Stars and Planets

NY Times article discussing the discovery of a handful of new planets orbiting two stars. We’ve been discovering planets fairly regularly in the last few years, but what makes these interesting (at least, more interesting than the run-of-the-mill extra-solar planet, which is already pretty interesting) is these are the first ones we’ve discovered using visual means. Up until now, the planets we’ve discovered have been detected due to gravitational wobbles the planets induce in their stars, or by the decrease in the star’s luminance as the planets pass between the star and us.

The planets were discovered around two different stars, using two different methods – one using adaptive optics, where the mirror of the telescope is flexed rapidly to compensate for the distortions caused by the atmosphere and one with the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s fascinating that two different sets of scientists can use such different means towards the same end.

Interesting Things from Around the Internet

This is a fascinating story about a study done on voting patterns in Michigan. Several different groups of voters were treated to different persuasions to vote via mail: nothing at all, appeals to civic duty and finally the threat of public shaming. Guess which one worked the best?

Also on the voting tip, here’s a New York Times editorial discussing the success of early voting in the states that have adopted it. It seems strange to me that we do all these things – voting on Tuesday, making registration difficult – not for any good reason, or because we think voting should be difficult, but because for some reason Americans hate the idea of certain kinds of change – usually change that involves public institutions – or milk jugs, I guess. At what point do we finally sit down and address this absurdity in a serious, progressive way?

The NASA probe to Mercury took a bunch of pictures in a recent flyby, expanding our knowledge of the closest planet to the sun, but still leaving a number of surprising gaps in our knowledge: the western hemisphere of the planet is 30% smoother than the other, it’s covered in an unidentified substance the scientists call “blue material” (oh, you scientists and your clever names!) and it looks like Mercury has shrunk significantly as its interior has cooled. All interesting enough, but it sounds like the real interesting stuff will happen in 2011 when the probe enters stable orbit around Mercury. Another success for the space program, and another blow against manned space exploration (sadly).

And finally, Daniel Larison has a perceptive take on that most frustrating of creatures, the undecided voter. I agree with PW that sitting through that Obama infomercial was pretty painful, but I think Larison was right: this is closer to what the undecideds want. Which is truly kind of frightening. It started me wondering, the problem is clearly not that people don’t understand the candidates positions. Even when they might be a little bit fuzzy or a little bit misleading, it isn’t hard to assess the positions of both candidates and come to a rational decision on them. Despite what they say, undecided voters don’t want to know more about “issues,” because they don’t understand and don’t care about issues. So: what do we do? How does democracy function when a large portion of the electorate (and when we’re talking about undecideds, we’re talking about people with no interest who still vote – to say nothing of those who don’t care and don’t bother) just don’t care about rational decision making? Are their opinions (and votes) worth as much as ideologues? Or more? I don’t have any answers, but it certainly seems to me like an important question.

Newton and Leibniz

If you’ve ever studied calculus, perhaps you’d be interested in who you have to either thank or blame for the experience. The answer to the question is not quite as simple as it might seem, but is pretty fascinating, delving into the world of the 17th Century natural philosophers (the word scientist only came much later) such as Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Wired has a brief post discussing Leibniz’s creation of the integral sign ∫. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, full of crazy characters (Robert Hooke is my favorite), mortal feuds and a transition period from the wild and wooly medieval view of the world to something much closer to our own view (though still deeply strange).

The Right Stuff, the Wrong Budget

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with space, NASA, the Space Shuttle and pretty much science in general. I had an eight foot tall poster of the Space Shuttle on my bedroom wall at my parent's house (still do, in fact). I still love it, which is why it pains me to read about manned space flight coming to an end – at least for the United States. That part doesn’t pain me, although I think it makes the world substantially less cool. What pains me is the fact that I can’t really mount an argument for manned space flight that rises above, “But it’s so cool!” That would work and be adequate reason for an eight year old, but I just don’t think it’s a rationale that an adult should embrace (at least not by itself).

As undeniably sweet as it is to have a space station, I don’t think the science it produces justifies the cost. There are tons of things that NASA is doing – from sending a probe to the sun to all the various Mars probes going on – that are producing good science at reasonable costs. I don’t think this should be the end for NASA. I do think we should reconsider what we get out of something in a clear, levelheaded way. Although, if NASA were to decide that they wanted to send me into space, I would consider changing my mind.

Refighting the Monkey Trial in Third Period Biology

This is an interesting article about the difficulties of teaching evolution in high schools today. It seems like a completely unfamiliar environment from me. Not only did I not grow up in Missouri, but I graduated from high school during the Clinton years, before half of the country apparently decided to lose their minds and think that evolution is false. Teaching high school age students is hard enough, I can’t imagine also having to deal with this kind of thing.

Half of Americans believe that evolution is false. Just let that roll around in your brain for a minute.

It’s an unbelievable statistic. Is this simply a religious fad? For the most part, religious groups didn’t have a problem with evolution for almost all of the twentieth century. Even the Catholic Church supports the teaching of evolution. Why is it that these evangelical, protestant groups have a problem with evolution? And why just evolution? Why are they not protesting tectonic plate theory, carbon dating, geological science or mineralogy? Why do they still cling to discredited dates made up by an Irish bishop in 1654? It just seems like a strange, nonsensical place to decide, “This far, no further.”

Big Science

The CERN Large Hadron Collider went live this morning outside Geneva, Switzerland. If you follow science, this is pretty exciting news. This particle accelerator hopefully has the ability to prove – or disprove – some of the many theories surrounding the world of physics right now. In particular, they’re hoping to discover a particle called a Higgs boson, a particle that’s predicted by a lot of theories but so far has remained undetected. Theoretically, the Higgs boson is the particle that makes up and gives other particles mass. It would be a big discovery.

The sad part of all this is that the United States was set to build an even larger, more powerful particle accelerator in Texas called the Superconducting Supercollider. Congress killed it because of its budget in 1993. It would have been a truly impressive machine. With the Iraq War costing $12 billion dollars a month, it’s hard not to be a bit wistful about the uses that money could be going towards. I’ve always been a huge fan of “big science” projects like particle accelerators and space probes. I can understand people who think there are better uses for that money, and they may be right: education, transit infrastructure, poverty, medical research. All that stuff is important.

But it’s just not as cool as slamming particles together at seven trillion electron volts.