Joe's Famous

I don't know if you know this Joe but you can be seen in the background of the BYU Honor Code video. There is a shot where someone is explaining the honor code in front of the Maser Building and Joe can be seen walking towards the camera in the background. Too bad you're out of focus. I should get a hold of it and get a still from it and post it.

Mac OSX Leopard Hacked

We reported that you can download and install a hacked version of Windows Vista. Well, now Mac OSX Leopard has met the same fate. Link here. Careful, this OS only works (well) on Apple hardware.

The Elegant Universe

Nova produced a series on string theory called "The Elegant Universe" based on Brian Greene's book by the same name. I thought I should post them on the blog.

The Elegant Univers pt 1

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The Elegant Universe pt 2

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The Elegant Universe pt 3

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Stephen Colbert to Run for President

He's running as both a Republican and a Democrat!

Ubuntu 7.10 Released, Delivering the Best of Open Source Software

LONDON, October 15, 2007 – Canonical Ltd. announced today the upcoming availability of version 7.10 of the Ubuntu Server, Desktop, Kubuntu and Edubuntu Editions. All will be available for free download on Thursday 18 October. Canonical is the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu makes no distinction between community and enterprise editions, Ubuntu 7.10 is our best work and is available freely to all. Ubuntu has consistently ranked #1 in reviews of security update responsiveness and effectiveness. The Ubuntu platform is fully certified and supported, making it a secure choice for users looking to explore, deploy and enjoy Linux. Ubuntu 7.10 brings together the best open source and free software available in a stable, robust environment that 'just works'.

'We are privileged to have millions of users running Ubuntu every day". commented Jane Silber, COO of Canonical UK. 'This gives us great insight into what they want from a free, Linux-based platform. Ubuntu 7.10 is another milestone in delivering on these requirements on the desktop and server.'

Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Edition adds an enhanced user interface, improved hardware support, multiple monitor support and integrated desktop search. Additional information is available at http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-desktop710.

Ubuntu 7.10 Server Edition features improved functionality, manageability, pro-active security and hardware compatibility and delivers a rapid deployment platform for developers and businesses. Additional information is available at http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-server710.

New versions of Kubuntu and Edubuntu, derivatives of Ubuntu aimed at KDE enthusiasts and the education community respectively, are also being released at the same time. Additional information is available at http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-family710.

Check Out phds.org

For all of you applying to grad school, check out the new and improved phds.org. The website has a bunch of stuff on the complicated world of graduate school, but what caught my eye is their new ranking system. They use data from the National Research Council (NRC), the NSF/NIH/NEH/USED/USDA/NASA Survey of Earned Doctorates, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to make a database that you can use to generate rankings of physics (or astrophysics) programs based on criteria of your choosing.

Of course, like any ranking system, this has it's flaws and biases. Most notably, the NRC data is 12 years old (they are scheduled to release new data in December), so they tend to reflect where the programs were 10 years ago, not where they are now. However, they do have a lot of good information on post-phd employment in there and the rankings use the best data that exists for comparing graduate programs.

Overall, I think it would have been very handy to have this when I was picking schools to apply to last fall.

Religion and Science

I was reading an article in Physics Today by Pervez Hoodbhoy entitled "Science and the Islamic world" (which can be found here) that discusses why Islamic nations since about 1300 A.D. have generally not been a part of the on-going quest for scientific knowledge. The article is a very well-reasoned approach to the issue and I would recommend it to anyone who wonders why Islamic nations don't seem to embrace science the way Europe, Asia, and the Americas have. However, in that article, Dr. Hoodbhoy make the following statement:

"Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world."

That statement immediately made me cringe. I would consider myself one who takes miracles literally and seriously and I believe that revelation does provide the most authentic knowledge of the physical world available to humanity - yet I aspire to be a scientist. Moreover, I think most Latter-day Saint scientists feel the same way. To us, belief in miracles and revelation are not enemies of science but compatible means to truth.

