Lifesigns

At first I thought this was just a very funny xkcd strip, before I realized it’s actually a rather deep comment on the possible futility of SETI. We expect alien civilizations to utilize electromagnetic signals for communication. While that’s probably a good assumption with our current knowledge, keep in mind that ants would expect other species to utilize pheromones for the same purpose.

We, on the other hand, would hardly expect ants to become intelligent, so we don’t search extensively for it. It could be just as improbable to an alien civilization that some species of primates on a random planet in the outskirts of the galaxy would do the same. Sometimes I think the answer to that question is subject to some debate though.

On a sidenote, I’m back from the Mojave desert now. A trip with memories that will last for life. I’m already preparing a complete report for you guys. We even had an opportunity for some non-thesis astrobiology research. If you wanna know in advance where exactly we went, look up what’s probably the last instance in the US phonebook, Zzyzx.

The title’s pretty much what Chris said when he picked us up. So early next morning we all drove to LA. I’m afraid we couldn’t come inside JPL as our badges only applies for Ames. We were pressed for time, but we did all the essential sightseeing; Downtown, Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica beach, which was awesome. We didn’t have the time for Mount Wilson, but from our hotel in Pasadena to downtown, we passed pretty close to Griffith park, so of course we had to see Griffith Observatory. Unfortunately the entire mountain was covered in fog/clouds, so the view over Los Angeles was non-existent. We were also there so early that we couldn’t even get in. It’s a great, beautiful place however, we’ll definitely go there at a better time next time we’re in LA. If nothing else, you should probably recognize it from Terminator.

We weren’t just fooling around in LA however, our original reason for going there was to deliver stuff for a NASA/NSF antarctic expedition and then to drop Chris off to a NASA meeting where they discussed the next Mars mission. Which, according to first-hand sources, probably will be a drilling mission if a few budget issues can be resolved.

Then we had a "scientific mission", to collect a sample from the La Brea tar pits. A really cool place with pools of tar, the result of a few millions of years of decomposed plants and animals. Sadly, most of the tar is gone, having been excavated in the early 20th century and the pits refilled with water instead. This was however the very reason for us going there as the astrobiology institute wants to investigate how heavy organic molecules mix with water. Hopefully they’ll get something out of it, or I got my hand greased up for nothing.

We also strolled around at Caltech and managed to "drop in" at a lecture by Chris Martin, "Exploring the Ultraviolet Universe". He spoke a lot about galaxy evolution and it was one of the best lectures I’ve ever been on, with a lot of images from the GALEX Space Telescope. If there’s time I’ll tell you more about it later, for now I’ll end this post with another place we really need to visit again.

 /Lifesigns - Reporting from the Pacific, litterally.

Things have gone down fast these last few days and as I’m writing this I’ve had ~1 hour of sleep the last two days. That’s why it’s short despite all there is to write. We arrived at San Francisco a few hours ago, and got picked up by Chris McKay. Among the first things he did was to offer us a chance to drive to Los Angeles and see JPL tomorrow. Needless to say, it took about 5 microseconds for us to decide. If we’ll be there until evening I seriously hope we’ll have time to go to Mount Wilson. Believe me, I’ll let you know if that’s the case. And oh, we may be going on a field trip to the Mojave desert to watch a test of a new rover.

On the not-so-jolly side however, my baggage apparently got stuck somewhere in London, so I’m low on pretty much everything atm, even camera power. I also managed to destroy the OS on my laptop, which though gave me something to do on the ~16 hr long trip.

Until next time.
/Lifesigns

Barack Obama, the sitting US president, receives the nobel peace prize and it’s in every major media. The award is certainly a surprise to most people, but also very controversial. There’s definitely a polarization of opinions, most of the harshest critique appears to originate from right-wing commentators noting that he’s "done nothing".

I for one, wouldn’t say that. While most of Obama’s initiatives as still in mid-process, he’s only been in office for ~10 months mind you, they are there. He’s closing Guantanamo, he’s opened a dialogue with Iran, he’s dismantled the robot defense plans in Europe, he’s actively pushing for an end to the war in iraq, and he wants to dismantle a large part of the nuclear weapons arsenal. These are definately the signs of a leader preparing for peace, instead of war.

When you think of it, this decision is not at all inconsistent with the peace prize committee, remember Arafat, Rabin and Peres? They got the 1994 prize, practically just for talking to each other. And there’s still no peace in the middle east. For Obama, the committee motivated their decision as:

"His extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples."

Obama’s changed the attitude of the world’s most powerful nation from world-police to world-citizen. He’s creating a more unified future for all mankind. You get the peace prize for your efforts, not for the results. So I want finish this post with the following sentiment:

Congratulations Obama, we hope your legacy will live up to the hope you have for humanity, and the hope humanity has for you!

Media: BBC, CNN, NY-Times
DN, SvD, Aftonbladet, Metro (sw)

It’s not exactly slow news in science these days, though you could hardly tell so from this blog. Among other things; the nobel prize winners have been announced, for example Szostak, who’s work on the origin of life is incredibly important to astrobiology. NASA’s about to smash a 2 ton projectile into the moon (pictured) at roughly twice the speed of a rifle bullet, in order to try to detect water in the subsequent dust cloud. And astronomers have found a huge ring around Saturn.

