The full story of Oppenheimer's most famous quote

Thought-provoking stuff via Vladimir Pecha.

What was going through J. Robert Oppenheimer’s head when he saw the great fireball of the Trinity test looming above him? According to his brother, Frank, he only said, “it worked.” But most people know a more poetic account, one in which Oppenheimer says (or at least thinks) the following famous lines: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

The story of the Gita is that of Arjuna, a human prince who has been summoned to a war between princely cousins. Arjuna doesn’t want to fight — not because he lacks courage, or skill, but because it is a war of succession, so his enemies are his own cousins, his friends, his teachers. The text of the Gita is mostly Krishna telling Arjuna why Arjuna must go to war, even if Arjuna does not want to do it.

So let’s step back and ask who Oppenheimer is meant to be in this situation. Oppenheimer is not Krishna/Vishnu, not the terrible god, not the “destroyer of worlds” — he is Arjuna, the human prince! He is the one who didn’t really want to kill his brothers, his fellow people. But he has been enjoined to battle by something bigger than himself — physics, fission, the atomic bomb, World War II, what have you — and only at the moment when it truly reveals its nature, the Trinity test, does he fully see why he, a man who hates war, is compelled to battle. It is the bomb that is here for destruction. Oppenheimer is merely the man who is witnessing it.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/05/23/oppenheimer-gita

It's good to be periodically reminded of how stupid can be

[These days I try not to read stuff like this because literally all it does is anger up the blood. Nevertheless, sometimes it's worth being reminded that the world is indeed chock-full of idiots and angry people, and we ignore this at our peril.]

"I've gotten tired of girls like you who shamelessly attempt to pry into my career and really the kind of money/earning potential I have," he then messaged. "I put my job in my profile. I now use it as a vetting process to determine the truly shameless and unintelligent ones on here." He later added: "I don't fall victim... to this neo-liberal, Beyonce, feminist cancer which plagues society."

Ah yes, Beyonce : undoubtedly the fifth horseperson of the apocalypse, hell-bent on crushing us all beneath her mighty feet in a storm of uninteresting music. Will she never desist ??? Or will this terrible movement of freedom and equality bring forth demons from the hell-pit to devour the world in a carnal orgy of liberal hoity-toity fannying about ?*

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syPlnB9IQQ4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36488867/bumble-dating-app-blocks-and-shames-small-minded-misogynist

MIchael Gove's Guide To Experts

http://www.telesgraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/10/michael-goves-guide-to-britains-greatest-enemy-the-experts/

Cold blooded goats

Hibernation is the obvious exception. But there are also a very few cases where mammals are just not very good at generating internal heat :

Respect also to those who gave a shout out to the naked mole rat. "Naked mole rats are interesting from a thermoregulatory standpoint, because they don't control their body temperature very well," says Boyles. This does not mean they are failed mammals. Rather, it is simply that they spend all their lives in underground tunnels where the temperature is fairly predictable, usually somewhere between 29 and 32C."They don't have to spend the energy on thermoregulation," says Boyles. "It's the perfect example of an evolutionary adaptation, not a physiological limitation."

Finally, Jennifer Jones highlighted an extinct species of goat called Myotragus balearicus. It has been claimed that this goat was properly ectothermic: that is, entirely dependent on heat from its environment. The evidence is indirect. "The bone microstructure indicates that Myotragus grew unlike any other mammal but similar to crocodiles at slow and flexible rates," wrote researchers in 2009. This is suggestive of ectothermy, but it is a long way short of proof... It is an intriguing idea. However, we could not find a follow-up to the 2009 study, so for now it is not clear if M. balearicus was truly ectothermic.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160609-time-to-bust-a-myth-not-all-mammals-are-warm-blooded

Kangroo + pig = ?

What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a pig ? A non-viable embryo, hopefully.

A pig and kangaroo kept in a captivity in northern Australia appear to have formed a rather close physical bond. Animal behaviour scientists say the conduct of the pair, kept at the Aileron Roadhouse in the Northern Territory, is rare and surprising.

The owner of the roadhouse, Greg Dick, told the BBC that the animals spent a lot of time together and had "been in love for a while". Experts say the "aberrant" behaviour developed due to years in captivity. Mr Dick said he had seen the kangaroo sleeping with, cuddling and "carrying on too busy" with the female pig, named Apples.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36486468

The Armenian Arecibo

The Armenian Arecibo

The last time I went image hunting for this I could only find a few blurry postage-stamp images. The ROT-54/2.6 probably needs a better name for social media appeal (though it does also answer to Herouni Mirror Radio telescope, which is something of an improvement). Still, at least if you search for ROT-54/2.6 you'll now get a few good pictures, like this one. There's also a nice YouTube video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq37U4jH8Ls

I can't easily find much more information on it, though from the same link as the picture below :

The first in the World Radio-Optical Telescope ROT-54/2.6 was designed and built during 1975-1985 by Radiophysics Research Institute (RRI, Yerevan, Armenia) on territory of RRI Aragats Scientific Centre (ASC, 100 ha) on Mount Aragats (Armenia) at altitude 1700m. The ROT-54/2.6 includes the Radiotelescope with Large Antenna of 54m in diameter and the Optical Telescope with diameter of mirror 2.6m and focus distance of 10m. The Large Antenna of ROT is the new type. Its Main mirror (54m) is fixed in ground and has hemispheric shape. Using aperture is 32m in diameter (surface using factor 0,6). The spherical aberrations of Main mirror are recompensed by special shape of Secondary (Small) mirror of 5m in diameter, which can rotate around the centre point of Main mirror.

