Cosmological Principle may not hold

January 13, 2013

A new paper describes the discovery of the largest known Large Quasar Group – with a longest dimension of some 1200 Megaparsecs and a typical dimension of about 500 Mpc. (One parsec is about 3.3 light years). This LQG is thus some 1600 times longer than the distance between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy. The research team – led by Dr Roger Clowes from UCLan’s Jeremiah Horrocks Institute – has identified the LQG which is so significant in size that it also challenges the Cosmological Principle. As Dr. Clowes remarks:

“While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe. This is hugely exciting – not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe.

“Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take 4 billion years to cross. This is significant not just because of its size but also because it challenges the Cosmological Principle, which has been widely accepted since Einstein. Our team has been looking at similar cases which add further weight to this challenge and we will be continuing to investigate these fascinating phenomena.”

And if the Cosmological Principle does not hold it means that the fundamental constants of the known Universe may no longer be so fundamental or so constant.  The list of such constants is long but the most fundamental of these on which we build our understanding of the Universe – which we take as being  immutable – are the speed of light in a vacuum, the gravitational constant and the Planck constant. This opens up the possibility that the physical constants may take different values in different parts of the Universe. They may be a function of space and time. They may change over cosmological time – and of course this could mean that the passage of time itself is not uniform. So perhaps the “arrow of time” is really a “boomerang of time”? Or it could be that what starts out as an arrow may be morphing into a boomerang or something else as time progresses (or not). The concept of time – and not only the passage of time – may vary. What if the trajectory of time could loop on itself? or proceed in the form of a double spiral? Even if the Universe is still a non-static Universe – that itself makes a static Universe – Stasis – possible. The possibilities are legion – and not only for science fiction.

Stardate would no longer be uniform – but this could explain the variation between the different series of Star Trek!

Quasar - atists impression NASA-AFP

Quasar – artists impression NASA-AFP

A structure in the early universe at z ~ 1.3 that exceeds the homogeneity scale of the R-W concordance cosmology by, Roger G. Clowes, Kathryn A. Harris, Srinivasan Raghunathan, Luis E. Campusano, Ilona K. Soechting, Matthew J. Graham, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6256

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Noted in Passing 12th January 2013

January 12, 2013

My hope is to make “Noted in Passing” a regular, weekly post but I am not sure if I will have the discipline to maintain it. I shall try to confine myself to 3 topic areas: “Science and Behaviour”, “Engineering and Technology” and “Bad Science”. I’m trying to avoid politics as a topic in its own right but politics may well creep in under “Behaviour”.

Science and Behaviour

Polar bear numbers world-wide are up and here’s  a marvellous image of a polar bear in winter.

polar bear aurora_borealis_3-t2 free

Polar bear and the aurora borealis (from polar bear science)

Some people apparently believe that  too much genetic information could be a bad thing. Virginia Hughes disagrees strongly and I am inclined to agree with her. Genetic sequencing is here to stay and even if interpretation may lead to new challenges and new dilemmas, this genie cannot be stuffed back into the bottle.

Why did our fingers eveolve wrinkles? Was it perhaps to better be able to grip smooth objects?

John Hawks begins his descent through Darwin’s Descent of Man and has posted his “introduction” which is fascinating and – especially for a layman like me – eminently readable. “Experts” in my opinion are those who explain and not those who try to mystify (usually to inflate their own egos).

David McNeil believes that a gesture-speech unity lies at the origins of language but I am not convinced. When speech began – and that is a story in itself – gestures may well have added to man’s vocabulary but I am skeptical as to the role of gesture in the development of language and the grammar associated with language. But what seems obvious to me is that for the origins of speech as well as the origins of language we have to look to the increasing need for communication as the driving force.

In the meantime miR-941 is now being slated as a specific gene that contributed to how early humans developed tool use and language (in contrast to the FoxP2 gene which is thought to be a more general enabler). A study by psychologists claims that language learning begins before birth but I think they jump far too quickly from sound recognition to language learning and the study does not convince.

Recent excavations at an Australian site provides evidence of inhabitation ” certainly” at 41,230 years ago with the dating of charcoal found at the site. However the earliest inhabitation was much older since stone tools were found in deeper layers than the charcoal, but these have yet to be dated. This seems more consistent with the main human expansion Out of Africarabia first happening before Toba.

Even bloggers on the right are questioning the US love affair with semi-automatic weapons but I don’t expect any significant change to the gun laws in the US anytime soon.

Good grief! Greg Laden believes that summer in the Southern Hemisphere must be a sign of global warming. It’s -6°C outside my window right now and its been snowing in Jerusalem and the Lebanon, so I suppose the Northern Hemisphere must be entering a Little Ice Age.

