Harry Potter!

My girlfriend and I are at a midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie. The theater was nice enough to seat everyone now instead of making everyone sit in the halls. But they haven't been nice enough to turn on the overhead lights so I can't read the book I brought. And there's 2 hours till the movie starts.

Thus far, my girlfriernd and I are about the oldest ones in the theater. Not too many people dressing up, which makes me sad. I miss the Star Wars premiere when almost everyone was dressed up. Even the bad costumes were fun.

More Science Surveys

The Pew Institute has a new poll regarding scientific literacy and acceptance.

In general, it's more of the same things we've seen before:

Americans like science.
But they don't understand it.
People with more education understand it more.
People with more religious tendencies understand it less.
The media doesn't help.

However, there's some things that surprised me:

The majority of non-scientists feel government funding is “essential” to research. Granted, it's not a whopping huge majority (only 60%) but at least there's more people out there that realize this than don't. Why? The poll shows the majority of people think that scientific funding pays off in the long run. As can probably be expected, Democrats felt this more strongly (80%) than Republicans (68%).

Another somewhat surprising finding was that the most knowledgeable demographic was the 30-49 age bracket. Out of 12 questions, this bracket averaged 8.5 correct; A full question better than my own demographic (18-29) and notably better than the 50-64 bracket which only got 7.8 questions right on average. Was there something better about that group's education? Or is this just a demographic that tends to stay better informed? Amusingly, the only question my age group did do the best on was the “which of the following is no longer considered a planet?” question. I suspect it may have something to do with the “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet” Facebook group.

One question I've never seen before on these polls asked scientists why they chose their career. I was pleased to see that 86% of scientists answered that solving intellectually challenging problems was very important to them. Only 4% said the money was important.

Not only does the general public not know about the science itself, but this poll also showed they were pretty deaf to the oppression of science under the Bush administration. More than half (55%) of scientists heard “a lot” about it, but only 10% of the public was aware. Among those that did hear, 77% of scientists felt it was true, compared to 28% of the public. As expected, 77% of scientists felt this occurred more frequently under Bush than other administrations while only 28% of the non-scientists.

Of course, what would a poll on science be without the evolution question: Among scientists, 87% say they “think that humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes”. What about the other 13%? Sorry creationists. Almost all the rest are theistic evolutionsts. Only 2% actually believed humans were created in their present form (compared to 31% of the public). Happily, the younger generation seems to be more accepting of evolution. A total of 61% accept evolution (including theistic evolution). This falls about 5% per 20 year age group.

Disbelief in global warming, rejection of animal research and stem cells, fear of nuclear energy, and vaccines are also starkly highlighted as being far less supported by the general public than scientists. Fortunately, a strong majority (69%) of the public still feels vaccinations should be mandatory. I'd be curious to see if/how this has changed over time.

However, the public still remains positive about science, rating scientists as the #3 contributors to the well-being of society (behind the military and teachers). Humorously enough, that ranks us well above clergy and journalists (42% of those attending religious services say their clergy brought up science or scientific findings although the majority said that these references were neutral). As such, I find it very ironic that so many Americans get their science from clergy members and journalists.

But what are scientists trying to do to fix this? Sadly, it looks like it's not much:

While 87% often to occasionally talk with non-scientists (which I presume could also include their spouses or friends) about science, other means are far less common. Only 3% of scientists talked with reporters often (20% occasionally) and 2% blogged (5% occasionally). I'd like to see an break down of the frequency on the journalists by age. I'm willing to bet younger scientists are more willing to talk to reporters but quickly become disillusioned by having their work mangled.

However, one of the things I found the most disappointed wasn't in the poll itself. It was in the commentary. The commentator had this to say:

respondents did far worse on more complex science questions. Only slightly more than half of all public respondents (54%) knew that antibiotics do not kill viruses along with bacteria, and fewer (46%) understood that electrons are smaller than atoms.

I was disappointed enough when a poll showed that nearly half of Americans didn't know how long it took the Earth to orbit the Sun and nearly 20% though the Sun orbited the Earth. Those are pretty basic questions. But then again, so is knowing the parts of an atom. It's not even high school material. And here we have the CEO of the AAAS calling them complex?!

