A Physicist Journey

Monday, March 4, 2024

Cycles of Time - A Summary Review Part 2

If you read the first post on this topic, you’ll recall that the book is divided into three parts. In this publication, we cover some of Part 1. We highlight its most interesting aspect, discuss the main points, and provide additional insight using extra material as reference. This is more than just a review; it is my attempt to understand the subject of the book and hopefully create a helpful guide for potential readers.

Part 1 is titled “The second Law and its Underlying Mystery”. The book starts by exploring the concept of entropy, aiming to present it in the most meaningful way possible by explaining application to our understanding of the universe. The chapter is composed of six subchapters. In this post I will discuss sections 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 which I have read so far.

1.1 The relentless march of Randomness

The main subject discussed in this subchapter is related to the field of thermodynamics. A good way of defining thermodynamics is “a branch of physics which deals with the energy and work of a system.” This discipline is only concerned with large-scale observations. It is principally based on a set of four laws that deal with temperature, equilibrium, work, heat, energy conservation, and entropy. The latter being the focus of this chapter.

Penrose starts by discussing the notion of what a physics law is and how the second law of thermodynamics differs from the rest. The second law of thermodynamics (abbreviated as 2^nd law) can be stated as follows:

“Any spontaneously occurring process will always lead to an escalation in the entropy of the system” in simple words, the law explains that in an isolated system, entropy will never decrease over time.

While most laws are represented as equalities, the 2^nd law is an inequality. It states that the entropy of an isolated system is greater at later times that it was at earlier times. To grasp the idea presented here, one must have a clear understanding of what a system is. In science, a system refers to a group of interacting elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. In physics, it refers to a collection of objects that make thinking about a problem more convenient. Systems are perfect scenarios where we choose to acknowledge what is relevant and everything else is background. In this system, entropy is always greater as time evolves.

The next term we must understand is the concept of entropy, and this is where the next subsections spend a deal of time explaining. One description of entropy is disorder or randomness. if you consider a bedroom as a system, the entropy value is determined by how messy or disorganized the room is. Organizing your room takes a lot of time and energy, but for it to get messy takes no effort at all. It is as if its preferred state was to be messy. That is where entropy is greater.

Now, the equations of motions that we know as Newton’s law have niceness in them, and that is they are time reversible. You can determine the initial state of a system if you know where it ended and vice versa. This time reversibility is equally allowable, but with entropy, the case is different. Consider an egg that drops form a table to the floor and it breaks and spills everywhere (this is the example used in the book). If you roll the film backwards you will see a spilling egg reassembling itself. While this is possible for motion, it is not what we see with entropy. Entropy is more related to a probabilistic standpoint that indicates the likelihood that such event happens. As it turns out, it is very unlikely because we do not see eggs magically reassembling in our everyday lives. Instead, we see the eggs dropping and breaking because that is the state entropy favors. “The actual definition of the entropy of a system at any moment is, however, symmetrical with regard to the direction of time” so whichever the direction for future may be, that is where entropy is heading to and increasing.

Another puzzling thought I found is how the 2^nd law is not a deduction of dynamical laws. I spent a deal of time asking around and searching for information on how this works and basically, it means that because dynamical laws are time reversible, it does not mean that the 2^nd law will work the same way (Big thanks to everyone in physics.stackexchange.com for their comments). So, if we travel back in time, we cannot guarantee that entropy is decreasing as a product of reversibility. An example I found of entropy reduction is a freezer; water has a higher entropy as a liquid than as a solid but in a freezer, we can say that is losing entropy as it becomes solid. It does not mean that the water is traveling backward in time because we see time is still moving forward. So, entropy is much deeper than just randomness or disorder.

1.2 Entropy, as state counting

How do we assign a numerical value to this “randomness”? In 1.2, we see an example of mixing red paint (r) with blue paint (b) to give an idea on how this can be quantified.

If you think about the paint as small balls rearrange in a 3×3 grid you can make predictions on how the color distribution will look based on the red/blue ratio of paint balls in the grid. Counting different possibilities, a mixture of red and blue paint balls will be redder if r/b ≥ 1, bluer if r/b ≤ 1, and purple if 0.999 ≤ r/b ≤ 1.001.

This simplistic example does not do justice to reality for a variety of reason. For starters, we imagine balls of paint as perfectly spherical when they may differ in size. In the example given by the book, it also described the paints balls enclosed in a cube to complete the size of the grid. The number of paint balls in the grid does not come close to what we can expect. Even if we choose an example with a population of 10⁸, we should expect a reality with a number closer to 10^{235,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000} of arrangements. So, our population will be meaningless as the number of particles we must account for is vastly different.

