• http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/03/nitrogen_trifluoride_tv/
• http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0808/full/climate.2008.72.html
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/16/14493/4791/668/552598

it has been publicized that NF3 (nitrogen triflouride) is 16,800 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Carbon-dioxide is usually the focus of environmentalists and those who tremble at the worst case scenarios put forth by full-time activist and former senator, Mr. Gore. Steam, methane and others are also much worse than CO2, but NF3 comes in at the top of the list. Another factor in determining the effect of a greenhouse gas is how long, on average, it remains in the atmosphere. NF3 has been found to stay about 550 years.

While everyone has been focusing on the obvious black, dirty, ugly effects of CO2 (usually they just refer to it as “carbon”) there are many gasses which are not regulated by the Kyoto protocols. NF3 is listed second on their list of worst offenders, but not regulated. NF3 is also commonly used in the manufacturing process in the semiconductor industry. It has been used as a cleaning solvent for years, and now is being used for etching those nifty large-screen LCD panels that are all the rage with the kids.

Yes, Mr. Environmentalist, you have given up driving and wear sandals made of hemp (that you just so happen to grow yourself out back, in that garden you don’t show anyone) - but you haven’t considered the impact to ol’ Mother Earth of buying 40″ flat panel televisions for every room in your solar-powered condo. All kidding aside, we are seeing a surge in purchases of flat panel and plasma televisions, in time for the 2009 switch over to digital TV. Demand is expected to continue to grow.

If all the NF3 produced this year were to be released into the atmosphere, it would be on par to adding 67 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the air. (Michael Prather, UC-Irvine)

Not all NF3 makes it into the atmosphere, but this report does highlight one thing - our focus on just one gas as the scapegoat for “global warming” is wrong. We should be focusing on the many factors that influence climate change, and not demonize a single chemical (CO2) just because it is easier for the public to comprehend.

All this makes me want to get on eBay and buy that 500 HP, 6.1 liter sport SUV that gets 11 miles to the gallon. But, only if it comes with the DVD package and LCD screens in the headrests!

We’ve all had encounters with computer systems that get it wrong. Barclays once refused one of my transactions because they said I was accessing an account owned by a teenage girl named Ian Angell, who lived at my address and was a professor at LSE. I still had to take a morning off work to explain that a 14-year-old couldn’t own an account that, according to their own records, had been open for 35 years.

[Read the article.]

They don’t have any online content at this point, just a flashy intro, so I will quote some of the article, “Smashing Axioms”, written by Brian Cox in the latest issue.

Brian Cox poses the question, “Can’t we do something better with $6 billion dollars than spend it on a gigantic super-collider that smashes particles together?” His answer is an emphatic, “NO.” We don’t live in a world where everything is an even trade-off. I try to explain to my son that just because we decide not to go out for dinner some night, that doesn’t mean I have $35 burning a hole in my pocket that is now available to spend on something else. We MUST spend money on basic research, and there are direct economic and technological benefits to do so, but there is no PRODUCT created and sold that we PROFIT from. The profit is the KNOWLEDGE we gain. The LHC is not just another “playground” for scientists… there are many experiments that will test our fundamental understanding of nature. People often cannot appreciate or understand the complicated work that goes on, so they easily dismiss it as a boondoggle.

Finding out how the Universe works has never been a bad idea. In fact, it is the quest for a deeper understanding of nature that has given us everything we now take for granted in modern life. In an eloquent speech to the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1966, the theoretical physicist and then Phillips research director, H.G.B. Casimir, pointed out that virtually all of the great discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries came from curiosity-driven research. The transistor emerged from the quantum theory of solids, not from a desire to build computers and televisions. Radio waves were not discovered by men in government-directed laboratories in order to connect the world together with better communication systems, but by Heinrich Hertz, a man whose overriding concern was for the beauty of physics. In his speech, Casimir went on to list many of the great innovations of the mid-20th century — from nuclear power to automobile starter motors — and point out that none of them came about as a result of some kind of pragmatic process of innovation. The light bulb, as the saying goes, was not invented through research and development on the candle.

It should not be surprising that a deeper understanding of nature leads to great benefits for humankind. History speaks for itself. So why, then, could anyone question the “benefit” of projects like the LHC? I believe society undervalues exploration because searching for incremental solutions to pressing problems feels like a more pragmatic response to our problems than the quest for a revolution. It feels like we know enough — and we should focus our energies on better exploiting what we know. But, what is “enough”? If we ha applied this logic to particle physics over the past few decades, then we would have no World Wide Web (invented at CERN in 1990), no medical imaging scanners (the P in PET scanning stands for positron, an antimatter electron discovered in 1932 by observing cosmic rays) and no x-ray or chemotherapy treatments, all of which rely on miniature particle accelerators to create the short-lived radioisotopes required for medical use. The world would be a far less comfortable place because of the loss of medicine alone, and a poorer place for the loss to commerce.