What happened to our standards? If junior high material is can be considered "complex" it's no wonder we're doing so poorly.

Stars, Planets, and Metal

One of the characteristics of most stars with planets is that they tend to be towards the higher end of metallicity (they have more heavy elements). This should make sense since planets are thought to have rocky cores and you can't have a rocky core without heavy elements.

So what happens when a study of low mass stars in the nearby galaxy shows that all the M class stars are metal poor?

Obviously something is seriously wrong. There's two ways this could be taken: Either the study is wrong, or our theory of planetary formation has a major flaw in it.

Much to the disappointment of young Earthers, it's much more likely that the study. The reason is that for M class stars, finding accurate metallicity is not an easy task. To understand why, let's take a look at the ways we measure metal content of stars.

The most accurate method is via spectroscopy. This method is accurate because you can get the relative strengths of all the elements present by looking at the depth of their absorption lines. That's very nifty since the way we calculate metallicity relies on those ratios.

But the difficulty with all spectroscopy is that it must be performed on each star individually, unlike photometry which allows for quicker data, but with larger errors without careful calibration.

Fortunately, there exist photometric methods by which we can determine metal content. In the photometry I talked about in the post I just linked to, the filters used are carefully selected to avoid as many of the absorption lines as possible to get accurate measurements of the blackbody spectrum. However, if we instead choose filters to hit the pits of these absorption lines for the elements we're interested in, we can use those to determine our metallicity.

The trouble is that for small, cool stars, like the M class stars in question, there's lots of absorption lines. In fact, there's so many, there's almost no distinguishable continuum. Lines can overlap which makes spectroscopy, let alone photometry, exceptionally difficult.

To help try to improve things, the authors of the study used the fact that there's a relation between how much metal a star has and how much it's moved off the main sequence (metals tend to make a star slightly redder and scoot it right on the HR diagram). Piecing this together with photometric data, they argued that they had reliable metallicity estimates.

However, a recent paper is suggesting that the estimates may not be so reliable after all. It tested the older study to see if it could accurately estimate the metallicity of several stars for which they had higher quality measurements. The new study found the old significantly underestimated the metallicity!

Whew! Planetary formation theory is safe!

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Bonfils, X., Delfosse, X., Udry, S., Santos, N., Forveille, T., & Ségransan, D. (2005). Metallicity of M dwarfs Astronomy and Astrophysics, 442 (2), 635-642 DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20053046

Johnson, J., & Apps, K. (2009). ON THE METAL RICHNESS OF M DWARFS WITH PLANETS The Astrophysical Journal, 699 (2), 933-937 DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/699/2/933

WTF Spencer, Iowa?

Up in Spencer Iowa, a small town's school board is doing something monumentally stupid: They're trying to shove religion back into schools. And they're not even being subtle about it.

The draft resolution reads like typically uninformed religious propaganda. It starts off requiring that staff and students be granted rights they already have:

School will not discriminate against private religious expression.
School will educate about, not indoctrinate religious faith.

*headdesk*
Students have always had the right to private religious expression. It's when they start doing it publicly, in a manner that disrupts the curriculum or the academic environment that it becomes unacceptable.
Schools have always had the ability to teach about religion. This is something the religious right frequently whines about because to teach about it, means we don't leave out the things they'd rather not have people know.

But it doesn't get any better.

Promote dialogue between schools and community concerning faith.

Yes. Invite sectarian groups to proselytize. Smart one there. And who gets to pick which groups are invited in to do this?

Create a climate of academic freedom concerning faith issues.

This idea sounds wonderful, but how fairly will it be applied? I remember a few years ago a similar notion of allowing religious groups to distribute “backpack mail”. But as soon as a Pagan group wanted to use it, it drew complaints.

Allow for student and employee religious expression within the law.

I feel pretty repetitive here, but students do have this right. Teachers, not so much. If the “within the law” statement is actually upheld, then this resolution doesn't actually mean anything.

