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

New Insight Into Atomic Nuclei May Explain How Supernovas Formed Elements Crucial to Humankind

From Science Daily: New Insight Into Atomic Nuclei May Explain How Supernovas Formed Elements Crucial to Humankind

ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) — Ground-breaking research in nuclear physics at the University of Oslo may help astrophysicists understand how the heavier elements in our universe were made.<P>
The Big Bang only produced the lightest elements, such as hydrogen and helium. One of the fundamental questions of astrophysics is how all the other elements were formed. In 1957, American researchers concluded that elements were formed through nuclear reactions inside stars.

Astrophysicists have believed that half the elements which are heavier than iron were formed in gigantic star explosions, known as supernovas.

However, there is one little snag with this theory: Astrophysicists have huge problems to make computer simulations of a supernova.

"A supernova is extremely complicated. Astrophysicists have not yet managed to make realistic computer simulations of supernova explosions," says nuclear physicist Ann-Cecilie Larsen at the SAFE-Centre for Accelerator-based Research and Energy Physics at the University of Oslo.

The simulations are based on certain characteristics of the atomic nucleus that are taken for granted but which have never been tested, as these characteristics are hard to determine.

Now, experiments carried out at the University of Oslo show that astrophysicists are using the wrong data in their models. No one has ever carried out these experiments before. The new results may have a great impact.

"Calculations show that it will be 200 to 300 times easier to achieve specific nuclear reactions in a supernova with our data," Larsen says to the research magazine Apollon at University of Oslo.

Stars with onion-like layers

In order to understand this discovery, we must take a few steps back.

"In earlier times we thought the Sun was fuelled by coal. However, when we came to understand how old the solar system actually was, we realized there wasn't enough coal to fuel the Sun. Instead, the production of heat was explained by fusion, in other words melting nuclei together."

The Sun consists of approximately 75 per cent hydrogen, 23 per cent helium and a small portion of heavier elements. Pairs of hydrogen atoms fuse into helium atoms when the temperature and the pressure are so high that they exceed the electromagnetic forces that push the atoms apart. This is what happens at the centre of the Sun, where temperatures reach 15 million degrees Celsius.

About four billion years from now, all the hydrogen will be burned up. The combustion of helium will start, converting helium into carbon and oxygen. When the helium is burned up, the combustion of carbon and oxygen starts. In this way, increasingly heavy elements are formed.

"Imagine the Sun as an onion with multiple layers. The heaviest element is formed at the core, whereas the outer layers have lighter elements."

When the Sun expires, the core of the Sun will be transformed into neon. In a really heavy star, the core will have turned into iron. Then it will be over. A dying star will never be able to form heavier elements than iron. And the explanation is surprisingly simple.

"Stars do not gain energy by burning heavier atomic nuclei. This has to do with the nuclear binding energy."

In nuclear physics, energy can be released by fusing small atomic nuclei. This process is called fusion.

When the elements are heavier than iron, it is only possible to extract energy from nuclear reactions by splitting the atomic nucleus. This process is called fission, which we know from nuclear power plants.

In order for a dying star to end up as a supernova, its core must have been transformed into iron.

"Once the core cannot be compressed any further, the compressed matter must expand again in a gigantic explosion, or supernova. This is where the heavy elements of the universe may have been formed."

Atomic collisions

Nuclear physicists at the University of Oslo have measured the energy states of the elements iron and molybdenum. The results of these experiments could change our understanding of supernova explosions. All the experiments were conducted in the cyclotron laboratory at UiO, where nuclear physicists can measure what happens when atomic nuclei collide with each other at very high speeds.

The protons and neutrons are put very tightly together and orbit inside the nucleus itself. Protons are positively charged particles. Neutrons are not charged.

In one of the experiments the nuclear physicists shoot at a target consisting of iron, with helium ions. When a huge amount of energy is given to the iron nuclei, the protons and neutrons of the iron core are pushed into a new orbit. In the second experiment, helium is shot at molybdenum.

"The atomic nuclei become highly excited and emit electromagnetic radiation. This radiation can be measured. The characteristics of the atomic nucleus appear to be different to what was previously thought."

