The Aggie Physicist @theaggiephysicist-blog-blog - Tumblr Blog

I think things are beautiful when you don’t plan them, and you don’t have any expectations, and you’re not trying to get somewhere in particular.

Alison Mosshart (via luminiou-s)

summerinohio

"Let’s make sure history never forgets the name Enterprise.”

kny111

IQ Myth Debunked by Canadian Researchers

An individual’s IQ score — long-held as the standard measure of human intelligence — is not a valid way of assessing brainpower, say Canadian researchers.

A team from Western University is debunking the concept of general intelligence, saying that there is no single component that can account for how a person performs various mental and cognitive tasks.

Instead, human intelligence is made up of multiple and distinct components, each of which must be looked at independently.

The study, published today in the journal Neuron, included the largest online intelligence survey on record, which recruited more than 100,000 participants.

"The uptake was astonishing," said Adrian M. Owen, the project’s senior investigator. “We expected a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, culture and creeds from every corner of the world."

The survey, which was open to anyone in the world with an internet connection, asked respondents to complete 12 cognitive tests that tapped into memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities.

The results showed that how people performed at the tests could only be explained with at least three distinct components: short-term memory, reasoning and verbal ability.

No single measure, such as an intelligence quotient, or IQ score, could account for how well, or how poorly, people did.

The researchers also used a brain-scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at the brains of a select group of participants as they performed different tasks.

They found that each cognitive component related to distinct circuits in the brain, supporting the idea of multiple specialized brain systems, each one with its own capacity.

Moral of the story: Don’t hold on to ‘IQ’ anything with high regards to your intelligence. It doesn’t accurately or even closely represent your actual mental capabilities and will likely misinform more than inform you about yourself.

thenewenlightenmentage

Space Slinky: Jet of Superheated Gas — 5,000 Light-Years Long — Ejected from Supermassive Black Hole

Aug. 22, 2013 — More than thirteen years of observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have allowed astronomers to assemble time-lapse movies of a 5,000-light-year-long jet of superheated gas being ejected from a supermassive black hole in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87.

The movies promise to give astronomers a better understanding of how active black holes shape galaxy evolution. While matter drawn completely into a black hole cannot escape its enormous gravitational pull, most infalling material drawn toward it first joins an orbiting region known as an accretion disk encircling the black hole. Magnetic fields surrounding the black hole are thought to entrain some of this ionized gas, ejecting it as very high-velocity jets.

thenewenlightenmentage

Image Credit Here

mattybing1025

theaggiephysicist-blog-blog

Gregory Peck drinking a beer on the set of Night People in Germany, 1954.

terrysmalloy

Cary Grant in ‘The Eagle and the Hawk’, 1933.

dianelockhart

lemonsweetie

Let me tell you a thing, about an amazing man named Patrick Stewart

I went to Comicpalooza this weekend and I was full of nervous energy as I was standing in line to ask Sir Patrick Stewart a question at his panel. I first had to thank him for a speech he had given at amnesty international about domestic violence towards women . I had only seen it a few months ago but I was still dealing with my own personal experience with a similar issue, and I didn’t know what to call it. After seeing Patrick talk so personally about it I finally was able to correctly call it abuse, in my case sexual abuse that was going to quickly turn into physical abuse as well. I didn’t feel guilty or disgusting anymore. I finally didn’t feel responsible for the abuse that was put upon me. I was finally able to start my healing process and to put that part of my life behind me.

After thanking him I asked him “Besides acting, what are you most proud of that you have done in you life (that you are willing to share with us)?”. Sir Patrick told us about how he couldn’t protect his mother from abuse in his household growing up and so in her name works with an organization called Refuge for safe houses for women and children to escape from abusive house holds. Sir Patrick Stewart learned only last year that his father had actually been suffering from PTSD after he returned from the military and was never properly treated. In his father’s name he works with an organization called Combat Stress to help those soldiers who are suffering from PTSD.

They were about to move onto the next question when Sir Patrick looked at me and asked me “My Dear, are you okay?” I said yes, and that I was finally able to move on from that part of my life. He then passionately said that his mother had done nothing to provoke his father and that even if she had, violence was never, ever a choice a man should make. That it is in the power of men to stop violence towards women. The moderator then asked “Do you want a hug?”

Sir Patrick didn’t even hesitate, he smiled, hopped off the stage and came over to embrace me in a hug. Which he held me there for a long while. He told me “You never have to go through that again, you’re safe now.” I couldn’t stop thanking him. His embrace was so warm and genuine. It was two people, two strangers, supporting and giving love. And when we pulled away he looked strait in my eyes, like he was promising that. He told me to take care. And I will.

