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On My Radar: Sam Harris’s Cultural Highlights

By Kathy Sweeney

The neuroscientist, author and philosopher on the Tesla Model S, Brazilian jiujitsu and his fear that the machines will take over…

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The True Version of the False: Can Atheists Argue Over the “True” Version of Religion?

My good friend and former regular Camels With Hammers guest poster Kaveh Mousavi of the spectacular ex-Muslim blog On the Margin of Error held a panel called, “The ‘True’ Version of the False: Can Atheists Argue Over the ‘True’ Version of Religion”. I was on the panel with historian and philosopher Richard Carrier, Russell Glasser (of The Atheist Experience), and Alex Gabriel of the [Read More...]

Ask the Experts: How Do Amateur Astronomers Discover Comets?

Australian IT specialist Terry Lovejoy moonlights as an amateur astronomer with five comet discoveries under his belt. His latest find, Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), is currently approaching the sun, making it visible for the next few days to naked-eye observers in the Northern Hemisphere with clear skies in the early evening. The comet has gained social media fame, with eager stargazers around the world seeking it out. The attention has surprised Lovejoy, whose earlier discoveries didn’t get near as much attention. “This time it’s been quite insane,” he says. “In the last week and a half I’ve had at least a thousand Facebook friend requests.”

 

Lovejoy found his first comet in 2007. His third discovery, made in 2011, was distinctive because it was what is known as a Kreutz sungrazer—a comet that literally grazes the atmosphere of the sun. That object, called Comet C/2011 W3, flew through the sun’s corona, passing within 140,000 kilometers of the solar surface, and emerged damaged but still intact.

 

Scientific American spoke to Lovejoy about his comet-hunting exploits and his advice for those who would like to follow in his path.

 

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

 

How long does it take you to find a new comet?

I probably get one every two years. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it is quite tough. I’m trying to improve those odds with equipment upgrades and software changes.

 

Most comets are discovered by the professional surveys. We amateurs tend to find stuff in areas near the sun where the surveys don’t look.

 

How do you do it?

The computer and the telescope do most of the work. I have a shed just on the side of the house here; it has a roll-off roof that I can just push off. Then I connect the telescope to the computer and I run an automated sequence to image parts of the sky.

 

It takes three images of the same part of the sky, but they’re separated by about 10 minutes. If there’s a comet or any moving object you’ll see it move between those exposures. I have software that basically trolls through those images and looks for objects that are moving. What I do by eye is I look at what it’s found to verify if it’s real or not. That’s how I’ve done the last two.

 

Before that I looked at the whole image manually; it took a long time. A couple years ago I had to start automating it. Now it takes five minutes to do what used to take two to three hours.

 

A few people had pictured me being out there all night looking through a telescope. That’s very old school—it doesn’t happen. I have a family, I’ve got two kids, my wife. I have to think about them.

 

How often does the software flag photos that you need to check by eye?

During any one night’s session, maybe 100 or so [get flagged]. But because they’re just little preview windows I can flip through them very quickly. You also have real objects, like asteroids and other comets, so I have to eliminate those. There are some good Web sites as well where you can put in a position and you can see any known objects in that area.

 

So your software finds 100 possible objects every night but you had to go a year or two before one turned out to be real?

That’s right. It’s certainly very obsessive when you put it like that.

 

For the last two comets I went though about 70,000 images to find each comet. There’s a lot of time, even now, between comets. For me it’s the challenge of working on the telescope, working on the software to get it more efficient—that’s the satisfaction I get out of it. I think the actual discovery is probably not as exciting now as it was for the first one.

 

Tell me about this latest discovery. How long was it before you knew it was a new comet for sure?

It was probably about a day before I knew. I had made contact with a couple people and said, “I think I found something; I’m not 100 percent sure.” I found it in the morning, and I had confirmation from a Facebook friend in the evening when I was on the way home on the train.

 

At that point I knew we had a comet. But you need to get enough observations of the comet and its positions in the sky to calculate an orbital trajectory. Generally you need about two to three days of those observations. Once you have found the orbit you can compare it to any historic objects that may have been here in the past and are returning. Then you can confirm it’s a new comet.

 

So your new comet has not been to the inner solar system before?

Apparently 13,000 years ago it did [according to orbital calculations]—but not in recent human history. It will return in 8,000 years. It’s kind of cool to think about that.