Instead of releasing all the energy in a single quantum leap, the atomic nucleus releases energy in a series of small quantum leaps.

"Our experiments show a strong probability that the atomic nucleus releases small amounts of energy. It has been widely believed that this had little effect on the formation of elements in supernovae. We were surprised. The dynamics of the element production could be very different. All the atomic nuclei are connected in a network. If the nucleus of an atom changes its characteristics, this may change the entire pattern governing the formation of other elements."

Elements vary

One of the problems with simulations is that no one knows what happens when nuclear reactions move beyond the well-known nuclei and out to the very exotic ones, that are not found in nature.

Atomic nuclei consist of a good mix of protons and neutrons. The definition of an element is determined by the number of protons. The physical characteristics of elements depend also on the number of neutrons. The various states are called isotopes. '

When it gets really hot, such as inside a star or a supernova, neutrons may be released and fuse with other atoms. When one of the neutrons of an atom emits an electron, the neutron turns into a proton. Then the atom has been transformed into a heavier element.

Nuclear physicists can calculate the probability of a physical transition between different elements. The known isotopes have been measured in laboratories. However, there are many isotopes which have not been measured. The limits are unknown.

"We do not know what happens when nuclear reactions in supernova explosions move beyond the table of isotopes. In a matter of seconds, many exotic atoms are formed that do not exist on Earth and which quickly transform into stable elements. Since we have no data on these exotic nuclei, the astrophysicists have to make many assumptions about their properties."

In a supernova explosion you need a large enough number of neutrons available. At the moment there seems to be more protons than neutrons in a supernova.

"In order to get the necessary reactions in a supernova, we must have neutron-rich nuclei."

This is precisely where Larsen's research comes in. As long as the supernova has a sufficient amount of neutrons, astrophysicists can, with the help of the new findings from the University of Oslo, produce better simulations of the formation of elements in supernovae.

Researchers discover significant water anomaly

From R&D Magszine: Researchers discover significant water anomaly
A team of researchers from the Stony Brook University Department of Physics and Astronomy along with colleagues from the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) in Spain, explain a puzzling water anomaly in a paper published in Physical Review Letters entitled, "Anomalous Nuclear Quantum Effects in Ice." The work details an anomaly—a deviation from the common form—of water ice that has been largely neglected and never before explained.

"We believe that our study explains a rare, seldom mentioned property of ice which should be included in the list of water anomalies as an example in which quantum effects are anomalous and increase with temperature," said Marivi Fernandez-Serra, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook, who collaborated with three UAM professors and Stony Brook Professors Philip Allen and Peter Stephens, and PhD student Betuk Pamuk.

In this contribution, the researchers show that the volume of water ice depends on the quantum "zero-point" motion of the H and O atoms in an opposite way from "normal" materials. Crystals shrink as they are cooled, but because of "zero-point" motion, shrinking stops before reaching temperatures of absolute zero. This effect is a result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that there is a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties can be simultaneously identified—the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be controlled, determined, or known.

This figure shows the hexagonal ice crystal and how quantum mechanics modifies the structure with respect to a purely classical crystal. At T=0 the classical crystal is larger than the quantum crystal, but at high temperature (T=200 K) the opposite occurs and the quantum crystal shrinks. This is contrary to any other material, where the quantum crystal always expands, at all temperatures.

Less massive atoms are more "quantum," with more zero-point energy. Lighter nuclei need more room to move than heavier nuclei, which translates into larger crystals. At high temperatures, quantum effects become less important, so the volume differences decrease with temperature, noted Fernandez-Serra. The opposite occurs with ice. D2O (deuterated or heavy water) occupies more volume than H2O molecules, a difference that increases with temperature. "In order to access and measure quantum mechanical effects in matter, we usually need to go to very low temperatures, but in water ice some zero-point effects actually become more relevant as the temperature increases," said Fernandez-Serra.