School will neither promote, or disparage religious faith.

Which isn't never been allowed to in the first place! Why is this crap included in here? I think it's pretty obvious: A critical analysis of these people's religions and the history of their religion doesn't necessary cast it in a positive light. That's not disparaging it. It's being honest about it. But such people are so thin skinned that they can't tell the difference anymore.

The next section is “Definition”. The one for religion is stupidly vague:

Religion-a specific system of belief which may or may not include a deity, is not limited to orthodox belief systems or practices.

Oh look! Words to equivocate with! Let's not define the difference between “belief” based on evidence and “belief” based on blind faith.

The next one is even worse:

Evolution – The belief that an unguided process of mutation and natural selection resulted in the existence of life on earth.

I can guarantee no one with any scientific knowledge beyond a basic course helped write this crap. Evolution is not unguided. Natural selection is a powerful guiding force. Evolution does not have anything to do with the “existence of life on earth”. It only discusses the diversity.

The section on “Graduation exercises and other Extra-Curricular Activities” is nothing but things that have been ruled against by courts in the past:

a. Content of speeches by private individuals will not regulated on religious content.
b. School will permit the graduating class to choose whether to have an invocation and or benediction to be given by student volunteer in a non-proselytizing and nonsectarian manner.

The first one is basically saying that the school will not keep out preaching. The second contradicts the first saying that proselytizing is not ok. Make up your minds guys. It even contradicts itself by allowing for a “nonsectarian benediction”. While a benediction can be just a general well-wishing, given the title of the document (Religious Liberty), it's safe to assume that it's talking about a religious one.

Like the school I mentioned before, this school is trying to allow for distribution of religious materials too:

a. Religious materials may not be singled out for specific regulation based on content.
b. Students may distribute religious materials at reasonable times and manners designated by the school.

Again, something that sounds good, but just wait till someone with views they don't want tries to apply for the same rights. As for the second statement, students already have these rights, but it's pretty worthless anyway. Unless you want trashcans full of Chick tracts.

The section on “Religion in the Curriculum” is just a mess.

1. Curriculum areas that overlap religious faith shall demonstrate respect for affected religious convictions.
2. Electives to be offered at Spencer High School:
  a. The Bible in History and Literature
  b. Critic of Darwinism, a scientific approach. (provide a balanced review of evidence for and against the theory of evolution, using texts which include “Darwin’s Black Box” by M. Behe)

The idea that topics that may overlap must “demonstrate respect” is just code for “tiptoe around anything we don't like to hear” which destroys the stance of neutrality they're pretending to create. As far as the elective courses, the first one is fine. The second is, well, at least they're admitting the “criticism” of religion is a religious exercise. But seriously, Darwin's Black Box!? That book's been torn up and down so many times now it's not even funny. That's hardly “balanced”. Nor does “Darwinism” even exist beyond a silly Creationist strawman!

And just so the whole thing ends on a stupid note:

Teaching about the holidays. Discussion of the significance in an objective and historical nature will be allowed.

Sure. So they're going to admit that every Christian holiday is a rip off of other religions? Yep. Thought that one through real well...

HT: Stupid Evil Bastard

Planets and Shadows

Last year, I blogged about why catching stars forming is a tricky proposition; They're surrounded in gaseous nebulae that makes trying to observe the act a bit like watching a sports game from a plane flying through the clouds. You just can't see through it all.

In general, this should hold true for planets. Until the star clears out the dusty disk, the planets will remain hidden, even if we could spatially resolve them. So a paper talking about forming planets with “Observable Signatures” in the title caught my eye.

In this paper, the author explains something that, at first glance, is actually counter-intuitive: These dusty shells may help find newly forming planets. The reason is that, as planets form, they will slowly accumulate the material around them. In the vertical direction, this has the effect of making a “dimple” in the proto-planetary disk proportional to the planet's accumulated mass.

According to the author, the dimple will appear observationally as a “shadow”. She doesn't completely explain why this is and it seems somewhat strange to me. The reason is that “shadows” are usually caused by something that blocks light. Although the forming planet would cast a (relatively) small shadow that would be lost in the disk, it's not at all clear what would cause a shadow in the dimple.