In cases like this where number can get completely absurd, finding patterns of behavior in data can be cumbersome. For such cases, the use of logarithm is a most adequate path to take. For entropy measurements, the use of logarithms is more appropriate because the logarithmic properties make calculations much simpler, as it is stated in the book “we want the entropy of a system to be what we get by simply adding the entropies of the individual parts,” and this is something that is accomplished by using logarithms.

Finally, Penrose introduces a concept that will be explored with more detail in 1.3 and is the concept of configuration space. A simple definition of configuration space is a space defined by generalized coordinates. Generalized coordinates are a set of parameters that represent the state of a system. Because it is generalized, it is not dependent on a coordinate system. if we were to describe the position of a pendulum using the angle relative to the vertical position, we wouldn’t need the conventional x and y which are exclusive of the Cartesian coordinate. The configuration space will contain all possible configurations (states) the generalized coordinates set in the system. If this is confusing to understand, it’s because this concept tries to break away from the coordinate dependencies and create solutions that will hold true for any system.

1.3 Phase space, and Boltzmann’s definition of entropy

When I first started reading this chapter, my first question was, “What is phase space?” It’s a term I’ve heard before but never studied it, so I took this opportunity to do a little investigation and see what I can find about it.

Phase space is a mathematical concept used in dynamical systems theory and control theory. It is a space in which all possible “states” are represented, with each possible state corresponding to one unique point in the phase space. This very theoretical explanation can be summarized in the idea that phase space provides a comprehensive view of all possible states a system can be in and its evolution over time. If we consider a gas composed of many molecules, each molecule’s position and momentum would require a separate dimension in the phase space, so a monoatomic gas would be a 6-dimensional phase space (x, y, z, p_x, p_y, p_z).

I encountered this concept of phase space for the first time in a classical mechanics class when we studied the Hamiltonian mechanics (If you are not familiar with this, I recommend you take a quick look at it as it is very useful). The beauty of this framework lies in its deterministic characteristic; if we know the state of our system at one time, we can determine the state at any other time. This dynamical evolution goes through an evolution curve in phase space that must be unique and reversible, but most importantly its volume is dimensionless (it’s just a unitless number) which is basic key point in the Boltzmann definition of entropy as it defines volumes in phase space.

I encountered more technical definitions that somewhat take the reader away from the importance of the chapter as it spends a considerable amount of time explaining what a coarse graining is. I understand that Penrose wants the reader to grasp the basics where the Boltzmann definition of entropy lies, but for an average, and even some in the field like me, this becomes quite boring and hard to read and follow. So, basically, the equation proposed by Boltzmann for the measurement of entropy is as follows:

The constant K also known as K_Bis called the Boltzmann constant and it has a value of 1.3805…×10^-23 Joules/Kelvin. We use the logarithm base 10 because of its properties and because we will be dealing with very large number, but this can be substituted for the natural log as well without any issues. Finally, we have V which sometimes is presented as W or Ω, representing the volume of the coarse graining in phase space or the multiplicity of the microstates of a particular macrostate. To my consideration, this approach is much more simplified for general audiences than going through a bunch of cryptic mathematical language. As a reader, I can immediately understand what I need to know to apply this formula.

The book goes into more details on how to deal with the volume and the coarse graining, but the final point of this chapter lies on the how if the external and internal degrees of freedom are completely independent from each other, then we can calculate the entropy of the system individually and add them together thanks to their logarithmic properties.

Where V is the internal coarse graining of the phase space P and W is the external coarse graining of the phase space X that creates the product space G = P×X.

...

My apologies for the delay in the publication. I thought I had published this a long time ago, but apparently I did not. Hopefully I will be back to regular posting every week.

If you like this please share and comment. It will let me know that you want to see more of this and it will also help me grow.

Monday, September 25, 2023

Cycles of Time – A summary review kind of Part 1

While I was in college one of my professors gave me a book with the purpose of learning about this new physics scheme as he saw potential for research in it. Sadly, I never got myself around to reading it and finished my master program without any clue as to what the book is about. So, I decided on my own to read it and see what I can get out of it that would be so interesting for my professor to recommend as reading material for my research. I do not know how many parts it will take me to cover the whole book, but I will be writing this sort of summary with extra information that the book does not provide as I read it.