The theoretical model proposed, which is backed by careful computational modeling and an X-ray diffraction experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory's National Synchrotron Light Source, attributes the effect to the peculiar nature of the hydrogen bond. "In water, quantum mechanics manifests in a very striking way," said Fernandez-Serra. "Its effects are more dominant with increasing temperature, which is rather unexpected."

Astronaut Joe Allen returns to alma mater Thursday

Banner Graphic: Astronaut Joe Allen returns to alma mater Thursday
Joseph P. Allen IV, a 1959 graduate of DePauw University who has flown on two space shuttle flights and is a member of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, will return to his alma mater Thursday to offer "Reflections from the Edge of Earth."

Allen's speech is part of DePauw's 175th Anniversary Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series. The program, which will begin at 8 p.m. in Meharry Hall of historic East College, is free and open to the public.

Born in Crawfordsville in 1937, Allen earned a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics and physics from DePauw and a master's and doctoral degrees in physics from Yale University.

He was a nuclear physics research associate at the University of Washington when NASA selected him as one of 11 scientist-astronauts in 1967. After serving in several administrative positions with NASA, including four years at headquarters, he returned in 1981 to Johnson Space Center where he helped support the first space shuttle flight.

After four test flights, Columbia was ready for operational duty, blasting off in 1982 with Allen and three crewmates to deliver the first satellites to orbit for paying customers.

Nine hours after liftoff, Allen and William Lenoir conducted a countdown and sent a Satellite Business Systems communications satellite spinning out of the cargo bay. They repeated the feat the next day with a Canadian satellite. Allen and Lenoir were to have made the first shuttle space walk, but technical problems with the space suits canceled this plan.

History's first space salvage mission began when Allen and four other astronauts blazed into orbit aboard Discovery in 1984. Their main goal was to retrieve two communications satellites which had been stranded in useless orbits after deployment from an earlier shuttle.

Early in flight, the crew released a pair of satellites and then set out to round up their first target, Palapa. Once they caught up with it, Allen and Dale Gardner, wearing space suits, glided outside, with Allen moving untethered over to Palapa, propelled by a Buck Rogers-like jet pack. He latched onto it and moved it into position to be grabbed by the ship's robot arm.

For 90 minutes, one circuit of the globe, Allen held aloft the 1,200-pound satellite while work was done on it before it was manually lowered into the cargo bay. Allen and Gardner used similar procedures two days later to retrieve and stow Westar. Back on earth, the two satellites were repaired for return to orbit.

Allen left NASA in 1985. He served as chief executive officer of Space Industries International, Washington, D.C., and later was chairman of Veridian Corp., until he retired in 2004.

He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on April 30, 2005. A wrestler at DePauw, he is a life trustee of the university, a member of the DPU Athletic Hall of Fame, and received the Old Gold Goblet from DePauw in 1985.

The astronaut's father, Joseph Percival "Perk" Allen III, was a member of DePauw's economics faculty from 1957 until his retirement in 1975.

Allen will be introduced by his 1959 classmate and retired Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Robert Godwin. Following his remarks, Allen will take part in a conversation moderated by Howard Brooks, DPU professor of Physics and Astronomy. A reception for Allen will be held immediately following the event at Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a 1957 alumnus, delivered the inaugural remarks in February for DePauw's 175th Anniversary Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series: A Yearlong DePauw Discourse. The series will continue through June 2013.

Blue Valley senior is on the verge of a quantum leap for science

From Kansas City Star: Blue Valley senior is on the verge of a quantum leap for science The main course on the menu of innovations Hunter Browning is mounting at the age of 18 comes with large helpings of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics.

Seven provisional patents protect the enticing technology that has spawned two companies of his own making.

It’s laden with secret ingredients — electronic circuitry and chemical processes — that the Blue Valley senior expects players in the oil industry will try to buy off him or steal so they can suppress them.

It’s a heavy dish, developing hydrogen power from water to drive a car.

So how about an appetizer?

Take a look at the “armless crutch.”

This was a concept dreamed up by a couple of Browning’s classmates at Blue Valley’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies. What if you could attach something like a peg leg to the bent knee of someone with a broken ankle or a severe sprain?

When they needed a prototype built, of course they went to Browning.

