Theatre: Nuclear debate and a murky moment in time

From new Zealand Herald: Nuclear debate and a murky moment in time

The idea that we deviate from the path we are on - because of choice, chance or some sort of determinism - is one that British master dramatist and author Michael Frayn has long explored.

It threads through Frayn's 1998 play Copenhagen, which, following an international trend to revive many of his plays, gets an Auckland staging next week courtesy of recently arrived English director Alex Bonham and actors Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Bruce Phillips and Simon Kane.

Based on murky real-life events long argued over by historians and scientists, the award-winning drama revolves round a 1941 meeting between Werner Heisenberg (Kane), one of the scientists leading Nazi Germany's nuclear energy project, and his friend, mentor and fellow physicist Niels Bohr (Phillips), in occupied Denmark.

Exactly what Heisenberg's motivations were remain unclear, not helped by the fact that the protagonists, fearing they were being monitored by the Gestapo, talked to one another carefully and cryptically. Did he want Bohr to help him develop an atomic bomb so Germany could drop one on London, did he want moral guidance, or did he want the older man to know what might lie ahead so he could try to stop it?

In true post-modern style, Copenhagen explores what he might have been seeking by bringing together after their death the spirits of Heisenberg, Bohr and the latter's wife Margrethe, who acts as a sort of spectral witness, opening the play by asking, "Why did he come to Copenhagen?' and watching, commenting on from time to time, what the men are discussing and debating.

Ward-Lealand says of all the characters she has played, this is the one who has to listen with the keenest ears and interpret in the sharpest possible way.

"I don't think I have had a piece that is so packed with ideas. Each role is complex in its own way, but I don't think I have played a character so closely involved with the creation of such a huge and potentially world-changing idea."

Each character sees things differently and they proffer their own versions of what took place. If they feel a re-telling of the meeting is wrong, they call for "another draft" and the story takes on a fresh perspective. Along the way, there is lively discussion about nuclear physics and the morality of scientists developing atomic bombs.

Bonham and the cast acknowledge there is a lot of talk about physics, but say Frayn makes the science accessible and relevant so Copenhagen becomes a human story about moral dilemmas and how fate can depend on what a person chooses not to do as much as the actions they do take.

Dr Cather Simpson, a senior lecturer in Auckland University's Department of Physics, helped the cast get to grips with the scientific concepts. Phillips says Simpson's input has been invaluable, further personalising and bringing to life the science behind the play. As Kane says, if the actors have a clear understanding, it makes the play and its themes more real for an audience.

Bonham saw Copenhagen 11 years ago and says the "fiercely intelligent" play changed her life. It made her see the world in a different light and think more deeply about the impact of making a conscious decision not to do something.

Performance
What: Copenhagen
Where & when: Tapac, Western Springs, May 31-June 10

 

Iranian university to work with U.S. company on nuclear fusion project: Guardian

From Tehran Times: Iranian university to work with U.S. company on nuclear fusion project: Guardian

TEHRAN - A U.S. company and an Iranian university have agreed to collaborate on nuclear fusion, the elusive technology that promises a limitless supply of clean energy, the Guardian reported on Friday. 

 

New Jersey-based Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc and Tehran’s Islamic Azad University will jointly design a fusion machine that “would be affordable to construct in industrializing nations”, according to a contract signed last weekend and seen by the Guardian.

 

There is doubt whether U.S. trade sanctions will permit the collaboration, but LPP noted in a written statement that the pact qualifies as an official U.S. Department of Treasury exemption “which authorizes collaborating with academics and research institutions on the… creation and enhancement of written publications.” 

 

LPP was scheduled to notify the president’s council of advisors on science and technology of its Iranian partnership at 2:00 p.m. ET on Friday in Washington DC. 

 

Many people regard nuclear fusion as the Holy Grail of energy sources. Unlike today’s nuclear fission, it does not generate power by splitting atoms and leaving behind dangerous waste. Rather, in theory, it fuses them together – the way the sun works – typically combining isotopes of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium.

It's not supposed to rain while you're on vacation!

I'm sitting in a cabin up near Mount Rushmore with my mom and my aunt...and it's raining!

