Gold Beam Collision Recorded at STAR

	Gold Beam Collision Recorded at STAR
	A view of one of the first full-energy collisions between gold ions at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, as captured by the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC (STAR) detector. The tracks indicate the paths taken by thousands of subatomic particles produced in the collisions as they pass through the STAR Time Projection Chamber, a large, 3-D digital camera. Credit: Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory. More information: Nimbus and cloud computing meet STAR production demands

What Is Science?

Investigating the World around Us

Image by Image Editor The six Ws of journalism and police investigations to elucidate or investigate a saturation — who, what, when, where, why, and how. Fresco by Raphael Sanzio Plato (left) and Aristotle used philosophy to gain knowledge about the world. Drawing by DÜRER, Albrecht Prayer and meditation are part of many religious practices. Unknown A mouse uses trial and error to learn a maze.

Science is one method of investigating the universe. Many people think of science as chemistry, geology, etc. These are fields or bodies of knowledge discovered through science or areas investigated through science. Science, loosely speaking, is a technique of investigating the observable world around us in a systematic manner and explaining it in a testable, repeatable fashion. However, science isn’t the only technique available to us. The Six Ws (also known as the Five Ws or the Five Ws and one H) used by journalists and police are consider fundamental for getting the "full" story on something. The idea is that for a investigation to be considered complete it must answer the six questions represented by an interrogative word — who, what, when, where, why, and how. These interrogative words should be answered by a verifiable factual answer. It is of importance that none of these questions can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no" answer. Philosophy uses a systematic approach and a reliance on reasoned argument to study general and fundamental problems. Philosophy looks at areas such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Spirituality seeks to achieve communion, identity with, conscious awareness, or re-integration with the ultimate reality, spiritual truth, or Godhead. Spirituality uses direct experience, intuition, or insight. I’m sure those of you who believe in God, found your fate in God not by using science but through some combination of religious/spiritual experience. Trial and error is a general method of problem solving to obtaining knowledge. One decides on a possible answer and then applies it to the problem. If the solution is not successful, another possibility is selected that is subsequently applied. The process continues until a solution is found or one gives up.

Exploration is a time honored method of gaining knowledge.

Who can forget past explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Captain James Cook, Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, and Neil Alden Armstrong. Today many of our explorers are not humans but machines we have created to act as our surrogates. In our past exploration of space the Galileo, Viking, and Pioneer missions gathered information for us. Today other missions such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, continue our exploration of space.

Composite by Image Editor

Human and machines explorers through history.

No one technique is necessarily any better than another. It just depends on what you’re are trying to learn.

Next: The Scientific Method.

The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS at CERN

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the six particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, LHCb, and LHCf) currently being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland (46°14_N, 6°03_E). Currently under construction, the LHC is scheduled to begin operation in May 2008 and ATLAS in mid-2008. When completed, ATLAS will be 46 metres long and 25 metres in diameter, and will weigh about 7,000 tonnes.

The LHC is expected to become the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator. The LHC is being funded and built in collaboration with over 2,000 scientists and engineers at 165 universities and laboratories in 35 countries.

When activated, it is hoped that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson — often dubbed the God Particle — the observation of which could confirm the predictions and ‘missing links’ in the Standard Model of physics, and explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory which seeks to unify three of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. The Higgs boson may also help to explain why the remaining force, gravitation, is so weak compared to the other three forces.

 

Credit: CERN.