The name of the book is “Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe” by Roger Penrose. He is a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics as well as Emeritus Rouse Ball professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford. He has written other books such as The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics; The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe; The Nature of Space and Time, among others. The book Cycles of Time is divided into three parts: part 1 The Second Law and its Underlying Mystery; part 2 The Oddly Special Nature of the Big Bang; and part 3 Conformal Cyclic Cosmology. It also has a preface, acknowledgement, prologue, epilogue and appendices. So far i have read the preface, acknowledgement and prologue of the book (yes i am a slow reader), and this i will be discussing here.

Preface

Created by Penrose himself, talks about its motivation to create the conformal cyclic cosmological model. He talks about his beginning as a graduate student at Cambridge University in the 1950s, and how at the time the existing model to explain the origin of the universe was the steady- state model. In this model the density matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged (the destruction of galaxies is balanced out by the creation of new ones at the same rate). thus, stating that the observable universe is always the same at any time and any place. This was a scientific theory that was heavily supported by his mentor Dennis Sciama (1926 - 1999). It is interesting to denote that the word he chooses to denote the steady-state model as well as his own conformal cyclic cosmology is not the word theory but rather "scheme". in science a scheme is a type of diagram that shows the steps in a process. giving us an account of how something comes to be. This is how he views the steady state model, the big bang, and even his own theory as a step-by-step diagram of the process of whence the universe came to be.

The steady-state model did not last very long as evidence from the universe came to disprove it. Anzo Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered in an all-pervading electromagnetic radiation coming in from all directions, thus showing that the universe had evolved over time. This radiation is now known as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation or CMB for short. One of my professors in college likes to refer to the CMB as the first sonogram of the universe which I considered extremely hilarious. Under this new evidence even his mentor saw himself changing his views from supporting the steady-state model to the now more appealing big bang theory (I must add that it takes a lot to admit when one is wrong and accept reality, Kudos to Dr. Sciama). However, even with this step there are still mysteries to explore and questions to answer, one in particular pertains to the oddness of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which among all the physics laws is quite unique. he concludes saying that his scheme is unorthodox "yet it is based on geometrical and physical ideas which are very soundly based" as it resonates with the old steady-state model but at the same time bring together many aspects of the universe we know today. His model seems to be heavily geometrical but since the book is supposed to be for general audiences, he refrains from posting a lot of mathematics into the chapter and saved it for the appendices.

Prologue

Now this is a picture that i consider very fictitious. It is a conversation between a kid and his aunt who is a physicist that serves as an introduction about what’s to come. I deemed the story fictitious as there is no way that a child would have this level of cognitive reasoning to have this kind of conversation. At times the way the character questions the answers provided to him seems contradictory to his level of knowledge, but it is irrelevant to the point that they trying to make, I just expected a more believable scenario but still the story is quite captivating.

The story takes place in an old mill during a rainy day. Now, I have never seen an old mill, but I am guessing that it is one of those places that look like a cabin with a giant wooden wheel and a river that goes through it like the picture below.

Since it is raining the water is more active as the flow is higher and the wheel is turning faster than regular. The kid asked, "is it always like this?" to which his aunt replies not usually but due to the recent wet weather, water had to be diverted from the mill as there is far more energy than the mill needs. The kid, still surprised, asked a follow up question “where all this energy came from that got the water at the top of the mountain?” The aunt proceeded to explain how the sun heats up the water that becomes clouds and how the energy is transformed into gravitational potential energy that later is released when the water falls from the clouds, and so on (is basically explaining the water cycle with a focus on the energy). What puzzled the kid, and where the conversation got a little distorted, was when the kid asked about why he didn't feel hot but rather cold, or how he didn't feel like being lifted by the heat from the sun before. My problem with this is how can you go from presenting the kid as someone brilliant enough to make the first the question and understand its implication to someone completely out of sight to ask why the water molecules got lifted and he didn't. It seems inconsistent, but once again it is irrelevant.

The point is that the conversation serves as an introduction to the concept of Entropy which is the realm that the second law of thermodynamics handles. In physics we talk about organization and disorder for energy under the idea of entropy. Entropy is the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. One of the important concepts in the conservation of energy. How energy is converted from one form to another. This brings order into the system and keeps it functioning, but not all forms of energy are conserved, and this is what the second law is telling us. The degree of disorder is increasing as energy becomes less and less reusable (at least that is how I understand entropy and the laws of thermodynamics). Using this idea i am guessing is how Roger Penrose came up with his model of conformal cyclic cosmology. The prologue ends with the aunt explaining about different theories that try to explain the previous stage of the big bang including a new one she just recently heard which is the one the book will be covering. So, it is safe to say that the scheme the book will discuss is a model of the previous stage of the universe before the big bang.

