Category Archives: Science

Night of the Trifid, the Virgo, and so much more to come: First Light at the Vera Rubin Observatory

The eagerly-anticipated Vera Rubin Observatory has come online and the First Light images are stunning.  A 3+ gigapixel camera behind an 8-m combined primary/tertiary mirror will survey the full southern sky every three nights for ten years.  It will see broadly, it will see deeply, and detect changes subtle and dramatic for other telescopes to zoom onto.  This is a revolution.  Dr. Rubin must be smiling!

Excerpts from Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

 

Annotated Virgo Cluster. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

King Louis: The 2023 Nobel in Chemistry

It’s always great when one of the good guys is justly rewarded.  The Nobel Committee put a smile on many faces this morning when it announced that Louis Brus was among the winners of this year’s Chemistry Prize.  I had the great fortune to know him in the early 1990s during my postdoctoral years at the old Bell Labs.  I did not work with him directly but I was in the same organization, talked to him many times over coffee and at the famed “lunch table.” Always a respected scientist, he had achieved interdisciplinary fame in the late 1980s for initiating the quantum dot work recognized today. Despite the then-accolades, he was always gracious, patient, and willing to listen. When it came time for me to leave the Labs, he reviewed my research statements, listened to my practice job-talks, and gave me excellent advice. Although postdocs had a principal collaborator/sponsor, the culture was that we were the responsibility of the institution. We could go anywhere, walk into any office, and get the attention of the top person or people in any field. That industrial lab was everything a great University wants to be and I still can’t believe I got to experience it. It was taken for granted that Louis would go to Stockholm and frankly, it is long overdue.

Youtube Channel: Nobel Prize

 

Stop! It’s Hammack Time: The Engineer Guy returns

Bill Hammack of UIUC built and built-up the “Engineer Guy” Youtube channel into one of the most popular and respected technology-focused sites on the platform.

Then, he disappeared for four years.  His audience checked in periodically in the comments section but there was not much information to be had other than hints that he was still with us and might someday return.

In years past he had brilliantly explained the unsung inventions enabling coffee makers, microwave ovens, and injection molding.   His explanation of the prosaic aluminum beverage can and the 16-mm film projector are masterpieces – short stories as fine as any in written literature.  He also did longer-form works including a book on the history of British airships.

But now, he has returned and one hopes to stay, examining the “engineering method” as he describes it.  A complement to the much better-known scientific method.

In addition to the steam turbine below, he looks at cathedrals, turbulence, and revisits the microwave magnetron.

Welcome back, Professor.

Youtube Channel: The Engineer Guy

 

Talking Giants: Dirac and De Broglie in their own voice

Two founders of quantum mechanics speak.  Dirac is interviewed (and too frequently interrupted) by Friedrich Hund, himself an eminent physicist known to spectroscopists everywhere.  De Broglie lived to 94 and his post-Nobel career included the premier seat at Académie Française.  Dirac had a reputation as a man of very few words.  80 years old at the time of filming,  one senses that this discussion was difficult for him.

Youtube Channel: mehranshargh

Youtube Channel: Nomen Nominandum

 

A Shaft of Gold When All Around is Dark: JWST is operational

One last glorious gasp from a decayed and dead civilization.  JWST’s Mid Infrared Instrument observes Stephan’s Quintet.   What else will it be allowed to do before the American Taliban takeover?

JWST’s MIRI looks at Stephan’s Quintet. Courtesy NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute

Astrophysics at Ludicrous Speed: But Why? on stellar collapse

It should be no surprise that aging scientists from all fields gravitate (ha!) to astronomy as we get more interested in the grand fates of things. Fortunately there are many sites and channels to scratch that itch, giving us a perhaps too comfortable view of complex material. The life and death of stars is an example where the high level explanations of gravity versus fusion do work but where the many omitted details cause midnight befuddlement.  Where does the energy come from?  Where does it go?  Wait… how fast – Relativistic speeds?

Anonymous Youtuber “But Why?” breaks the barrier with this beautiful video on the collapse of very big stars – the kind that leave neutron stars or black holes in their wake. It isn’t all symmetric implosions and classical rebounds and the thought of a giant object collapsing 5000-km in a tenth of a second boggles the mind.  The depth of detail is breathtaking, the amount of research inspiring, and taught me much new physics that I incorrectly thought I already knew.

Youtube Channel: But Why?

 

He who keeps cool will collect (photons): Christian Ready on the JWST instrument package

Sports Illustrated quoted this Japanese proverb back in 1975 in conjunction with Cal’s championship men’s gymnastic team of that era.  The adage abides with the James Webb Space Telescope now in its halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, its optics and instruments slowly cooling to their ultimate cryogenic temperatures, the better to collect the faint signs of heat from the early universe.  Little has been said to the public about the instruments nestled in the big box behind the 6.5-m primary mirror.  This is perhaps not surprising.  There are no secrets here, just that the real science goals and the optical engineering to meet them are fiendishly complex.  Friendly Neighborhood Astronomer Christian Ready tackles the challenge, explaining where the precious photons will go and what will happen to them once they arrive.  The comment section clamors for more detail on the MIRI cryocooler which will take the mid-Infrared Instrument’s focal plane array below 7K.  Here’s to hoping for a full video on this beast, built across the hall from me, and on which I spent a couple of weeks when the team was shorthanded.

Youtube Channel: Launchpad Astronomy