Science & TechnologyS


Chalkboard

A meta-law to rule them all: Can information theory lead the way to a real "theory of everything"

Zeeya Merali
Scientific American
Mon, 26 May 2014 17:22 UTC
david deutsch
© physics.ox.ac.ukPhysicist David Deutsch, who is developing a potential 'theory of everything' with Chiara Marletto.
"Once you have eliminated the impossible," the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes famously opined, "whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." That adage forms the foundational principle of "constructor theory" - a candidate "theory of everything" first sketched out by David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford, in 2012. His aim was to find a framework that could encompass all physical theories by determining a set of overarching "meta-laws" that describe what can happen in the universe and what is forbidden. In a May 23 paper posted to the physics preprint server, arXiv, constructor theory claims its first success toward that goal by unifying the two separate theories that are currently used to describe information processing in macroscopic, classical systems as well as in subatomic, quantum objects.

Computer scientists currently use a theory developed by the American mathematician and cryptographer Claude Shannon in the 1940s to describe how classical information can be encoded and transmitted across noisy channels efficiently - what, for instance, is the most data that can be streamed, in theory, down a fiber-optic cable without becoming irretrievably corrupted. At the same time, physicists are striving to build quantum computers that could, in principle, exploit peculiar aspects of the subatomic realm to perform certain tasks at a far faster rate than today's classical machines.

But the principles defined by Shannon's theory cannot be applied to information processing by quantum computers. In fact, Deutsch notes, physicists have no clear definition for what "quantum information" even is or how it relates to classical information. "If we want to make progress in finding new algorithms for quantum computers, we need to understand what quantum information actually is!" he says. "So far, the algorithms that have been discovered for quantum computers have been surprises that were discovered by blundering about because we have no underlying theory to guide us."

Comment: For more on information theory and how it may apply to everyday life, see Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk's new book, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

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Fireball 5

Fireballs light up the radio sky, hinting at unexplored physics

Shannon Hall
Universe Today
Mon, 02 Jun 2014 13:45 UTC
Plasma Trail
© Gregory Taylor (University of New Mexico)A series of All-Sky (fish eye) images showing the plasma trail left by a fireball, which extends 92 degrees across the northern half of the sky. These images are 5 second snapshots captured at 37.8 MHz with the LWA1 radio telescope. The bright steady sources (Cygnus A, Cassiopeia A, the galactic plane, etc) have been removed using image subtraction. See Animated Image Here
At any given moment, it seems, the sky is sizzling with celestial phenomena waiting to be stumbled upon. New research using the Long Wavelength Array (LWA, a collection of radio dishes in New Mexico, found quite the surprise. Fireballs - those brilliant meteors that leave behind glowing streaks in the night sky - unexpectedly emit a low radio frequency, hinting at new unexplored physics within these meteor streaks.

The LWA keeps its eyes to the sky day and night, probing a poorly explored region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It's one of only a handful of blind searches carried out below 100 MHz.

Over the course of 11,000 hours, graduate student Kenneth Obenberger from the University of New Mexico and colleagues found 49 radio bursts, 10 of which came from fireballs.

Most of the bursts appear as large point sources, limited to four degrees, roughly eight times the size of the full Moon. Some, however, extend several degrees across the sky. On January 21, 2014, a source left a trail covering 92 degrees in less than 10 seconds (see above). The end point continued to glow for another 90 seconds.
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Info

Blond hair gene identified

Tia Ghose
Live Science
Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:18 UTC
Blond Kids
© wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.comelection for different hair color could be a byproduct of other, more consequential genetic changes. One idea is that light-skin genes helped ancient humans survive in Northern Europe's low-light conditions, and light hair may have been a byproduct.
A genetic mutation that codes for the blond hair of Northern Europeans has been identified.

The single mutation was found in a long gene sequence called KIT ligand (KITLG) and is present in about one-third of Northern Europeans. People with these genes could have platinum blond, dirty blond or even dark brown hair.

"There's a half dozen different chromosome regions that influence hair color," said study co-author David Kingsley, an evolutionary biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University in California. "This is one, but not the only one. The combination of variants that you have at all those different genes - that sets your final hair color."

