Kate Rauner's Blog, page 53

Famous Physics Cat, Second Only to Schrodinger’s #physics #science #cats #research #quote

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This isn’t FDC Willard, but let’s pretend it is, with some of his many academic awards

“Science must be understood as a gutsy human enterprise.” Stephen Jay Gould

Yes, scientists are human. They even have a sense of humor – consider the career of F.D.C. Willard. He’s known for being listed as an author for several serious research papers, and he’s a cat.

It seems Jack H. Hetherington, a Michigan State University physics professor, wrote a soon-to-be-influential paper on the low-temperature physics of helium-3 isotopes. He was the sole author, but in the formal tone of research, he had

written the entire paper using the “we” pronoun. This was against the journal’s style rules. Hetherington’s paper would surely be rejected if it wasn’t retyped. livescience

[image error]Like any of us, he hated the idea of retyping his paper, so he solved his problem with a touch of whimsy. He added a co-author, his cat Felis Domesticus Chester, or F.D.C. He gave F.D.C. a family name following the usual practice of Americans, the cat’s father’s name of Willard. Now there were two authors and no need to change the paper.

Hetherington’s solution wasn’t a secret. His colleagues were fine with it and even enjoyed the joke. F.D.C. Willard became famous in the small world of physics.

[image error]Several years later, a French paper on helium-3 appeared under a single author’s name: F.D.C. Willard. Apparently, the actual research team could not agree on a version of the paper that satisfied them all, so they decided to credit America’s best-published cat instead. livescience

F.D. C. Willard appeared henceforth repeatedly in footnotes, where he was thanked for “useful contributions to the discussion” or oral communications, and was offered a professorship by a Professor and Imminently Erstwhile Chairman:

‘In response to your valued letter of 25 November: let me admit at once that if you had not written I should never have had the temerity to think of approaching so distinguished a physicist as F. D. C. Willard, F.R.S.C., with a view to interesting him in joining a university department like ours, which after all, was not even rated among the best 30 in the 1969 Roose-Anderson study… Can you imagine the universal jubilation if in fact Willard could be persuaded to join us, even if only as a Visiting Distinguished Professor?’ wikipedia

On April 1, 2014 (note the date) the American Physical Society announced that cat-authored papers, including the Hetherington/Willard paper, would henceforth be open-access, rather than behind a pay-wall.

This post is mostly quotations, because I can’t improve on reality.

If you plan a career in research, be sure to take your sense of humor with you.

Shelter in the deepest pines #haiku #poem #poetry #winter

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Not going up there – nope – not going

Branches sway and bounce

Cold and harsh are winter winds

One lone bird blows by

Kate Rauner

The Shape of Water is Weirdly Excellent – Go See It #reviews #theshapeofwater #movies #fantasy #moviereview

[image error]No spoilers.

This movie is wonderful because it’s weird. It’s a fantasy, a monster story, a romance story, a buddy story, a spy story, with a few pornographic scenes and brutal, bloody violence. Then there’s a song and dance number. A couple scenes are fantasy even within the movie’s world. All pulled together into one story and definitely for mature audiences.

The settings are amazingly detailed and beautifully filmed. Set in the early 1960s (Mister Ed and Dobie Gillis play on TVs in the background – in black and white of course), the good-guys befriend each other despite having no hope of better lives in their grim, impoverished city. Most of the story takes place on the night shift, which adds to the darkness. The only bright colors are outside their reality, on a theater’s movie screen.

The military/CIA research facility is dingy and forbidding. No clean white labs here! Instead, a cavernous structure of gray concrete and rusty metal. The movie uses the familiar trope of evil government agents and this is the perfect place for them.

To further praise the visuals, the monster is excellent, even when he stands in full light.

The plot isn’t particularly inventive. Especially in the second half of the movie, things proceeded as I expected, and that wasn’t a problem. I held my breath a couple times wondering how the movie was going to get from point to point. Watching it unfold was thoroughly satisfying.

The villain doesn’t have a mustache, but if he did, he’d be twirling it. There’s a brief attempt in one scene to create some sympathy for him – but, no! I have no sympathy for the villain.

