headers
What's New | 2 Mar 2007 23:41

What's New Friday March 2, 2007

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 2 Mar 07   Washington, DC

1. FIRST AMENDMENT: HIGH COURT TAKES ON FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES. 
Early in his presidency, George W. Bush issued an executive order
creating a White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives that
gives billions of dollars to religious groups of its choosing
without oversight.  No politician dares to challenge it, but a
group of atheists who pay taxes sued in federal court, arguing
that it violated the "establishment clause" of the 1st Amendment. 
An appeals court ruled that the case can go forward.  However,
the White House director short circuited the process by asking
the Supreme Court, stacked with conservatives, to weigh in.  The
issue is whether taxpayers have standing under the establishment
clause to challenge the way the executive branch uses money
appropriated by Congress.  The Court heard oral arguments this
week and is expected to rule before adjourning for the summer.  

2. NASA EXPLORATION: THE ROBOTIC MISSIONS ARE GOING JUST FINE. 
The speedy New Horizons probe has gotten a boost from Jupiter on
its way to Pluto.  As it left Jupiter yesterday, the Long Range
Reconnaissance Imager on board New Horizons took a spectacular
picture of the plume from the Tvashtar volcano on Io.  The plume
was discovered by Hubble just two weeks ago.

3. THE OTHER NASA: RETHINKING THE VALUE OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT.
The arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak on charges of planning to
kidnap and murder a romantic rival raised questions about plans
for dealing with instability in space.  The Associated Press
obtained NASA's written procedure.  It calls for binding wrists
and ankles with duct tape, tying down with bungee cords and
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
What's New | 9 Mar 2007 22:25

What's New Friday March 9, 2007

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 9 Mar 07   Washington, DC

1. GLOBAL CLIMATE: ARE THOSE WHITE URSINE CARNIVORES ENDANGERED? 
The Alaskan division of the Fish and Wildlife Service circulated
a memo instructing biologists not discuss global warming or polar
bears unless they have been designated to do so.  Hmmm.  A year
ago NASA's top climate scientist, physicist James Hansen, was
being pressured by a White House appointee to cool it on global
warming http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn021006.html .  NASA
chief Michael Griffin put a stop to that, issuing a policy that
allows scientists to speak their minds if they give their boss
notice.  Science owes its success to a culture of openness in
which Nature is "The Decider."  Anything else is just religion.

2. CHRISTIAN CLIMATE: "EVANGELICAL CLIMATE INITIATIVE" OPPOSED. 
"Conservative Christian" sounds like an oxymoron to me, but there
is a split between the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)
which has expanded its agenda to include climate change and human
rights, and really conservative groups.  These would include
James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer's Coalitions for
America  and Tony Perkins' Family Research Council.  Note: Real
conservatives aren't interested in conservation.  The Christian
right wants to get back to fighting the real enemy   sex.  Sex
and drugs were the downfall of Ted Haggard, who was the President
of the NAE http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn110306.html . 

3. OPENNESS: THE MARCH MEETING OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY. 
The commitment of physicists to the principle of openness was
tested this very morning in Denver at the APS March meeting, as
it has been every year for 108 years.  Roy Masters, author of
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
What's New | 19 Mar 2007 13:22

What's New Friday March 16, 2007

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 16 Mar 07   Washington, DC

1. APOPHIS 2036: NASA SAYS IT HAS MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO. 
In 1998 Congress mandated a NASA Spaceguard Survey to discover,
track and catalog the 20,000 or so near-earth asteroids and
comets.  NASA is behind schedule.  Asteroids usually show up
around budget time.  The latest is named Apophis, which is headed
our way in 2036.  WN has a call in to Bruce Willis to see if he
will be available in 2036.  Apophis is nothing like the asteroid
that spelled curtains for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, nor
does it have much chance of hitting Earth, but you play the cards
you're dealt.  This morning's New York Times has an op-ed by
Apollo astronaut Russell Schweickart calling for public hearings
to "shame" NASA into action.  This looks like the old "Washington
Monument ploy," in which the Park Service threatens to close the
most popular visitor site because of budget problems.