I will continue with my reading, and I will bring you an update of the first chapter when I am done with it. If you like this, please share it with others and if you have any insights about the subjects, please share them in the comments. I will be happy to hear from you guys.

If you want to learn more about the subject, you can learn from the following sources.

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Science News - July 2023

If you ever took a general science class then you were probably told that the Earth gravity at the surface has a value of 9.81 m/s2 or 32 ft/s2. This is the gravitational acceleration you should experience at sea level of the surface and as you go up in height the gravity goes down following Newton’s law of gravity, or something along those lines. To an extent this can be used as true to make some calculations easy, like measuring the depth of a well if you were that kind of kid, or figuring out which object will touch the ground first, but as an adult now you may think that sea level is not an accurate representation of a distance from the earth’s center and that the feeling of the gravitational acceleration is different on different parts of the world, so the value is more like an average that you should experience across the globe, and this hold mostly true except for one area.

In the Indian Ocean there is an area of 3 million square miles where the gravity is so weak that the sea level is 106 meters lower than the global average. That is quite a huge difference that has puzzled scientists since 1948. Just for a little reminder the actual shape of planet Earth is not perfectly spherical, but more approximately like an ellipsoid with the poles being flatten down. For simple calculation in science classes we like to refer to Earth as a sphere as it makes calculations easier (trust me this is a common practice in physics when we are not considering accuracy), and the approximations hold up to a degree, but when precision and accuracy are quite important then those details arise and must be taken seriously to make adequate predictions and the use of Newton’s law of gravity is not as reliable and we apply some general relativity into the mix. Although it could be tedious, it is quite important work to keep in mind if you see yourself dealing with satellites as you will need to make adjustments to their orbit to remain up there, also to make GPS corrections, otherwise they would end up crashing. Continuing with our narrative.

Map showing the variation of Earth's gravity. The color depict the strength of gravity, the blue dot over India is the gravity hole. Courtesy of ESA's GOCE Satellite (Insider).

Officially known as the Indian Ocean geoid low, this region has been mapped using computer models of Earth’s gravity and compared with real data to try to understand how the anomaly came to be. After all such a big area could not be a mere coincidence.

Scientists studying the anomaly have thought that something underneath was causing the strange effect, But a new study suggests that they should have been looking around, and not under, the gravity anomaly to solve the mystery of how it formed.

A team of researchers in India claims that the gravity hole was formed by plumes of low-density magma that rose up from Earth’s mantle generated 50 million years ago from a sunken tectonic plate.

The new study was conducted using computer simulations at the Indian Institute of Science in the city of Bengaluru. They plotted 19 different scenarios to simulate the movement of the tectonic plates in the past 140 million years, and only a few of these scenarios account for the gravity hole but none of these scenarios showed the low gravity was caused by something directly underneath. Instead they found the hole was likely shaped by plumes of low density magma.

“As India separated from Africa and smashed into the European plate, the ocean that used to be there, called Tethys, was split apart and squished between the continental plates.”

Future ocean surveys can confirm whether these plumes exist or not, but as of now this is the latest and more insightful explanation we have ever received to explain such an anomaly. Maybe this way of thinking can change the perspective on how to proceed with tectonic plates research.

If you want to learn more about this you can read these articles.

Monday, June 19, 2023

Scientific Update

I have tried to summarize the thoughts in my head for a while on the scientific news I have found recently. They may not be as recent anymore due to how long it has been since I read about them, and when I am posting about them, but they are still important, and I think they deserve more time in the spotlight. This has been a demanding task to do as life happens and one must deal with other stuff aside from just writing, but this is a task that I have chosen so here I have put my thoughts into a concrete script that I present to you now.

Water Hidden Under Earth’s Crust

I found this information while searching for scientific breakthroughs a while ago. I like to see what news articles I can find and then proceed from there to search on scientific journals. The premise of this article is as follows:

Scientists found that water is stored inside the mantle’s rock in a unique state, which is not a liquid, solid or a gas. This state is known as the fourth state (I am guessing is plasma water which I never thought about but I kind of want to create on a lab now).

It all came from a rare piece of diamond found in 2022. When analyzed they were able to determine that this diamond originated 660 km or 410 miles beneath earth surface in the transition zone.