Fish colors

Kingsley's team first encountered the gene about seven years ago, when they noticed that stickleback fish color ranged from dark to light depending on the type of water they inhabited. It turned out that a change in one base pair, or letter, in the KITLG gene was responsible.

The gene codes for a protein known as KIT ligand, which binds to receptors throughout the body and affects pigmentation, blood cells, nerve cells in the gut, and sex cells. A broken KITLG gene would be disastrous for an individual, Kingsley told Live Science.

"You'd have white hair and be sterile, because your gonads hadn't developed properly - and actually, you'd be dead, because blood cells didn't do what they're supposed to do in the bone marrow," he said.

Yet the mutation also seemed to be linked to normal variations in hair color. In population studies, blonds in Iceland were much more likely than brunettes to have the genetic variant.
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Laptop

Google gets many requests to be 'forgotten'


Phys.org
Sat, 31 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© AFP
Google received 12,000 requests from people seeking to be "forgotten" by the world's leading search engine on the first day it offered the service, a company spokesman in Germany said Saturday.

The requests, submitted on Friday, came after Google set up an online form to allow Europeans to request the removal of results about them from Internet searches.

The number confirms earlier estimates given by the German daily Der Spiegel and reported in other media.

Earlier in May the European Court of Justice ruled that individuals have the right to have links to information about them deleted from searches in certain circumstances, such as if the data is outdated or inaccurate.

Google said that each request would be examined individually to gauge whether it met the ruling's criteria.

The US-based Internet giant declined to estimate how long it might take for the links to disappear, saying factors such as whether requests are clear-cut will affect how long it takes.

The ruling on the right to be forgotten comes amid growing concern in Europe about individuals' ability to protect their personal data and manage their reputations online.
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Satellite

IRIS observes its first coronal mass ejection

Brook Hayes
United Press International
Sat, 31 May 2014 15:07 UTC
Earlier this month, a coronal mass ejection (CME) -- which sounds both gross and dangerous, until you learn it's just a really big solar flare -- leaped from the side of the sun. Luckily, IRIS, NASA's newest solar observatory, was in prime position to capture a detailed profile view of extraordinary ejection. Capturing the impressive CME was a first for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, which launched in just last summer.0

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Rainbow

Unusual dazzling, electric-blue from volcanoes caused by sulfuric gases

Brian Clark Howard
National Geographic
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Olivier Grunewald/National GeographicIn Ethiopia's Danakil Depression, the sulfur dust in the soil of a hydrothermal vent ignites to form blue flames.
For several years Paris-based photographer Olivier Grunewald has been documenting the Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia, where dazzling, electric-blue fire can often be seen streaming down the mountain at night."This blue glow - unusual for a volcano - isn't, of course, lava, as unfortunately can be read on many websites," Grunewald told National Geographic in an email about Kawah Ijen, a volcano on the island of Java.The glow is actually the light from the combustion of sulfuric gases, Grunewald explained.

Those gases emerge from cracks in the volcano at high pressure and temperature - up to 1,112°F (600°C). When they come in contact with the air, they ignite, sending flames up to 16 feet (5 meters) high.Some of the gases condense into liquid sulfur, "which continues to burn as it flows down the slopes," said Grunewald, "giving the feeling of lava flowing." Cynthia Werner, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, told National Geographic that Grunewald's photos show an unusual phenomenon.

"I've never seen this much sulfur flowing at a volcano," she said.
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Airplane

Researchers demonstrate mind controlled flight

Alan McStravick
RedOrbit
Tue, 27 May 2014 15:29 UTC
Simulating brain controlled flying
© A. Heddergott/TU MünchenSimulating brain controlled flying at the Institute for Flight System Dynamics.
When you think about the future and the technologies that are right around the corner, what comes to mind? Are you excited by the prospect of one day owning a refrigerator that senses when you are out of milk and eggs and contacts the store for you? Perhaps you long for the day when your home is fully automated with security, lighting, temperature and entertainment controlled by a single central computer? Recent news out of Germany highlights a technology that will prove the sky is no longer the limit.

Researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM), under the guidance of Professor Florian Holzapfel, are developing methods for even untrained laypersons to strap into the cockpit, soar into the clouds and return safely again to the surface of the Earth. The method, involving a white skull cap and several wires, relies upon electroencephalography (EEG) readings from specific brain regions used by traditional pilots in captaining an aircraft. The EU funded project, "Brainflight," is a long-term study intended to make flying even more accessible to the average person.