As a final measure of the movie, my husband and I talked about it the entire drive home, sharing the parts we especially noticed, and admiring the way bits came back to tie into the plot later.

No review would be complete without a quibble or two. A character holds a TV Guide, and it’s the modern large-sized magazine instead of the small size I expected. Also, in that dingy government facility, the bathroom has sinks mounted under-counter, under bright marble – that seemed odd, especially when everything else was so beautifully and depressingly “period.”

This movie is different – weird in a good way. If you’re okay with sex and violence (even torture scenes) then I recommend you see The Shape of Water.

View the official trailer here:

From master storyteller, Guillermo del Toro, comes THE SHAPE OF WATER – an other-worldly fable, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment.

Exo-Atmospheres Send Photonic Clues #poetry #astronomy #telescope #space #planets #alien

[image error]Stars wobble in our telescopes,

Luminosities diverge,

And from such tiny signals

Their planets do emerge.

Thousands of stars host planets,

Giants of swirling gas,

And some that seem more earthly

In their orbits and their mass.

But each of these is distant,

Lifetimes away for certain.

How ever will we know if

There’s life upon the surface?

Light filters through their atmospheres,

When atmospheres they own.

Molecules split spectra

Into patterns that are known.

Life creates imbalances,

Whatever life may be,

However strange,

Disequilibrium

Points to biology.

And so we have a protocol

As we gather specks of light,

Photons that passed through planets’ air

On their interstellar flight…

Will tell us if there’s oxygen

Or methane, CO2,

Water vapor, nitrogen,

Or ozone in the brew.

And tease us with the knowledge

That beyond our current grasp

Creation may have left its mark,

A hand we cannot clasp.

Kate Rauner

Inspired by an article from the latimes

Lunar Eclipse on a Perfect Winter Morning #lunar #moon #eclipse #sky

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Lunar eclipse from New Mexico 31JAN2018 – moon looks much more orange in picture than it did to my eye

Perfect morning for the lunar eclipse. I could stand at my kitchen sink and watch the moon through a window, then step out on my deck for a view of the whole sky. The morning was clear and calm. As moonlight dimmed, the stars grew brilliant. Then, just at totality, the rising dawn began washing them out again.

I live in the mountains of New Mexico, so once the usual morning breeze kicked up, I hopped back and forth – outside for a better view of the moon’s coppery blush, inside to warm up. Lunar eclipses last long enough for leisurely viewing. There’s time to make coffee and take pictures, even with a simple amateur camera.

The rising dawn won out, and the darkened moon, in the last minutes of totality, faded faster than it set.

Glorious.

Fading bright to dim

Now engulfed in Earth’s shadow

Blushing as you set

Colony on Mars – Someday Real Martian Settlers Will Tell Stories Like These – the complete series #Mars #scifi #sciencefiction #ebook #series

[image error]The Box Set of Colony on Mars is now available at Barnes&Noble, Apple iTunes, Kobo, Scribd, and Smashwords. All five books from the first colony on Mars for hours of reading pleasure at a value price.

Look for the set on Baker & Taylor/Follett, cloudLibrary, Gardners, and Odilo this coming week.

I had a little trouble with the Table of Contents on Smashwords, so those of you who’ve already downloaded the set, if your Table of Contents has some dead links, go back and download the updated version. Sorry about that. It’s always something!

[image error]Of course, if you prefer Amazon, the Box Set is there too, with a special Amazon cover.

From NASA to Mars One, real-life visionaries will send settlers to Mars. Go today in science fiction. Start with a fragile foothold and read on into the future. From the first twelve colonists struggling with a strange illness through the generations, follow one settler in each book as they face danger and build a life on Mars.

Another Successful Science Olympiad – We Play Nerdy #science #citizenscientist #nerdgirl #nerdboy #STEM #education

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Crush-testing a tower

Science Olympiad regional at Western New Mexico University is complete and the awards will be handed out shortly at the closing ceremony. I coordinated a middle school event this year, and there was also a high school division. We had great participation from area schools and fine weather.