 

How did you get into amateur astronomy?

I grew up in a place called Cumnock, in central New South Wales. Because it was so far away from any major cities we had very dark skies, and I think it was there where I became interested. My father got woken up one morning for work and it was pitch black, like it normally is when there’s no moon, and he was walking outside and saw this giant feather in the sky—that’s how he described it. Then it took a few moments and he thought, “That’s a comet.”

 

That turned out to be a Kreutz sungrazing comet, so it’s fitting that I found a comet in 2011 that was [also a Kreutz sungrazer]. That’s how it all really began.

 

And when did you become a more serious comet hunter?

Around 2004 I kind of fell into that. I was following a lot of the known comets as well as looking at other objects. But one thing I noticed is that being in the Southern Hemisphere, a lot of comets were not being found. All of the people looking for comets appeared to be in the Northern Hemisphere. I thought, I’ve probably got an opportunity here to go and find some comets.

 

I don’t think I’ve really ever had that drive to get up at all hours of the night and stare through an eyepiece—to me that wasn’t fun. But when digital cameras and decent quality CCD cameras started to appear I thought I could automate a system and then I could live a normal life.

 

Between your full-time job and your astronomical activities, do you get enough sleep?

No, not really. Well, believe it or not, I usually get eight hours of sleep but sometimes it’s interrupted.

 

What advice do you have for people who would like to get into comet hunting?

Don’t be too serious about it. Often people go out and buy all the best equipment and then realize it’s not for them, or they burn out and get overwhelmed by it. My advice is that people start fairly simple and not spend lots of money. Just go and buy some binoculars or a small Dobsonian telescope and then develop your own interest that way. Some people go and buy too large a telescope. There’s not much point if you can’t move it or get it into your car. There are also people who say you’re not an amateur astronomer unless you’re doing serious observations and I think that’s wrong as well. You’re doing this for enjoyment. The serious stuff can come later.

 

 

Twitter intervention with a right-wing extremist

 

 

This sixth tutorial shows that Street Epistemology doesn’t have to be conducted in person. Social media platforms like email, Facebook, and Twitter can be great places to have reflective conversations as well as practice for face-to-face encounters.

This tutorial also illustrates the versatility of Street Epistemology—discussions do not have to be about a God belief.

Due to the potential dry nature of the material, several notable atheists volunteered to narrate tweets. Their names are revealed near the end of the video. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the participants or their respective organizations.

It is my hope that seeing these techniques, as detailed in Dr. Peter Boghossian’s book, “A Manual for Creating Atheists,” will encourage others to start putting these ideas into practice and help people live self-examined lives.

This tutorial was based largely on screenshots from an actual Twitter discussion. A small portion of the tweets were re-constructed from memory. The representation shown here is as true to the actual talk wherever possible. Links to screenshots of the discussion and to a longer video without commentary can be found below.

Want more “breakdown” videos? Let me know which encounter I’ve conducted that you want to see deconstructed in the ‘Comments’ section, and I’ll consider it.

Want to Learn More About Street Epistemology? Read the Book: http://tinyurl.com/se-pb-amfca

For playlist of more Street Epistemology videos: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Audio Only: http://www.spreaker.com/show/street-e…

For playlist of more Secular Exchange videos: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Audio Only: http://www.spreaker.com/show/secular-…

~~~

Playlist of All Street Epistemology Breakdown Tutorials:

http://www.tinyurl.com/se-bd-tutorials

