Large Hardon Collider

[Azull]

We can tell what its atmosphere is made of by measuring the colors of its spectrum.

Does Kepler have this ability or is it only designed to measure intinsity? If not we should be able to predict its next transit and point a telescope which can measure its spectrum that way. I would guess the results can tell us if it is 1) has an atmosphere and 2) if that atmosphere is from a large earth or a small neptune.

[Tyche]

Who's ready to take Manny for a ride?

The Woolly Mammoth Returns: Scientists to Clone Ancient Beast Within 5-Years
http://www.inquisitr.com/165654/the-...ithin-5-years/

Five years from now you’ll be able to see a woolly mammoth in the flesh. Scientists, who recently discovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone, say that they’ll be able to clone the animal in less than five years.

According to Discovery News, the woolly mammoth cloning project will be a join effort between Russian scientist Semyon Gigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic’s mammoth museum, and Japan’s Kinki University. Gigoriev and his team are currently analyzing the marrow, which was extracted from a mammoth femur bone found in Serbia.
The report notes that global warming has been a major blessing since it has thawed ground in Eastern Russia that is usually covered by a permanent layer of perma-frost. Researchers have unearthed several well-preserved bones, including the thigh bone that could bring the woolly mammoth back to life.
Gigoriev’s team and Kinki University will replace the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with the ones they find in the mammoth’s bone marrow cells. This, which has been known by researchers for a long time, will create embryos with mammoth DNA. Discovery Reports that researchers have been looking for undamaged nuclei since the late 1990s, and now, they believe that they have the final ingredient needed to make a woolly mammoth.
The AFP reports that the woolly mammoth has been extinct for about 10,000 years.
So do you agree with this Jurassic Park experiment? Should the woolly mammoth be cloned?

[Valkrish]

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but I would absolutely love to see a wooly mammoth up and in action.

[Kaylia]

Might as well call if Second Mars too. Also, i thought we could tell whether a planet was gas/liquid or solid by looking at the light it gives off?

Another Mars-like would make a catchy title. We find new Earth-like planets every months, it's getting old.

We can usually tell what the planet is made off from its density (size and mass are relatively easy to observe), and knowing the density allow you to make educated guess about its composition.

However, when you're talking about water on the surface, it's nearly impossible to tell unless you manage to observe some in the atmosphere.

Who's ready to take Manny for a ride?

The Woolly Mammoth Returns: Scientists to Clone Ancient Beast Within 5-Years
http://www.inquisitr.com/165654/the-...ithin-5-years/

It's not ethic!

No, but seriously...why not? It's not like you can accidently start an infestation of wooly mammoth. They are probably talking big and won't be able to pull it off tho.

[Kuya]

What would you need in order to determine a planet's density with our current instruments?

[Khamsin]

Has cloning entirely outside the womb, from petri dish to living, breathing complex macro-organism without the intervention of another living organism to incubate it, been done yet?

[Kaylia]

What would you need in order to determine a planet's density with our current instruments?

Calculating a density is as simple as doing mass/volume.

We can calculate the mass using Newton's movement equations (need to know the mass of the star and how fast the planet revolves)
Radius (and volume) can be calculated when the planet eclipse its star. The intensity drop tell us which fraction of the star is covered by the planet, and from that surface, we can obtain the volume.

[Tyche]

Cock tease part XXIII

BBC News - Cern scientist expects 'first glimpse' of Higgs boson
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16074411