So like Arecibo it's a spherical reflector which uses 32m of its 54m dish to collect photons. Hence it's similar to Arecibo, though smaller. But that's where the similarities end. First, it's a lot smaller, but the frequency range is much greater than Arecibo (1-300 GHz according to Wikipedia, compared to Arecibo's maximum of 10 GHz). It also covers pretty much the entire full hemisphere, unlike Arecibo's dish which is only the bottom tenth of so of the sphere. And the design of the mount for the receivers is completely different - Arecibo uses a platform suspended on high-tension cables; Herouni has a tripod structure which intersects the dish and uses an optical telescope (itself 2.6m in diameter, which is not so small !) as a counterweight.

As to how good it is, I've absolutely no idea. I've never heard of a single publication from it so I'm inclined to guess "not very".

EDIT : The original image I used is now offline, so I replaced it with this one (which has been uploaded to this blog for safe keeping). I also found this PDF detailing the structural and technical parameters of the telescope, and also briefly describes how it was used to search for the Cosmic Microwave Background. The search was unsuccessful, leading to a brusque dismissal of the standard cosmology :

So there is only one explanation, that Relict radiation is absent in Universe, and it is that there never was any Big Bang [3, 4, 5] in Universe.

Nice telescope, shame about the science.

A human-carrying drone

Yet another annoying article where the content is fine but the author hasn't grasped the difference between sentences and paragraphs.

It's like reading a series of soundbites, except not really because they're all closely related.

Here is my edited version which has a proper paragraph structure and the content re-arranged to give it a more coherent narrative :



A human-carrying drone has been given approval for test flights in Nevada, the first of its kind in the United States. The autonomous drone - dubbed 184 - can carry one passenger and was developed by Chinese company EHang. A prototype was shown off at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with the company hoping to sell the drones later this year.

Officials from the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems granted permission for the drone to be tested and offered to help EHang submit the results to the Federal Aviation Administration in a bid to win further approval. It is not clear whether the drone will carry a passenger during tests.

The prototype drone is over 4ft (1.2m) tall, weighs 440lb (200kg) and has eight propellers. It can carry a single passenger for 23 minutes at 60mph (96km/h). Passengers enter their destination on a 12in (30cm) touchscreen in front of their seat, and the drone's on-board computer works out the best route. There is no passenger over-ride function, meaning the user cannot take control in an emergency. In the event of a malfunction, the drone would land in the nearest available area. It is likely to sell for between £140,000 ($200,000) and £200,000.

Experts were divided over whether such a system would have mass appeal. "I personally look forward to the day when drone taxis are part of Nevada's transportation system," the institute's business development director, Mark Barker, told local the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Dr Mirko Kovac, director of the Aerial Robotics Lab at Imperial College London, said: "Passenger drones have huge potential. "They can decrease congestion, offer flights in challenging environments and in developing countries where the road infrastructure is not as developed. We don't even think about large aircraft flying over large cities on autopilot. Yet people are afraid of drones, some of which may use similar robotic technology. I think society will overcome this once the technology is more proven."

Big leap Regulation of commercial drones has proved tricky in both the US and Europe, and some doubt passenger drones will ever get off the ground. "It feels like it is a long way off," said Douglas McNeill, a senior analyst at consultancy Macquarie. "Drones will first have to prove their worth in less people-facing roles such as deliveries of small cargo. The other question is whether people will be willing to fly in a pilotless aircraft, and that seems like a big leap. People are sensitive to reduced journey times, and if drones could do that it would be a big plus - but I'm not sure that they can. Consumers are led by what regulators say are safe. And if they say these drones are safe, people might be more willing."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36478614

The myth of the medieval belief in the Flat Earth

The medieval Flat Earth myth is just one aspect of the whole, "the Dark Ages were entirely due to the Church suppressing science" idea, but it's a particularly pernicious one. The best that can really be said for that notion is that it's not totally bollocks. The medieval thinkers did have some really weird beliefs that came from religious textbooks, and there were indeed, on occasion, some pretty damn brutal atrocities committed in the name of religion. But the idea that all rational thinking was seen as heresy or that all scientific discoveries were seen as the work of the devil... that is pure nonsense.