~~~

Twitter Screenshots, Transcript, and Caption files: http://tinyurl.com/sebd-files

~~~

INITIAL TERRY CONVERSATION: http://youtu.be/aX-LMOtDsYE

Mistakes:

Please let me know if you notice any mistakes so that I can address them here for self-improvement.

Video captured using Go-Pro Hero 3

Video edited using PowerDirector

The views addressed here are mine and mine alone, and are not necessarily views shared by members of my family and friends.

Rival Space Internets Vie For Sky Pie

About half the world’s population doesn’t have access to the Internet, for a variety of reasons. Now two prominent entrepreneurs say they’ll address the tech issues contributing to this digital divide.

 

SpaceX’s Elon Musk wants to launch a new $15 billion constellation of mini communications satellites into near-Earth orbit to provide fast, low-cost and more comprehensive global Internet coverage.

 

Communications satellites generally operate from geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. The Musk satellites would transfer data packets only 750 miles up, through the planet’s exosphere, rather than via a tangle of terrestrial networks. If successful, the new network could rival fiber optic cable service speeds and be available in currently poorly served areas.

 

That is, if rival tech mogul Greg Wyler doesn’t get there first, with his OneWeb venture. Wyler appears to have a leg up with his proposed 648-micro satellite network: he claims to own access to the spectrum frequency needed to communicate in low-earth Orbit.

 

Internet satellite ventures do not have a good track record and it’s not clear that there’s room for two distinct networks. The bet here is that that two billionaires eventually team up and divide the pie in the sky.

 

—Larry Greenemeier

 

(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)

 

Ecstasy in Rivers and The World’s First Geological Map

SciShow News shares new research into how music festivals can lead to high levels of drugs in your drinking water, and celebrates the man who created the world’s first geological map.

Hosted by: Michael Aranda

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Sources:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/smith.html

http://www.sciencemag.org.weblib.lib.umt.edu:8080/content/347/6219/230.full?sid=6a9ecdfc-7fbb-4b99-bdd2-85ab4c3dea6f

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/acs-lo011415.php

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/bay_delta/docs/cmnt081712/sldmwa/munozetal2009.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/science/traces-of-anxiety-drug-may-affect-fish-behavior-study-shows.html

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2015/acs-presspac-january-14-2015/levels-of-molly-aka-ecstasy-spike-in-rivers-near-music-festival.html

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geological_map_Britain_William_Smith_1815.jpg

Revealed: Asteroid That Killed The Dinosaurs Boiled The Earth’s Atmosphere

Photo credit:

Calm before the storm. Donald E. Davis / NASA

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs set off an intense heat wave that briefly boiled the Earth’s atmosphere – but it didn’t burn off all the plants.

Doomsday Clock Moves Closer To Midnight, But Can We Really Predict The End Of The World?

Environment





Photo credit:

Clockwatchers are getting impatient. EPA

The second hand of the Doomsday Clock is now only three minutes to midnight. This is the closest to apocalypse we have come since 1984 – the coldest of Cold War years, just a year after Able Archer, the Petrov incident and Reagan’s “evil empire” speech.

Tech Consequences Voiced By Carnegie Mellon Prez

Subra Suresh: “With every invention and every technology we have a lot of intended benefits and intended consequences. Simultaneously, we have many unintended consequences.”



Steve Mirsky: Subra Suresh, an engineer by training, is president of Carnegie Mellon University and former director of the National Science Foundation. He spoke on January 23rd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina.



MD: “I’ve also been hearing some critiques and concerns about what’s going to happen as machines grow more intelligent.”



SS: “As machines become more and more sophisticated, we have to be very careful about issues of privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property. If people from discipline and one part of the world go and mine proprietary information from another part of the world, either legally or illegally, what are the consequences of this? We’ve already seen leak of information because of breach of cybersecurity. And I think those kind of issues are going to be there. But in that sense, artificial intelligence and machine learning are no different from any other new wave of technology that has the potential to be used as well as abused.”



SM: For more from Subra Suresh, check our website, www.scientificamerican.com, for an upcoming edition of the Science Talk podcast.



—Steve Mirsky



(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)

 

A Graphene Discoverer Speculates on the Future of Computing

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.

Editor’s Note: As leaders from business, politics and science convene this week at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss pressing matters of the day, Scientific American is publishing a series of interviews with leading scientists, produced in conjunction with the forum. This is the third of four interviews for the WEF by Katia Moskvitch.

In 2010 two physicists at Manchester University in the U.K. shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on a new wonder material: graphene, a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick. Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, both Russian émigrés, discovered the material by applying plain old sticky tape to simple graphite.

Graphene is highly conductive and transparent and is also the strongest material known to science. One day it could revolutionize electronics. Novoselov tells us about the possibilities of this 2-D material and how it could transform the industry.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

What does graphene mean for the future of computing?

