Fine Structure

Fixing Neural Sensor Problems

2009-11-07T17:42:09Z

I've always assumed that the future would contain implantable silicon chips that integrate with our brains and either augment or monitor our neuron activity for all sorts of applications. Of course, many a technical hurdle has to be overcome for this to become a reality and it seems as though we're well on our way.

From the MIT Technology Review, an article on scientists who monitor moths via neural sensors. Not only are these sensors incredibly small, but they're powered by radio frequency transmitters so there's no battery to implant. Read the story for the rest of the technical leaps forward they've made.

So it is the future, but currently only with moths.

[ http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23878/ ]

Carl Sagan Day on November 7th

2009-11-06T16:41:03Z

Bad Astronomy has the details on the newly minted Carl Sagan Day being celebrated tomorrow, November 7th. Carl Sagan's birthday is the 9th of November (don't ask me about the discrepancy) and he would have been 75 this year. Broward College in Florida is holding a celebration with a number of interesting speakers (Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait, for one) in attendance.

Sagan was a pioneer of skepticism and science advocation. Though he exists as a passing comment in any number of conversations, I only recently caught the inspiration to start reading his written works. There are quite a few so I imagine I'll be a while...

[ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/02/carl-sagan-day-november-7/ ]

The Beginning of a New Ocean

2009-11-05T18:30:13Z

A rift has opened up in Ethiopia, shown here, that will one day become a new ocean. Other than a fascinating picture, the explanation is also really interesting.

Though the area is a clear choice for expansion since it sits near the meeting point for the African and Arabian tectonic plates, regular geologic expansion occurs here only at a rate of one inch per year. The rift was apparently caused in only a few days due to magma pressure from a nearby erupting volcano.

Welcome, new ocean! Now what should we call it?

[ http://www.livescience.com/environment/091102-africa-rift-ocean.html ]

First 1km Prize for Space Elevators

2009-11-05T18:02:02Z

Three teams met at NASA Dryden in an attempt to be the first to zip their way up a 1km tether at one of two average speeds, 5m/s or 2m/s. The full $1.1 million prize has not yet been awarded but a smaller $900k prize was awarded yesterday to LaserMotive for their 4-minute climb to the top.

The first group to attempt, Kansas City Space Pirates, were met with some technical difficulties and never reached the top of the tether. The last group, from the University of Saskatchewan, has yet to make their attempt so the $1.1 million prize is still at stake!

If you're curious what these climbers look like, here's a good photo of a weigh-in for the LaserMotive climber.

[ http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/?p=1315 ]

Arex I-X Launch to Landing Video

2009-11-03T17:44:09Z

Most of the videos of the Ares I-X launch were shot from the ground and only show the launch until separation of the two segments. After hearing that the booster portion has sustained some damage on splashdown in the ocean due to a parachute malfunction, I was curious to see the rest of the flight.

Luckily, NASA also had a chase plane flying at 12,000 feet which captured the entire launch on video. You can see the first couple seconds of flight all the way through max Q, flameout, separation, parachutes and splashdown. It really is a nice way to show the entire test flight without having to switch between so many different cameras.

(Yes, we've been fairly Ares I-X news-heavy over the past week, I think this is the last bit of news for a while)

[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4l2wxbMEQg ]

Augustine Commission Recommendations

2009-10-26T15:51:16Z

Catching up on some of last week's news: the Augustine commission has come back with a variety of recommendations regarding the future of the space program. They're organized roughly into two segments, with additional funding and without additional funding. Clearly our ability to do new things is based partly on how much money we have for the program, and the difference it makes on NASA shows in the report.

Most of the options include finding the budget to extend the Shuttle to 2011 (from our current 2010 plan) and the ISS until 2020 (from 2016), so there is some promise for the extra science that can be done with those additional windows. The rest of the options range from our current moon-first plan to a plan that would take us to near-Earth asteroids and Mars' moons.

Where do you think we should go next, regardless of funding?

[ http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/22/committee-urges-multi-destination-plan-for-nasa-human-space-flight/ ]

The Mars Missions, Failures and All

2009-10-24T17:57:28Z

A nifty infographic on all the missions ever sent to Mars from Earth. Note the long string of failures in the early years (punctuated by some of the later mariner flybys) compared to our more recent string of successes. We're getting better at this kind of thing!

[ http://i.imgur.com/GoCGR.jpg ]

Google Wave Invites

2009-10-21T16:22:51Z

A special reader offer: I have five Google wave nominations that I should pass out to worthy readers. Post a comment describing how you came to read Fine Structure and an antispammy version of your email address. No judgments here, the first five comments get nominations (invites generally go out a day or two after that).

Update: Ha. Foiled by advanced in instant blog search technology. I'm trying to separate random invite searchers from actual readers. As it turns out, I am going to judge.

Update 2: They're all gone! I'll have to figure out a new way to do reader giveaways so that there isn't such an influx of random people via search.

Ares I-X is on the Launchpad

2009-10-20T17:06:59Z

Next week is a big week for NASA. The Ares I-X has been rolled out to the launch pad (39B, retrofitted from a shuttle launch pad to one that supports the huge height of the I-X) and is scheduled to make its first big flight on Tuesday (the 27th of October) at 8am Eastern. The I-X is an unmanned test rocket that is the precursor to the entire Constellation program. If this launch goes well, engineers and scientists will have the data they need to move closer to the next generation of launch vehicles for the United States.