2. NASA BUDGET: NO ROOM FOR THE ALPHA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER. 
Yesterday, Bart Gordon (D-TN), chair of the House S&T Committee,
noted that the budget reality bears little resemblance to the
"rosy projections" offered by the Administration when the
President announced his "Vision for Space Exploration" three
years ago.  Don't scrap the vision - kill the science.  One
casualty is the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer that was
scheduled to go to the ISS on a 2008 shuttle flight.  Griffin now
says there's no room for the AMS on the shuttle because every
flight is crammed with hardware to finish the ISS.  It wouldn't
do to drop an unfinished ISS into the ocean.  The AMS was
designed to search for antimatter.  Nobel prize winner Sam Ting
of MIT, made the case for AMS personally to Dan Goldin.  It was
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
What's New | 23 Mar 2007 21:30

What's New Friday March 23, 2007

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 23 Mar 07   Washington, DC

1. MARCH MADNESS: COLD FUSION PEAKS AROUND THE VERNAL EQUINOX. 
On this day 18 years ago, the University of Utah announced the
discovery of cold fusion without giving any technical details
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN89/wn032489.html .  The peak
came three weeks later when Stanley Pons received a standing
ovation at the annual ACS Meeting in Dallas, but by June it was
over.  The Utah research was exposed as a pitiful embarrassment. 
For years the faithful sulked at their own annual meetings held
at swank resorts around the world.  There they could congratulate
each other on their progress.  Each year another experiment would
be hailed as proof, but never survived replication.  A few years
ago, however, the bolder of the faithful began to reemerge from
the dark, giving papers at professional society meetings.  They
now prefer to call their field Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions
(LENR),and they held a session at the APS March Meeting in
Denver.  Next week they will hold a session at the ACS Meeting in
Chicago.  Once again, there is a new experiment that is being
hailed as proof-at-last.  Who knows, maybe this will be the one.

2. BUBBLE TROUBLE: CONGRESS LOOKS INTO THE OTHER COLD FUSION. 
Last month we predicted that Rusi Taleyarkhan's troubles aren't
over http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn021607.html .  You
will recall that while he was at ORNL Taleyarkhan claimed in a
paper published by Science that he had generated deuterium fusion
in sonoluminescence.  His claims were disputed by two experienced
physicists, Putterman and Suslick, who repeated the work and got
no indication of fusion.  After Taleyarkhan joined Purdue as a
Nuclear Engineering professor, another paper was published that
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
What's New | 30 Mar 2007 23:23

What's New Friday March 30, 2007

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 30 Mar 07   Washington, DC

1. INTELLIGENT DESIGN: THE LHC WILL DO "REAL" CREATION SCIENCE. 
In November, on schedule, protons will begin circulating in the
27km ring of the Large Hadron Collider.  After 15 years and
$3.8B, the LHC is nearing completion at CERN in the tunnel used
for LEP.  The largest and most complex scientific instrument ever
built, the LHC involves the collaboration of more than 2,000
physicists from 34 countries.  The primary objective is to find
the Higgs boson, the particle that catalyzed the creation of mass
from energy to form the universe.  Nobel laureate Leon Lederman
called it "the God particle."  It is the only particle predicted
by the Standard Model of particle physics that hasn't been found,
but physicists are confident that the Higgs will be found by the
LHC.  There will likely be much more.  Supersymmetry (susy)
predicts a boson superpartner for each fermion.  According to a
story in New Scientist, there were hints of both the Higgs and
susy in results from the Tevatron.  In any case, we are on the
threshold of spectacular advances in understanding the creation
of the universe.  Better a God particle than a God 

2. "SECRET" DESIGN: CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO OPRAH. 
Why is "The Secret" suddenly the number-one best seller?  When I
first heard that "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne is at the top of
the NY Times bestseller list I didn't believe it.  Besides, I
look at the best seller list in the Sunday Times every week, and
I hadn't seen anything called "The Secret" in either Fiction or
Nonfiction.  But there is a category called, "Advice," that the
NYT only posts on the web.  You can think of it as books for
people who watch daytime television. The great champion of The
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |

Gmane