LHC Restart - live webcast

I wonder just how many people across the world are watching this feed with me:

CERN LHC live webcast snapshot

There have been a couple of glitches in the cooling and monitoring systems, but nothing catastrophic so far, and the system is now being brought up to speed again.  While everyone is waiting for the beams to reach the required energies again, some talking heads are discussing what the LHC is looking for and how.  It's fun spotting people I've dealt with through my work:  Ooh, they're on the editorial board, ooh, that was that nice guy who published with us last year!

It's so exciting.  I just wish I wasn't the only physics-educated geek in a building full of biologists and medics...  Oh, and that I had some popcorn.

Edit:  Great, now I have my second only ever migrane precursor sparkly vision artifacts.  They're very pretty, but they're interfering with my webcast watching, damnit!

Be still my nerdy heart: LHC pop-up book

 Atlas detector - complete it yourself, but try and take less than 25 years...

As a massive physics and papercraft geek, this announcement had me swooning: an LHC pop-up book.  Entitled Voyage to the Heart of Matter: The ATLAS Experiment at CERN, it explores through paper engineering the motivation, construction and operation of part of the world's biggest experiment.

Not just mega-science, but mega-engineering

To quote the press release,

"In this unique collaboration between ATLAS and renowned paper engineer Anton Radevsky, 7000 tonnes of metal, glass, plastic, cables and computer chips leap from the page in miniature pop-up, to tell the story of CERN’s quest to understand the birth of the universe."

 CERN press release

I'm really excited by the immediacy and spatial understanding that comes from the use of physical models to represent concepts, and a pop-up book is a fantastically portable way of bringing to the grubby paws of the masses.

 

 The book goes back to the big bang to explain the experiment's motivations

 

I've always adored pop-up books.  Needless to say, I'm drooling over this one.

Sold out at the publisher here, but in stock with Amazon here.

Exploring digital worlds

I just read another interesting post over on Cocktail Party Physics, this time talking about MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) such as World of Warcraft as models for human behaviour in the face of epidemic or economic crises.  Knowing several WoW-heads myself, I find the headspace it occupies interesting, including its carefully engineered addictiveness. 

However, what buzzed me was the mention of educational games.  I recall playing a few when I was younger, including the non-taxing (piloting a dolphin around an underwater reef, solving simple sums before it ran out of air), the entertaining but limited (completing equations to zap alien rubbish, avoid asteroids and navigate space stations), and the wickedly catchy (a kiddie's colour, number, and shape recognition complete with insidous earworms, with my little brother you understand).  I even wrote a tiny  times-table practice tool in True Basic.

Though not really targeted as a game, I can't recommend highly enough the magnificent Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.  Perhaps you've got to be a special kind of nerd to enjoy racing cars by typing quickly and accurately, but it was better than school typing lessons.  Accuracy at over >70wpm is an indispensable skill - I can actually type faster than write, with the added advantage of legibility!  I just wish my brother had played it too, perhaps I'd be able to talk to him online without wincing.

The increasing use of physics simulations (crayon physics, little big planet and the rest) is fantastically exciting, especially when experiments are increasingly restricted in schools, but as mentioned in the Cocktail Physics article the use of online community-building techniques and mobile technology could lead to a new generation of engaging science games.  As a case in point, Whyville looks very cool - I love the sound of kids actually investigating an infection of "Whypox" themselves. 


One of our journals recently published a piece on the use of Second Life as a visualisation, research and educational tool.  According to the reviewer reports its contribution to science was slightly debatable, but it's certainly an interesting conceit.  Alas, not having played with any such online worlds I can't really conjecture on its effectiveness or how it might be improved. 

Still, I really hope a game developer mashes all these ideas together and runs with them, creating a freely roamable world complete with intriguing tableau, enlightening encounters and a culture of exploration and learning. With an element of user-contributed content and community building, just think of what would be available to someone with an internet connection - a world of information not just presented in bite-sized chunks, but integrated into an engaging framework that rewards curiosity and reinforces enquiring habits.  It's so much more satisfying to find things out for yourself!

Twice crowned in fire

 Gorgeous visible and ultraviolet composite of Saturn and its aurora from Spacetelescope.org

 
I've just been admiring the luscious production values of NASA's Hubblecast, as superbly displayed by their most recent video which looks at the aurorae of Saturn.  Formed in the same way as Earth's Northern and Southern lights, the aurorae of Saturn circle both poles of the planet and rise more than a thousand miles above the cloud tops. 

Hubble image of Saturn showing both poles with aurorae, and the planet's rings edge-on, from Spacetelescope.org

The gas giant recently moved into a position where the light shows of both poles are visible simultaneously.  Fortuitously, this coincides with the planet's equinox, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison between the two displays, as the two poles are recieving an equal influx of charged particles from the sun.  Interestingly this has shown up a subtle difference in activity, which implies that the magnetic field of the planet is not evenly distributed.  I'm intrigued to find out where this goes with further observation. 

