the frig blig

He rests in peace for all mankind.

New Scientist posts First black hole for light created on Earth but if you read the article you learn that the black hole built by Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng at Southeast University in Nanjing works on microwaves, not light waves. “I expect that our demonstration of the optical black hole will be available by the end of 2009,” Cui is quoted as saying in the article.

Based on research published earlier this year by Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, this is a fascinating development of unexpected new technology. Who knew you don’t need massive gravitational fields to create black holes?

I expect I’m joining a cast of thousands of fellow baby-boomer bloggers all over this land (the boomersphere) in posting assorted personal recollections of this day 40 years ago.

I was 15 years old when I watched the Apollo 11 broadcasts with my family on our black and white TV. Since he died last week, Walter Cronkite isn’t present to add his recollections of the event — and just as well, since my memory of his comments might not jive with his (as if).

I distinctly recall, immediately after Neil Armstrong touched the lunar surface and said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Walter screwed up his face and announced “What did Armstrong just say? One small schlep for a man, one flying leap for the moon?”

He kept this up for at least 20 minutes — “…or was it, ‘one small flip for a man, one mindful bleep for moon pie?…’” etc. It almost drove me bonkers since the words were perfectly clear to me.

And then the following year Jethro Tull’s album Benefit contained the cut ‘For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me’, a bitter-sweet ballad featuring one of the crew. As a space nut in the process of becoming a rock-and-roll nut, it was almost too much to bear.

Who knew that after the Apollo program ended, there would be no further manned space flights to the moon (or places further) in my lifetime? It seemed all about to begin.

… is a potential future one might imagine based on research reported in this Green Car Reports article. It’s so preliminary that it’s irresponsible to speculate at this point. But I’m powerless to resist such a compelling idea and image.

Curious and concerned after reading Kristof’s NY Times op-ed about the apparent link between widespread frog deformities and endocrine disruptors, I decided to learn more about the subject. I quickly discovered TEDX, a nonprofit organization with an educational website on the subject.

From the TEDX site: Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the communication system of glands, hormones, and cellular receptors that control the body’s internal functions. A relatively unique feature of endocrine disruptors is that they exert their effects at extremely low doses, even when higher doses exhibit no adverse effects. Disorders that have increased in prevalence in recent years such as unusual male gonadal development, infertility, ADHD, autism, intellectual impairment, diabetes, thyroid disorders, and childhood and/or adult cancers are now being linked to prenatal exposure to endocrine disruptors.

My next step is to compile a list of common chemicals classified as endocrine disruptors, and determine their presence in Seattle’s public drinking water. Stay tuned.

Also from the TEDX site: The National Pesticide Information Center at Oregon State University has a phone number for pesticide related questions from the general public: 1-800-858-7378.

Yesterday’s New York Times ‘Week in Review’ section features a front-page, top-of-the-fold story by Philip Taubman called The Trouble With Zero about the nuclear disarmament movement. On first read it appears like a straightforward-enough status report on that subject. But turning to the story’s continuation on page 4 I was immediately struck by the accompanying photograph — a picture of the ‘Fat Man’ bomb from 1945 ironically captioned ‘New Weapon’!

Why did the editor select a photo of a nuclear warhead over fifty years old, when there are thousands of more modern weapons in the U.S. arsenal? Photos are not hard to find — here’s one of the B61, a light weight, intermediate yield bomb with variable yield options, of which the U.S. has several hundred stockpiled. Or this one of the newer W87 intermediate yield strategic ICBM MIRV warhead. Or the beautiful photograph of neutron pulse tubes for the W76 undergoing testing at Sandia National Laboratories (which I’m using to illustrate this blog entry).

I can only guess that the editor’s motive in selecting an ancient history nuke instead of a contemporary one is to lull the reader into complacency, by portraying nukes as quaint and old rather than presenting a picture of current reality; viz. scores of thousands of modern high-tech weapons of much greater megatonage deployed in U.S. silos and submarines, ready to be used on command.

Sheesh…while I’ve been off galivanting around the globe the industrious folks at the Camel Reproduction Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (sic) have been busy cloning a camel. Of all creatures! Life and tech on earth is indeed speeding up.

All I know is, Injaz is a good name for an avatar.

Upon reading news of ‘the world’s cheapest car’ it made me notice an apparent contradiction between people’s efforts trying to slow global warming, and trying to slow global economic recession. Bailing out the U.S. automakers, for instance — possibly helps slow the recession, while possibly hurting the environment.

Which leads me to the headline question: Did mother nature have a hand in causing the global economic recession, in order to slow global warming? Could Mona be another ‘invisible hand’ on the market of which economists speak?

www.space.com

I saw a reference to this video on The Old New Thing and since I’m too lazy to write my own post today, am sharing this with my four faithful readers. (Also I couldn’t come up with anything even close to this in quality.)