Sir Patrick Stewart is an absolute roll model for men. He is an amazing man and was so kind and full of heart. I want to let everyone know to please find help if you are in a violent or abusive house hold or relationship. There are organizations and people ready to help. I had countless people after the panel thanking me for sharing the story and asking him those questions. Many said they went through similar things. You are not alone.

^ Here is the video of my question to Sir Patrick Stewart

Photos by Eugene Lee, Thank you

kny111

Antimatter and Fusion Drives Could Power Future Spaceships

Nuclear fusion reactions sparked by beams of antimatter could be propelling ultra-fast spaceships on long journeys before the end of the century, researchers say.

Image: Comparison of Daedalus spacecraft and Saturn V rocket.

A fusion-powered spacecraft could reach Jupiter within four months, potentially opening up parts of the outer solar system to manned exploration, according to a 2010 NASA report.

A number of hurdles would have to be overcome—particularly in the production and storage of antimatter—to make the technology feasible, but some experts imagine it could be ready to go in a half-century or so.

It’s “probably not a 40-year technology, but 50, 60? Quite possible, and something that would have a significant impact on exploration by changing the mass-power-finance calculus when planning,” Jason Hay, a senior aerospace technology analyst for consulting firm The Tauri Group, said during an Aug. 29 presentation with NASA’s Future In-Space Operations working group.

The power of fusion

The fuel for such a fusion-driven spaceship would likely consist of many small pellets containing deuterium and tritium—heavy isotopes of hydrogen that harbor one or two neutrons, respectively, in their nuclei. (The common hydrogen atom has no neutrons.)

Inside each pellet, this fuel would be surrounded by another material, perhaps uranium. A beam of antiprotons—the antimatter equivalent of protons, sporting a net electrical charge of minus-1 rather than plus-1—would be directed at the pellets.

When the antiprotons slammed into uranium nuclei, they would annihilate, generating high-energy fission products that ignite fusion reactions in the fuel.

Such reactions—for example, deuterium and tritium nuclei merging to create one helium-4 atom and one neutron—throw off huge amounts of energy that could be harnessed to propel a spacecraft in several different ways.

“The energy from these reactions could be used to heat a propellant or provide thrust through magnetic confinement and a magnetic nozzle,” states the 2010 report, called “Technology Frontiers: Breakthrough Capabilities for Space Exploration,” which NASA produced with the help of The Tauri Group and other experts.

The basic idea is not new: Project Daedalus, a study conducted by the British Interplanetary Society in the 1970s, proposed using a fusion rocket to power an interstellar spacecraft. Daedalus’ fusion reactions would be sparked by electron beams rather than antiproton beams, however.

Full Article

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Basics of String Theory

itscolossal

This is what happens when you run water through a 24hz sine wave.

astronomnomy-blog

Warning, turn volume down!

Woke up to the news that a meteor broke up over Russia’s Ural region. BBC says at least 250 people have been hurt by the shockwaves, broken glass and the like. After listening to the above video it’s plain to see why they’d have been hurt. I hope there’s no serious injuries.

ESA experts at ESOC have confirmed that there is NO link between this meteor and the flyby of 2012DA14. [link] (different trajectories)

kidsneedscience

While the expression ‘it’s Ancient Greek to me’ is used to mean something incomprehensible, the truth is that Ancient Greek is both accessible and still very much alive in Modern English. Today’s word, star, is a great example. If you were to get in a time machine and travel back to to Ancient Greece you would be able to share many words that are virtually unchanged. You could point to the night sky and say ‘a star’ which is so close to the Ancient Greek aster (αστερ) they would understand it immediately. You could perform this time travel trick over a huge exspanse of land and time with similar results: the Old English steorra, from Proto-Germanic *sterron, *sternon (and for other Proto-Germanic derivatives see also Old Saxon sterro, Old Norse stjarna, Old Frisian stera, Dutch ster, Old High German sterro, German Stern, Gothic stairno), the Proto Indo-European *ster- (see also Sanskrit tar-, Hittite shittar, Latin stella, Breton sterenn, Welsh seren). Some words play such a powerful role on the imagination and and culture that they pass down from generation to generation like valuable treasure. Today star has dozens of metaphorical and poetic uses, from Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers to soccer stars and five star restaurants. We wish upon stars, celebrities are known as stars, and we still treat the word with the highest metaphorical value: a star is distant, beautiful and inspiring.

Image courtesy NASA, in the public domain.