Most importantly, though, the world would be truly impoverished without all the fundamental knowledge we’ve gained. And the LHC has been built to answer some very profound questions about the nature of matter. We know it will discover something because we have deliberately built it to journey to uncharted waters, reaching energies in its particle collisions never before achieved in Earthly laboratories (although routinely achieved by nature elsewhere in the universe — prophets of doom take note, we are not powerful enough to endanger the world with this thing by a very long shot!)

What might the LHC discover? Top of the list is the origin of mass in the universe. We strongly suspect that the particles that make up our bodies don’t just have mass — that is to say substance — but acquire it by some very subtle mechanism. The most well-established theory is the Higgs mechanism, which predicts the existence of one or more particles known as Higgs bosons that should be well within the reach of the LHC. We also hope to discover the nature of dark matter, which many theorists suspect consists of a new kind of subatomic particle that outnumbers the stuff that makes up the Earth, Sun and all the stars in the sky by a ratio of 5:1. More speculatively, we could discover extra dimensions in the universe, revealing in a Copernican revolution of unprecedented proportion, that we’re crawling around on a four-dimensional sheet in a perhaps infinitely larger multi-dimensional cosmos like ants on a piece of paper. And last, but hardly least, we could discover something so strange and, possibly, so useful that nobody has yet thought of it.

His point is well-taken, none of the significant advances in history have come about by sitting on our asses, or through pragmatic plodding along, happy with only our current tools and knowledge. It is through the process of research that we have discovered and been inspired. This has advanced our civilization to where it is today. Few of us could even imagine (the horror!) being transported back to an earlier age before automobiles, medicine, refrigeration and computers. Yet, most average people a century ago would have chosen to spend more conservatively, and missed out on the tremendous progress and benefits of the scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. The average person is not used to thinking with this perspective, because in their everyday lives, plodding along is important. They don’t succeed day after day by having revelations that change the world, their view is of a much more meager, limited and incremental change made by individuals. The changes coming in the next century will be absolutely mind-blowing, and if we knew today what they were, we would hardly be able to contain ourselves in anticipation - yet, they are shrouded in mystery and will be uncovered as we continue to explore and perform basic research. If we decide to be frugal and pragmatic, and only spend our budgets on buildings, bombs and technology that has direct pay-offs, the undiscovered century ahead will be lost to us and future generations will suffer the consequences.

[From Science Central.]

All you Alex Jones types … your 9/11 building 7 conspiracy theories have come to an end. No longer can you call my radio show and yap, “9/11 was an inside job! What about building 7 … blah blah blah.” The Washington Times reports that scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology have completed their three year investigation of the building’s collapse, and they say the science behind their findings is “incredibly conclusive.”

The investigation concluded that the collapse of building 7 “was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a skyscraper.” A giant computer model of the collapse shows the failure of the internal column of the building is what brought the building down. Extreme heat caused some of the steel beams to lose strength throughout the entire structure; however it was the collapse of the 13th floor that weakened the critical support column. Investigators also found that another collapse nearby had broken the city’s water main, which left the bottom of the building without water for the sprinkler system.

None of this matters, though, to the “9/11 was an inside job” whack jobs. There are people who believe that the Earth is flat. There are people who earnestly believe that the Earth is perfectly stationary in the middle of the universe. And there will be people who will take that eternal celestial dirt nap quite sure that 9/11 was an inside job. Come on now … these people make life interesting. [Neal Boortz, August 22, 2008.]

The candidates give lip service to many “feel good” issues. It sure “feels good” to think someday we’ll be energy independent. Well, that would be great if I could generate all my own energy and not have to pay the power companies, but as consumers, we will always depend on someone else. We shouldn’t care where it comes from as long as it is cheap and plentiful (and maybe it doesn’t destroy the planet).
[Read the article.]

Have I mentioned before how the sound of the ice cream truck annoys the living hell out of me? It does. I find it very creepy. Here’s a grown man cruising for kids with spare change in the neighborhood. If this social reject wasn’t driving an ice cream truck, you wouldn’t let him within 5 miles of your precious little one, would you?