Rather, I suspect a better word choice would have been to say there would be a “darkening” in the dimple. This would make more sense to me, since the dimple would be a lower density and have less material to scatter light propagating along the plane. Less light means that, relative to the rest of the disk, it would appear darker. Thus, I'm pretty sure that's the actual mechanism at work here.

But there's another interesting component: On the side of the dimple that's further from the parent star, there's a brightening! Weird huh?

This again, is not well explained in the paper, but I suspect the reason for this has something to do with the angle at which the photons coming through the disk are striking the side of the dimple. Either that or it's the opposite of the darkening effect where suddenly the boost in numbers of photons that were allowed to flow relatively freely through the empty space created by the dimple are suddenly again encountering a relatively dense medium again.

Regardless of how these effects should be created, planets should show a dark spot next to a brighter spot with the sizes proportional to their mass. But should these be observationally detectable?

According to the paper, yes. These features would be most readily observable in the visible to near-IR bands. The real limiting factor would be how well we're able to spatially resolve these dimples. Obviously, the further away a system would be, the smaller it would appear. Even for the largest planets simulated (50 Earth masses), the dimple is about 3 AU across. That means that we'd need to be able to resolve half of that to see both the darkened and lightened portions.

Tossing that into the small angle equation and assuming a fairly typical resolution for a good telescope of 1arcsec, we get that we should be able to observe these systems out to 3.1 x 10⁵ AU or 4.9 ly.

Eep!

That's not very far at all! In fact, the only stars that fall in that range are the stars in the Alpha Centauri trinary star system. The next closest one after that (Barnard's star) is 5.9 ly away!

The Hubble can get down to ~0.1arcseconds of resolution, which would mean 10x further, but there's still not really any star forming regions within 40 ly.

So ultimately, while this technique is interesting it doesn't seem the least bit practical with the current generation of telescopes.

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Jang-Condell, H. (2009). PLANET SHADOWS IN PROTOPLANETARY DISKS. II. OBSERVABLE SIGNATURES The Astrophysical Journal, 700 (1), 820-831 DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/700/1/820

Anime Review – Planetes

No. I didn't spell the title of the series wrong.

Planetes isn't a series of which many people have heard. It received the prestegious Seiun award for the manga in 2002 and for the anime in 2005 (the famous series Cowboy Bebop won this award in 2000). Even among rabid anime fans, it's gone largely under the radar. I suspect this is because it doesn't fit the norm of being ridiculously over the top; There's no giant mecha, no magic powers, no crazy transformations, no ninjas.... oh wait. There's ninjas. But not in the normal anime way....

Instead Planetes is a very subdued series that focuses more on character development and complex yet subtly highlighted issues rather than the in your face action. The series takes place in the near future when space debris has reached a level so critical that it's requiring international clean up efforts. The main characters in this series are debris haulers in charge of this zero-G cleanup.

For an anime series, the science is unexpectedly good. There's frequent talk of transfer orbits, Van-Allen Belts, relative motions, dangers of radiation sickness, muscle degeneration in weightless environments, and other things that, in most series, I'd expect to be filled with techno-babble. But in this series, it's apparent the writers did their research and yet, it's not even boisterous about it. Whereas many series that have to do similar research for accuracy will take the time to show it off (usually by having awkward lines of someone having to explain the concept to someone that should already understand it), Planetes drops it in seamlessly, merging into an unusually harmonious background.

As I mentioned, the series manages to touch on many very human themes throughout the 26 episode run. It tackles the place of humanity in the universe, class divisions, terrorism, the difference between ambition and greed, and isolation.

It's one of the best series I've watched in a long while. If you're into anime and haven't seen it, I'd recommend picking it up when you have the chance.

Book Review: Zen in the Art of Archery

A few years ago, a friend recommended Zen in the Art of Archery to me. I bought it quite awhile ago, but until this past spring, it was sitting on my bookshelf collecting dust. This spring I read it, and apparently it then sat in the back of my mind without review collecting proverbial dust.