The sleek result, lying across one of the school’s work tables last week, at first glance looked factory made.

But closer inspection revealed a piece of a go-kart tire at the foot of the peg leg, packed with insulation, connected to black PVC pipes leading to a hinge flexed by two hydraulic arms from a car window hatch. Red-painted strips of spare metal affixed with kitchen drawer handles held the straps and cushioning scavenged from the knee braces Browning once wore after a soccer injury.

“That was a good weekend project,” he says.

Browning quickly gained his reputation as the master of the testable prototype, said Jill Riffer, who guides the engineering design and development class at the Blue Valley center.

“Hunter was a physical-space creator more than a virtual-space creator,” she said. “He likes to tinker.”

Even more remarkable than the work of his hands, however, were the ideas he had been packing into his head on his own.

The engineering class was all about unleashing students to create and chase ideas, Riffer said. And she’s seen a lot of fascinating work.

“But did I think I’d see a hydrogen fuel cell…?”

To understand where Browning’s going, you have to see the world as he does — as a quantum universe.

“Everything you see is shaking,” he says. His eyes sweep across the tabletop. The chairs. The carpeted floor.

“Solidity is an illusion.”

Quantum physics explores the vast inner universe of molecules, the open spaces where atomic particles vibrate and struggle against one another in waves.

Kinetic energy is in everything, he says, “like mass on a spring.”

He spent most of any free time he had during his junior year learning everything he could on the science. Far beyond his high school texts, he was acquiring college texts, emailing professors, reading overnight into morning hours.

He had learned about electrolysis in sophomore chemistry — how precise use of electric currents can trigger chemical reactions.

That led him to the common but usually fanciful speculation on sparking the power of hydrogen out of water.

With enough trial and error, with the right processes, the right electrical current, the mysteries of the quantum universe could efficiently unleash hydrogen from oxygen’s grasp.

Couldn’t it?

During his junior year, Browning asked that question of his physics teacher, John Holloway.

Holloway’s first thought, he recalled, was to say, “No.” The laws of thermodynamics dictate that you can’t get something from nothing. The energy needed to break out hydrogen was too much to get enough energy profit in the output.

Many have tried.

The conflicting job of a science teacher, Holloway said, is that you have to be receptive and skeptical at the same time.

“You want an open mind,” he said, “but not so open that your brain falls out.”

Browning clearly believed in the idea — a passion that Holloway felt deserved encouragement. So he opted in favor of the open mind.

For Browning, his life “had taken a complete 180,” he said. “The goal … the ability this has to really help people … has been unbelievably motivating.”

Browning faced another barrier — and it wasn’t the physics.

It was his shyness.

The idea of speaking in public used to make him sick to his stomach in his middle school years.

Then, as he prepared for his senior year, he was going to have to make a major presentation on his hydrogen project in order to bring his work into the Center for Advanced Professional Studies and use its resources for his senior project.

Holloway joined the panel that would judge his idea.

There Browning stood, describing the resonant frequency of molecules and the chemical reactions, proposing the electrical circuitry and the models for measuring feedback.

Here, on display, “was the right way to learn,” Holloway said. “This project had completely lit a fire under him. He really understood the science.”

What was supposed to be a half-hour presentation turned into an hour and a half. Fascinated educators bombarded Browning with questions that he answered thoroughly.

The panel huddled briefly, and then the director, Donna Deeds, spun to face Browning, announcing: “All right. Let’s do it.”

Browning became the center’s most frequent visitor among what is a high-energy crowd of students. He’s in at 7 a.m. for several hours before heading off to other classes, then back in the afternoons and into most evenings.

Most of the students get to work with mentors. Browning’s mentor, David Cox of Garmin, has worked with several students in the past two years.

“But this was the first time,” Cox said, “that I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

It seemed far-fetched at first. A student with “ideas of grandeur,” Cox said.

But every day Browning assailed his mentor with new ideas. “He’d say: ‘Look at this report.’ ‘Look at this video.’ ‘Look at this article,’ ” Cox said. “He had a lot of confidence, and he built up my confidence.”

