L. Riofrio's Blog, page 2

The Speed of Light on Tour!

As some of you know, I've been on "Book Tour" giving free talks from Texas to Hawaii. Photos coming soon! I'm Crowdfunding again to extend the tour:

THE MARTIAN Review: Ridley Scott Returns to Space

Ridley Scott Returns to Space Ridley Scott's first commercial hit, coming after little-seen The Duellists, was 1979's Alien. Since then Scott has become a master of big-budget filmmaking, from the futuristic noir of Blade Runner to the sand-and-sandal epics Gladiator and Exodus, a modern war movie (Blackhawk Down) and even American Gangster. With Prometheus and now The Martian, Scott has returned to outer space. Based upon Andy Weir's self-published bestseller of a marooned astronaut, The Martian is the most thrilling movie of space survival since Gravity. Weir's novel is notable for attention to technical details. Drew Goddards screenplay includes the science but emphasizes the human, cutting between Matt Damon's one-man show on Mars to his crew mates in space and at NASA trying to get him back. The fine cast includes Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ijiofor, Sebastián Stan, Mackenzie Davis, Sean Bean, Kate Mara and Michael Pena. The actors bring the technical jobs of NASA employees to life. Movies about NASA and the real future in space are back. For three Autumns in a row we have been treated to Gravity, Interstellar and now The Martian. In all these movies NASA personnel are portrayed as heroes. The NASA of this latest film is portrayed as being bound by bureaucratic inertia, personified by Jeff Daniels, but the agency breaks all bounds to rescue Watney. When NASA's first attempt to resupply Watney fails, help comes from the Chinese space agency, much like the Soviet cosmonaut in Marooned. The opening and closing scenes of Prometheus showed us some of the grandeur of outer space, trying consciously to approach Kubrick's 2001. Watney's solo traverses across the Martian surface show is ,ore of what it might be like walking where truly No One Has Gone Before. We also get a hint of the terror of space. Watney's removal of a foreign object is reminiscent of Noomi Rapace's harrowing self-surgery scene in Prometheus, which was itself an attempt to match the infamous "chest-buster" scene of Alien. Scott is already deep in preparation for a sequel to Prometheus, so we can expect more journeys into space soon. The Martian leaves us wanting more. By showing the adventure of humans traveling regularly to Mars, this movie makes us all want to go, now.

THE MARTIAN review coming!

Yesterday at Johnson Space Center we were treated to a screening of THE MARTIAN along with members of the cast. Full review and photos coming shortly!

Tahoe

Hello from Nevada! Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong reports on the SUSY2015 conference here, where physicists report on the complete lack of evidence for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. For over 30 years physicists have worked on supersymmetry without any evidence that it exists. It's time for them to enjoy Lake Tahoe and rethink their lives.

Happy Birthday Inge Lehmann

Today is the 127th birthday of Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann, as the day's Google doodle reminds us. Lehmann studied at Cambridge a University before getting an office job. Eventually she found work as a scientist, and discovered that Earth had an inner core. This was done by analysis of seismic waves caused by earthquakes. These waves have names like PKP. The strongest wave should be PKJKP, a wave passing directly through Earth's centre. The PKJKP wave has never been reliably detected. Something in Earth's core swallows the energy of earthquakes. A journey to the centre of the Earth would be an excellent place to find a small Black Hole.

Supervoid

Astronomers have found an enormous "void" in space 1.8 billion light-years across, the largest structure yet found in the universe. The void is aligned with a "cold spot" discovered in the cosmic microwave background. The void was found using the PAN-STARRS telescope on Maui and NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in space. Detection of a supervoid aligned with the cold spot of the cosmic microwave background The study suggests that the void is draining light energy from the surrounding space, causing the cold spot. This supervoid may not be empty, but could be the lair of an ultra-massive black hole. Old theories of the universe can't explain a structure this large. The void could have been formed by an ultra-massive black hole emptying the space around it. The black hole would be primordial, born of a quantum fluctuation shortly after the Big Bang. Size of a black hole is limited by a "horizon distance" related to the speed of light. This immense void is one more sign that the speed of light was once much larger.

Type Ia Not All of a Type

Happy 25th Birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope! Type Ia supernovae were once thought to all have the same brightness. Using these exploding stars as standard candles to measure distance, physicists in 1998 concluded that the universe is accelerating due to a repulsive "dark" energy. Speculation about an accelerating universe has occupied physics for years. Now a new study says that Type Ia don't all have the same luminosity after all. A new study published in the Astrophysical Journal finds that Type Ia supernovae form at least two groups, distinguished by colour and luminosity. The authors used results from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SWIFT satellite. This shows that they are not standard candles, and estimates of the universe's expansion could be way off. The paper is at: The Changing Fractions of Type Ia Supernova NUV The researchers conclude that differences between Type Ia supernovae could account for at least some of the apparent "acceleration". The so-called "dark" energy might not be as prevalent as thought. In the scientists' words: "Not accounting for this effect should thus produce a distance bias that increases with redshift and could significantly bias measurements of cosmological parameters". In English, what was thought about an accelerating universe could be wrong. GM=tc^3 predicts that the speed of light has been changing. Since redshifts are roughly proportional to v/c, instead of v increasing c has been slowing down. The answer could be in light rather than imaginary "dark" energies.

The Solar System

The newest project on Kickstarter is an updated Solar System poster, including new photos of Ceres and Pluto. What is different? Most depictions of our solar system don't accurately show the distances between planets. Here we show the relative orbits, with the planet sizes depicted below. What do you think? Tell your frineds about this project!

"Variations in the speed of light"

More and more physicists are willing to consider that the speed of light may be changing, as predicted. From phys.org: Physicists propose method to measure variations in the speed of light "But in some alternative theories of cosmology, the speed of light is not actually constant, but varies throughout time and space." The physicists from universities in Poland and Spain propose to use baryon acoustic oscillations, waves in the microwave background that can theoretically be detected and measured. Their pasper appears, behind a paywall, in Physical Review Letters: Measuring the speed of light with baryon acoustic oscillations The article in phys.org mentions a simple relationship: There is an angular diameter distance Da, which can be multiplied by the Hubble factor H to get the speed of light: DaH = c We can calculate Da, the maximum distance light has travelled from the time of highest redshift. M = R = t in Planck units, which in CGS units becomes: GM = tc^3 and R = ct c(t) = (GM)^[1/3]t^[-1/3] Da = \int c(t)dt = (3/2)(GM)^[1/3]t^[2/3] integrated from t = 0 (the Big Bang) to the present time. Note that (GM)^[1/3]t^[-1/3] = c, so: Da = (3/2)ct Now we figure out the Hubble value H = Rdot/R R(t) = ct = (GM)^[1/3]t^[2/3] \Rdot(t) = (2/3)(GM)^[1/3]t^{-1/3] H = \Rdot /R = (2/3t) Putting it all together: DaH = (3/2)ct(2/3t) = c Matches perfectly, no? A simple cosmology of M = R = t fits the relation DaH = c. Why hasn't anyone noticed this before?

Project Near Funding

Funding is always an issue with science, especially in a time of darkness. The new book project, THE YEAR OF LIGHT, is tantalizingly close to being funded. thanks to all who have backed this project: One candle can light the darkness.