A respected scientist from the Cern particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see "the first glimpse" of the Higgs boson next week.
It comes as the search for the mysterious fundamental particle reaches its endgame.
If so, this will be a significant milestone for teams at the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The particle-accelerating machine on the French-Swiss border was built with the hunt for the Higgs as a key goal.
The collider smashes beams of protons together in head-on collisions, with signs of the Higgs boson, perhaps, in the debris.
The Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to define, but its existence helps us to understand why particles have mass.
The search for the Higgs has become the hottest pursuit in modern physics. It is separate from the unexpected announcement in September of the apparently faster-than-light neutrinos, a result which is still puzzling the world of physics, and has taken the limelight recently.
'Growing sense of excitement' Next Tuesday, two separate teams will each reveal the outcome of trawling through their latest data from LHC collisions. A spokesman for one of these teams told us that this year alone they've searched the remains of some 350 trillion collisions, with only ten or so producing candidates for a reliable sign of the Higgs.
The two teams of scientists work independently, using two separate detectors - called ATLAS and CMS - each relying on different technologies. This way they provide an independent cross-check for each other. How closely their results agree will be an important measure of how significant a finding they can claim.
The teams are sworn to secrecy, but various physics blogs, and the canteens at Cern, are alive with talk of a possible sighting of the Higgs, and with a mass inline with what many physicists would expect.
The teams have been focussing-in on the Higgs by ruling out energy ranges where it might be lurking. They now expect to see it at around 120 to 125 GeV (gigelectronvolts), where one GeV is about the mass of a proton.
Professor John Ellis, a former head of theoretical physics at Cern, told Newsnight's science editor Susan Watts about the growing sense of excitement at Cern, a week ahead of that key science meeting next Tuesday.
"I think we are going to get the first glimpse. The LHC experiments have already looked high and low for this missing piece. It could be that it weighs several hundred times the proton mass, but that seems very unlikely, then there's a whole intermediate range where we know it cannot be, then there's the low mass range where we actually expect it might be. There seem to be some hints emerging there... and that's what we're going to learn on Tuesday".
Professor Ellis, who is now a guest professor at Cern, and was recently made James Clerk Maxwell professor at King's College, London, told Newsnight that finding the Higgs matters hugely to modern physics.
"What we have at the moment is something we call the Standard Model, that describes all fundamental particle physics. You can think of it as being an enormous giant Jigsaw puzzle, but there's a piece missing right in the middle there. We have been looking for this for 30 years now, and finally, maybe, hidden under the back of the LHC sofa…we are finally finding it".
The teams at Cern will not claim next week's result as an official "discovery" - a so-called 5-sigma event. This is because they have not yet produced enough experimental data to make that claim. That will come next year, probably by the summer.
Journalists are being told to wait for the briefing after next week's scientific meeting, but researchers whom Susan Watts spoke to in the coffee shops of Cern were finding it hard to keep the smiles from their faces.
Understandably perhaps, the director of research at Cern, Sergio Bertolucci, is being more cautious than Professor Ellis. He told me, somewhat enigmatically: "It's too early to say…I think we may get indications that are not consistent with its non-existence." He expects next Tuesday's results to amount to less than the formal definition of "evidence", but said the statistics will be "very interesting".
"I would be very inclined to say just that we will not give anything except an update which will tell people we are on a good path to the discovery."
Mr Bertolucci told Newsnight: "This hunt for the Higgs is like fishing in an ancient way… instead of using modern tools you are removing the water from the pond… it might look tedious but it is the only way, at the end of the day, when you have removed all the water from the pond to find the smallest fish."

[Siralin]

Anyone have experience with the TI nspire series calculators? I'm about to be the coolest kid ever and put a calculator on my holiday wishlist, but I'd like to know if I should just get the TI-89 Titanium or look into the nspire. Going into calc next semester, and I hear the 89 helps with that over my current 83.

[Kryssan]

Sliderules forever. Fuck dem calculators.



Anyway.

Russia and China Reactor Collaboration

Russia and China have held their first meeting for cooperation in the development of marine nuclear energy for floating power plants and potentially for propulsion of large ships.

While hundreds of nuclear reactors have been employed in the military navies of China, France, Russia, the UK and USA for decades, only Russia has maintained a fleet of civil nuclear ships: the icebreakers that work the country's Arctic ports and one freighter. Other countries' forays into civil marine nuclear power - the NS Savannah, the Otto Hahn and the Mutsu - did not continue in the long term due to various social, economic or technical factors.

