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05/21/19
Welcome to SciTechNature get-togethers
| Intros | Science Book Club | News with Terra Mizwa | Links |
Presentations:
Terra Mizwa: Everything Science Knows So Far
There is (still) so much about the human brain we have yet to understand. Terra will present a couple of short videos (3 minute and a 4.5 minute), a bit of information and then, open to discussion.
Stephen Goodfellow:
"Cosmic heresy; the Fourth State of Matter"
Today it is recognized that 99.999% of all observable matter in the universe is in the plasma state - and we know hardly anything about it.
Location & Time: Tuesdays, 11:30am to 1:30pm
Quinta Loreto Hotel, Cjon. de Loreto 15, Centro, Zona Centro, 37700 San Miguel de Allende, Gto.
From Cjon. de Loreto, enter the Mercado de Artisanias alley (East, going up-hill) about twenty yards and turn to your left into the Hotel Quinta Loreto compound.
The community center is on the Southeast side of the little central park. If you are coming by car, there is a parking lot within the compound.
(The community center is in the same location as the Philosophical get-together which is held on Fridays.)
A 50 pesos donation is suggested.
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Links from last week: Terra Mizwa links: Meat in a dish may be bad for planet: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, “Push to curb China’s urban smog may be backfiring” doi.org/c2vs
Robotic tube learns to navigate inside a beating heart: Science Robotics, doi.org/c42t
Antbot gets around without sat nav
Science Robotics,
A day in the shade builds up a tan
Molecular Cell,
Science Advances:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/4/eaav4707
“Device converts thoughts to speech” Nature:
http://dlderakhtejavidan.ir/dl/Books/Magazines/New_Scientist-05_04_2019(www.derakhtejavidan.com).pdf
"AI creates masterful art in just minutes"
Stephen Goodfellow Part I "Cosmic heresy; the Fourth State of Matter" Links
As the Universe goes, plasma loops on the Sun are a rather weak example of the electromagnetic force of a plasma configuration, yet even so these loops seem immune to the Sun's crushing gravity (28 times stronger than Earth's):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFT7ATLQQx8&t=45s
Well no, Benjamin Franklin didn't discover electricity, nor did a whopping lightning strike zap down the kite string, through the key and strike the ground.
What did happen was, without a lightning bolt hitting the kite, the hairs on the kite string stoop up (static charge,) and a small satisfactory electrical discharge occurred when his finger was placed near the key. Less sensational than the myth, but quite significant in the exploration of electricity - and plasma - in the 1770's:
https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/10-false-history-facts1.htm
Hans Christian Ørsted, 1821; the story goes that the naturalist (what they called scientists back then,) had returned from a brisk walk to be in time for a demonstration using a static charge hand-turned generator. He had casually placed his compass which he used when taking a walk, onto the demonstration table. Giving the generator a few hand cranked turns, he noticed to his surprise that the compass needle responded to the electrical current. Ørsted published his findings in 1823, thus becoming the first to demonstrate the link between electricity and magnetism: Electromagnetism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_%C3%98rsted
...And a rather nice painting of him:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/%C3%98rsted.jpg
Little formal education, Michael Faraday had a natural affinity for discovery when it came to electromagnetism; truly a genius.
Among his may discoveries and inventions, he is responsible for the electrical generator, being able to turn electricity into mechanical work.
(1824):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
James Clerk Maxwell could do what Faraday didn't have an affinity for: Being able to mathematically quantify Faraday's findings, allowing for electromagnetic predictions. Between the two of them, the theory and application of electromagnetism took a quantum leap
(1855):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell
Even the lowest form of plasma is susceptible to external electromagnetic forces:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7_8Gc_Llr8
Here, the nice lady gives a stripped-down version of what a plasma - the 4th state of matter, is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2osF6l6-zWg&feature=youtu.be
...And Wikipedia's more lengthy descriprion of Plasma Physics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)
Not very well known by the public at large, Kristian Birkeland is a pioneering giant in the field of plasma research, a visionary way ahead of his time. His chief discovery is the existence of electromagnetic-plasma behaviour that is named after him. He is one of the great pioneers that saw the electromagnetic connection between the Earth and surrounding space.