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Roller coaster marbles

Congratulations to all the teachers who’ve been coaching their teams for months, to everyone who had to catch a school bus at 5 am to arrive on time, and especially to the competitors. Whether these kids pusue a career in science and technology or not, they’ll be better informed citzens for their interest and knowledge of science and, I think, more interesting people.

Our Solar System is Odd. Does That Mean Life is Rare in Universe? Who Knows?. #astronomy #stars #planet #space #exoplanets

We often start with the assumption that Earth, our Sun, and our entire solar

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Kepler is amazing, but it’s a big universe

system is fairly typical. But as we learn more about the universe, we begin to look odd. The Kepler Space Telescope sees solar systems with planets that are fairly close in size, with regular orbital spacing.

By contrast, our own solar system has a range of planetary sizes and distances between neighbors. The smallest planet, Mercury, is about one-third the size of Earth — and the biggest planet, Jupiter, is roughly 11 times the diameter of Earth. There also are very different spacing between individual planets, particularly the inner planets. space.com

We have a lot to learn about how solar systems form, and who knows what the current research may mean for the possibility of life in other star systems. Or closer to home, where oceans beneath the frozen surfaces of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons may be the best places to search for extraterrestrial life.

The Kepler study reminded me of an old book, (published in 2003, which[image error] makes it very old in the field of exoplanets) Rare Earth. Even without the latest exoplanet data, the authors knew that our Sun is uncommonly rich in heavy elements, and that Earth orbits in a narrow habitable zone and has an oddly large moon. Plate tectonics have formed and reformed Earth but not our neighbor Mars. Global catastrophes from a frozen Snowball age to the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs makes llife on our blue globe seem remarkably lucky.

Rare Earth is still worth reading. On Amazon, the book is popular. Some reviews complained the authors “seem to feel the reader needs the same information endlessly repeated.” Or that, while the authors demonstrate that life on Earth pretty much had to evolve on Earth, they don’t consider that life on other worlds may be very different.

That reflects a problem all exobiology struggles with – we only have one example of life. Maybe earthly life is rare but life-in-general is common.

ET is a fascinating subject. Maybe, in our lifetimes, science will find something swimming beneath the frozen surfaces of Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons. Maybe, someday, something from out there will find us, swimming in the atmosphere that covers our planet. The possibilities are too compelling to ignore. Keep searching, astrobiologist. Keep searching, and let us know what you find.

Space Age Problem We Didn’t Bargain On – Trapped on Earth By Our Own Stupid Mess? #poem #poetry #space #NASA

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NASA’s computer-generated image representing space debris as seen from high Earth orbit.

Space is vast and empty,

But not space close at hand,

Not the space around the Earth.

Our orbit now is jammed.

Every satellite we launch

Will someday be defunct

And hang above us, orbiting,

As billion dollar junk.

Everyone who’s serious

About the new space age

Has a plan for dealing with

Our quickly-closing cage.

Perhaps we’ll net the pieces,

Or blast each till it falls

To burn up like a meteor

In our atmospheric wall.

The million pieces of debris

Could trap us on our planet

Since even just a fleck of paint

Could crash a ship titanic.

Where is ET, we wonder?

Why don’t aliens

come to us?

Perhaps they’re trapped on their own worlds

By spheres

of their

space junk.

Kate Rauner

The scifi movie Gravity began with space junk smashing a Shuttle, and that could happen in real-life. Read about laser and giant electric whip proposals to clean up near-Earth space. There’s a video here.

Want to Go to Mars? Why Wait? Take a Scifi Trip! Affordable Gigantic Set of 5 Books Will Make You Happy #scifi #series #top10 percent

[image error]Yee ha! Colony on Mars Box Set – my complete 5 book series – has debuted on Amazon in top 10% of it’s science fiction category.

Go to the Box Set on Amazon or other favorite online stores. The set and the individual eBooks and paperbacks, are available today on Amazon and will be popping up everywhere else over the week.

Or, search for my name, Kate Rauner, or Colony on Mars on other platforms and favorite stores. Value priced for hours of reading pleasure on Mars – you’ll save even if you already bought one of the books at the regular ebook price