So we're playing Scrabble.

We'll be leaving for home early tomorrow, as its a 5 hour drive and we're seeing a play at 7.30...but I'll try to post at some point, on matters relevant to this blog!

Saturday I should be back to my old routine.

Again, thanks for your patience.

I crave your indulgence

My mother's sister is visiting for three days.


My mom's deaf as a post, my dad can't be bothered to get out of his chair, so I will be doing the entertaining - the chauffeuring and the talking and the communicating - for the next three days.


So I'll be posting back here Thursday.


Thanks for your patience.

Antimatter Propulsion Engine Redesigned Using CERN's Particle Physics Simulation Toolkit

From Technology Review: Antimatter Propulsion Engine Redesigned Using CERN's Particle Physics Simulation Toolkit
Smash a lump of matter into antimatter and it will release a thousand times more energy than the same mass of fuel in a nuclear fission reactor and some 2 billion times more than burning the equivalent in hydrocarbons.

So it's no wonder that antimatter is the dream fuel for science fiction fans.

The problem, of course, is that antimatter is in rather short supply making the prospect of ever building a rocket based on this technology somewhat remote.

But from time to time physicists put aside these concerns and have a little fun working out how good antimatter rocket engines can be. Today it's the turn of Ronan Keane at Western Reserve Academy and Wei-Ming Zhang at Kent State University, both in Ohio, who take a new approach to the problem with some interesting results.

First, some basic rocket science. The maximum speed of a rocket depends on its exhaust velocity, the fraction of mass devoted to fuel and the configuration of the rocket stages. "The latter two factors depend strongly on fine details of engineering and construction, and when considering space propulsion for the distant future, it seems appropriate to defer the study of such specifics," say Keane and Zhang.

So these guys focus on the exhaust velocity--the speed of the particles produced in matter-antimatter annihilations as they leave the rocket engine.

The thrust from these annihilations comes largely from using a magnetic field to deflect charged particles created in the annihilation. These guys focus on the annihilation of protons and antiprotons to produce charged pions.

So an important factor is how efficiently the magnetic field can channel these particles out of the nozzle.

In fact, the exhaust velocity of these pions depends on two factors--their average initial velocity when they are created and the efficiency of the magnetic nozzle design.

In the past, various physicists have calculated that the pions should travel at over 90 per cent the speed of light but that the nozzle would be only 36 per cent efficient. That translates into an average exhaust velocity of only a third of lightspeed, barely relativistic and somewhat of a disappointment for antimatter propulsion fans.

All that is set to change now, however. Keane and Zhang have come up with a different set of figures with the help of software developed by CERN that simulates the interaction between particles, matter and fields of various kinds.

CERN uses this software, called GEANT4 (short for Geometry and Tracking 4), to better understand how particles behave at the Large Hadron Collider, which itself collides beams of protons and antiprotons. So it's ideally suited to Keane and Zhang's task.

The new work produces some good news and some bad news. First the bad. The new simulations indicate that pions produced in this way will be significantly slower than previously thought, travelling at only 80 per cent of light speed.

The good news is that the GEANT4 simulations indicate that a magnetic nozzle can be much more efficient than previously envisioned, reaching 85 per cent efficiency. That translates into an average exhaust velocity of about 70 per cent light speed. That's much more promising. "True relativistic speeds once more become a possibility," say Keane and Zhang.

These guys have another surprise up their sleeve. Their nozzle has a magnetic field strength of around 12 Tesla. "Such a field could be produced with today’s technology, whereas prior nozzle designs anticipated and required major advances in this area," they say.

That will bring a smile to the face of many science fiction fans.

There is, of course, the small problem of gathering enough antimatter for a journey of any decent length. The number of antiatoms made at CERN is small enough to be countable. By one estimate, at this rate it will take a thousand years to make a single microgram of antimatter.

Keane and Zhang point out that all earlier estimates predate the PAMELA spacecraft's discovery last year that Earth is surrounded by a ring of antiprotons and suggest that this could mined for fuel. What they don't mention, however, is that PAMELA spotted only 28 antiprotons in two years--far less than the rate at which CERN makes them on a daily basis.