An inspiring review right there, to be sure.

While the book was interesting enough to read, it was not especially captivating in any manner beyond a cute personal narrative.

The book's primary purpose is to tell the story of the author's journey to become a Zen master through the art of archery. In doing so, it seeks to explain the philosophy of Zen, namely that through mastery of an art to such a degree that it can be done without conscious thought (thus becoming "artless") one transcends the material world and frees one's mind to reach higher states of consciousness.

Most of the book is the author making mistakes and being too conscious of his own actions and his master rebuking him with cute riddles and analogies. These are thought provoking, certainly, but in no way convincing of the "truth" of the religion.

The most impressive feat along these lines is an example of the master hitting a target dead center in a darkened practice room. Certainly inspiring, but this would seem more an impressive example of muscle memory and familiarity with one's own practice area than any transcendental physicality.

Rather, that (and the rest of the book) would only seem compelling to those already lacking an inherent skepticism or any critical thought. Indeed, the author at one point goes so far as to mention that it's only convincing if you already believe. Echoes of the Christian motto that you have to open your heart. It was a fun read and a good introduction to the religion, but fails to be anything more.

Heavy in the Halo

If you've been following my blog a long time, you may remember a post on stellar evolution that was responding to some rather silly claims made by some Creationists. One of the claims was that the universe must be young, because we see young, massive stars where there's no gas and dust to form them. The example he used was near the galactic center. My response then (and still is) that this makes the rather ignorant assumption that stars stay where they're formed.

The center of the galaxy is a very messy place and this is certainly not true. The massive black hole swings stars far and wide.

Meanwhile, the center of the galaxy isn't the only place we find these peculiar stars. They're in the halo of the galaxy too, far removed from the disk of the galaxy. In many instances, this isn't that much of a problem. The stars we find way out there have velocities that are too high for them to have remained in the disk, indicating they were indeed flung out by either a close binary reaction with another star, or in the case of some of the exceedingly fast ones, by our galactic black hole.

However, for some of the most massive stars, their lifetimes are shorter than the amount of time since they were thrown from the galaxy. In other words, if we track backwards, the stars didn't exist when they were last in the galaxy!

Uh oh.

Is is possible that these stars actually came from a satellite galaxy like the Large or Small Magellanic Clouds?

Not likely. Their spectra show their chemical composition is more likely related to our Milky Way than any of our neighbors.

So what's the story?

The outer reaches and inner disk aren't the only place we've seen stars of masses and lifespans that don't fit. Nearly three years ago, I mentioned another one: blue stragglers in globular clusters.

In globular clusters, all the stars tend to form in one big burst from one big cloud of gas and dust. This means that their chemical composition and age are effectively the same. The only thing that will determine their evolution from their on out, is their mass. The massive ones peel off the main sequence first and slowly die towards the less massive ones (see this post for more on this topic).

Yet in several globular clusters, there are massive stars remaining on the main sequence when there shouldn't be. The notion here was that normal stars interacted, either by direct collision or mass transfer in a post main-sequence phase, which rejuvenated a star by giving it more mass and dropping it back on the main sequence.

Could such an explanation be possible for these odd runaway and hypervelocity stars?

The first question is whether or not there are any known runaway stars exist in binary systems in the first place. It turns out there are, but not many. Only about 1% of ejected stars appear to be binaries. However, many of these binary systems have very short periods (<5 days) which indicate a very close pair. This is perfect for mass transfer or instability such as predicted by the theory.

Additionally, many individual high mass stars like these have strong cases to make for their binary birth. Some are still binaries where one star is significantly more massive than the other with periods of closer to 10 days. More need to be observed to get a really good feeling on whether or not this possibility is right, but statistically, it works out pretty well on the theoretical level.

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Perets, H. (2009). RUNAWAY AND HYPERVELOCITY STARS IN THE GALACTIC HALO: BINARY REJUVENATION AND TRIPLE DISRUPTION The Astrophysical Journal, 698 (2), 1330-1340 DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/698/2/1330

Bento lunch

A few weeks ago, I moved in with my girlfriend. Since this meant moving back to St. Louis from Kansas, I'm still looking for a job. In the mean time, my girlfriend is paying the bills and everything else.