The luminosity of our Sun varies just 0.1% over the course of its 11-year solar cycle. There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. Tony Phillips from NASA comments on  “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate”  issued by the National Research Council.

Engineering and Technology

The technology for drones that today are used to kill could have more peaceful purposes. A Dronenet for a human free package delivery service  is attractive and does not sound so absurd.

Livefist reports that Airbus has beaten out the Russians to win the Indian Air Force’s new generation of  mid-refuelling tankers while Boeing is still going through teething troubles with the 787 Dreamliner.

The pressures on the supply of neodymium, dysprosium, and other rare-earth metals for the manufacture of strong magnets is leading to a surge in the use of nanotechnology to find alternatives.

Bad Science:

  1. Another idiot study about how our fists evolved in response to fighting!  An excellent takedown by  T. Ryan Gregory. “The most impressive thing about this study is that it managed to gain so much attention with so little substance”. 
  2. ChemBark has this update on serial data fabricator Bengu Sezen who has been hired by the Gebze Institute of Technology.
  3. Simon Kuper has some sympathy for Diederik Stapel who now finds himself in an unforgiving Dutch society. His take on the Stapel affaire is in the FT.
  4. The American Psychiatric Association would seem to be in thrall to the pharmaceutical industry as DSM -5 is adjusted to sell more drugs.
  5. John Hawks has a scathing post about Mark Lynas as “someone who had never read a scientific study on the subject, purporting to be an advocate in the popular press, and having his ignorant statements printed widely by multimillion-dollar media organizations” and the shoe fits whether Lynas is pontificating about GMO or global warming.
  6. Further retractions of social psychology papers: “Fraud committed by any social psychologist diminishes all social psychologists” and reinforces the view that social psychology is mainly for headlines and is still a long way from being a science.
  7. Most junior scientists accept academic theft by their advisors as a way of life and only a very few decide to make any noise about it.

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Climate change costs are not that critical compared to economic development of poor countries – Prof. Per Krussel

January 11, 2013

Swedish Radio is one of the more rabid and unthinking supporters of global warming orthodoxy (as are all the main stream media in Sweden). So I was rather surprised to see them giving prominence today to Per Krussel, Professor of Economics at Stockholm University. Normally Swedish Radio is so biased and bigoted on this subject that they would have made no mention of this if Krussel had not been a Swedish Professor. Of course – for balance – they then also interviewed a Professor on Environmental Economy who just happens to be a member of the IPCC and clearly backed the alarmist line — what else? He was less than impressive. For representing the IPCC they might just as well have interviewed someone from Greenpeace!

Krussel skewers the Stern Report on fundamental methodology but this itself is nothing new. The Stern Report from 2006 is another one where the content has been massaged to come to a pre-determined conclusion and is almost embarrassingly bad. In my view any document today which cites the Stern Report as support is itself discredited.

Swedish Radio: (free translation from the Swedish)

Many researchers believe that the threat from climate change is the critical issue of our time. But Per Krusell, professor of economics at Stockholm University, and leading a major international effort to calculate the economic costs of climate change, believes that the threat is not that critical in financial terms

“Climate change is a threat, it’s pretty big, but it’s not that huge when translated  into dollars and cents”  says Per Krusell.

Per Krusell leads an international research project to develop an economic model, which the world’s countries can use to figure out their future costs of climate change. The model should be finished in about a year and will be the world’s most advanced tools in this context, according to Per Krusell. So far, they have concluded that GDP in the worst case will only drop by a few percent in most countries, such as Sweden. This differs from the widely publicized Stern Report in 2006 pointing to significantly higher costs.

……..  above all, Krusell is critical of Stern for putting  together all anticipated costs, without discounting these costs  properly in the way economists usually do for future costs. … 

(The Stern report used a discounting factor of 0.1% – but it is normal to use a discount rate of 1%, which therefore lowers the cost of future generations substantially.) …. Economist Per Krusell agrees that climate change is a big problem, but thinks it’s more important to focus on the economic development of the poor countries rather than combating climate change.

“When we consider the effects of climate change, we expect also that there will be a cost especially in poor countries, but it sums up to no great critical issue for the world. It is more important to get the poor countries to develop. I’m a little worried that “environmental thinking” leads to more important issues being ignored.”

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Sheldon Cooper would approve – “A rock is a clock”

January 11, 2013

This is right up Sheldon Cooper’s street (not that I understand his physics which is best explained here). A new paper suggests that the wave properties of matter (as contrasted to particle physics) could be used to measure time. If every rock is a potential clock Sheldon will have to change the rules of the “scissors, paper, rock” game. In any case, I look forward to a suitably acrimonius debate between Sheldon and Leslie Winkle on the nature of time and change.