Upon further review of Dr. Hoodbhoy's quote, you can grant a little wiggle room for faith in miracles and revelation in his statement. For example, I don't believe that when God sent manna from heaven in the book of Exodus that He did so violating natural laws. I think that instead of violating natural laws, He, through perfect planning and the use of physical laws we may not understand at the moment, fed the children of Israel in a way that could be explained scientifically given the proper knowledge. I also believe that some of the Biblical miracles (and those in other traditions' scriptures) may not be accurately described due to errors by the writers, compilers, and translators of the text over time.

The big issue, however, is not the nuances of my faith or his statement, but rather the very common opinion in scientific circles that religious faith is bad for science. I, personally, have known of too many good scientists who were religious (Issac Newton, for example) to believe that science is damaged when one believes that miracles that science cannot currently explain and revelation that may go against current scientific understanding are authentic. In fact, I feel that science is at its best when it is practiced by one who believes that science doesn't have all the answers. Shakespeare put my view on science in more eloquent language when he wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy".

Mac OSX Leopard Ships October 26

For those interested, Apple has announced the new Mac OSX Leopard will ship on October 26, 2007.

I think they choose this date because they need something to compete with Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon which will be released October 18, 2007. You will also note Apple stole Ubuntu's idea of having a countdown on the website.

I think Linux should start suing people like Apple for stealing intellectual property!!!

Quantum suicide and Many Worlds Experiment

Max Tegmark of MIT has proposed an experiment to test the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is called quantum suicide. From the Wikipedia:

n quantum mechanics, quantum suicide is a thought experiment which was independently proposed in 1987 by Hans Moravec and in 1988 by Bruno Marchal, and further developed by Max Tegmark in 1998^[1], that attempts to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat experiment. The experiment essentially involves looking at the Schrödinger's cat experiment from the point of view of the cat.

Quantum immortality is a metaphysical speculation derived from the quantum suicide thought experiment. It states that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that conscious beings are immortal.

A physicist sits in front of a gun which is triggered or not triggered depending on the decay of some radioactive atom. With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct, then the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into one world in which he lives and another world in which he dies. After many runs of the experiment, there will be many worlds. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist. However, from the point of view of the non-dead copies of the physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the surviving copies of the physicist will notice that he never seems to die, therefore "proving" himself to be immortal, at least from his own point of view.

Another example is where a physicist detonates a nuclear bomb beside himself. In almost all parallel universes, the nuclear explosion will vaporize the physicist. However, there should be a small set of alternative universes in which the physicist somehow survives (i.e. the set of universes which support a "miraculous" survival scenario). The idea behind quantum immortality is that the physicist will remain alive in, and thus remain able to experience, at least one of the universes in this set, even though these universes form a tiny subset of all possible universes. Over time the physicist would therefore never perceive his or her own death.

2007 Nobel Peace Prize

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.

Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.

Oslo, 12 October 2007"

A Permanent Moon Base?

On Tuesday, October 8th, I had the opportunity to attend a colloquium presented by Wendell Mendell, Manager of Human Exploration Science Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Dr. Mendell is one of NASA's top people in trying to figure out what to do with the "Vision for Space Exploration" that NASA has adopted. President Bush and the U.S. Congress have decided that NASA's focus should be the human exploration of the solar system and that this should be done by returning men to the moon and then putting a human on Mars. There is one primary question that Dr. Mendell deals with : what are we going to do on the moon and later Mars when we get there?

The idea that NASA is currently pursuing is that between 2020 and 2024, NASA will establish a permanent lunar base on either the north or south pole of the Moon. Like the current International Space Station, the lunar base will have a few (Dr. Mendell's current prediction is about 3) occupants who are rotated in and out every 6-12 months. If this comes to fruition (and it looks like it will), the question that has to be answered is what will these people do on the moon? There is no sense at all in spending billions of dollars to get them there and keep them alive unless we have some good reasons for them to be there, so what are those good reasons?