The once-shy teenager was now his own biggest promoter, selling his idea, marshaling the support he has needed financially and intellectually.

He’s created a company that he intends to help other entrepreneurial students learn to connect with mentors and the investor crowd.

As far as his own research goes, he has created a hydrogen cell that is efficient enough to power a cooking grill. So he’s created another company, Green Grills, which he plans will create water-powered grills to help raise the capital he needs to carry on his ultimate dream.

That is being carried out by his prize company, BLISresonance — Beauty Lies in Simplicity, which continues its pursuit of a water-powered car engine.

“He’s gone beyond ‘the crazy idea,’ ” Holloway said. “This is real engineering. If it works the way he thinks it can work, it’s a change-the-way-everything-works idea.”

Since the need isn’t readily apparent, Browning assured that he will be going to college this fall while he keeps on growing his companies and his research.

He’ll study physics at the University of Kansas — his safety school, of sorts.

He talks about the efficiencies “we’ve” already achieved. He talks about the energy models “we’ve” already beat.

Who’s “we?”

Sheepishly, he answers, “Me and my science.”

It’s a duo that’s getting closer to what physicists have said can’t be done.

“When the final circuitry gets done,” he said, “it’s going to be beautiful.”

Nukes and a fatwa

From Haaretz.com (an opinion piece): Nukes and a fatwa
In the same week that Iranian nuclear negotiators in Istanbul mentioned an alleged fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning nuclear weapons to offer reassurances about Iran’s peaceful nuclear intentions - 12 Iranian nuclear scientists reportedly attended a failed ballistic missile test in North Korea.

This is not the first time Iranian nuclear scientists have shown an uncanny interest in military applications. In May 2008, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that a scientist employed at the Institute for Applied Physics of Tehran had included in his curriculum vitae “a Taylor-Sedov equation for the evolving radius of a nuclear explosion ball with photos of the 1945 Trinity test.” Iran’s answer about their scientist’s interest in a plutonium bomb’s nuclear explosion was elusive – and IAEA inspectors were not allowed to interview him.

Iran may now protest that its scientists’ presence had nothing to do with fitting a nuclear payload into a missile warhead – maybe they were just there on holiday. Yet, these coincidences, alongside Iran’s decade-long cover-up of its nuclear activities, are telltale signs of a military program, not a civil one. As if this was not enough, solemn references to Khamenei’s fatwa came only days after Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, revealed in a Boston Globe opinion piece that Iran had reached ‘breakout capacity’ in 2002: “It is too late” said Mousavian “to demand that Iran suspend enrichment activities; it mastered enrichment technology and reached break-out capability in 2002 and continues to steadily improve its uranium enrichment capabilities.” Mousavian was pitching a compromise proposal to a Western audience, but he also unwittingly shed light on Iran’s nuclear progress and intentions. U.S. officials insist that Iran has not yet decided whether it wants nuclear weapons – and are confident that, if this decision is ever made, they will be able to know it in time to preempt and thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

When the U.S. Department of National Intelligence published its 2007 Iran National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), it followed this logic when it postulated that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Even assuming this information was accurate – and successive IAEA reports offer abundant reasons for scepticism – the NIE never fully explained why the programme was halted. The standard assumption was that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had made Iranian leaders concerned that U.S. forces would now turn their attention to Tehran.

This approach would postpone a decision to some future date – but leave open the path to nuclear weapons. Yet, this is flawed logic, because it does not take into account how advanced the program was when it was allegedly suspended.

An answer to this question is even more critical to gauging Iran’s intentions than the motives behind the decision.

If Mousavian’s observation that Iran had “reached break-out capability in 2002” is true, then Iran’s weapons program was ‘halted’, not because its leaders’ resolve wavered, but rather because it had achieved the goal of producing a nuclear weapon short of the fissile material which the enrichment programme would later yield.

Having become the focus of intense international scrutiny on account of its previously undeclared nuclear activities, Iran stopped its efforts to build a nuclear weapon (very advanced), concentrating instead on enrichment (not advanced enough), which is critical for nuclear weapons but can be plausibly justified within the framework of a civil program.