The unique thing about this diamond is that it contained ringwoodite, a high-pressure phase of Mg2SiO4 (magnesium silicate) formed at high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's mantle, with hydrous phases which means it is rich in water implying that the transition zone is a wet zone, contrary to previous beliefs.

It has been known that water can fall to the mantle through the tectonic plates and make its way back through volcanic activity in something known as the deep water cycle but this discovery is something else we did not expect. If this zone contains at least 1% of the total water then it implies that there must be more water than the one available in the surface, and if that is the case our models on how water appear on earth might need revisions.

The team that made the discovery also found ferropericlase (Mg,Fe)O and enstatite MgSiO3, using X-ray diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy. This discovery aligns with another discovery made that the earth’s core is cooling down and it may be due to this appearance of water in the Earth mantle, but further research needs to be done on the subject.

Room Temperature Superconductor Research

The next one I found it on a video on TIK TOK and decided to find the article and read it. The article “Evidence of near-ambient superconductivity in a N-doped lutetium hydride” talks about the first ever discovered room temperature superconductor. If you are not familiar with the term, a superconductor is a material that can conduct electricity without any resistance. The reason why the wires get hot when you use a hair blower for an extended period of time, or your phone, or any other electrical device you may think of is because of the resistivity of copper and other materials to conduct electricity. This causes a loss of energy in the form of heat, but in the case of a superconductor this will not occur as electricity will freely flow without any resistance.

MRIs, levitated trains, even the particle accelerator at CERN, are possible due to superconductivity, but as of now those devices depend on one big factor. To create superconductivity in materials such as mercury, lead, indium, and tin, the temperatures must be extremely cold, we are talking about 7 kelvin and lower, and they must be kept at that temperature because once the material starts to heat up it loses it superconductivity properties. Therefore, creating a material that sustains its superconductivity at room temperature has been researched for decades.

During the experiment described in the article. The researchers squeezed together carbon and sulfur at extreme pressures, exposed them to hydrogen gas and shot it with a laser until a crystal substance was made and this crystal conducts electricity with zero resistance, a superconductor. This superconductor works at temperatures as high as 287 kelvin or about 15 degrees Celsius. While this is a great step in the right direction there is still a trick to this. The pressure at which this material can exist is about 267 gigapascals, two and a half million times the atmospheric pressure, so there is still a milestone to conquer. The interesting part about this article lies in the material used that made the discovery, nitrogen doped lutetium hydride (LuH2±xNy) indicating that new combinations of elements may hold the key to unlocking a feasible superconductor in the future.

The James Webb Space Telescope Has Done It Again

Finally, the one that knocked the socks off (figuratively) of many physicists in the last few weeks. My boy, once again, the JWST found what is being classified as the oldest known galaxies thus far. These galaxies date back to a time when the universe was only 2 percent of its current age, approximately 300 to 500 million years after the big bang.

The discovery was made using faster photometry-based techniques that essentially use obvious variations in galaxies’ brightness to estimate their redshift rather than pining down cosmic coordinates to measure their redshift.

The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) confirmed estimates for the four new galaxies. Of the four, the most distant is one with the name JADES-GS-z13-0. It has a redshift value of 13.2, meaning we are seeing the galaxy as it appeared just 320 million years after the big bang.

While the galaxies don’t yet pose problems for leading models of cosmology, they suggest galactic formation began earlier and proceeded faster than expected in the universe, this could revolutionize the field of cosmology and modification to the theory of the big bang may need to be made.

Some science popularizers deem this discovery as the beginning of the end for the theory of the Big Bang, others simply claim that the model may need to make some adjustments, I think that it is just astounding to see how much the JWST has contributed to the field of cosmology and astronomy since its launch. This may create more opportunities for the field of astronomy and cosmology as more people get interested in learning about the new discoveries the JWST will continue to bring in the years to come.

When I started this, I did not expect to find this many exciting news so often. People tend to say that science is dead and not many discoveries occur often as the news is constantly bombarded with other kind of news, but I keep finding interesting articles and discoveries every day, and as you see I have only covered the ones related to the field of physics and geology but there are more news in the fields of biology, chemistry and medicine that if I find anything that catches my eyes I will write about it.