In the meantime, the beautiful video of fluttering, coruscating curtains of light encircling the planet's poles has really inspired me to create some jewellery - I'll share if it works!

Submarines to sprogs

Dr Mark Lythgoe gave me another generous helping of food for thought the other morning, with episode three of his Images That Changed the World series, considering the foetal ultrasound scan.

 

19 week foetus from  from Obstetric Ultrasound - A Comprehensive guide

Ultrasound imaging (also known as sonography) is an incredible tool for safe and non-invasive investigation of the soft tissues of the body. It can reveal the presence of an embryo at a very early stage in development, as well as show the foetus in sufficient detail not only to let its digits be counted, but to look further inside and resolve abnormalities in the internal organs.  Dr Joseph Woo has put together a fantastic site on the usage and history of ultrasound in obstetrics, including an amazing gallery of images.

 

Twin pregnancy at 10 weeks from Obstetric Ultrasound - A Comprehensive guide

 
Ultrasound images are such a routine part of obstetrics now that it's hard to imagine a time without them. Historically, however, the 9 month journey from bundle of cells to wriggling sprog was shrouded in mystery, punctuated by unseen movement and illustrated only by the unsettling sight of cold, grotesque pickled embryos and foetuses in jars. The programme explored the impact on parents of having even a scruffy little black and white outline of their offspring-in-progress, but what caught my ear was the history of the development of ultrasound imaging technology.

Towards the end of the 18th Century, Italian experimental biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani concluded that the uncanny ability of bats to orient themselves without the use of sight is related to their hearing. 140 years later Donald Griffin recorded their inaudible cries using the first ultrasound microphone and completed the picture. Bats emit sharp sounds above the range of human hearing ('ultrasound' begins just beyond what we can hear, about 20 kilohertz), and listen for the echoes, using the timing and volume of the echo to guage the distance and nature of obstacles and prey. The resolution of echolocation is dependent on the frequency of the sound used, so the extremely high-pitched squeaks of bats allows them to detect tiny prey insects on the wing. I found a great page from the Western Ecological Research Center, with modified recordings of the sounds various species of bat use to investigate their surroundings – there's even one which is low enough for humans to hear without modification.

Bat in flight by Arnold Song at Brown University, who was researching the aerodynamics of their flight

Other species also use echolocation, from cave-dwelling swiftlets to the tiny shrew, but perhaps the most well-known are the toothed whales, including dolphins. Greater sound transmission in the liquid medium apparently allows a dolphin to resolve a golfball a football field away, but that's far too sporting a measure for me. Let's just say that it beats a bat's ~17 meter range.

It wasn't until the Titanic was rusting on the sea bed, however, that humans really took up the act.  In 1913 Alexander Behm patented the echo sounder, a device intended to prevent future disasters by detecing icebergs.  It proved much more effective at locating the sea-bed though, and has been a huge aid to shipping since.

During WWI the threat of enemy submarines drove further research into the potential of echoes, culminating in the invention of ASDIC (later renamed 'SONAR' by the Americans), the piercing 'ping' of which is a familiar staple of tense, dank aquatic thrillers. Reflected sound was also used to detect far smaller dangers, when engineers used ultrasound to examine the internal structures of aircraft wings for stress-induced cracks.

Submarine Sonar Operator's Manual - a fantastic piece of online archive material, training operators of the US's state-of-the-art sonar equiment at the end of WWII - from the Maritime Park Association

In the wake of WWII, obstetrician Professor Ian Donald returned home and began to wonder about the application of this technology to his own profession.  Armed with an ultrasound transducer, he began experimenting on tumours and cysts removed from patients, to see whether they could be differentiated from other tissues, such as muscles (represented by slices of beef). In 1958 he published his work, and so began the application of ultrasound imaging to medicine.

While it has used the same basic principle of reflected sound waves for the past 50-odd years, sonography has evolved into a vital medical tool.  Imaging resolution has improved hugely, structures can be viewed in realtime (cue videos of waving foetal hands and wrinkling noses) and shown 3D rather than cross-section.  Ultrasound can even reveal blood flow in the arteries by analysing the doppler shift of the echoes.  It can also be used in more active ways, such as in controlled powerful bursts to break up kidney stones into easily passed fragments. 

From submarines in the watery deeps to foetuses immersed in amniotic fluid - not a bad bit of lateral thinking, and one that has had a huge impact on medicine and pregnancy.

The Death Inside

This morning I've been listening to yet another fascinating piece of radio from the BBC.  Images That Changed The World is a series of 15 minute programmes presented by Dr Mark Lythgoe examining the history of medical imaging, and how five leaps in imaging technology impacted popular culture at the time.