Unfortunately I’m fortunately leaving for San Francisco on Tuesday. Yes! Finally everything’s in order and we got a date to go. Still, wrapping things up back in Sweden and preparing for the thesis work is taking all the time available right now. On the bright side however, in a few days there will be updates from San Francisco and NASA Ames.

Remember those images of Vega and Jupiter I posted a while ago? I just wanted to see what kind of stargazing could be done with a simple compact camera. Those images were taken with an upper mid-segment camera, anno 2006. A few days ago I had the opportunity to borrow a Casio Exilim EX-H10, which I suppose could be considered a mid-mid-segment camera, though pretty new, released just earlier this year. The best feature is the x10 zoom (combined with a 12 Mpx resolution). So a friend and I went outside town with the intention to get some good images of star clusters (like the Pleiadies) and the Milky Way.

There were two big disapointments. 1: The moon was shining so brightly that the scattering in the atmosphere gave the entire sky a blue tint. And 2: The camera didn’t allow for manually setting the shutter time. It’s so stupid, you can change ISO-speed and white balance, you can use all kinds of preset scene-settings, but you can’t change the shutter time. It’s the classic case of making things so user-friendly that they’re practically broken to any advanced user.

Anyway, we made the best of the situation and decided to try to shoot the bright moon instead. After a lot of trial-and-error, oversaturated images and attempts to fool the camera’s auto-settings into using a short shutter time, we managed to get a clear shot. This was the result:

I’m amazed! A relatively cheap compact camera with broken software and you can see craters on the moon? I cut out and magnified them in the image. I believe they are, from top-down: Hansteen, Billy and Henry Fréres. What kinds of results you can get with a camera in the high-end segment nowadays then?

This is the best my own camera (anno 2004) can achieve: Here.

As I wrote in the last post, I went to the embassy yesterday. Amazingly, today they returned the passport with the visa. In other words, it took about four months to get hold of the correct papers and one day to actually issue the visa. I don’t know what to say.

Anyway, we should be ready to go pretty soon. I’ll keep you updated. There’s a lot to take care of atm.

Alright, I just came back from the US embassy. To my cheer surprise, all papers were in order, and while I didn’t get the visa right away, it should be in harbor sometime early next week. The staff were even polite and helpful, though strict of course. Still, not at all the grumpy paper-turners I had in mind when our first visas applications were rejected. Maybe the real bureaucrats hid themselves, as far away from human contact as possible. Anyhow, besides waiting in a line out in the cold for some 40 minutes, it was a surprisingly pleasant experience.

…and no, no one’s pointing a gun to my head to make me say this.

…and he’s a Swede (sw). Appearently the Supreme Administrative Court had to decide on the name his parents chose for him. I don’t see why, it’s short and unusual, but other than that it’s just Qte.

I wonder if he’ll grow up to look like John DeLancie?

Sums up the message of the whole series pretty well if you ask me. Give it up for Carl!

Via Pharyngula.

The preparations for the preparations for the trip are done. In other words, we got the paperwork needed for the visas by mail today. Now there’s only a visit to the US Stockholm embassy between us and our trip. Though, somehow I doubt we’ve seen the last of bureaucracy yet… more updates to come soon.

Oh, by the way, there was one part of the so called "DS-156" form that was just plain hilarious. Could the VoF be considered a terrorist organization maybe? There are a lot of creationists in the US.

Even though there’s no visa in sight yet, I’m not just drifting around, if that’s what you think. I’m pulling a lot of extra hours at my part-time job (also at the university). The trip and stay in the US won’t be cheap, so money is priority #1 at the moment. NASA is a government organization. As such, they are strictly forbidden from providing any foreign non-employee with funding. When I applied for this thesis, that was the only big downside. Now we can add the visa application process to the list.

Also, I’m tagging along in the “Astrophysics & Cosmology” course, headed by Johan Hansson (famous for postulating the concept of Preon Stars). The course is definitely a good way to stay sharp and gather inspiration for a thesis topic. If you’re lucky, I’ll throw up some cool astrophysical phenomena here soon. At the moment we’re into solar physics; neutrinos, energy production etc. Much of which I’ve already gone through in particle physics and quantum mechanics/statistical physics.

NASA has put up a video with some of the most interesting parts of STS-128, most likely the final mission in space for our Swedish astronaut, Christer Fuglesang. It’s nearly an hour long, but you get to see a lot of the things you usually miss. Like what they do for procrastination in zero-g or when they’re cheering with recycled urine. And, of course, stunning shots of Earth from space. Enjoy.

Apparently, the US customs have the authority to search your computer or mp3-player and copy the hard drive and have done so for some time. The ACLU is investigating how many people’s had their computers searched so far. You don’t have to be suspected of a crime or anything, so these measures are probably meant to fight terrorism or software piracy. Probably both.