Russia went on to expand its leadership in this area with the adaptation of the KLT-40S small reactor for installation in pairs on a barge. This vessel could be docked in remote places to supply power and heat either to the local population or new industry. The first such floating nuclear power plant, the Akademic Lomonosov, is at an advanced stage of construction at the Baltiysky Zavod shipyard. The barge is completed and afloat, with main power systems already fitted. Eventually it will be maneuvered along rivers and canals to the Arctic sea and towed to the town of Vilyuchinsk on the Pacific coast of Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's far east. Another is planned for Pevek, on the Arctic coast.

http://world-nuclear-news.org/upload...wer_plants.jpg
Potential deployment sites for nuclear power barges. China has yet to name any sites

Chinese interest in this kind of power source has grown steadily in recent years and has now reached the level of formal cooperation. The first meeting for this was held at the end of November in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Around the table were representatives of power plant operator Rosenergoatom, designer OKBM Afrikantov as well as China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and its subsidiary the Nuclear Power Institute of China.

Rosenergoatom reported a 'high degree' of interest from the Chinese side, 'with a view to joint development of design solutions for the construction of floating nuclear power plants in China and joint promotion of projects in third countries.'

The bilateral cooperation group talked about the possible direction it could take. China is primarily interested in deploying floating nuclear power platforms for oil and gas installations at sea, and for the service of remote communities. Another application under consideration in Beijing is the propulsion of large cargo ships, for example on point-to-point routes carrying heavy cargo like mineral ore.
Based on the status of the Akademik Lomonosov, Rosenergoatom said it had at its disposal 'a full package of design documents to create a reference floating nuclear power plant for China'.

China has given a set of proposals to Russia for consideration as dialogue continues ahead of the next formal meeting in May 2012. Separately the countries are discussing cooperation for space nuclear power systems, and from mid-2012 Russia will supply radioisotope thermal generators to the Chinese space program.

In more conventional nuclear power, Russia has already built the two-unit Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu province, where two more are expected to be fully contracted soon. OKBM led the construction of the 65 MWt China Experimental Fast Reactor near Beijing, and a 1000 MWe power-generating version is slated to begin construction in 2017 known as the China Demonstration Fast Reactor. Before that, however, could come two BN-800 fast-reactor units also by OKBM at Sanming, on which construction could start in 2013.

European vacation
Early next year the 50 Years of Victory will be temporarily redeployed from Arctic duties to maintain shipping lanes in the Gulf of Finland. This eastern portion of the Baltic Sea often freezes over completely and last year the major port at Saint Petersburg suffered congestion after a lack of icebreaking capacity. The nuclear ship will join six diesel-powered icebreakers based in the port.

Another country with fast reactors on the grid? Craziness. Maybe the two of them can kickstart something, though obviously too soon to tell. Of interest to me was Russia pledging RTG units to China's space program. Seeing the modular design also coming on full force is a welcome thought; though that barge has seen some rocky financial dealings so far.

[Eliseos]

Anyone have experience with the TI nspire series calculators? I'm about to be the coolest kid ever and put a calculator on my holiday wishlist, but I'd like to know if I should just get the TI-89 Titanium or look into the nspire. Going into calc next semester, and I hear the 89 helps with that over my current 83.

I've only ever used an 89, and the thing is fucking awesome. I don't know what an nspire is besides them misspelling a word.

Googling it I have a hard time believing that the framerate on an nspire will be anything short of frustrating, especially during computation heavy moments. The 89 gets bogged down occasionally, with a b&w screen.

[BerenTebogo]

Also like 6 or 7 years between the development of the two of them at LEAST though. I've always liked the idea of the nspire.

[Eliseos]

They had the same screen style since the 90s, at least between the 83 and the 89. That isn't upping my confidence

[Tyche]

BBC News - LHC: Higgs boson 'may have been glimpsed'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16158374

Well, we kinda, probably, may have found the Higgs. (Brian Greene said that the chances are about 1/3,000 that is isn't the Higgs, but to claim a discovery, that number needs to be around 1/1,000,000)

LHC: Higgs boson 'may have been glimpsed'