The first X-ray image of the hand of Röntgen's wife (who exclaimed something along the lines of "It's like seeing the death inside me"), taken from the mesmerising Dream Anatomy gallery at the NIH's NLM

When in 1896 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen presented his discovery of X-rays, the ghostly depiction of his wife's hand which illustrated the work took only days to reach newspaper and magazine covers around the world.  Never before had the deep, delicate structures within the body been seen in their living context, and the new technology went straight to the public's imagination. X-ray machines were installed in big department stores and fairgrounds, and the public flocked to have their pictures taken.  There were even fads for X-ray family portraits, and the possibility of buying lead-lined underwear to protect a lady's modesty.

Coin operated X-ray machine c1900, taken from A Short History of Amusement Arcades

An anecdotal tale of a woman's diamond engagement ring being revealed as a fake or 'paste' gem led me off at slight tangent.  I've heard the term before many times in venerable works of detective fiction, but the word 'paste' did not call to mind anything you could mistake for the sparkle of finest emeralds.  It turns out that 'paste' gems are a form of heavy glass with a high refractive index, which when cut well can imitate gemstones.  'Paste' refers to the method of manufacture: powdered silica, soda and lead or other metal oxides are combined with water to ensure even mixing, before being heated in a kiln until fused.  [This page on gem creation is a good read if you have any interest in jewellery and gemology.] A more common name for a paste gem which you might recognise is 'rhinestone', widely used in costume jewellery.

 Radiograph of a diamond ring from Myth busting – in the world of x-rays

Being amorphous, fused glasses rather than single, grown crystals of gemstone, paste gems have subtly different optical properties, meaning that the expert can distinguish them just by looking (an important plot point!).  Even an untrained eye, however, can spot when the diamond they expect to appear as a faint smudge appears completely opaque in an X-Ray image - hence the woman's outrage at the X-ray image's revelation. 

 

Reynolds' X-ray set, 1896 from Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library

Within a year of the announcement of Röntgen's announcement reaching Britain, school student Russell Reynolds completed the building of his own X-ray apparatus.  Home machines like these became widespread, with enthusiastic amateurs able to bring cutting-edge scientific equipment to their parlours.  Experiencing the glee of examining everything within reach with a microscope makes it easy to imagine excited Victorians X-raying hands, feet, cats, frogs, and indeed anything that they could get their hands on.

Unfortunately however this orgy of discovery came at a price - the following years revealed the dangers of overexposure to the ionising radiation - burns, ulcers, cancers and amputations.  The grisly vignette of a conference of radiologists unable to cut up their food due to the loss of one or both hands puts a chilling dampener on the joy of discovery.

X-ray images revolutionised medicine by enabling the harder structures within the body to be viewed non-intrusively for the first time, revealing everything from broken bones to tuberculosis.  Understandably, the X-ray machine above has been selected by curators at the Science Museum in London as the item in its collection that had made the biggest impact on human history. 

Nowadays X-ray images of the human body are familiar, but along with less familiar portraits of plants, animals and everyday objects the can be fascinating and beautiful, as well as instructive.  I highly recommend you check out the incredible work of Albert Koetsier and Nick Veasey, but be warned you may be there some time.

Let's have a little atmosphere

A friend linked me to a visually interesting news snippet on the BBC, featuring striking images of drifting and persisting aircraft contrails, adding to cloud cover eastward of the coast of the UK:

Unfortunately, one of the things about the BBC news website is that really bugs me is the complete absence of onwards links or information.  In this case it wasn't too hard to find the right paper, but I'm more used to reading articles which anchor a web of information leading to as much detail as you could wish for, and again and again with the BBC news site I find myself rather uncomfortably brought short.

Getting back to the research, 

"A single aircraft operating in conditions favorable for persistent contrail formation appears to exert a contrail-induced radiative forcing some 5000 times greater (in W m⁻² km⁻¹) than recent estimates of the average persistent contrail radiative forcing from the entire civil aviation fleet." Abstract of paper

While I don't particularly feel like dissecting this and other effects of high-altitude flights right now, the piece put me in mind of an interesting article I read the other day over on Cocktail Party Physics, on the effects of space shuttle exhaust on ionisation of the atmosphere, an in turn on radio communications.

It's another example of the fine work done by the blog's contributors, starting from an anecdote, exploring around the topic, explaining the science clearly and bringing it all together in a memorable way, without skimping on detail.  I love their work, which always offers you an entertaining read while casually filling your brain the kind of quirky knowledge that might come in handy at cocktail parties. 


I highly recommend you go and explore the archives (who doesn't love a science blog that has a 'zombies' category?) where you'll certainly find something interesting to while your time away, or subscribe to it and just wait for the posts to roll in.