To learn more:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08759
https://www.quantamagazine.org/room-temperature-superconductor-discovery-meets-with-resistance-20230308/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JADES-GS-z13-0
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04568
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwsts-newfound-galaxies-are-the-oldest-ever-seen/
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/56052/20230402/ocean-under-the-crust-massive-water-formation-found-beneath-the-planet.htm
https://www.samaaenglish.tv/news/40031004

Sunday, April 30, 2023

What the Future Looks Like for us

In my last publication I talked about a comet that has not been spotted in over 50 thousand years. I hope you had the opportunity to see it. I got a small glimpse of it in the sky, and it was an experience I will treasure forever. Ever since then I found some great news in the world of science I wanted to write about; the upcoming solar eclipse in 2023 and 2024 (I should keep an eye on this). I attended a webinar about career for physicist that was very educational and interesting to know that the career path does not necessarily has to lead to academics, as a physicist you can find yourself working in many other places that find your skills useful. Finally, I found an article about how scientist at CERN made the most precise measure measurement of the second yet and it could lead to changing the number of hours in a day from 24 to 25 hours (Of course this was just an April’s fool prank, but it got me thinking).

Unfortunately, I got caught up in work, sickness and other things that made it hard for me to sit down and write about it. It's not that I couldn't write it, I can sit and write about the rumors I heard or my personal thoughts on the matter, but I wanted to gather more information to provide a more compelled and truthful account of the articles I read, and not something superficial. To do this requires time because I have to find the articles, read them, verify the sources, ... and the task takes more than a few mere hours. I am very bad at managing my time. I always struggle finding time to do things I want to do, but I am working on this. So, I decided to change the approach of things. I will dedicate some time daily to reading scientific articles and creating a summary of them which then, I will compile into an article that I can use for publication here. You can read these summaries in my Twitter account where I will be posting daily, and you'll know when my next publication will be done.

Also, I will be writing about the projects I am working on. Right now, I have started reading the book “Cycles of Time” by Roger Penrose and I will be writing about it as I go through it so you can see my progress. This book was recommended to me by one of my college professors a long time ago and although I have years with the book in my possession, I have never found the time to fully read it, my apologies to my college professor. Another cool project I found was in the YouTube channel of CERN lectures where they have small courses on some interesting topic, and I decided to give it a try so you may see writing about Quantum Computing which is the first course I will be doing. I may be doing other small projects and I will write about it so if you are interested in this kind of thing let me know in the comments.

I am doing this to bring you interesting information about what real science is working on right now, not like those scientific demo shows that are made with the intention of popularizing and getting people’s attention by showing “cool science experiment”, this will be more realistic information and you may find this more appealing, hopefully. The second reason is to keep up to date with everything that's going on as I consider is of vital importance for me as a scientist to keep up with what is happening in the world of science, what new discoveries have been made and what topics are research worthy, after all I plan of getting my PhD one day and I will need to have a strong background not just in physics but also in other areas. Hope you find this helpful and get you access to the latest in scientific news.

Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/JMDciencias

Monday, February 6, 2023

A Visitor That Took 50 Thousand Years To Return

If you have ever looked up in the sky and wonder about the marvel of our universe, you form part of the thousands of year tradition that led human curiosity to explore the vast cosmos. In our exploration we have encountered planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, and comets. The latter being one of the most mesmerizing and rare events one could ever see.

A comet is an icy, small solar system body that when passing close to the Sun warms and begin to release gases in a process called outgassing. Their icy center called the nucleus surrounded by a cloud of gas called the coma which is like a visible atmosphere. The ice is Regularly made of water (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), ammonia (NH₃) and/or methane (CH₄). They are a testament of the solar system early stages.

Comets can develop two tails as they travel closer to the sun. the ion or gas tail, and the dust tail. The gas tail is created by the solar winds and the ice, it always points back from the sun. The dust tail is not affected by the magnetic field but is vaporized by the sun’s heat. Stargazers and astronomers enjoy the looking at the gas tails for its brightness and beauty while the dust tail to determine their trajectory.

Picture courtesy of NASA.

Comets travel in Highly elliptical orbit starting out around Neptune or father away in our solar system in the Oort cloud. Due to their travel trajectory, they can end up leaving our solar system so they can become a one-time event.

Among some of the most famous names we got the Halley’s comet which becomes visible to Earth every 75 years; Shoemaker-levy9 which was discovered in 1992 when it split and crashed into Jupiter, and the Hale-Bopp which was one of the most observed and brightest comets of the 20^th century. Some comets take hundreds and even thousands of year to complete their orbital period which is why when one is approaching people search the skies for the opportunity to see them. This year we got the opportunity to see a once in a lifetime comet that hasn’t been previously seen.