At the same time, NASA waits for a report from the Augustine Commission. The commission was created to evaluate the Constellation plan as put into place by the last administration. Constellation could potentially be completely scrapped as soon as next week, regardless of the I-X success or failure. It's an interesting time to be watching our space program, for sure.

[ http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/20/ares-i-x-at-the-launchpad/ ]

Auto-Tuned Science

2009-10-20T15:49:04Z

Following the Carl Sagan auto-tune track from last week, we are given the next installment of great scientists who are auto tuned to a catchy synth melody: We Are All Connected.

This episode features Sagan, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Feynman.

[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk ]

I <3 Basic Research

2009-10-17T15:03:17Z

Stephen Chu knows the value of basic research labs and it shows in his FY2010 Department of Energy budget proposal. Included are "Energy Innovation Hubs" which Chu envisions as throwbacks to the 60s-era research labs that we owe so many of our technological advances to.

Linked is a story on our missing basic research labs from NPR. They blame the risk-averse big companies that used to have research labs, such as AT&T. Does that make sense in our culture? As our financial systems were going riskier and riskier, our big companies are taking the slow safe route? The article invokes the federal government to reinstitute these research labs but that doesn't really strike me as the right answer. Can't we depend on ourselves rather than going in for the handout from the federal government?

[ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113819356 ]

The Place Where Math Geeks Go

2009-10-14T17:48:04Z

Back when I was still in tech (full time, that is), I thought Stack Overflow was a great idea for a question and answer site related to programming. Ask questions, get answers, rate answers, mod up or down comments and generally have a nice community organized around reputation.

Since then, the guys behind Stack Overflow (Fog Creek) have generalized Stack Overflow into StackExchange, a hosted software package for a community to create their own reputation Q&A site. And now math geeks have a place to go and form a community; Math Overflow.

It's centered around serious mathematicians, just as Stack Overflow is centered around programmers (which means no "how do I integrate this?" questions). Probably not as widely applicable as it could be if it were aimed at a slightly larger user base, but that's the community they chose to create. Go check it out and ask some questions!

[ http://mathoverflow.net ]

Quit your Job and Go Back to School

2009-10-14T16:17:04Z

For almost two and a half years this blog was a hobby of mine. It's definitely undergone some changes in organization and style but it's always been about science and physics in the end. I considered it a hobby because my day job, while related, was really quite different in subject matter.

The last five years in San Francisco have been mainly spent developing for the web at Six Apart, an awesome blogging company that I'm grateful to have worked at. Clearly, blogging has been an important part of my life for a number of years now. When I started to blog about science, I was right in the middle of a summer physics course that I was enjoying and the blog was a way for me to expand on my thoughts during the course and maybe start to make some friends who were interested in the same stuff. I think I've been more than successful in contributing to science blogging and meeting some really interesting people, either through the comments here or on other science blogs. This isn't to say that there's not a large pile of improvements to be made, just that I'm happy with how far the blog has come.

At the beginning of September, this blog became something much more than a hobby. Physics is now my full time "job". I've been planning on going back to school full time for a while since I don't have a proper undergraduate degree. It just happens that now I find myself in a very fortunate position: surrounded by great schools for science, fascinated by physics and looking for new challenges.

It wasn't easy to leave Six Apart, for sure. Six Apart is filled with great people that I miss collaborating with on a daily basis, but one has to break away to start something new. I've been lucky enough to have been able to fit a couple classes in during the work week for the last couple years but the transition really needed to be full time as I start to work on the third-year physics material.

So, what am I doing now? Currently I'm taking classes at San Francisco State. I'm not enrolled as a full time student (and I won't be until at least next fall due to budget cuts in California) but they have a decent program where I can take a number of classes without being enrolled. I'm still thinking about staying in San Francisco or going to another school next fall. I want to be somewhere that encourages thinking about physics beyond the assigned problems, so I'm still trying to find that.

It's surprisingly busy going back to school! There is now a free-flowing stream of ideas for longer blog posts and little time to complete them as thoroughly as I want to. Hopefully this will clear up as I get used to homework (!!!) again. It remains to be seen if blogging will increase or decrease, though I think I'm in a good groove for recapping some interesting news just about every day and thinking about a longer blog post once or twice a week.

It's going to be a very interesting year, to say the least. Wish me luck!

How the new Bay Bridge Will Withstand an Earthquake

2009-10-13T19:50:14Z

A snippet of interesting local news for a moment: San Francisco is currently in the process of replacing the bridge that spans one half of the San Francisco bay and our new bridge is going to be ultra-quake resistant.

We've heard a lot about the reasoning behind this bridge replacement recently (mostly because the currently bridge partially collapsed last time we had a fairly large earthquake) but nothing has really captured my attention as well as this animation showing our new bridge design and the specific features it employs to withstand an earthquake. A link to the video is below.

[ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?blogid=55&entry_id=49408 ]

Is That Viral Video Fake?

2009-10-13T17:23:58Z

Rhett at Dot Physics is always ripping apart viral videos and trying to discern if they're real or not based on the physics involved. He really has gotten quite good at modeling physics from within a video by using various video analysis tools and figuring out what works and what doesn't for even the shakiest shakycam footage.

Now he's put together a 20 minute presentation on how he does the video analysis and it's on vimeo for you to watch. Go get it and do some video analysis for yourself!

[ http://blog.dotphys.net/2009/10/fake-videos-presentation/ ]