Of course, the fact that the average person still gets their idea of medieval cosmology from a 1951 Bugs Bunny cartoon is not really the issue here. The problem is that the Flat Earth Myth keeps popping up in New Atheist critiques of religion, despite it being patent nonsense. If it were just people like Tyson's Twitter defenders whose grasp of history was so inadequate that they believe this stupid myth this would not be an issue. But when a man like Tyson, who is regarded as some kind of authority on all things (not just science), and who has 5.21 MILLION Twitter followers, peddles this pseudo historical crap it's small wonder New Atheists have a warped view of history. Donald Prothero is nowhere near as influential, but as an educator, it's deeply concerning that he takes it upon himself to lecture others on this subject, despite the fact he doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about.

What we see here, in short, is everything that is wrong with New Atheist Bad History - outdated myths backed by garbled evidence peddled by non-historians who have irrelevant authority by merit of being scientists and who are motivated by an emotionally-driven ideological bias against religion. The result is, yet again, total garbage presented uncritically by people who are meant to be rationalists and sceptics. And that's the problem.

I would add to the article that it wasn't modern antitheists who first came up with the idea of painting the Catholic Church as some sort of thought policing system. That was started by humanists and Protestants who had their own reasons to vilify the medieval Church (http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2014/07/review-gods-philosophers.html). Modern antitheists are simply happy to run with this to suit their own purposes.


http://historyforatheists.blogspot.cz/2016/05/the-new-atheist-bad-history-great-myths.html

Preparing to vote

I've registered to vote by proxy. This issue matters to me a lot more than previous recent referendums. But then, as an expat scientist, I'm heavily biased.

About six million residents have yet to register to vote on 23 June, more than a million of them are under the age of 25. Lord Kinnock said the outcome of the referendum was "vital to the future of British people of all ages" but "the longest and strongest effects will be felt by you - the young generations". "The risk is, if we get a low turnout, regardless of what people's background politics is, that by default Leave could win."

(Non-British readers should be advised than in general, the only people in Britain who care about Europe are the ones who hate it. That's why most of our MEPs are UKIP; not necessarily because most Brits are anti-Europe, but because they are totally apathetic about it.)

But was there no condition imposed on voter turnout ? For referendums I feel there should be some lower limit below which they become void. Then again I'm becoming disillusioned with the idea of direct democracy. It might work if a large proportion of people were actively interested and rational, but they are neither. Which may be the fault of the media or entirely natural, I don't know.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn - who has previously expressed Eurosceptic views - has been accused of being "half-hearted" in his backing for Labour's position to campaign to stay in the EU. This week he said there was an "overwhelming case" to remain in, citing issues ranging from mobile phone charges to clean beaches and protecting bees - but also called for sweeping reforms.

Right, yes, because these are a) tremendously important and b) really matter to voters. Aaaargh. I'm also pretty much done with Corbyn. I like the guy, but he has the leadership skills of a bag of hedgehogs. He'd be a fantastic deputy Prime Minister though.

The major advance of the E.U. is freedom of movement. This should be praised to the stars at every opportunity. It is a wonderful, fantastic advance compared to the xenophobic, isolationist, imperial policies of pre-war Europe, and I simply do not understand those who see that horrible era as "the good old days". For this reason alone we should stay in, not that there aren't many others also. And while like any other bureaucratic political institution the E.U. is not without major flaws, I see nothing that couldn't be better fixed by us staying in to help fix it.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/05/i-quite-like-eu-lets-keep-it.html

(Disclaimer : these sorts of posts have the tendency to attract racists and occasionally mysterious hordes of UKIP supporters with whom I've never interacted; if that happens I will simply delete comments because I've utterly lost patience with bigoted idiots)
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36447926

Science versus religion is not a chronic condition

The historical relations between science and religion have been the focus of considerable study over the past thirty years and the verdict is now in: there has been no enduring warfare between science and religion.  The present consensus among historians is that there is no consistent pattern of historical relations between science and religion.  If there is a single word that might characterize past relationships it is 'complexity'. 

One reason for this complexity is that the disciplines were arranged very differently in the past and up until the nineteenth century there were no clear cut boundaries between what we would now call ‘science’ and religion.  Medieval thinkers, for example, tended to classify theology as one of the sciences.   From their perspective, speaking of a conflict between science and theology could only result from some kind of conceptual confusion, since theology was a science.  Subsequently, in the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton (1642-1726/7) would declare that discussion of God was an integral part of the business of scientific investigation. 

The very idea of a 'law of nature', when first proposed in the seventeenth century, was not a mere metaphor, but was regarded as a divinely authored rule that natural objects were compelled to obey... virtually all the key figures of the scientific revolution were devout Christians.  Most would have found any talk of an inevitable science-religion conflict deeply puzzling

http://www.theologie-naturwissenschaften.de/startseite/leitartikelarchiv/conflict-myth.html