Friday, November 9, 2007
A billion times more energetic than the particles that will be accelerated
by the LHC, there was skepticism that they even existed when they were
first reported in 1962, and they are indeed rare. But in 1992, Alan
Watson, together with Jim Cronin who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize with Val
Fitch for the discovery of CP violation, proposed an observatory to study
them. This is big science. It consists of 1600 Cherenkov water tank
detectors along with atmospheric fluorescence detectors, distributed over
2000 square miles of Argentine Pampa with the Andes as backdrop. It is
the first experiment with ground and atmospheric detectors on the same
site. The Pierre Auger Collaboration, including 370 physicists from 17
participating countries, reports in today's Science that the distribution
of these rays is not isotropic and correlates well with active galactic
nuclei nearby. It should stir the heart of every curious human to learn
that scientific exploration of the cosmos is still going on. As Jim
Cronin said to the New York Times, "the age of cosmic-ray astronomy has
arrived."
The probe, described by China Daily as weighing about as much as an
elephant, will remain in orbit for a year, studying the lunar surface.
The plan is to soft-land a robot vehicle on the moon by 2015, followed by
a robot sample-return mission by 2020. The Commission of Science,
Technology and Industry has not announced plans for a manned flight to the
moon but it has said that the lunar program "aspires" to manned flights to
the moon and a space station (why not ours?). WN hopes China includes
taikonauts in its program. A Yuan spent on space is a Yuan not spent on
military adventures.
WN heard from the other side this week about the realities of open access
in science publishing. Even my former students blasted me over last
week's column. WN learned this week that Sandia, on the advice of a
consultant who said it will save money, is closing the stacks. "We're not
closing the library," the information director said, "We're transforming
it."
There was a wild scramble on Wednesday about the death of the manmade
global warming theory, except the authors didn't exist, nor their
institution, nor the journal. It took two minutes to find this out, so
what was the purpose? Just a prank?
|
