Curio

Astrophysicists no longer sit and idly wonder what happens when a powerful stellar jet from a young star collides with giant clouds of gas and dust. They first watch what happens hundreds of light years away, and then recreate the cosmic event with a multi-trillion-watt laser capable of delivering more power than exists in the entire U.S. power grid.

A recent experiment did just that with the Omega laser at the University of Rochester in New York, and then compared the lab results with both computer models and telescope observations of a real-life stellar jet. The study marked the first time that astrophysicists have collected new astronomical data from a laboratory simulation.

"Ours is the first study to investigate what happens when jets run into obstacles along their paths, and the first to have a strong enough laser to properly scale the shock waves in a jet to the astrophysical case," said Pat Hartigan, an astrophysicist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and lead author of the new research.

Huge lasers aimed at tiny targets

Experimental runs went like this: The football field-sized Omega laser would fire for just millionths of a second at a small cylindrical can called a Hohlraum. The vaporized can would send radiation slamming into a piece of titanium the size of a marble, and the titanium almost instantaneously heated into a plasma similar to what exists in stellar jets. The plasma would then strike a tiny sphere of plastic embedded in foam, which stood in for interstellar gas clouds.

"Targets are literally the width of a dime," said Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. "And then to hit the things with one of the most powerful lasers and not have it all turn into mush, that's what the target design was really pushing."

Such laser-driven experiments have enabled astrophysicists to simulate phenomena such as supernova blast waves in Earth labs. The Omega laser at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics represents one of the top three lasers around.

The most powerful lasers have only recently emerged at the National Ignition Facility in California. There physicists hope to carry out "the ultimate lab experiment," in Frank's words, by triggering a thermonuclear fusion reaction similar to what takes place in the sun.

But scientists looking to conduct smaller-scale experiments more than once a day can still flock to the Omega laser and its counterparts.

"The thing about Omega is that it's incredibly flexible," Frank told SPACE.com. "It can fire every hour or so."

Deep impact makes big splatter

Even the most powerful laser experiments still fall short of stellar jets that erupt outward from the poles of newly born stars at hundreds of miles per second. But Hartigan and Frank knew that they could compare the Omega laser experiment to real-life stellar jet collisions because of mathematically equivalent ratios among the matter densities.

In other words, the mathematics of stellar jets doesn't really depend on the vast difference in physical size between a stellar jet and superheated plasma in a lab, or between a gigantic interstellar cloud and a small plastic sphere, Frank explained. The behavior of the two systems will be the same as long as the density ratios are the same.

The real-life comparison for the experiment came in the form of a stellar jet hundreds of light years away, named Herbig Haro 110. Hartigan collected fresh observations about the stellar jet by using a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory outside of Tucson, Arizona.

Much of the experiment closely resembles how interstellar clouds and gas clumps can partially deflect stellar jets, but a few differences emerged. The researchers found to their surprise that the experimental jet in the lab burrowed into the plastic sphere and lifted entire pieces off, rather than simply vaporizing the target pieces. That lab finding helped explain observations of how real-life stellar jets could drag along easily-destroyed molecular hydrogen from clouds.

"The new infrared images from Kitt Peak, when compared with existing Hubble Space Telescope images show this phenomenon quite well," Hartigan said. "In our data the red is H2 (hydrogen) and clearly is along one side of the deflected flow, just like what we see in the lab."

Thermostats for star nurseries

The most recent laser experiment replicated what might happen if a stellar jet impacts a giant interstellar cloud, but astrophysicists also want to know about the more common cases when jets run into smaller gaseous clumps.

Frank says that the smaller-scale collisions may explain why stellar jets don't look smooth like a garden hose, but instead appear more fragmented. Stellar jets might also simply emerge in that fragmented state from young stars — and that would touch on the mystery of why young stars consistently create such jets.

Stellar jets could even represent thermostats for stellar nurseries by regulating star birth.

"Clouds that form stars are really pretty inefficient at turning mass into stars," Frank noted. "Maybe something like the feedback from many jets running into each other or their environment keeps the cloud from collapsing on itself [and forming more stars]."