A Clock Directly Linking Time to a Particle’s Mass, by Shau-Yu Lan, Pei-Chen Kuan, Brian Estey, Damon English, Justin M. Brown, Michael A. Hohensee and Holger Müller, Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1230767

Science Daily reports:

Taking advantage of the fact that, in nature, matter can be both a particle and a wave, he (Holger Müller, assistant professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley) has discovered a way to tell time by counting the oscillations of a matter wave. A matter wave’s frequency is 10 billion times higher than that of visible light.

“A rock is a clock, so to speak,” Müller said.

In a paper appearing in the Jan. 11 issue of Science, Müller and his UC Berkeley colleagues describe how to tell time using only the matter wave of a cesium atom. He refers to his method as a Compton clock because it is based on the so-called Compton frequency of a matter wave. ……

…… While Müller’s Compton clock is still 100 million times less precise than today’s best atomic clocks, which employ aluminum ions, improvements in the technique could boost its precision to that of atomic clocks, including the cesium clocks now used to define the second, he said.

“This is a beautiful experiment and cleverly designed, but it is going to be controversial and hotly debated,” said John Close, a quantum physicist at The Australian National University in Canberra. “The question is, ‘Is the Compton frequency of atoms a clock or not a clock?’ Holger’s point is now made. It is a clock. I’ve made one, it works.”

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Publicity-hungry lawyers now flocking to defend the Delhi rapists

January 10, 2013

Just a few days ago no lawyer wanted to defend the Delhi six.

But it has not taken long for the worst aspects of human behaviour to again come to the fore. Now some among the lawyers have seen how much free publicity this can bring and that they will not have many such opportunities. They are flocking like vultures to the defence of the Delhi rapists. One of them – a certain ML Sharma –  has also seen the benefit of being as provocative and outrageous as possible and has today claimed that

  1. the victim brought the rape on herself (“I have never seen a respected lady who brought rape on to herself)“!!!
  2. the prisoners are being tortured to confess

AP Singh and VK Anand are the other two lawyers who have presented themselves for the defendants. I am not sure that these lawyers will bring much competence to bear, but they will surely make the most outrageous claims and demands – and that too extremely loudly – so that they at least remain in the public eye. They have no doubt been encouraged when observing how politicians and religious leaders gain a huge amount of publicity by attacking the victim. The defendants cannot be served by more bad publicity (not that it can get much worse) but their lawyers have nothing to lose and everything to gain:

First Post: It seems to be raining lawyers for the Delhi gang-rape accused. Three lawyers have told reporters on Thursday that they will be representing four of the five accused in the case. ML Sharma, a Supreme Court lawyer, told media persons that he will be representing Mukesh, brother of main accused, Ram Singh. Explaining how he became involved in the case, he said, “I have been interested in this case from the very first day. About eight days ago, I got a call from an unknown person and he said ‘Baccho ko bachao’ (save the boys). However, I remained undecided. And it was on January 7 (on the day accused where to be produced before the court), I decided to take up their case.” …. 

…..  Sharma, a member of the Maharashtra Bar Council, says he has been practicing in the Supreme Court since 1990. Asked about some of the cases he has fought, Sharma mentions the PIL enquiring into the assets of former Chief Justice of India (CJI) KG Balakrishnan and another PIL in the Vodafone tax case that claimed that the then sitting CJI SH Kapadia had a conflict of interest in the case. Not only did the apex court dismiss Sharma’s petition in the Vodafone PIL but also fined him Rs 50,000 for it.

Another Supreme Court lawyer, AP Singh told reporters that he was representing two of the accused — Akshay Thakur and Vinay Sharma. Recounting how he came to be involved in the case, Singh said: “The family members of both the accused — Akshay Kumar and Vinay Sharma – met us. This was on 5-6 January. But at the time of the first meeting, I refused to take their case because it was a highlighted case and a number of public persons were protesting against it. The family member of accused contacted my mother again on 6-7 January. And it is not possible for me refuse the order of my mother.”

….. The loudest of the three lawyers is VK Anand, who had created a ruckus in the courtroom on Monday after getting into a heated argument with another lawyer. Anand told reporters that he was representing the main accused Ram Singh.

The advocates told reporters that the next hearing in the case will be on 14 January.

One India: ML Sharma told Bloomberg that the 23-year-old paramedical student’s friend was “wholly responsible” for the savage attack on her. “Until today I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady. Even an underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect,” Sharma said. While making the above statement, the lawyer surprisingly did not even pause to think that he was casting aspersions on the victim. In his professional capacity, he might be entitled to claim that his clients are innocent. However, Sharma cannot be unaware that it is unethical to defame the deceased.