By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website, Geneva The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.
The particle is purported to be the means by which everything in the Universe obtains its mass.
Scientists say that two experiments at the LHC see hints of the Higgs at the same mass, fuelling huge excitement.
But the LHC does not yet have enough data to claim a discovery.
Finding the Higgs would be one of the biggest scientific advances of the last 60 years. It is crucial for allowing us to make sense of the Universe, but has never been observed by experiments.
This basic building block of the Universe is a significant missing component of the Standard Model - the "instruction booklet" that describes how particles and forces interact.
Two separate experiments at the LHC - Atlas and CMS - have been conducting independent searches for the Higgs. Because the Standard Model does not predict an exact mass for the Higgs, physicists have to use particle accelerators like the LHC to systematically look for it across a broad search area.
At a seminar at Cern (the organisation that operates the LHC) on Tuesday, the heads of Atlas and CMS said they see "spikes" in their data at roughly the same mass: 124-125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
"The excess may be due to a fluctuation, but it could also be something more interesting. We cannot exclude anything at this stage," said Fabiola Gianotti, spokesperson for the Atlas experiment.
Guido Tonelli, spokesperson for the CMS experiment, said: "The excess is most compatible with a Standard Model Higgs in the vicinity of 124 GeV and below, but the statistical significance is not large enough to say anything conclusive.
"As of today, what we see is consistent either with a background fluctuation or with the presence of the boson."
'Exciting' Prof Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director-general of Cern, told BBC News: "Such signals can come and go… Although there is correspondence between the two experiments, we need more solid numbers."
None of the spikes seen by the experiments is at much more than the "two sigma" level of certainty.
A level of "five sigma" is required to claim a discovery, meaning there is less than a one in a million chance the data spike is down to a statistical fluke.
Another complicating factor is that these tantalising hints consist only of a handful of events among the billions of particle collisions analysed at the LHC.
Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director-general of Cern told BBC News: "We can be misled by small numbers, so we need more statistics," but added: "It is exciting."
If it exists, the Higgs is very short-lived, quickly decaying - or transforming - into more stable particles. There are several different ways this can happen, which provides scientists with different routes to search for the boson.
They looked at particular decay routes for the Higgs that produce only a handful of events, but have the advantage of having less background noise in the data. This background noise consists of random combinations of events, some of which can look like Higgs decays.
Other decay modes produce more events - which are better for statistical certainty - but also more background noise. Prof Heuer said physicists were "squeezed" between these two options.
Prof Stefan Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester, called the quality of the LHC's results "exceptional", adding: "Within one year we will probably know whether the Higgs particle exists, but it is likely not going to be a Christmas present."
The simple fact that both Atlas and CMS seem to be seeing a data spike at the same mass has been enough to cause enormous excitement in the particle physics community.

[Mizango]

Watching very closely.

[Mizango]

Do want.

[Kryssan]

Not necessarily science-y news per se, but interesting/potentially important for the US nuclear community.

Personally, I hope they fry him.

Jaczko Under Fire

Severe criticism of Gregory Jaczko's chairmanship of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been made public by Congressmen looking into the matter.

As chairman, Jaczko is one of five NRC commissioners appointed by the President and approved by the Senate for five-year terms. They consider and vote on important matters of nuclear safety and are supported by a workforce of permanent expert staff in Washington DC and around the country. Currently Jaczko and two other commissioners are appointees of President Barack Obama, while the other two are completing terms to which they were appointed by President George Bush.

All four other commissioners have formally expressed their "grave concern" that Jaczko's leadership is causing "serious damage" to the NRC. They expressed this in a letter to Jaczko and the White House chief of staff on 13 October. This has now been picked up by Darrell Issa, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who wrote again to the White House, making the complaints public in the process.

Jaczko was accused of "intemperate and disrespectful behaviour and conduct" towards the other commissioners as exemplified by yelling down the telephone and storming out of meetings. He was also said to intimidate and bully NRC staff, "strongly criticise" their views and even direct them to withhold certain views from the rest of the commission.

One senior member of staff was even dismissed without proper liaison with the commissioner affected. The four commissioners attest that this was because the staffer did not follow Jazcko's view on what should be presented as the staff's policy position. "This impairs the ability of the commission to function effectively" they said, adding that it is contrary to how the organisation has worked until now.

Jaczko was also said to have made remarks at a senior leadership meeting showing "disdain for the internal commission procedures" and "contempt for the commission." The four commissioners said these were part of "a long series of very troubling actions" that have "undermined the ability of the comission to function as prescribed by law and decades of successful practice."

One fundamental of nuclear safety is the ability of staff at all levels to speak their minds on nuclear safety matters without fear of losing their jobs. Another is for a regulator to be sufficiently independent of both industry and politics - a point that has been a focus of concern thanks to Jaczko's former roles with Senators Harry Reid and Ed Markey.