For now, the researchers have scheduled Feb. 26, 2010 as their next big date with the Omega laser.

"We have an ongoing project to study how shock waves [from stellar jets] behave when they pass through clumpy environments, as happens in real astrophysical situations," Hartigan said.

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This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and Nov. 24 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the landmark work in which Darwin laid forth his theory of natural selection. While celebrations have emphasized the British naturalist's giant role in the advancement of human progress, British political journalist Dennis Sewell is not convinced. In a new book, The Political Gene: How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics, he highlights how often — and how easily — Darwin's big idea has been harnessed for sinister political ends. According to Sewell, evolution is scientifically undeniable, but its contribution to human well-being is unclear.

Should we reassess Darwin's legacy?
Bicentennial celebrations have portrayed Darwin as a kindly old gentleman pottering around an English house and garden. What that misses is the way his ideas were abused in the 20th century and the way in which Darwin was wrong about certain key issues. He asserted that different races of mankind had traveled different distances along the evolutionary path — white Caucasians were at the top of the racial hierarchy, while black and brown people ranked below. [Racism] was a widespread prejudice in British society at the time, but he presented racial hierarchy as a matter of science. He also held that the poor were genetically second-rate — which inspired eugenics. (See a photo-essay on Darwin.)

In your research, you found vestiges of this warped way of thinking in an unexpectedly modern setting: school shootings.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen, a Finnish schoolboy who murdered eight people at his high school in November 2007, wrote on his blog that "stupid, weak-minded people are reproducing ... faster than the intelligent, strong-minded" ones. Auvinen thought through the philosophical implications of Darwin's work and came to the conclusion that human life is like every other type of animal life: it has no extraordinary value. The Columbine killers made similar arguments. One of the shooters, Eric Harris, wore a "Natural Selection" shirt on the day of the massacre. These are examples of how easily Darwin's writings can lead to very disturbed ways of thinking.

You believe that Darwin should continue to be taught in schools. But how can we teach Darwin and also teach that humans are somehow exceptional in the natural world? Wasn't his great breakthrough to show that humans, like all animals, share a common origin?
I think we have to decide what status we are going to give to the human race. Most of the world's religions hold that human life is sacred and special in some way. In teaching our common descent with animals, we also have to examine what is special about human beings, and why they deserve to be treated differently and granted certain rights.

Are you concerned that your ideas will be trumpeted by the creationist movement?
Science is a big enough interest group. It can look after itself. (Read "The Ever Evolving Theories of Darwin.")

We understand now that eugenics was an illegitimate science, so why even worry about it today?
The thinking behind eugenics is still present. Many senior geneticists point to a genetically engineered future. As the technology for this falls into place, there has also been an explosion of the field of evolutionary psychology that tries to describe every element of human behavior as genetically determined. What we will begin to see is scientists arguing for the use of genetics to breed out certain behavioral traits from humanity.

Is it that you oppose artificial selection in principle, or that you feel scientists are still too far away from a full understanding of genetics to be making such decisions?
Who is going to make the value judgment of what is human enhancement and what makes a human better? I don't feel comfortable with such judgments being left to scientists.

All things considered, do you believe Darwin was a great luminary in the path of human progress?
What has the theory of evolution done for the practical benefit of humanity? It's helped our understanding of ourselves, yet compared to, say, the discovery of penicillin or the invention of the World Wide Web, I wonder why Darwin occupies this position at the pinnacle of esteem. I can only imagine he has been put there by a vast public relations exercise.

See TIME's list of history's greatest adventures and explorations.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

Schizophrenia sufferers aren’t fooled by an optical illusion known as the “hollow mask” that the rest of us fall for because connections between the sensory and conceptual areas of their brains might be on the fritz.

In the hollow mask illusion, viewers perceive a concave face (like the back side of a hollow mask) as a normal convex face. The illusion exploits our brain’s strategy for making sense of the visual world: uniting what it actually sees — known as bottom-up processing — with what it expects to see based on prior experience — known as top-down processing.