The lawyer was more in his elements when he alleged that the accused had been subjected to brutality. AFP quoted Sharma as saying that “All the accused have been badly beaten by the police and they have used the third degree to extract the statement that suits the evidence they have collected.” He even claimed: “My clients have been forced to confess to crimes that they did not commit.” He was referring to the five men who have been charged with not only raping the paramedical student in a moving bus but also brutally attacking her with a rod on that fateful night. The victim succumbed to her injuries at a Singapore hospital on Dec 29, 2012. 

The Journal:  Speaking to AFP on Thursday, Sharma said he would prove that his clients were not responsible for the attack on December 16 and he denied having tried to blame the victim. …

“I did speak to Bloomberg but did not say anything about the victim. I only told them that women are respected in India, they are mothers, sisters, friends but tell me which country respects a prostitute.”

Asked if that meant that he regarded the victim as a prostitute, Sharma replied: “No, not at all but I have to protect my clients and prove that they did not commit this heinous crime.”

I can’t help thinking that in this case court-appointed lawyers for the defense is called for. These almost self-appointed, publicity seeking lawyers are likely to only bring the court procedures into disrepute.

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What food crisis? Global food prices drop 7% while UK study says half of all food is wasted

January 10, 2013

Back in July the World Food and Agriculture Organsiation was warning about run-away food prices and a potential world food crisis. Yet two reports today would suggest that alarmism about food is just as unreal as that about man-made global warming:

1. Economic Times: Global food prices fell by 7.0 per cent in 2012 from the level the previous year, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Thursday, assuaging worries a few months ago that the world could be heading for a food crisis. 
The FAO added that prices had fallen in December for the third month in a row. 
The Rome-based FAO’s Food Price Index averaged 212 points in 2012, a drop of 7.0 per cent owing largely to falls in the prices of sugar, dairy products and oil. 
According to the FAO’s index, a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, prices dropped in December by 1.1 per cent to 209 points, down for the third month from the 263 points registered in August. 
“The result marks a reversal from the situation last July, when sharply rising prices prompted fears of a new food crisis,” said Jomo Sundaram from FAO’s Economic and Social Development Department. 

2. BBC: As much as half of the world’s food, amounting to two billion tonnes worth, is wasted, a UK-based report has claimed.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers said the waste was being caused by poor storage, strict sell-by dates, bulk offers and consumer fussiness. The study also found that up to 30% of vegetables in the UK were not harvested because of their physical appearance. The institution’s Dr Tim Fox said the level of waste was “staggering”.

The report said that between 30% and 50% of the four billion tonnes of food produced around the world each year went to waste. It suggested that half the food bought in Europe and the US was thrown away. Dr Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said: “The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world’s growing population – as well as those in hunger today. …..

It only reinforces the view that the world will be well able to feed its 9 billion + people by 2050. But being able to will not ensure that everybody is fed. There will no doubt be distribution issues and food supplies may not be equitably available to all the world’s population. There will still be cases of starvation and malnourished children even if more people  than ever before will be adequately fed and clothed. But there will be no catastrophic global food crisis.

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World polar bear population is now up to 22,600 – 32,000

January 10, 2013

What’s going on? Suddenly”official” figures for global polar bear populations are being shown to be quite substantial and increasing. What happened to all the fanatics of the “endangered species lobby”? Where is the WWF? I don’t think polar bears are in any danger of extinction and their endangerment is greatly exaggerated,  but are they actually thriving? Are polar bear culls now on the cards?

Perhaps the “real” scientists are beginning to see that continuing with the alarmism touted by eco-fascists is not sustainable and is counter-productive?

PolarBearScience has the story:

According to a dynamic summary report on the home page of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group website  called State of the Polar Bear, there are now 22,600-32,000 polar bears worldwide, when tallied by nation.

Here are the numbers, by nation, listed in the State of the Polar Bearsummary report (see map below):
Canada                              13,300-17,500
USA                                   1,200-1,800
Russia                               2,700-4,800
Norway                             1,900-3,600
Greenland
(Denmark)                        3,5000-4,400
Total                            22,600-32,000

The “Nations” page of the Polar Bear Specialist Group’s “State of the Polar Bear,” a dynamic summary that can be launched from the home page of the IUCN PBSG http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/dynamic/app/ [published Oct. 15, 2012] Click to enlarge.

