Make Sure You Are Absolutely Positronium

Let me come out and admit that one of my passions is comic books. I have run the emotional gambit on this subject for years, from early teen ecstasy at the multicolorworlds unfolding, to mid-teen speculator greed where I grasped for every first crappy issue I could seal into a bag, to late teen shame and complete avoidance, to college year snobbery where I recognized the format but rejected most of the mainstream riff-raff, to finally full circle acceptance of the inherent geekiness of both the medium and myself. Over the years the one comic that I have collected through thick and thin was the Incredible Hulk. I think I identify with the nerdy Bruce Banner and experience some sort of masculine catharsis with each transformation into the raw Id that is the Jade Goliath: power incarnate and unshackled by any of the rules of society. Not even the laws of physics.

As a quick primer to the comic book impaired (i.e., those of you with lives), Bruce Banner was transformed into the Incredible Hulk when he was caught in the blast wave of a gamma-ray bomb explosion. These gamma rays are what make him green as well as all of his various gamma-ray powered rivals, like The Abomination or The Leader. Great and good, except it doesn't take much physics to know that gamma radiation is merely the highest energy type of light, not some exotic ray or particle. Any atomic bomb produces gamma radiation and as the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know, you do not get super powers from gamma-rays. You get sick and dead. Still, even if we grant that in the comic book world radiation will give you super powers a good 50% of the time, what exactly is a Gamma Bomb?

By the time the first Gamma Bomb had gone off (May 1962), the H-bomb had already been in existence vaporizing South Pacific islands for a decade, and as far as I know, those are about the most gamma-ray intensive sources ever created. Was Dr. Banner working on some sort of low-heat explosion, i.e. a bomb that would put out almost all of its energy in the form of gamma-rays? Such a bomb would be similar in concept to a Neutron Bomb, which sacrifices total energy yield to put out a higher dose of initial radiation (in the form of neutrons). This sort of weapon will cause less infrastructure destruction, but be more deadly to things vulnerable to radiation. Like people. Oh, Bruce... the pursuit of science does not mean leave your soul at the door.

What brought all this to mind was a recent scientific discovery that might be used to one day make gamma-ray lasers (also known as Grasers or to the Dr. Evils of the world, Gamma Ray Annihilation Lasers). Laser is actually an acronym meaning Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The key to that is the "Stimulated Emission" which means that when light of the right wavelength hits the inner parts of the laser it stimulates the production of more light of the same wavelength, which then moves "coherently", i.e. all the light waves move together, not interfering with each other. Your basic laser works by "pumping" up a medium (a ruby in the very first laser) to an excited state. Once in the excited state every photon of light it emits makes more photons which all run together, bouncing around the medium until you get a cascade of light that comes out in the laser beam, across the theatre, and onto Kevin Bacon's chin. Would you cut that out, I am trying to watch a movie here!

Gamma-ray lasers would in principle work the same way, only the energy of a gamma ray is roughly 5000 times greater than your typical optical light. This kind of energy requires quite a special excited medium, which up until now has eluded physicists. Your typical atom can't give you much more than ultraviolet light energy, as any more energy just blows electrons off atoms -- not so great for making a laser.



The hot discovery this week is the creation of di-positronium. Positronium (without the "di") has been around for a long time. Well the typical piece of positronium only lasts a picosecond, but the ability to make them has been around a long time. A positron is the anti-matter, mirror-world version of an electron. Every piece of matter has an anti-matter opposite. If you combine a positron and an electron, they generally annihilate each other, producing a lot of energy. However, sometimes they combine for a short while in a weird element known as positronium. It is just like Hydrogen, an electron orbiting a single positive bit, except it is much less heavy and about to explode. Since at best positronium only exists for a microsecond it has been tricky to make any molecules out of it, but researchers in Riverside, CA managed to get two to stick together into di-positronium (using this pictured apparatus), the bizarro world version of common Hydrogen gas. Apparently it is this stuff that scientists think could potentially be used as the medium for a gamma-ray laser.

"The difference in the power available from a gamma-ray laser compared to a normal laser is the same as the difference between a nuclear explosion and a chemical explosion." - Dr. David Cassidy^

Yikes. Still, one needs to be careful making such strong claims. If things don't work out you might end up looking like a bit of an ass:

Once we get out of the '80s, the '90s are going to make the '60s look like the '50s!" - Dennis Hopper, Flashback (1990)

Yeahhhh... Not so much.