(1900):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Birkeland
Hannes Alfvén, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics, for his work on magnetohydrodynamics. He was considered to be the world's foremost expert on plasma physics. He arrives on the scene at a time when cosmologists and astronomers have become wholly enamored with the force of gravity, dismissing plasma behaviour as irrelevant background noise.
Despite his high status as a Nobel Prize recipient, Alfvén's plasma observations when largely ignored by the astrophysical community. He laments,
"When I describe [plasma phenomena] according to this formalism most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers. With the referee system which rules US science today, this means that my papers are rarely accepted by the leading US journals."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfv%C3%A9n
Anthony Peratt was Hannes Alfvén's mentor and became the de facto expert in the field of plasma research. He worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and led the N-Tunnel Diagnostics Program for Los Alamos at the Nevada Test Site nuclear testing ground.
He is an influential proponent of plasma cosmology, a non-standard cosmology proposed as an alternative to the Big Bang and rejected by mainstream cosmologists.
I had the good fortune to dine with him in 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Peratt#Scientific_career
The contemporary 'Black Hole' media frenzy had many plasma physicists shaking their heads. As with many of the individual scientists mentioned above, you're unlikely to ever see their research reach the public attention.
As soon as the much heralded image of a purported "black hole" was shown to the world this April, most of the plasma physicists commented, "Oh look - a plasmoid!"
...So now we'll meet Winston Bostick. He was an American physicist who discovered plasmoids, plasma focus, and plasma vortex phenomena. He simulated cosmical astrophysics with laboratory plasma experiments, and showed that Hubble expansion can be produced with repulsive mutual induction between neighboring galaxies acting as homopolar generators.
(1950's):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_H._Bostick
For anyone wondering about the veracity of Plasmoids, hopefully these links will allay your doubts, here, here here, and quite recently, here.
Controlled Fusion researches - although alchemists would be a more appropriate word - use the plasmoid (doughnut) shape in an attempt to trap and make a super-hot plasma perform at temperatures that are necessary to create controlled fusion. These have failed miserably over the past five decades, because the plasma sets up it's own magnetic fields and causes the reactors to become unstable.
What is the cause of this failure? It is a lack of basic research; knowledge of plasma and the magnetic configurations produced are to this day, largely unknown.
It is this 'messiness' that scares astrophysicists and cosmologists who have a tendency to dismiss plasma behaviour as 'hot gas', which is the nod and wink expression in contemporary cosmology publications for, 'we don't know how this works, let's ignore it.'
So getting back to the much hyped 'black hole' frenzy, after training several telescopes and processing the data, an image was produced and presented to the public that looks like this:
https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/2019/04/main/articles/041019_LG-EV-MT_EHT_feat.jpg
A slight puzzling pause - then the science community and the popular press cheered; "A Black Hole!"
- Except for the plasma physics community which murdered, "Shouldn't there be a high energy accretion disk? That looks like an orange doughnut."
https://youtu.be/ZFnyMlkLcgc?t=103
In the classical Black Hole scenario, the singularity ought to be surrounded by a furious flat disk of 'hot gas', the closer to the singularity, the more furious the circulation and the hotter it should be:
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/image/6977208-16x9-2150x1210.jpg
One the left is what we are seeing, on the right is what we OUGHT to be seeing:
So what we are looking at is a plasmoid, not a black hole:
Second part of "Cosmic heresy; the Fourth State of Matter" this coming Tuesday.
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The SciTechNature get-together is also on Facebook. ********
SMA Lifelong learning program
http://instituto-allende.edu.mx/en/lifelong-learning-program/
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...Because the acquisition of clean water in our town is not only a science, but a necessity, especially in the San Miguel de Allende area:
Link to John Wharton's Shelter Space; an excellent source of SciTechNature trace elements:
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SMA Rotary Club rests upon a foundation of compassion and science, so it too gets a heads up from SciTechNature.
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Best,
Stephen Goodfellow
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