Officially called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), this comet was discovered in March 2022, and it was determined that it would make it closest approach to Earth on February 1-2, 2023. What makes this comet so special is that the last time the comet approached Earth was 50 thousand years ago. A period where Neanderthal roamed the Earth. Unlike now the sky was much darker because they did not count with the technological advancement of electricity, so it is possible that Neanderthals saw the comet, but we have no records of this as it hasn’t been seen ever again since. The comet was visible to the naked eye during Feb 1-2 in certain regions of the planets but as it makes its exit you need a telescope to search for it.

Unlike other comets this one is made of Diatomic carbon and cyanogen which makes it look green and it could be spotted near mars by Feb 10^th. If you miss it do not worry as advancement of technology has allow for recording of the comet to be made. Here I share one of the pictures taken of C/2022 E3 (ZTF).

Comets leave behind black organic compounds when heated up that are studied as they may contain essential chemicals for life. There is the theory that comets may be the key to how life came to be on Earth. As they contain water and other resources essentials for life. In 2005, the Deep Impact Probe was launched to study the interior composition of comet Tempel 1. We await excitedly its return to see what we can learn from it.

Comets are among some of the earlier remnants of the early universe. We can learn some much from them and they are also a beautiful sight to see. Being able to see one live is something you can tell your grandkids about.

Monday, January 16, 2023

2022 A Year of Breakthroughs

At the end of every year people look for the most meaningful things that has happened to decide whether it can be considered a good year or not. After almost three years of battling isolation and Covid-19 we have finally returned to a more normal environment, and science has thrived because of it. 2022 marked a great milestone in many fields of science, so let’s take a look at some of the most iconic breakthroughs of the past year.

Nuclear Fusion Advancement

Image from the deparment of Energy of the United States.

Our current nuclear power is based on fission, a reaction where a big atom is taken and broken apart and the energy released is used to heat up water that in turn powers some dynamo to make electricity. Nuclear fusion on the other hand aims to recreate the reaction that happens in the sun where small atoms are fused together to form a new bigger one releasing energy in the process. Physicists started researching techniques and technology to recreate this process in the 1950s.

Nuclear fusion is considered the “holy grail” of carbon-free energy, and with non-radioactive waste produced makes it the source of the future. For decades they have not been able to create the net energy gain required to make it viable. That is until now.

The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reported that they had achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using a tiny pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world's biggest laser. “ While the achievement is significant, there are still monumental engineering and scientific challenges ahead”, but it is a giant step in the right direction to feasible fusion reaction, although the public are more interested in the energy aspect of what this could mean considering the current fuel problem and energy consumption we are facing, this is an incredible achievement for science as fusion could help in the research of neutrinos detection and some other fields.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

Image taken from the Nasa JWST website.

On December 25th, 2021 the Ariane 5 rocket was launched from the French Guiana with the load of the JWST. A project that started in the 1990s as a substitute for the Hubble telescope but a numerous number of issues made the project delay over and over until it became an idea that never thought to become a reality. As soon as the launch took place, astronomers were excited to see what this telescope had to bring to the conversation so for the next few months the waiting was to fulfill expectations that were paid off on July 12, 2022.

The first full-color images and spectroscopy were released to the public and the results were astounding. A comparison of the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723.3-7327 taken by the Hubble in 2017 and JWST in 2022 proved how the new telescope was indeed an upgrade over the Hubble telescope. Details never seen before appeared right away and people noticed that what they thought to be stars before turns out to be galaxies.

Over the course of the year the JWST continues to explore deep space and the results and details are astounding. Some of the most notable images are the Carina Nebula, Southern Ring Nebula, Stephan’s Quintet, The Cartwheel Galaxy, Jupiter, Messier 74, the Tarantula Nebula, and so many more.

Life After Death

The heart, kidneys and liver are among the most needed transplant organs.

Researchers from Yale University presented their results in what is considered a groundbreaking achievement for the future of organ donations. As of now the list of people that require organ donations is incredibly high across the globe and every year fewer and fewer people opt for becoming transplant donors. One of the reasons this is the case is because the transplant of organs has to be done while the person is alive, because cells become inactive once the person dies and the organs cannot be brought back anymore… or can they?

In an experiment involving cells of dead pigs the researchers at Yale were able to see signs of functioning again in places such as the heart, liver, kidneys, and brains. The researchers hope the finding is a step in the effort to be able to make more human organs available for transplant long after death. Although it is still too early to say anything as the application is still very far away from use in humans, the results tell us that it will be a reality.

Universal Flu Vaccine

Representation of a universal vaccine.