News 20071118

	Google unveils cell phone software and alliance
	CNET News.com By Marguerite Reardon and Elinor Mills, Staff Writers Published: November 5, 2007, 8:13 AM PST Last modified: November 5, 2007, 10:40 AM PST
Update: Google’s cell phone strategy took shape Monday with the announcement of a new open software platform and an alliance of wireless heavyweights that will help form the development community for the planned phones.
	Container Ship Strikes Bay Bridge
	NOAA Office of Response and Restoration By Staff November 7, 2007
At 8:30 am PST on November 7th, the container ship M/V Cosco Busan struck the Bay Bridge in San Francisco Bay, California. A 100-foot gash in the hull of the vessel caused the release of an estimated 53,000 gallons of fuel oil (IFO 380) into the water (as of November 8, 2007). The vessel is no longer leaking product and is undergoing inspection.
	30,000 birds dead after Black Sea oil spill
	Telegraph By agencies Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 13/11/2
More than 550,000 gallons of fuel oil have now spilled into straits connected to the Black Sea in what Russian officials are calling an environmental catastrophe. The oil from a tanker cut in two during a storm at the weekend has killed an estimated 30,000 birds and there are warnings the effects of oil sinking to the sea bed could linger for years.
	Ancient beer pots point to origins of chocolate
	NewScientist By Jeff Hecht November 12, 2007
Chocolate was first produced by the ancients as a by-product of beer, suggests a new archaeological study. And evidence from drinking vessels left by the Mesoamericans who developed chocolate suggests that the source of chocolate, cacao, was first used 500 years earlier than thought.
	Better Blood Vessels
	New artificial blood vessels could help a wider range of patients Technology Review By Amanda Schaffer November 09, 2007
Researchers have developed artificial blood vessels that are derived from human cells but appear to have long shelf lives and are unlikely to provoke an immune response. Such vessels could someday prove valuable to patients undergoing heart-bypass operations, dialysis, or other procedures in which portions of blood vessels, or vascular grafts, may be needed.
	Time Slows When You’re on the Fly
	ScienceNOW Daily News By Elizabeth Quill 13 November 2007
Einstein was wrong. So, in essence, begins many a screed by some poor crackpot who aspires to be a physicist. Still, many legitimate physicists are willing to entertain the possibility that, in formulating his theories of relativity, Einstein didn’t get it exactly right. Some are looking for slight deviations from the prediction of his theory that might point to some deeper understanding of the universe. Alas, they’ll have to search even harder than before: A new experiment tests the stretching of time predicted by Einstein’s special theory of relativity and finds it spot on the money to 1 part in 10 million.
	Superbug Knocks Out Patient’s Defense
	ScienceNOW Daily News By Martin Enserink 12 November 2007
Mention resistant staph bacteria, and most people think about the almost invincible strains–officially called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)–that infect immunocompromised and sick people in hospitals. But in recent years, strains of MRSA that are even more virulent have started spreading outside hospitals and attacking perfectly healthy people (Science, 14 March 2003, p. 1639). Now, researchers say they have discovered how these bugs, which some see as a major public health threat, do their damage.
	Climate change is delaying spring in some areas
	NewScientist 13 November 2007
The last thing a seasoned gardener would expect from global warming is for leaves to appear later in spring, but exactly that is happening across the southern US.
	Sleeping Giant Grows Restless
	ScienceNOW Daily News By Phil Berardelli November 8, 2007
It’s a little like being in a room with the proverbial 800-pound gorilla–every little burp or twitch keeps you on your toes. That’s the way geologists feel about the caldera that sits under Yellowstone National Park. Scientists have detected accelerated activity on Earth’s surface that they think is originating from deep inside the geological structure known as a hot spot, and they are attempting to determine whether the giant volcano is growing restless or just turning over in its sleep.
	China Reaches the Moon
	Sky & Telescope By Jonathan McDowell November 13, 2007
China’s space science program took a major step when its first deep-space probe, Chang’e 1, began orbiting the Moon on November 5th. Two days later the 21⁄2-ton craft — named for the Chinese Moon goddess — dropped to a circular 125-mile-high orbit and prepared to begin its close-up studies of the surface.
	Cyclone kills hundreds in Bangladesh
	USA Today By Julhas Alam, Associated Press Writer November 16, 2007
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The death toll from a cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh’s coast with wind speeds of 150 mph, has risen to at least 1,100, a local news agency reported Friday. While government estimates had earlier put the death toll at 242, the United News of Bangladesh — which has reporters deployed across the devastated region — said they had made their own count in each affected district taking the toll to 1,100.
	Guba upgraded to Category 3
	news.com.au By James Luffman November 16, 2007 19:42
Tropical Cyclone Guba reached Category 3 intensity in the Coral Sea late on Friday, according to weatherzone.com.au The first named system of the season, Guba continued on a southward track off far north Queensland during Friday, at a pedestrian speed of about 4 km/h. Although slow moving, the cyclone intensified to produce wind gusts of up to 170 km/h, developing a clearly visible eye. By 4pm EST Guba had been upgraded to a Category 3 storm.
	Bizarre Dinosaur Grazed Like a Cow, Study Says
	National Geographic News By James Owen November 15, 2007
A weird-looking dinosaur with a muzzle resembling a vacuum cleaner suggests long-necked plant-eaters such as the well-known Diplodocus didn’t always have their heads in the trees. The findings are based on fossil analyses of a 110-million-year-old dinosaur found in the Sahara region of Africa by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues.
	The Brain in Chronic Pain
	Sophisticated brain-imaging studies suggest new ways to treat chronic pain. Technology Review By Emily Singer November 15, 2007
Anyone who suffers from chronic pain knows that the experience is fundamentally different from enduring a scratch or a broken toe. Growing evidence from brain-imaging studies supports this notion: people with chronic pain show fundamental differences in both the structure and function of their brain. Scientists are now using these findings to develop and test new drugs created specifically for chronic pain.
	Start-up makes electric power from motion
	Cnet News By Martin LaMonica November 16, 2007
The company’s mission, in essence, is to apply the long-understood Faraday Principle–that putting a conductor near a magnetic field will produce voltage–to 21st century applications. Its initial target is to create a D-size battery for the military and then create batteries for consumer electronics. Magnet and coil generators are typically too large for use in mobile electronics. The company’s technologists have been able to generate enough electricity to power small devices by manipulating the electromagnetic field that is produced when a coil moves near a magnet.
	Chile’s President Visits Earthquake-Ravaged Area as Aftershocks Continue
	Voice of America By VOA News 15 November 2007
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has toured northern towns hit by a major earthquake that killed two people, injured more than 100 and left thousands without homes. Tocopilla and the nearby mining town of Maria Elena were hardest hit in Wednesday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake. Several thousand homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving 15,000 displaced people.