One thing I know for sure, with the Hulk around drywallers must have been in constant demand. Hulk smash puny wall! Now gaping hole makes hulk laugh. Hmmm, Hulk feels chill breeze and no longer have place to hang Hulk pictures. Plus aesthetically displeasing. Hulk angry again! Must call contractor to fix wall! Smash! Two walls need fixing?! How hulk gonna pay for all this? Smash...

And so on.



Barring the unexpected appearance of the Hulk, or maybe just an angry teen or two, our walls should be in good shape, with drywall now up everywhere. Again, I am a bit behind in my house remodel updates, so these walls went up three weeks or so ago. These are the first, raw photos before the taping and plastering. Drywall is on the list of things that require inspections from the city, I guess so walls and ceilings won't collapse on you in your sleep. The city requires a nail every so many inches or the drywall does not pass inspection. Only after this inspection do you tape up all the gaps/cracks and start slapping plaster on to produce one smooth surface (see next week's blog entry).



Anywhere you might expect water could leak or drip or spray, we have put in green board drywall, a Hulk favorite. In theory this drywall is more resistant to water damage, as it covers the gypsum drywall base with a tasty wax coating, as opposed to just paper. In practice it is not supposed to do much that 2 or 3 coats of paint won't do for you, but builders use it to play it safe. If a leak rotted out a wall behind a sink and it was not green board there would be hell to pay. You can see the green board in the bathroom and in the next frame in our kitchen.

For the curious: you do not want to use green board in showers or behind bathtub tile, i.e. places that seriously get wet. You use a water proof cement board, which will not crumble into dust if it gets wet. I may or may not show photos of cement board in a later tile installation entry. Probably not, as it looks a lot like a cement board. Let your imagination frolic, if it will.



Still, getting the drywall up was one of the big "Oh Wow" moments in the house remodel. Where before there were frames, after there were walls again. It is like the difference between a skeleton and a person with skin. Except putting the skin on and off is decidedly less unpleasant. I mean, I assume. Our serial killer readership can chime in with their own opinions.

It looks like we can't have it both ways. I am only one man with only so much time available for procrastination. If I work to get more remodel stuff in the blog, there is just no room for babies. I can't please everyone and it is tearing me apart!

Actually, I just ran out of photos on my laptop, both house remodel and babies. Too lazy to get the more recent ones Candice has taken, I leave you with the last picture I have from our San Diego vacation. I call it "Get a Haircut!" or alternatively, "Maybe a Little More Exercise Is in Order, Mmmm?" Nope, no one likes pictures of themselves. Well, maybe Brad Pitt does. Damn you Angelina, why can't you share him with the world?



^PS - When exactly did David Cassidy get so involved with high energy physics? I mean we are talking about the man who sang The Puppy Song, for goodness sakes.

If only I could have a puppy
I'd call myself so very lucky
Just to have some company
To share a cup of tea with me
I'd take my puppy everywhere
La la la la I wouldn't care

Everlasting Flight

Of all the hard lessons one learns along the highways and byways of life, one is essential and unavoidable: Gravity Always Wins. Also known more colloquially as the "What Goes Up, Must Come Down" rule. Whether it be a baseball, a bullet, or a baby, if it heads upwards you know eventually it will return to the ground, often with a resounding thump. A thump which will sound particularly loud if what fell happens to be your very own noggin. That's right, every time you fall down it is just another example of a force acting on you proportional to the square of the distance to the center of mass we like to call Earth. You can climb a tree or a mountain, hop in a hot air balloon or helicopter, or board the back of the mighty, if mythological, Roc, and it will all end up the same: In the end gravity will claim its own. No exceptions.

Mankind, however, has never been big on absolute and uncompromising restrictions. No one can circumnavigate the globe? Magellan's crew had other ideas (but not poor Ferdinand, of course). You can't split the atom? Tell that to the Eniwotak atoll. Only universities and major research laboratories will ever be able contain the giant, room-sized computers of the future? I think Steve Jobs' bank account might indicate otherwise. In a similar vein, teams of engineers are working toward Everlasting Flight. That's right. You put the plane "Up" and it does not, in fact, "Come Down."