Reid has been a longtime opponent of the Yucca Mountain waste storage project with Jaczko acting as a scientific advisor. Soon into President Barack Obama's term his energy secretary Stephen Chu shelved the project without giving a reason, while Jaczko directed the NRC to stop work on its analysis of the project's safety. These actions were soon disputed by the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) which said Chu had no power to stop the Congressionally-mandated project and that the NRC had no choice but to follow through on its portion of the work. A seven-month review of the affair upheld Jaczko's authority to cut funding for NRC's work on Yucca. The five NRC commissioners declared themselves "evenly divided" but nevertheless signed off an order for staff to wrap up remaining work on Yucca Mountain and place it all in storage.

Issa invited the White House chief of staff William Daley to nominate a spokesman for a 14 December hearing. He noted: "The President has the authority to take action to address these concerns... The White House has now been aware of the commissioners' concerns for nearly two months and the public deserves to understand what actions have been taken and whether the President still believes that chairman Jaczko is capable of leading the NRC."

Speaking for the US nuclear industry, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute Marv Fertel said, "The issue that is of most concern is the question of a chilled working environment at the agency, including the possibility of staff intimidation and harassment, at a time when the senior management and staff are working on critical licensing activities and post-Fukushima safety recommendations. The industry takes safety culture very seriously and we expect the same priority treatment of these issues by our regulator."

Edit to include next article:

More stuff

The leadership issues consuming the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been played out in front of American lawmakers over two consecutive days but there is no real resolution in sight.

The commission has been at odds for several months over the behaviour of one of its members - the chairman, Gregory Jaczko. The other four commissioners allege he has bullied and intimidated staff, withheld information, treated them and NRC processes with contempt and abused emergency powers during the Fukushima crisis.

Three of the five commissioners were appointed by US President Barack Obama, and two by his predecessor President George Bush. But aside from any political or personal issues, the withholding of any information from the commissioners would violate the 1980 Reorganisation Plan that established the NRC in its current 'strong chairman' form.

http://world-nuclear-news.org/upload...n_Dec_2011.jpg

Four against one, the NRC Commissioners: George Apostolakis, Kristine Svinicki, Gregory Jaczko, William Magwood, William Ostendorff

The commissioners say that the gradual establishment of a 'chilled' working environment runs contrary to basic principles of nuclear safety culture that are fundamental to safe and successful use of nuclear energy. One commissioner said the behaviour "would be subject to investigation and potential enforcement action" if found to occur in the management of a nuclear power plant.

This week the issues have been discussed at both the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

With a range of political views on offer, the complaining commissioners have been accused of lacking the 'passion' for nuclear safety that Jazcko shows, acting in the interests of industry or pursuing a 'witch-hunt'. The hearings have been called 'marriage counselling' and likened to a children's squabble in which it is embarrassing for lawmakers to intervene. Nevertheless, Jaczko was unable to effectively refute the charges and the commissioners calmly contradicted their equally composed chairman throughout.

As with the power of appointment, the power to dismiss a commissioner or pick a new chairman lies with the President, but Obama has not yet spoken publicly on the subject. Another suggestion is to appoint an independent and trusted mediator for the commission.

Meanwhile, a critic of Jaczko, Congressman Lee Terry, has sponsored a bill intended to reduce the powers of the NRC chairman in emergency situations, while increasing the transparency of staff appointments, budgets and travel.

[Psion]

Not necessarily science-y news per se, but interesting/potentially important for the US nuclear community.

Personally, I hope they fry him.

Jaczko Under Fire

All I got from that article was AAAAAAH IT'S A SPIDER LADY, KILL IT WITH FIRE! /scream

[Kryssan]

All I got from that article was AAAAAAH IT'S A SPIDER LADY, KILL IT WITH FIRE! /scream

If you're trying to make me believe you noticed the rest of her over the prominent, barely covered boob, it's not working.

[Psion]

<_< I"m gay, so yes, the first thing i saw was spider, then lady. I didn't even realize she wasn't wearing a shirt till you mentioned it, lmao.