It is certain that silicon will be used for transistors—semiconductor devices that are the building blocks of modern computers—for at least the next five to 10 years. But people are already thinking about possible alternative materials and technologies to replace silicon when it will fail to deliver for increasingly smaller and smaller transistors. A graphene transistor is one of the alternatives.

I’m also looking into other one-atom-thick 2-D materials that were obtained soon after graphene and at heterostructures based on those 2-D crystals. Potentially they can provide an alternative to silicon technologies, but here we’re talking about completely new architecture rather than just introducing a new material into the system. It’s hard to predict how it will develop because when you introduce one new material into a process, it’s already quite a complicated step, and if you want to change the whole architecture, it requires years of research. That’s why research should start now if we want to achieve something like that in 10 years’ time.

What do you think computers of the future could look like?

Computers are much more than just a display, interface and software: they are mainly about computing power and microprocessors—also known as the central processing unit [CPU], or the “brain” of a computer. In the future, we’ll probably expand the parallel computations, utilizing microprocessors with larger number of cores, when several CPUs will be working together on the same chip, enabling the computer to perform many more tasks with a much greater overall system performance. At the same time more specialized computers will start to appear because the cost won’t be so prohibitive anymore.

Do you think that in the future we will still think in terms of separate entities called computers?

Microprocessors will still exist. You won’t get rid of them. How parallel the computations can be and how many computers will be linked into a large network, into a cloud, that’s a different question. And with advances in telecommunications, with the speed getting higher and higher, it’s much easier to link many computers into a large network. That’s definitely what we’ll see more and more of. We’re seeing it already now, when a lot of our data is stored not on our desktop but in the cloud—and cloud computations will be more and more popular. But the basis will still be microprocessors and electronics and the current architecture.

What else can graphene be used for?

It’s a very strong material that is also highly conductive, so people try to use it for composite material applications as a mechanical reinforcer or to enhance conductivity. A particularly interesting application is in biotechnology, life sciences and medicine, where you can use graphene as a sensor, because many properties are interlinked; change the chemical environment and you immediately get an electronic signal out of it. Something that interests me a lot is the use of graphene as a 2-D membrane. With graphene we’ve got our hands on the thinnest possible fabric and at the same time it’s completely impermeable to any molecule. In principle, we can design it so it would be permeable for some molecules and use it as a biological membrane.

How long will it take before graphene really makes it into the industry and commercial use?

It will be a gradual introduction into our day-to-day lives. A good example is carbon fibers. Only a few years ago we started to see planes where carbon fibers are used. But 20 years ago carbon fibers were mostly used for mechanical reinforcements in sports cars and some sports equipment. So it’s never an abrupt change but a gradual introduction, first from niche markets and then going into larger and larger–scale applications. And that’s exactly what we already see with graphene—some touch-power applications, thermal conductivity applications, mechanical reinforcement, conductive paints and so on—and the range of those products will increase year by year. As we do it, we’ll learn more and more about the material and about the production, so that the production cost will decrease and the quality will improve. And before long it will be quite a ubiquitous material.

Can graphene lead to completely new technologies, something we can only dream of right now?

One of the areas where I work is “materials on demand.” We have a library of different 2-D materials—crystals that are only one atom thick. All of them have very different properties: some are metallic, some are insulating, some are semiconductors, some transparent, some opaque and so on. This library can help design new 3-D materials, just putting 2-D sheets layer by layer—not as Mother Nature intended but combining different materials into a different stack, and this way encoding functionalities as we build this stack. I call it “materials on demand” because, depending on your application and what you want to achieve, you can design this stack according to your needs. We’ve never had this opportunity before—we’re usually stuck with one material—but here we can design new multifunctional materials from scratch.

How will this and other latest breakthroughs in material science transform the industry?

We will bring functionality from the structural level to the material level. So rather than saying that we take silicon and restructure it into transistors to do certain functions, we now say: “Tell us what functions should there be and we will design a material that will have those functions.” It’s a completely new paradigm. And generally the hope is that it will be a multifunctional material—so within a few layers of atoms we will be able to encode the logic circuit, the power unit and so on. You would have a flexible, transparent or semitransparent, multifunctional material that has functions encoded into its structure.

Related articles:

Graphene—a 21st-Century Wonder Discovery
Graphene Towers Promise "Flexi-Electronics"
D.I.Y. Graphene: How to Make One-Atom-Thick Carbon Layers With Sticky Tape
Deep-Fried Graphene Spheres Could Make Good Battery Materials
Andre Geim: in praise of graphene
Carbon Wonderland
Stacks of Atom-Thin Form Materials the World Has Never Seen
Graphene Researchers Geim and Novoselov Win Nobel Prize in Physics [Updated]