This explains also why Iran, with its Natanz enrichment facility exposed, sought to build a new, secret underground enrichment facility near Qom, whose ‘size and configuration’ as U.S. President Obama said, ‘is inconsistent with a peaceful program.’

What about the fatwa then?

In 1984, amidst the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war, the late Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the reassembling of the Shah’s military nuclear team. Khomeini had that program disbanded in 1979 on Islamic grounds. But he reversed himself – and if there ever was a fatwa, the Islamic Republic’s founding father revoked it there and then.

Taken at the height of an existential war, this decision was clearly aimed at military, not peaceful civil nuclear developments.

As talks resume in Baghdad on May 23, negotiators should not lose sight of this fact – or else they may endorse a deal that will leave Iran, in due course, with the ability to build the weapon it has always coveted.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington DC and the author of The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Corps (FDD Press, 2011)

Princeton Plasma Physics scientists to test new theory for a puzzling problem

From NJ.com: Princeton Plasma Physics scientists to test new theory for a puzzling problem
Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab have offered a theory explaining a decades-old puzzle in fusion research: plasma reactions that break down before reaching the optimum conditions needed to generate power efficiently.

The researchers believe bubble-like islands in the plasma are the culprit, and if confirmed by experiments, their explanation could overcome one of the major barriers to generating clean energy from nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion occurs when atomic nuclei within plasma — heated, electrically charged gases — join together. Forcing atomic nuclei to fuse requires a combination of high temperatures, increasing the speed at which particles move, and high density, which forces particles closer together. The combination increases the rate at which particles collide, generating a burst of energy that scientists believe can be harnessed as a new, cleaner source of electricity.

But when physicists increase the density of plasma in a type of reactor used in plasma experiments called a tokamak, the plasma breaks down well below the optimal density for fusion reactions.

This density limit has been a mystery for decades, said David Gates, a research physicist at PPPL who co-authored the proposed solution, published in the journal Physical Review Letters last week with Luis Delgado-Aparicio, a postdoctoral fellow at PPPL.

Gates and Delgado-Aparicio’s insight was connecting the mysterious behavior at the density limit to another phenomenon that hadn’t been fully explained — the islands that grow as plasma reaches the density limit, Gates said.

During fusion experiments, scientists increase the temperature and density of the plasma in the tokamak through ohmic heating, the same process that heats a toaster. An electric current flowing through the plasma generates energy and creates a magnetic field that keeps the plasma together.

But islands in the plasma collect impurities from the walls of the reactor, which Gates and Delgado-Aparico said cool the plasma and shield it from energy that should heat it. As the plasma approaches the density limit, the islands grow until the electric current collapses and the plasma flies apart.

French physicist Paul-Henri Rebut, in the mid-1980s, was the first to describe plasma islands. Gates learned about them a decade later while working with Wolfgang Suttrop, a German physicist whose paper speculating that islands might be connected to the density limit sparked Gates’ and Delgado-Aparicio’s idea.

But Gates said he never actually worked on the problem until he learned about Delgado-Aparicio’s research explaining corkscrew-shaped phenomena called snakes that were very similar to the plasma islands described by Rebut and Suttrop.

Gates said he introduced Delgado-Aparicio to the prior research on islands and the density limit, and eight months later, Delgado-Aparicio wrote a paper in which he developed an equation relating the growth of islands to the density limit.

They quickly realized that if islands were the explanation for the density limit, that equation held the answer, Gates said. When the two met to work out the solution, it was even easier than they realized, and they found the solution to the decades-old problem in just 15 minutes, Gates said.

“It was really a very simple idea,” Gates said. “It was just a matter of putting all the pieces together.”

Princeton University Dean for Research A.J. Stewart Smith wasn’t surprised that Gates, “one of the most creative scientists at the lab,” was one of the people to put those pieces together. “This is a major development,” Smith said.

Their next step is testing the theory experimentally, Gates said. Although PPPL’s reactor is currently undergoing renovations, Gates and Delgado-Aparicio have submitted research proposals to other labs, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Delgado-Aparicio is a visiting scientist.

