one another and readily form connective bonds, which gives water some of its interesting characteristics, such as its ability as a ‘universal’ solvent, and its high surface tension (this is why there is a meniscus at the surface, and why insects can walk on water). To be more specific, water molecules form a ‘V’ shape (some people call it a ‘U’ shape), with the hydrogen atoms at the two top tips of the ‘V’ pointing away from the oxygen (oxygen has extra valence electrons which ‘push’ the electropositive hydrogen atoms away, and the hydrogen atoms repel each other — they are both electropositive — thereby forming the ‘V’ shape).

The melting point of water decreases as a function of pressure. The triple point is a certain temperature and pressure at which all three phases of a substance — solid, liquid and gas — occur in a stable equilibrium (for water, the triple point is 0.01 °C and 611.73 pascals).  For most substances, the triple point is the minimum temperature at which the liquid phase can occur; however, for water, the melting point decreases as a function of pressure.

[image found at SWE.org]

The volume of water increases from liquid to gas and from liquid to solid. Conventionally, molecules disperse into gaseous form when heated, condense into a liquid phase when cooled, and condense to a greater density when cooled further. These phase changes, or changes in state, correspond to energy changes; from high energy (gas) to medium energy (liquid) to low energy (solid). Water, however, is a bit of an individualist. When water vapor is cooled, it condenses into a liquid, but when water is cooled to 4°C (39 °F), its volume begins to increase slightly; further, when it reaches 0°C (32 °F), it begins to expand radically, becoming less dense (this is why ice cubes float in a glass of water). This odd characteristic of water is related to its shape and how molecules bond together (see above: Water is a polar molecule). As a liquid, water molecules move about quite readily; the individual molecules form bonds, bonds are broken, and bonds are re-formed, thereby giving water its fluidic properties. When water is cooled to 4°C, the energy of the molecules decreases until they become very closely packed, but at 0°C, the molecules begin to align in a hexagonal, crystal lattice that increases the volume of a given sample of water (e.g.: water in an ice-cube tray) because individual molecules are held farther apart, with more empty space between them.      

For your submission, you may want to thow in some  psycho-babble regarding quantum states (in particular, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle), Schrödinger’s cat though-experiment (the observer is part of the experimental system: you don’t know the water is frozen until you actually observe it), chemical kinetics (e.g.: does the higher temperature of water act as a catalyst, creating more collisions or larger spaces between molecules, thereby yielding more bonding potential for ice’s hexagonal, crystal lattice structure?), and maybe even some hand-waving about sublimation (transformation directly from gaseous to solid form).

Best of luck with your submission!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I found this cartoon in an old  textbook; Biology, IV Ed., by Helena Curtis

 

 

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