The idea is to build a plane that not only powers itself using energy from the sun, but which can store enough energy to make it through the night as well. Send these planes up to 60,000 feet, well above any weather, and they can circle forever, or at least until their batteries give out from the constant charge/discharge cycle. So the laws of physics will eventually have the last laugh, but a gravitational stay of execution that could conceivably last years is nothing to sneeze at. And while sending planes up that will be able to fly beyond one's own brief lifetime would be a reward in itself, there are significant financial reasons for getting these Forever Planes working. They could serve the same function as a communications satellite for a fraction of the cost, particularly if you are only interested in a single large market, like New York or Los Angeles. Plus, string a few of them across the country or across the ocean and you can make satellite-style calls without the delay induced by having to bounce a signal all the way up to geosynchronous orbit (120 million feet is a bit more than 60,000). Imagine CNN interviews where people don't start to answer questions, then stop when they hear the interviewer tell them to start, then starting again, only to stop again when the interviewer tells them to continue.

Everlasting flight is not true perpetual motion, as it requires the constant input of energy from the sun. Even if the batteries lasted forever, the sun will give out in five or so billion years. Stupid fusion.



No, the only perpetual motion machine is that of remodeling one's home, which truly never ends. I have fallen way behind in my remodel updates, with the earliest photos in today's blog taken nearly a month ago. I will do my best to pick up the pace, but it still may take a few blog entries to get us fully back up to speed. See what happens when you go to the zoo?



When last we left our home-remodeling heroes they were just about to get an entirely new Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning system (HVAC). Silver snakes of insulated ducting were everywhere, threatening the townspeople of fair Homeownersville. Only through the valiant efforts of good men like Pedro^ here were we able to get the crafty ducts stuffed back into the roof. This little bit of roof was actually created so that the ducts could go from the old house (below Pedro) to the new house (where the camera is located). The next picture shows the ductwork coming into the loft space. The central vent is the return vent, which may actually end up raised up to the ceiling in the final configuration for efficiency, as hot air has been known to rise.

This is our new behemoth air conditioner, sitting proudly on its new rooftop dais. I actually find it rather pretty, a sort of avant garde industrial cube. Your art appreciation mileage may vary. The more astute reader may also notice the roof has been tarpapered since we last saw it. This actually makes our home relatively water resistant. Not water-proof, mind you, just resistant. As much as SoCal needs a great anti-drought deluge, I would appreciate if the monsoons held off for another month.

This shot comes from back inside the house. You will see more of those slippery, silver ducting snakes running across the rafters. You may also notice a giant metal monstrosity (I already used behemoth. Please send in your own suggestions for words that mean "big monster" to I Need More Monster Metaphors, PO Box 1313, Mockingbird, IL, Esq.) to the left of the chimney. That is my new furnace and air blower which has been located up in the attic. While making it more difficult to kick if it gets out of line, it frees up an entire closet worth of space down in the living quarters.

Changing gears, here are some shots of my new trellis which comes off of the new addition and wraps around a sprawling redwood tree. You can just see my beautiful new AC unit from this angle, although from most viewpoints it will be hidden. The trellis was actually the center of a small point of controversy. The wood for the trellis arrived in late June and sat by the side of the house, doing little but slowly sweating out the last of any excess glue or sap it might have.

I had taken all painting away from my contractor, because he wanted a gianormous amount of money to do it and even back then I knew we needed to find things I could do to save money. To punish me for taking out a nice profit-heavy part of the project, I was told that sanding and staining the trellis would be something I was in charge of. Fair enough. This would be best accomplished while the wood was still sitting on the ground, especially the sanding. I was told the trellis would be going up in September.

I made plans to come and sand all day on the third week of August. Seriously, I had planned on this date for weeks. I told my contractor more than a week in advance I was going to do it that weekend. Guess when he put up the trellis?

That's right. The Friday before I was going to sand all the pieces, our contractor decided they had to go up. Now he had his reasons. Order of operations, making sure his guys had work, etc. All I know is that instead of sanding something on the ground, I would now be doing it 10 feet in the air.



I now know that it takes 3 times longer to sand things while balancing on a ladder. I have so far dedicated two mornings to sanding the damn thing and gotten about 2/3 of it done, so one more morning ought to do it. On the great list of screw-ups it still ranks fairly low, however. And I got to purchase a new vibrational sander, which does in fact seem to be superior to the rotational sander I already have, although a side-by-side comparison has yet to be undertaken. Also, the trellis does look damn funky cool...





You know who else looks funky cool? My lady and her babies. These photos were taken at the Ellen Scripps Browning Park in La Jolla, California, the day after our trip to the San Diego Zoo (see Diatribe comma Panda). This beautiful spot overlooking the ocean is just north of the Children's Pool, which is deceptively named, as it is actually completely overrun by Harbor seals and it is the last place you would send a child, unless of course you wanted said child to be mauled by blubbery sea mammals. Anyway, there are no seals or other hostile sea life up in the park, unless you want to include the occasional garbage picking sea hobo.

