Science

Strong Leonid Meteor Shower for 2006… But Not on the West Coast

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

I love the Leonid Meteor shower.

Every year, at this time, if you are willing to stay up late and drive to an area that is relatively dark, you are rewarded with a great show. It’s always exciting to see a shooting star – it’s even better to see dozens of them in one viewing.
I got excited by this news on Space.com today:

Strong Leonid Meteor Shower Expected This Weekend

On the surface, this sounds like incredible news:

A brief surge of activity is expected begin around 11:45 p.m. ET Saturday, Nov. 18. In Europe, that corresponds to early Sunday morning, Nov. 19 at 4:45 GMT. The outburst could last up to two hours.

At the peak, people in these favorable locations could see up to 150 shooting stars per hour, or more than two per minute.

“We expect an outburst of more than 100 Leonids per hour,” said Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. Cooke notes that the shooting stars during this peak period are likely to be faint, however, created by very small meteoroid grains.

Now, here’s the problem:

Unfortunately for viewer’s on the U.S. West Coast, the peak occurs before Leo rises. Outside of the expected peak, the best time to watch for Leonids is in the pre-dawn hours, when the constellation Leo is high in the sky.

Drat. If you are interested, the Space.com article has great information about the cause of the annual Leonid meteor shower (it’s caused by the Earth rotating through the trail of the comet Tempel-Tuttle every year), and how to best view the shower wherever you are in the world.

Too bad. 2 shooting stars per minute sounds amazing.

SunPower (SPWR) Presents at Solar Power 2006 Conference

/ Adam Nash

Some nice information from the Cleantech Blog on the recent Solar Power 2006 conference, specifically on advances made by SunPower on increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) cells:

SunPower is approaching a 23% efficient PV. This helps it take business from typical 17% efficient PV. Dr. Richard Swanson, CEO, SunPower gave the conference good reason to expect continued high growth. He pointed out that in 1975 solar modules cost $100/watt. By 2002, the cost had fallen to $3 per watt. The industry learning curve of 30 years has been consistent – each time that production doubles, cost drops 81%. Dr. Swanson expects $1.40 per watt by 2013 and 65 cents per watt by 2023.

There is a lot of fascination with green technologies in the Valley right now, but solar really looks like the real deal in terms of technology plays.  The economics are very close to fitting consumer pocketbooks (a 2.5kW single home system costs approx. $15,800 after taxes, and can cut your utility bill by 95%), and they will continue to get dramatically better.  Even more exciting, it looks like a lot of competing technologies are going to be released in the next few years to really drive down the cost, and drive up the efficiency of these systems.

I found this news through Seeking Alpha, but clicking through I found a few really neat blogs on the topic:

This is technology news that is worth getting excited about.

The Robots Have Spoken: Humans Taste Like Pigs

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

A slightly unnerving article on Good Morning Silicon Valley tonight:

Doesn’t this violate one of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics?

The news comes from Japan, where a robot built to detect smell and taste also evaluated the taste of the reporters covering the story.  Apparently the writer “tasted” like prosciutto and the cameraman like bacon.

It is going to be very interesting over the next twenty years as we learn to view humanity through the eyes of our non-human creations.  Despite Asimov’s best intention, they will likely not be bound by our explicit or implicit moral codes or societal norms.  At least, not completely.  We are are immensely biased and subjective when evaluating ourselves – it will likely be quite illuminating to start learning about ourselves from non-human sources.

Then again, maybe it’s just because I saw this news on Friday, the night Battlestar Galactica airs, and I’m a little sensitive to the idea that machines might decide that they like the taste of bacon.  BTW If you are not watching Battlestar Galactica, you are missing one of the best shows on television.

Invisibility & Cloaking Experiment Successful

/ Adam Nash

Any fan of Star Trek knows all about “cloaking” technology.  Well, we’re one step closer as of yesterday.

LiveScience.com – Scientists Create Cloak of Partial Invisibility

Interestingly, while groundbreaking, the basic concept for cloaking has been worked out quite well in the science fiction community.  This experiment seems to confirm the basic approach:

Bend light around you, and there will be no reflection of light for an observer to see.   The experiment used the latest technology in metamaterial fabrication, and was limited to the microwave spectrum.  It also wasn’t perfect, with some small amount of distortion & reflection.

Still, it’s an impressive demonstration, and it’s extremely likely that this technology will progress with nano-materials to true cloaking capability at a variety of wavelengths, including visible light.

Most of the coverage I’m reading argues that this will be of limited use, largely because unlike Harry Potter, when you bend light around you, none of it is captured resulting in an inability to “see” outside of the cloak.  You are invisible to others, but others are invisible to you.

It seems to me that there is an easy solution to this:  the device in the cloak needs to be able to capture a percentage of light hitting it so it can “see”, but then have an energy source to duplicate the signal with sufficient fidelity to make it appear that the light was never captured at all.

I love seeing metamaterials play a strong role here.  As a trivia point, I originally planned to major in Molecular Biology at Stanford.  But my freshman year, I took an introductory course in Material Science & Engineering, and I fell in love with the science.  I ended up majoring in Computer Science, but Material Science was my “first love” in the Engineering School.

The advances in materials are every bit as breathtaking as the advances in software these days.  There is something magical about creating these materials with almost magical properties.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

Welcome to Ununoctium (Element 118)

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

Just a quick article that I had to post.

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Heaviest known element created

Ever since I learned about basic chemistry, I’ve had an unnatural affection for the periodic table. What an amazingly elegant and simple roadmap to understanding the composition of matter.

I’m not sure what we’re learning at this point as we built heavier and heavier elements, but for some reason, I still love the fact that we have scientists pushing forward our understanding of matter in this way.  This one was particularly interesting, because there has always been something special about the noble gases, and this one was the blank spot on that last row.

Let’s hope they give it a better name than Ununoctium