In exchange. I have to do all the cooking. Given I've been cooking since I was 12, this is pretty easy for me. But to make things interesting, I've been sending her to work with Japanese bento lunches for the past 2 weeks.

I haven't done anything too fancy yet, but I'm getting there.

You're doing it wrong.

Although I don't often say too much about it, there's more forms of dangerous pseudo-science out they aside from Creationism. The anti-vaccination movement is one that seems to be growing a lot recently (or is at least getting more attention) that I've been growing pretty concerned with.

Another is the recent actions of the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). While I, nor anyone else I know has a problem with a good back rub to relieve some stress, Chiropractors and those they dupe seem to be under the delusion that spinal alignment fixes all sorts of problems. The evidence simply does not support this.

So what happens when a prominent figure points this out?

If you haven't been following the story of Simon Singh at Bad Astronomy, go do so. In short, instead of actually presenting their evidence in court when their practice was called for what it was ("bogus"), they decided to sue.

And against all reason, they won.

The decision is obviously being appealed, but the entire assault against honest inquiry via abuse of the legal system is staggering. And fortunately, a lot of people seem to be realizing it.

In response, the Vice-President of the BCA wrote an article in New Scientist entitled In Defense of Chiropractic. And boy did he bungle it.

His first claim is that no real Chiropractor actually believes they can treat entirely unrelated illnesses like asthma, digestive disorders, infant colic, menstrual pains, sport injuries, tension headaches, and migraines.

[The criticism] has the clear intention of suggesting that modern chiropractors cling to the 19th century idea that spinal misalignments are responsible for the majority of diseases. While a tiny minority retain this view, most are aware that such claims have long since been debunked.

Orly? Then why, according to they very article that the "defense" was responding to did the author point out that the illnesses I just referred to are, in most cases, believed by more than half of Chiropractors to be treatable through their profession?

A 2004 survey by the UK General Chiropractic Council revealed that most chiropractors believe they can treat asthma (57 per cent), digestive disorders (54 per cent), infant colic (63 per cent), menstrual pains (63 per cent), sport injuries (90 per cent), tension headaches (97 per cent) and migraine (91 per cent). According to a 2007 survey, 69 per cent of all UK chiropractors see themselves as more than just back specialists, and 76 per cent consider Palmer's original concepts to be "an important and integral part of chiropractic".

Oops. Either you're lying or didn't do your homework.

Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that he knows he's lying. And the BCA is hurriedly trying to cover it up. Sounds like the guys over at Uncommon Descent.

But the bungling doesn't stop there. The author then tries to justify the notion that Chiropractic medicine is safe. How? By saying it doesn't cause stroke:

Claims that chiropractic is dangerous overlook two recent pieces of research. One found no causative association between chiropractic manipulation and stroke. The other concluded that the incidence of stroke after chiropractic was no greater than after a consultation with a general practitioner

Well huzzah!

So it doesn't make things worst (most of the time). But that still doesn't mean it makes things better which is the claim that Singh was making in the first place.

But even if it doesn't directly harm people, it does indirectly by making people think that they're going to get better through this bogus treatment. They forgo treatment that actually does solve the problem. And that's when Chiropractic treatments, faith healing, and all the other "alternative medicines" stop being just silly, and suddenly turn dangerous.

Of course, the author's mouth is so big, he has to shove his foot in it a few more times. He claims:

[Critics overlook] the fact that many accepted medical interventions have little or no research evidence to support them.

Translation: "Woot! We don't have to have standards because lots of other alternative practices don't either! If we can drag everyone down to our level we can all win!"

Pathetic. Sounds just like Creationists trying to abuse the term "theory" to try to get themselves on the same level as honest science.

I'd love to see patients form a civil action lawsuit against the Chiropractic association under the notion that, aside from a placebo effect, they been hoodwinked to pay good money for a treatment which provides no discernible benefit in most cases.

So, dear BCA, if you think that's a real defense, think again. You're doing it wrong.