One reason we went to the beach was to meet up with my buddy from college Joe Bray, formerly known as "Crazy" Joe Bray. He is no longer called that because he expressed a strong desire to not be addressed as such. He is still crazy. There are no photos of him, mostly because it was so sunny that my camera melted into a puddle in my pocket.

Kayla is in blue while Rylie is wearing white and pink. You can also tell Rylie because she is the one grinning like a crazy baby while her mother hides her face in shame. After the first picture I think Kayla rolled her eyes in exasperation and then crawled off to catch a cab. Good thing that kind sea hobo brought her back to us unharmed.

I like this last photo. I think both these girls are pretty. No getting jealous, Kayla. There is a price for running off with strange beach people: You miss out on excellent photo opportunities.



^ Sadly I have to admit I don't really remember the name of this good fellow, who basically acts as an assistant/everyman for our contractor. If something needs getting done, like packing fiberglass insulation into a hole in the roof, he is the man. His name might be Pedro. I'd swear it was something like Pedro.

Dammit, I am the man.

Tricera Topsi Sleeps With the Fishes

As a working astronomer, the two things I get asked about most are whether I believe in extraterrestrial life and whether I think an asteroid is going to hit the Earth any time soon. My field of expertise is galaxy formation, which mostly happened billions of year before the Earth was even formed and studies objects so large that our entire solar system would be a mere drop of water in the sea of trillions of other drops that the typical galaxy holds. I have no formal biology training above high school and the study of the solar system is almost a different branch of science altogether, more often thrown in with the "Planetary Sciences" rather than traditional astronomers. Still, apparently I am the the man to ask these Earth shattering (literally) questions, because if the government was hiding something I clearly have to be on the inside track, because, well, I regularly use telescopes. Or maybe because I get NASA money? It is not like my funding comes with a conspiracy mailing list or anything...

For future reference, my stock answers are:
A) No one has any idea whether there is any other intelligent life out there. You can't make an extrapolation from a single data point, by which I mean us. If smart aliens were so rare as to be only created once per galaxy... then that would have to be us, wouldn't it? Aesthetically I find the notion of us being the only ones displeasing, but I have no scientific reason to say otherwise. I do not buy into the notion that if they existed they would have visited us by now (I do not believe they have. The bright light you saw was probably just Venus). The galaxy is a big place and making any assumptions about a lifeform which might not even breath the same air we do seems a bit audacious.

B) Killer asteroids do hit the Earth. However, these dinosaur-killers only come once ever 50-100 million years or so. I would not put it at the top of my list of things to worry about, but I would spend a modest amount of time and money tracking asteroids. Whatever particular asteroid that you recently heard about striking the Earth is almost certainly NOT going to strike the Earth. Measuring the orbits of tiny celestial bodies is exceedingly difficult. Virtually every "this asteroid will hit the Earth in 2163" story you have ever read was based on the initial measurement of its future path. This measurement has a gigantic error associated with it. If the Earth fits inside the error, that is usually good enough for a press release and associated hoopla. Later measurements shrink the error bars. Odds are strongly in favor of the Earth falling outside those recalculated error bars.

Still, scientists love fame and media attention as much as the next guy, so I would not expect an end to these stories about Earth killing asteroids. Apparently a lot of them can be blamed on a single asteroid-asteroid collision 160 million years ago, possibly even the asteroid that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. This mega-crackup out in the asteroid belt created a whole mess of giant asteroids, now referred to as the Baptistina family, making the killing of the dinosaurs the most spectacular mob hit of all time.

The astute among you might note that the creation of the 120 mile diameter Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan that is now closely associated with what Tyrannosaurs of the time thought of as a "real bummer of a day", was created 65 million years ago, not the 160 million BC date that the Baptistina rock crash occurred. The overachievers among you would go on to point out that 160 million years is actually the middle of the Jurassic period, while the K-T boundry isn't until the end of Cretacious, which means we are talking Allosaurs not T-rex!

Yeah, well you poindexters can spend an extra hour in study hall pushing your glasses back on your noses and snorting milk out your nose....