In Dr. Mendell's colloquium, he presented NASA's list of 6 reasons to go to the moon. They include things like opportunities for technological advancement, development of new resources, increasing public interest in math and science, and so on. However, if I were to put words in Dr. Mendell's mouth, the main reason for NASA's moon base is to lead the way for others to build their own moon bases. Essentially, the idea is that NASA could show others how to do it, and then these other groups would privately fund the colonization of the moon. These groups may be commercial groups interested in tourism, industrial groups looking for cheap power (solar cells work wonderfully in space), raw materials, and an escape from pollution laws, or other unexpected groups. If we take the analogy of the American west, there could be any number of groups seeking wealth, freedom, or adventure. Dr. Mendell even suggested religious groups might want to set up their own "moral society" on the moon, which I thought was a bit silly until I remembered how Utah was settled.

After Dr. Mendell had finished his presentation, the lights came back on, the dreams of future marvels faded a bit, and a room full of skeptical scientists proceeded to ask the most blistering questions I have ever heard posed to a colloquium speaker. As many of you know, many scientists feel that NASA's new emphasis on human space exploration is taking money away from more worthwhile scientific endeavors. Several professors very bluntly stated technological, physical, and political challenges would make it so that a lunar base would be a waste of time and money.

After the colloquium, I was left unsure of what to think about the idea of a permanent lunar base. On one hand, as Stephen Hawking famously said, "I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space". As we increase our ability to change our world, the chance that we could irreparably damage or destroy it grows exponentially. If humanity is going to survive, I think it needs to expand beyond a single world and it seems like the moon and then Mars are the places to start.

On the other hand, I agree with the idea that human space exploration is probably taking money away from more important and timely science research. For example, NASA has cut funding or delayed a number of projects like the Constellation-X X-ray Observatory and the LISA gravitational wave detection satellites that could provide more science for the money.

So I thought I'd pose the question to you. Do you think NASA should build a permanent lunar base in the next 15 years? And on a broader note, is human exploration of space worth the cost or should we stay on our planet and let probes, robots, and telescopes do the exploring?

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2007

"For the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance"

Press Release

9 October 2007

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 jointly to

Albert Fert
Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/THALES, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France,

and

Peter Grünberg
Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany,

"for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance".

Nanotechnology gives sensitive read-out heads for compact hard disks

This year's physics prize is awarded for the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. It is thanks to this technology that it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks so radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players, for instance.

In 1988 the Frenchman Albert Fert and the German Peter Grünberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR. Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current. Soon researchers and engineers began work to enable use of the effect in read-out heads. In 1997 the first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched and this soon became the standard technology. Even the most recent read-out techniques of today are further developments of GMR.

A hard disk stores information, such as music, in the form of microscopically small areas magnetized in different directions. The information is retrieved by a read-out head that scans the disk and registers the magnetic changes. The smaller and more compact the hard disk, the smaller and weaker the individual magnetic areas. More sensitive read-out heads are therefore required if information has to be packed more densely on a hard disk. A read-out head based on the GMR effect can convert very small magnetic changes into differences in electrical resistance and there-fore into changes in the current emitted by the read-out head. The current is the signal from the read-out head and its different strengths represent ones and zeros.

The GMR effect was discovered thanks to new techniques developed during the 1970s to produce very thin layers of different materials. If GMR is to work, structures consisting of layers that are only a few atoms thick have to be produced. For this reason GMR can also be considered one of the first real applications of the promising field of nanotechnology.

Join The Ubuntu Countdown, Save The World

Okay everybody, here is your chance to help take the first step toward solving all the world's problems. Start pinning up the official Ubuntu countdown everywhere you can on the web. For when it comes to all the world's problems, as former President Clinton wisely said: "All You Need Is Ubuntu."




Here is the website that contains the script: