Friday, March 12, 2010
You've seen the snapshot of the sunlit face of Earth, taken by Apollo 17
astronauts on 7 Dec 1972, more than 100 times. It's the blue marble, one
of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. It always
moves us, but never changes. Al Gore dreamed of a continuous live image
transmitted from a solar satellite located at the L1 point between the
Earth and the Sun. Gore chose to call it Triana after Rodrigo de Triana.,
the crew member on the Pinta who first sighted the New World. But it has a
far more important scientific purpose in the climate debate: is Earth's
climate determined entirely by the Sun, or is there a component of
anthropogenic warming? Built and paid for, Trianas launch was delayed
into the Bush administration by the Challenger disaster. Bush didnt want
anything to have Gore's initials on it, so the name was changed to the Deep
Space Climate Observatory. But Bush didn't like that either, so the
mission was canceled. But Triana, or DSCOVR, thankfully was not
destroyed. It was locked up in Guantnamo, or a maybe a warehouse in
Greenbelt, MD. A year ago Congress voted the money to refurbish DSCOVR,
but weve heard little since. WN finds its getting an extreme makeover.
The opposition to DSCOVR is based on the fact that the L1 is a retro-
reflection (hotspot) point. And so it is, but DSCOVR will not be exactly
at the L1 point. It will orbit the L1. In any case it is possible to
analyze hotspot reflections.
In an editorial this week, Nature acknowledges that "climate research has
taken a very public battering in recent months," and so it has. A few
climate scientists ignored the simple rules of such a fight at considerable
cost. Rule one: never imagine that your e-mail conversation is bound to
remain private.
The use of cell phones has become ubiquitous in modern society. There is
also a lot of brain cancer. This has led to a lot of people to suggest
that the two are connected, and the state of Maine is considering
legislation that would require cell phone manufacturers to print a warning
on the product. But has the incidence of brain cancer increased at
anything like the numbers of cell phones. It is a troubling issue for most
physicists who recognize that cell phones almost certainly cant cause
cancer. All known cancer agents act by breaking chemical bonds in DNA,
creating mutant strands that may multiply to become cancers. Microwave
photons are orders of magnitude short of being able to break chemical
bonds. The Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug
Administration and the American Cancer Society recognize this, but for most
Americans the words quantum mechanics are simply an announcement that you
won't understand what follows. Even a very bright high school student
probably won't have any idea what you're talking about.
BBC news this week reported that the British Fertility Society warns that
there is no evidence that acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine boosts the
chances of getting pregnant through in vitro fertilization. You will
recall that just a month ago we reported what we hope was the end to the
prolonged struggle between courageous California obstetrician Bruce Flamm
and the claim of fertility clinic owner Qwang Cha that prayer arranged by
his clinics contributed to success of the procedure. Both cases involved
beliefs that began in early childhood when the brain was still open to its
first language.
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