Whoah, where did that come from? I must have some repressed rage against paleontologists. Or maybe it was just those those lame Jurassic Park movies. Anyway, the point was there was a doubling in the number of rogue asteroids (which is determined from cratering rates) in the time period of 50-150 million years ago, which the authors of the study trace to this Baptistina incident. So if half of all Earth-crossing asteroids at the time of dinosaurs still came from this ugly little asteroid billiards break, that would make a 50% chance it was one of them that did in the dinosaurs. Looking at the type of asteroid that made the Chicxulub crater the authors determined that it matched the Baptistina family (Dammit Louie, you got to make sure you whipe your gun before dropping it!), making the odds more like 90%. For good measure the authors throw in the Tycho Crater on the moon, which was also formed around the same time. I need only point out that this is also the location of the Monolith discovered in 2001: A Space Oddysey to bring this whole intro full circle.



No house updates this entry. House remodels are exhausting and I just want to have some fun and go to the zoo. The San Diego Zoo to be precise. Here we are on a sunny August day at the zoo's entrance, where I believe I have just had my hat impaled by a topiary elephant. A young hooligan asked me for change, so I grabbed him and would have given him a proper thrashing if his parents hadn't been the ones taking this photo.

OK, in actuality the boy is Ian, the son of our friends Kris and Jenny whom we stayed with in San Diego. Other clear fallacies: there are no hooligans in San Diego and the boy asked not for a bit of change, but for my entire wallet. The only thrashing received was me from the damn topiary, which refused to move out of my way no matter how much I beat at it and screamed "Move Bush!" at the top of my lungs. Did I mention it was hot? That I suffered from some mild heat-related hallucinations? That the topiary elephant later apologized and joined me in the gazebo for a crumpet and a spot of tea?

Smashing.



This slightly dark and blurry photo was taken from the security camera in the reptile house, where this miscreant was discovered try to feed a baby to a giant Monitor lizard. Fortunately I caught him in the act and kept the poor child from being lizard chow.

The reptile house was our first stop on the zoo tour, at the insistence of young Ian. Kayla was deep asleep at the time, so Rylie got the Daddy shoulder tour. Unfortunately most reptiles are not big movers, so even impressive monsters like this monitor lizard did not get a lot of interest from the baby. One exception was a giant 20+ foot python, who came up and licked the glass right next to Rylie's head. The two of them just sort of stared at each other. I am proud to say that it was the python that eventually gave way. Beware staring into the eyes of a baby. They can mesmerize you.



By the end of the day it was Rylie who was konked out in the stroller and Kayla who got the front row seat. Her absolute favorite were the elephants. The San Diego Zoo has three, two African and one Indian. I assume there is a joke there, but I am sure it is in bad taste. Here is one of the African elephants giving himself a shower with its trunk.



This is Kayla going nuts at the sight of the elephant. You can't quite see her eyes, but I think her mouth expresses it all. I can only imagine she was thinking that she had never seen such a big dog before. The elephant then picked up a magic feather and flew away by flapping its giant ears. Crows could be heard laughing and soon after we saw a peanut stand, a rubber band, and a needle that winked its eye.



The San Diego Zoo is famous for its Panda denizens and they had in fact recently given birth to another tiny, rat-looking baby, so the exhibit was packed. Pandas seem to me to be the clearest evidence of God, as no way could any creature have evolved into such a precarious state. For starters, Pandas eat nothing but a certain type of bamboo. However, the digestive tract of the Panda is not well designed to actually absorb nutrients from bamboo, requiring the Panda to spend every waking moment eating so that it might glean just enough calories to stay alive.



Pandas also are not big fans of mating, even in the wild. Panda bears are generally solitary creatures, who mark out gigantic bamboo forest territories for themselves, which they have to do, if you recall, because of the insane amounts of bamboo they must eat just to survive. This makes male/female encounters rare in the first place. If they do find each other, it is very common that the female spurns the male's advances. Fine and good -- who wants three hundred pounds of horny bear on top of them -- but the species is dying out for crissakes. The females are not being picky, they are comitting species suicide. Finally, if a female does get pregnant, the baby it gives birth is so ridiculously small and helpless that the mother will occasionally just roll on top of it by accident, crushing it to death.

Seriously, should such a maladapted creature really continue to live? I guess they do fill that valuable cuddly/cute niche. Where people are concerned, that is definitely a survival trait.



Finally, here are a couple of meerkats. One is an actual African meerkat, famous for their Manors and close friendships with warthogs. The other is a spokesmeerkat for the park and should in no way be associated with or be compared to the Disney character Timon for the Lion King. Totally different and non-litigatable. I will leave it to you to tell which is which, but I will drop you the hint that real meerkats are not big on tickling babies.

Or polyester blends that smell suspicously of stale sweat.