If the results verify their theory, knowing that islands cause the density limit suggests ways of overcoming it, Gates said. An experiment they’ve proposed would test whether cooling and shrinking the islands with targeted blasts of radiation can keep them from disrupting the plasma. If that lets researchers use higher densities, they could generate fusion at lower temperatures.

“If you can raise the density, the tokamak becomes a much more viable fusion device,” Gates said. “It gives you much more freedom in designing it.”

China wants "drastic" U.S., Russia nuclear arms cuts

From TheStarOnline: China wants "drastic" U.S., Russia nuclear arms cuts
VIENNA (Reuters) - China called on the United States and Russia - which hold the vast majority of the world's nuclear warheads - on Monday to make further "drastic" cuts in their atomic arsenals.

A senior Chinese diplomat also told a meeting in Vienna that the development of missile defence systems which "disrupt" the global strategic balance should be abandoned, a possible reference to U.S. plans in Europe that have angered Russia.

A new U.S.-Russian arms reduction treaty will cut long-range, strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the two Cold War-era foes to no more than 1,550 on each side within seven years after it came into force in February 2011.

But they still have by far the most nuclear arms - a fact stressed by the Chinese representative on the opening day of a two-week conference to discuss the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a 1970 pact to prevent the spread of atomic bombs.

China, Britain and France are the other three recognised nuclear weapons states. But the size of their arsenals are in the low hundreds, well below those of the United States and Russia which have thousands of nuclear warheads.

Ambassador Cheng Jingye, head of the Chinese delegation, said all nuclear weapons states should publicly undertake "not to seek permanent possession" of atomic bombs.

"As countries with (the) largest nuclear arsenals, U.S. and Russia should continue to make drastic reductions in their nuclear arsenals in a verifiable and irreversible manner," he said, according to a copy of his statement.

"Other nuclear weapon states, when conditions are ripe, should also join the multilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament," Cheng added, apparently referring to the five recognised nuclear-armed countries.

India and Pakistan - which also have nuclear arms - are not part of the NPT. Israel, widely believed to have weapons arms, is also outside the treaty, as is North Korea, which is believed to be preparing for a third nuclear test.

The Non-Aligned Movement of developing and other states also called on the United States and Russia to cut their arsenals, expressing concern that nuclear weapon modernisation undermines the "minimal reductions" agreed by them.

MISSILE SHIELD CONTROVERSY
China closely guards information about its nuclear arsenal. However, the U.S. Department of Defense has said that China has some 130-195 deployed nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.

The head of the U.S. delegation, Ambassador Susan Burk, earlier told delegates that her country was making progress on disarmament and it would "detail those efforts this week."

Shortly after taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama set the goal of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons as a central theme of his presidency and pledged dramatic steps to lead the way.

Obama unveiled a revamped policy in 2010 renouncing development of new nuclear weapons and restricting use of those already in the U.S. arsenal. He followed that up by signing the new START landmark arms reduction deal with Russia last year.

But momentum seems to have slowed on Obama's nuclear agenda and, with the November U.S. presidential election looming, chances for major new advances look doubtful.

Burk said The United States has made clear that it "understands its special responsibility to take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons by pursuing nuclear disarmament."

France said it was one of few states to have taken "ambitious, irreversible" disarmament action in the past 15 years, and now had less than 300 nuclear warheads.

"In the last 15 years we have cut the number of nuclear warheads by half," added Ambassador Jean-Hugues Simon-Michel.

Britain - whose nuclear stockpile consists of fewer than 180 strategic warheads - is "fully committed to the long-term goal" of a world without nuclear weapons, said the UK representative.

But as long as large arsenals remain and the risk of proliferation continues, its "judgement is that only a credible nuclear capability can provide the necessary ultimate guarantee to our national security," Ambassador Jo Adamson added.

The development of missile defence systems "which disrupt global strategic balance and stability should be abandoned," Cheng said, without elaborating.

Washington says a planned European missile shield is meant to protect against a potential Iranian threat, but Russia says it risks tipping the balance of nuclear power between itself and the United States in Washington's favour.