Remember now, this is part of ACTA, which is being negotiated behind closed doors, so we (the EU-countries) might be forced to implement such measures as well in a few years. I’m usually very skeptical about conspiracy theories. But when laws and international agreements legitimizing the surveillance of large numbers of people are made in secret and only one side of interest is represented, then it’s hard to find a more suitable word than conspiracy. And since the current Swedish administration came to power, individuals’ integrity rights have been in free-fall here as well.

As I’ll be leaving for the US soon (hopefully anyway), I’m curious how frequent these searches are. Not least after having heard stories of how laptops have been treated at security checkpoints.

SvD (sw)

"So when are you leaving?", "Shouldn’t you be in the US?", "Are you still here?" - I’ve been getting those questions a lot lately. The fact of the matter is that we’re still stuck knee-deep in the visa application process. In order to apply for a J1-visa (research exchange) you need the following:

- A formal agreement between the two exchanging organisations
- A financial support letter
- Confirmation of insurance

The agreement letter took practically the whole summer to produce as it was to contain eligibility rules for all kinds of situations, up to the point of us blowing up the entire Ames facility. The insurance confirmation is done, but appearently our professor’s letter saying we had financial support wasn’t good enough. So I had to call the Swedish Board for Study Support (CSN) and ask them for a confirmation letter in English. I’m still waiting for it and until I get it we’re not going anywhere.

Anyway, so after NASA has handed in all our documents and the US embassy has processed them, we can go to Stockholm and get our visas. …given our experience with the visa process so far though, we’re lucky if we’ll be in the US before christmas.

If only the embassy had given us that B-1 visa as they’ve done for all our predecessors, but no, for some very unspecified reason, not this time. And I thought the US would become more open under Obama…

…and as someone who’s worked part-time as an IT-technician for some time. I can tell you that this is often the way things are done at the Helpdesk aswell.

From xkcd

Wow! The image above was made by IBM researchers a few days ago, it’s an Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) image of a pentacene molecule. I’ve worked with an AFM microscope before as part of a course in Biophysics, but nothing nearly as accurate as this. The basic principle is that you drag a "needle" over the sample and register the force/displacement returned by different parts of the surface. The tip of that needle was a few nanometers across and gave us great images of surface defects on a crystal. It wasn’t made for cellular scans, but the principle’s the same.

The level of detail in AFM-images is directly proportional to the size of the needle tip. The most detailed images uptil now came from tips that had carbon nanotubes attached, like this. To be able to map the components of a single molecule in this detail, however, you need a tip no larger than a single atom. In this case an oxygen atom at the end of a carbon monoxide (CO) molecule, like shown in the image below.

An interesting feature is the fact at we don’t see individual dots of atoms. There are interconnected lines and brighter areas at the ends of the molecule. Brighter means more force was induced on the tip. This all stems from the fact that atoms are not just spherical balls, but nuclei with surrounding often aspherical electron clouds. What binds atoms into molecules is the sharing of electron clouds to lower the total potential energy of the system. The CO-molecule at the tip is repulsed by the same reason. As the electron clouds begin to overlap, they repel each other because there can only be two electrons per energy state. A quantum mechanical law known as the Pauli Principle. If the CO was to react with the pentacene, some electron(s) would need to reach a higher state, which requires too much energy.

The experimental value of this technology is enormous. The brigher ends of the molecule indicates a higher electron concentration in these locations. Thus we can reason that any reactant will attack the middle of the molecule, where the electrons are in lower energy states. Then there’s the mind-boggling fact that we are looking at electron clouds. Cool!

I love shuttle launches, and they’re even better in HD. If you, like me, missed the the live launch of STS-128, you can watch it on Youtube. Go Christer!

It looks awesome when the main engines kick in and the whole shuttle is pushed upwards by the enormous forces. Then the SRBs are ignited and the platform lights up like a star.

The orientation period (sw. Nolleperioden) at LTU is over, and these have been some hectic two weeks. Not a single day goes by without some kind of event and many days are full-booked. I dare say that the the orientation period is rather special for Luleå. While other universities have similar events, often called kick-offs, few lasts for two weeks and includes a Dog Show, Yukigassen, shooting a teddy bear with an improvised Minigun (yepp), fireworks (several actually), live band concerts, a university wide CAPS-tournament, a trip to Storforsen, a theater show and outside boardgames with human game pieces plus an approx. 1.5x1.5x1.5 m die (though destroyed after two or three throws, remains below).

Then there’s of course a lot of practical/boring stuff which I won’t mention in detail. Anyhow, the last two weeks has been a blast. If any of my zeroes or fellow phösare read this; Thank You!

Christer Fuglesang; engineering physicist (like me), folkhero and the only Swedish astronaut, is but four hours away from his second launch into space when I write this. In fact they’re prepping the astronauts gear right now. During the STS-128 mission, they will among other things deliver and install the Leonardo module, which has a really cool insignia. If you can, then watch the launch live via NASA’s web-TV, here. I, on the other hand need to get a few hours of sleep before the next day of the orientation period. Seeing as there’s very little time from day to day, I’ll post a summary when it’s over.

Cowabunga!

Media: BBC Sw: DN SvD AB

Update: The flight was delayed by one day because of the high risk of lightning.