The “Nations” page of the Polar Bear Specialist Group’s “State of the Polar Bear,” a dynamic summary that can be launched from the home page of the IUCN PBSG http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/dynamic/app/

This is a big change from the 20,000-25,000 that has been touted as the global polar bear population since 2005.

……

If there could be as many as 32,000 polar bears worldwide, why have we not heard of this before? Is this another example of data being kept secret?[see previous discussion here and here]. Or is something else going on?

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China’s trade surplus in 2012 was 48% higher than in 2011

January 10, 2013

China’s role as a motor for the world economy continues.

In spite of sluggish world-wide demand, Chinese exports rose 7.9 percent in 2012 from the previous year, while imports climbed 4.3 percent year on year. Xinhua reports that “China’s foreign trade for 2013 will be better than that of last year despite uncertainties, a General Administration of Customs spokesman said on Thursday. Spokesman Zheng Yuesheng said global economies have launched stimulus policies to prevent growth rates from slumping, adding that China’s domestic efforts to boost the growth of foreign trade will have more visible effects this year”.

MarketWatch: China’s trade surplus soared to $31.6 billion in December, trouncing estimates and widening sharply from a $19.6 billion surplus in November, aided by a strong growth in the country’s exports. Official data released Thursday showed exports expanded 14.1% during the month from the year-earlier period, while imports grew 6%. A survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires estimated a trade surplus of $19.6 billion, exports growth of 4.6% and a 3.3% increase in imports. The steep increase in December’s positive trade balance boosted China’s full-year trade surplus for 2012 to $231.1 billion, 48.1% higher than the level recorded in 2011, according to a Xinhua news report.

 

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Ice-age coming: Heaviest snowfall in Jerusalem in 20 years

January 10, 2013

Not much comment needed.

The Jerusalem Light Rail on a snow covered Jaffa Road on Wednesday (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

The Jerusalem Light Rail on a snow covered Jaffa Road on Wednesday (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90 – The Times of Israel)

Jerusalem Post: 

Greatest snowfall since 1992 sees Jerusalem municipality announce closure of schools, kindergartens; police shut Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway as snow predicted to persist until afternoon.

.. Elisha Peleg, an official in charge of emergencies with the Jerusalem Municipality, urged the city’s residents to remain at home and stay off the streets, telling Army Radio the area had overnight seen its greatest snowfall since 1992. He said 10 to 15 centimetres (4 to 6 inches) of snow had piled up in the city center and more than that in outlying areas. “The downtown area is bathed in white,” Peleg said.

“The elders of Jerusalem don’t remember such a snowstorm in years,” Peleg also said.

 

 

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New Doomsday possible on 13th April 2036 when asteroid Apophis could hit earth.

January 10, 2013

Yet another doomsday for us to look forward to (it gets boring looking back at doomsdays from the past that have failed to come to pass). This time it is a 325 m wide asteroid – named Apophis (Apep) after the Egyptian God of darkenss and chaos – which could crash into the Earth on 13th April 2036 (a Sunday).

My own hypothesis is that if we can increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to around 1200 ppm, a collision could be avoided. All I need is some funding (just a few million would do) and I’m sure I could develop a suitable mathematical model to “prove” this. Maybe Greenpeace and WWF could contribute. After all it would save so many species on Earth – not to mention humans.

Daily Mail: The European Space Agency’s orbiting telescope has captured striking new images of the huge ‘Doomsday’ asteroid Apophis that could smash into Earth in 2036 – revealing it is larger than previously thought.

Long billed as a potential cause of an Extinction Level Event (ELE) for humanity, today ESA officials announced that its Herschel Space Observatory discovered that the asteroid is 1,066 feet wide, 20 percent larger than the previous estimate of 885 feet.

Whizzing past Earth at the relatively close distance of nine million miles tonight, Apophis is being closely tracked because of a 2004 study that predicted the rock has a 2.7 percent chance of hitting Earth in April 2029, which was later revised to 2036.

BBC: The large rocky mass was first discovered in 2004. At the time, it raised alarm when scientists calculated that it had a one-in-45,000 chance of smashing into the Earth in 2029.  Later revisions, lifted this threat; instead on the Friday 13 April 2029, it will make a close pass at a distance of about 30,000km. However, astronomers say there is still a one-in-200,000 chance that it could strike Earth in 2036.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast, UK, said: “In 2029, it will pass so close to us that Earth’s gravity will change its orbit. Most of the potential orbits it will end up on will mean we are safe for the next 100 years. But there is a small region of space – something we call a keyhole – and if it passes through that keyhole in 2029, it will come back and hit us on 13 April in 2036.”

If this happened, it would strike the Earth with 100 times the energy in our largest nuclear bombs, said Prof Fitzsimmons.

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