Keane and Zhang finish by noting that other fuel technologies have advanced at an exponential rate, liquid hydrogen production, for example. If antimatter manufacture turns out to follow a similar trajectory, who knows what could happen.

Interesting, entertaining and wildly ambitious--all good fun. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281: Beamed Core Antimatter Propulsion: Engine Design and Optimisation

Iran hangs man convicted of killing nuclear physicist in bomb attack blamed on Israel’s Mossad

The only problem with Iran's conclusion that Mossad was behind the killings is that, surely, Mossad would have been smarter - killing these guys in a way that would have been dismissed as natural death. Why kill them, anyway? Why not just sabotage the nuclear enrichment facility.

From the Washington Post: Iran hangs man convicted of killing nuclear physicist in bomb attack blamed on Israel’s Mossad
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has hanged a man who was sentenced to death for the 2010 killing of a nuclear physicist, state TV reported Tuesday.

Majid Jamali Fashi, who had been accused of being an agent of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, was hanged in Tehran on Tuesday morning, the broadcast said.

Tehran University physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed by a bomb-rigged motorcycle that exploded outside his house as he was leaving for work in January 2010. He had no publicly disclosed links to Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran claims that Israel and the U.S. are trying to disrupt its nuclear program through covert operations. Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but has neither confirmed nor denied it, accuses Iran of seeking to develop an atomic bomb.

Iran has denied it seeks nuclear weapons and insists its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes only, such as generating electricity and nuclear isotopes to treat cancer patients.

At least five Iranian nuclear scientists, including a manager at the Natanz enrichment facility, have been killed in recent years. Tehran has accused Israel’s Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s MI-6 of being behind the assassinations. The U.S. and Britain have denied the allegations but Israel has remained silent on the issue.

Jamali Fashi, 24, was tried and convicted last August, and subsequently sentenced to death in Mohammadi’s killing. His lawyer appealed the verdict but Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the execution order issued by a lower court, paving the way for the hanging.

During the trial, he was accused of cooperating with Mossad, traveling to Israel to attend a Mossad training course and receiving money from the Israeli intelligence service.

Last year, Iran’s state TV broadcast what it said were confessions by Jamali Fashi in which he admitted that he was recruited by Mossad.

Engineering school looks to offer nuclear emphasis

From Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune: Engineering school looks to offer nuclear emphasis
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/may/09/engineering-school-looks-offer-nuclear-emphasis/

The University of Missouri’s College of Engineering is in the process of coming up with new graduate-level nuclear engineering degree offerings, sidestepping the existing nuclear engineering program on campus.

It’s the latest move in a tussle between administrators and the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, which is currently housed under MU’s Graduate School.

Administrators have said NSEI will close after its last student graduates and will ultimately be replaced with a larger, more interdisciplinary program. The idea is to allow the College of Engineering to move forward with nuclear engineering offerings even as NSEI is phased out.
That means, in the interim, two separate entities, NSEI and the college, both would be offering master’s and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering. NSEI offers those degrees with emphases in medical physics, health physics or power.

The College of Engineering would then offer the degree with another emphasis in an area yet to be determined.

Because it is adding an emphasis area and not an entirely new degree, creating the College of Engineering program does not require the type of approval process needed when new degrees are created, MU Provost Brian Foster said.

But Sudarshan Loyalka, a curators’ professor in NSEI, said he fears such a move will be confusing and dilute nuclear engineering at MU.

“This is, in my view, an outrage,” he said. “We have a strong program already in place, which has been working extremely well. Starting something of this type does not serve the students, the faculty or the community. There is no argument or rationale behind it. It is totally unwarranted.”
Foster said he hopes NSEI faculty would be involved in the discussions creating the new nuclear engineering track, but so far, they have not been included.

Engineering Dean James Thompson held a meeting yesterday to begin planning details of the program. The NSEI faculty members were not invited, nuclear engineering Professor Mark Prelas said. He was not aware of details of any new nuclear engineering program.

NSEI has been on the chopping block since March 12, when administrators announced it would cease to exist on March 15. They backed away from that timeline after pushback from students and alumni