Every year the biggest enemy to health is the flu. We all at some point experience a strain of the flu even in adulthood. Flu shots are offered every year, but even those have proven ineffective most of the time as the flu virus is one of the fastest evolving viruses we have, and the number of different strains that exist around the planet is huge. With all this darkness and not seemingly solution nearby, a ray of light shined on us with the Covid-19 vaccine.

When the vaccine for the coronavirus was announced it was an achievement that was hard to believe. The timeframe in which they were able to produce an effective vaccine against the virus left many people feeling doubt about the effectiveness of it, but it worked! This was possible due to a new technique using the mRNA of the virus instead of the regular method of inactivated or attenuated vaccine. mRNA vaccines work by introducing a piece of mRNA that corresponds to a viral protein, usually a small piece of a protein found on the virus's outer membrane. This allows the antibodies to immediately recognize it and be prepared for the future. The great advantage of this lies in that modifications of the virus does not greatly affect the effectiveness of the vaccine. This new technology makes the vaccine adequate for all strains of the virus. So, it was only a matter of time until this technology was used to attack the flu virus.

Dr. Scott Hensley from the University of Pennsylvania designed a vaccine that included a virus protein from all 20 distinct influenza types. The vaccine has been tested on mice and proven quite effective in their first trial. Vaccinated mice produced antibodies against both similar and unique regions of all 20 different HAs, and levels of these antibodies remained unchanged for months after vaccination. This means that an universal flu vaccine is not that far away and it will be up to all of us to eradicate this virus.

CERN Back In Business

In 2018 the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (from the French Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), was shut down for maintenance and upgrades, but after almost four years is finally back as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) set up for a run 3 with an even higher energy threshold.

The LHC is set to run 24/7 for the next four years at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electron volts. The upgrades should give the LHC tools greater precision and hopefully more discoveries about particles in quantum field theory. Some of the discoveries made at CERN are the W and Z bosons, creation of the first antihydrogen, discovery of CP violation, quark-gluon plasma state, and the Higgs boson. What can we expect from this new run of the LHC and what can be discovered at this new high energy level? We would have to wait to see.

Changing Asteroid Trajectory

Representation of the DART mission.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA space mission aimed at testing methods of planetary defense against devastating collision with a space rock. A probe was launched on 24 November 2021 and on 26 September 2022 intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, a minor-planet moon of the asteroid Didymos shortening its orbital period around didymos by about 32 minutes.

The results of the cosmic collision are significant because it was the first real-life test of humanity's ability to protect the Earth from potentially catastrophic asteroids. The maneuver’s success suggests that with enough warning, asteroid deflection could be a viable way to save Earth from devastating collision and who knows what else.

Malaria Vaccine

A miracle that save lives.

Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite. The humans get infected through the bites of infected mosquitoes. People who have malaria usually feel very sick with a high fever and shaking chills. While the disease is uncommon in temperate climates, malaria is still common in tropical and subtropical countries. Malaria is one of the oldest known diseases on Earth and one of the deadliest killer diseases killing nearly one million people every year and infecting one out of 21 human beings on the planet. Great efforts for the creation of a vaccine have been in the works for years but just recently in 2022 the first approved vaccine came into effect.

RTS, S or Mosquirix as it is named, is the only malaria vaccine approved and in use. It requires at least three doses in infants by age 2 and reduces severe malaria and hospital admission by 30%. This once again seems like a small step but it is quite an achievement as it is the first effective vaccine in one of the oldest diseases we know.

A New Space Era

Artemis 1 mission patch.

After a few months of delay due to fuel leakage, on November 16th, 2022, the Artemis program officially started. The launch was a success in starting the new era for space exploration. After orbiting the moon and deploying ten CubeSat the spacecraft returned to Earth on December 11. This concluded the phase of Artemis 1 as a success and certify Orion and the Space Launch System for crewed flights beginning with Artemis 2 expected to launch in May 2024. The success of this mission will serve as the platform for future Mars human explorations.

Artistic AI

You have probably seen the trend on Tik Tok or reddit, but the doors of AI have open to the public with new possibilities for businesses and households with text-to-image generators to “writing hallmark movie script” giving insights to artist, urban planner, and even reconstructive surgeons a helpful hand to visualize ideas. This is a great time to see how far artificial intelligence has come and what to expect for the future.

More information about black holes, largest single cell bacteria, better batteries that do not depend on lithium, among many others are research that were considered groundbreaking in the past year. It was an incredible year for scientists, and I am thrilled for what may come in the upcoming 2023.

If you want to learn more about the subjects here, feel free to read the following.