"With brain control, flying, in itself, could become easier," explained Tim Fricke, one of the project leads at TUM, in a recent statement. "This would reduce the work load of pilots and thereby increase safety. In addition, pilots would have more freedom of movement to manage other manual tasks in the cockpit." This last point is true because, with mind controlled thought, the pilot would not be restricted by having to maintain contact with flight control devices or pedals.
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Info

Doctors trial first human experiments in 'suspended animation'

Helen Thomson
New Scientist
Mon, 26 May 2014 15:58 UTC
Suspended Animation
© A. Reinke/PlainpictureNo heartbeat, no hope?
Doctors will try to save the lives of 10 patients with knife or gunshot wounds by placing them in suspended animation, buying time to fix their injuries

Neither dead or alive, knife-wound or gunshot victims will be cooled down and placed in suspended animation later this month, as a groundbreaking emergency technique is tested out for the first time.

Surgeons are now on call at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to perform the operation, which will buy doctors time to fix injuries that would otherwise be lethal.

"We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," says Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon at the hospital, who is leading the trial. "So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

The technique involves replacing all of a patient's blood with a cold saline solution, which rapidly cools the body and stops almost all cellular activity. "If a patient comes to us two hours after dying you can't bring them back to life. But if they're dying and you suspend them, you have a chance to bring them back after their structural problems have been fixed," says surgeon Peter Rhee at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who helped develop the technique.

The benefits of cooling, or induced hypothermia, have been known for decades. At normal body temperature - around 37 °C - cells need a regular oxygen supply to produce energy. When the heart stops beating, blood no longer carries oxygen to cells. Without oxygen the brain can only survive for about 5 minutes before the damage is irreversible.
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Robot

Shape-shifting "Lego" furniture: A help for elderly and disabled people?

Tanya Lewis
Livescience
Thu, 22 May 2014 18:15 UTC
Image
© EPFL
Like a scene right out of The Jetsons, a fleet of robotic blocks could assemble themselves into pieces of furniture that can move around the house.

A group of scientists in Switzerland is developing small robotic modules, called "roombots," which fit together like LEGO bricks to form structures that can self-assemble and morph into different shapes.


The idea of roving furniture may be somewhat disconcerting, but the researchers envision them being used to provide assistance to elderly or disabled people.

"The idea of different units that self-assemble and change morphology has been around for quite a while, but nobody came up with a good idea for how to use them," said Massimo Vespignani, an engineer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, andco-author of a study to be published in the July issue of the journal Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
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Fireball 4

New potentially hazardous asteroid 2014 KP4

Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini
Remanzacco Observatory
Sat, 24 May 2014 13:21 UTC
The MPEC 2014-K35 issued on May 23, 2014 announced the discovery of a new PHA asteroid officially designated 2014 KP4. This asteroid (~ magnitude 16) was discovered by C. Jacques, E. Pimentel & J. Barros through a 0.20-m f/2.2 Schmidt-Cassegrain + CCD telescope of SONEAR Observatory (MPC code Y00), on images obtained on May 20.2, 2014.

According to the preliminay orbit, 2014 KP4 is an Apollo type asteroid. This class of asteroids are defined by having semi-major axes greater than that of the Earth (> 1 AU) but perihelion distances less than the Earth's aphelion distance (q < 1.017 AU). It is also flagged as a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid". PHA are asteroids larger than approximately 100m that might have threatening close approaches to the Earth (they can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU).

2014 KP4 had a close approach with Earth on May 11, 2014 at rougly 26.2 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0673 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers).

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object on 2014, May 20.6, remotely from the Q62 iTelescope network (Siding Spring) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + focal reducer. Below you can see an animation showing the fast movement (the object was moving at 6.5 "/min) of 2014 KP4 on the the sky on May 20, 2014. Each frame is a single 15-second exposure. Click on the thumbnail here to see the animation (East is up, North is to the right):

Below you can see the discovery images of 2014 KP4 by SONEAR survey.
PHA 2014 KP4
© SONEAR ObservatoryPHA 2014 KP4
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