Well, an Akron suburb did something about the creepy ice cream truck, and that haunting nursery rhyme song it repeats over and over until you want to take knitting needles and jam them into your ears. A new law against transient vendors happens to hit the ice cream man where his lives (literally?).

I frankly don’t care about all you losers who cherish fond memories of the ice cream truck and who liked that petulant music growing up. I didn’t have an ice cream truck, and it’s an anachronistic throw-back to the 1950s, with a twist. The driver is a hard-luck high school drop-out with satanic tattoos, greasy hair and one set of clothing he just wears over and over. He’s a horror movie waiting to happen. He’s a grown man (who still lives at home) driving up and down your street, looking for your children. Something tells me this is creepy. Yep. Pretty sure.

In fact, one message from the Democratic Convention this week was that a poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks can attend Ivy League schools, be successful professionals and even run for President some day. I tell you, Obama better be careful with his message of hope or the Democrats are going to think he’s a Republican! [*granted, the modern Republican is a poor facsimile of the small-government, small-budget, non-intrusive Republicans of yesteryear...]

This is just a funny list from David Letterman. Have a sense of humor folks! (Start at the bottom and work your way up.) Clearly Obama does, or he wouldn’t have approved that cover of The New Yorker magazine!

1. Been cruising for chicks with John Edwards
2. Announced his running mate will be Andy Dick
3. Offered McCain a job in gift shop at Obama presidential library
4. He’s voting for Nader
5. Guy sits around eating soup all day
6. Having head measured for Mount Rushmore
7. The affair with Barbara Walters
8. Asked guy at Staples, “Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?”
9. Offered Bush 20 bucks for the “Mission Accomplished” banner
10. Proposed a bill to change Oklahoma to “Oklabama”

It seems that Blake Stacey agrees with me. He basically rips Terry Witt a new one, and links to a wonderfully scathing review of the book, Our Undiscovered Universe. [Read his article here.]

This month, Null Physics is not advertised in Science News. I don’t know if my letter had anything to do with that. I know that Science News is more sensitive to reader’s concerns than the bigger science magazines. (Scientific American still has a 2-page spread this month. Ugh!)

Stargate: SG-1 finished its 10th season in early 2007. It followed up with a series of direct-to-DVD movies in 2008. (2 of 3 have been released.) Now it seems that the SciFi channel is canceling Stargate Atlantis, the spin-off in its 5th season currently. It will complete the season and offer up at least one direct-to-DVD movie of its own. (You can bet that if SG-1 made money with DVDs, Atlantis will do the same.)

What lies in the future for the Stargate franchise?? Well, rumor has it that SciFi has authorized a new series, “Stargate Universe”. Keep tuned for more news on that as the season continues.

First, from the Fermilab media archives, you now have access to a whole series of colloquia from 2000 through the present. (There’s even more if you poke around their site.) [View archives here.]

I do actually have these video podcasts of Leonard Susskind teaching Modern Theoretical Physics at Stanford University. You can enjoy the lectures on iTunes or here. [Download lectures here.]

1. Hot Dogs - Saturated fat seems to be less of a worry than carbohydrates, says the latest in a series of studies.
2. A/C - Leaving your windows open at 65 mph creates air drag that cancels out the fuel savings from turning off the A/C.
3. Eating regionally - In terms of the carbon footprint, food is shipped more efficiently internationally than within a country and thus apples from New Zealand may have a smaller carbon footprint than those from Washington.
4. Cancer from cellphones - There’s no known mechanism for the radiation from cellphones to cause cancer, and there are no consistent links between phone use and cancer.
5. Plastic bags - They use less energy to make, ship, and recycle and take up less space in landfills than paper bags.
6. Toxic plastic bottles - Bisphenol-a (BPA) seems to have no evidence of harm in humans, at least in the low doses found in polycarbonate bottles.
7. Sharks - Just one person died from a shark attack last year!
8. Arctic Ice - While we do need to worry about long-term ice loss in the Arctic, the record ice losses predicted for this summer haven’t come to pass.
9. The universe’s missing matter – You’re not to blame for losing it, and the universe isn’t likely to collapse anytime soon.
10. Wormholes - Not likely. Neither is the destruction of the universe by a black hole created by the LHC.

Peter McCready also took some 360 view images of LHC. Take a tour! Zip around like you’re an energized proton!

Check out these images of Jupiter and its moons, over on The Boston Globe. Here’s an example.

I also found this link on Phil’s site, with the top astronomy photos of 2007. Here is a really cool hole found on Mars.