"Our top-down processing holds memories, like stock models," explains Danai Dima of Hannover Medical University, in Germany, co-author of a study in NeuroImage. "All the models in our head have a face coming out, so whenever we see a face, of course if has to come out."

This powerful expectation overrides visual cues, like shadows and depth information, that indicate anything to the contrary.

But patients with schizophrenia are undeterred by implausibility: They see the hollow face for what it is. About seven out of 1000 Americans suffer from the disease, which is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and poor planning. Some psychologists believe this dissociation from reality may result from an imbalance between bottom-up and top-down processing — a hypothesis ripe for testing using the hollow mask illusion.

In healthy viewers, the illusion is so powerful that even when aware of the illusion (see video below), they are unable to see the concave face — the mind just flips it back. Though the illusion is strong for faces, it doesn’t work well with other objects, or even with upside-down faces. This bias is likely due to the special relationship we humans have with faces. Many neuroscientists believe we have brain regions dedicated to processing faces, and some brain injuries can leave patients unable to recognize faces, even though their vision and other memories remain intact.

Dima and Jonathan Roiser of University College London wanted to understand why people with schizophrenia aren’t fooled. They put 13 schizophrenia patients and 16 healthy control subjects in an fMRI scanner that measures brain activity, and showed them 3D images of concave or convex faces. As expected, all of the schizophrenic patients reported seeing the concave faces, while none of the control subjects did.

Dima and Roiser analyzed the fMRI data using a relatively new technique called dynamic causal modeling, which allowed them to measure how different brain regions were interacting during the task. When healthy subjects looked at the concave faces, connections strengthened between the frontoparietal network, which is involved in top-down processing, and the visual areas of the brain that receive information from the eyes. In patients with schizophrenia, no such strengthening occurred.

Dima thinks when healthy subjects see the illusion, which is somewhat ambiguous, their brains strengthen this connection such that what they expect — a normal face — becomes more influential, overpowering the actual, though unlikely, visual information. Schizophrenia patients, meanwhile, may be unable to modulate this pathway, accepting the concave face as reality.

Schizophrenics aren’t the only ones who see the concave face — people who are drunk or high can also ‘beat’ the illusion. A similar disconnect between what the brain sees and what it expects to see may be occurring during these drug-induced states.

Citation: "Understanding why patients with schizophrenia do not perceive the hollow-mask illusion using dynamic causal modelling" by Danai Dima, Jonathan P. Roiser, Detlef E. Dietrich, Catharina Bonnemann, Heinrich Lanfermann, Hinderk M. Emrich, Wolfgang Dillo, NeuroImage, In Press, Available online 24 March 2009.

See Also:

• The Meaning of a Schizophrenic Mouse
• Eye Flicker Explains ‘Enigma’ Optical Illusion
• Magic Tricks Reveal Inner Workings of the Brain
• How to Use Neuroscience to Become Your Avatar

Image: Flickr/atöm

See article on schizophrenic perception.

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When the pitch really is too good to be true.

Low fat. No money down. Mission accomplished. Occasionally, the folks behind a product feel the need to paint a picture that isn't necessarily true to lure in the unsuspecting masses.

More from Minyanville.com: • 10 of the Most Overhyped Products • Product Envy: The Stuff We Want But Can't Have

Be it a purported discount price or a lab coat-clad actor in the commercial giving his "professional" opinion, false advertising comes in a multitude of flavors and ostensibly dates back to the Stone Age when a Neanderthal hyped a spear for its "state-of-the-art grip" and "35%-improved accuracy."

Barely a week goes by without another company being accused or another class action settlement being doled out. In May, Minyanville took a look at eight notable instances of false advertising, and here's nine more for you to enjoy.

 

Airborne

Maybe it's the depiction of the airplane passenger who just can't believe how many people around him are sick, but Airborne's claim that it "boosts the immune system with seven herbal extracts and a proprietary blend of vitamins, electrolytes, amino acids, and antioxidants" almost seemed too good to be true.

More from Yahoo! Finance: • Battle of the Netbooks • What Your Dollar-Value Meal Really Costs • What the Car You Drive Reveals About You Visit the Family & Home Center

Turns out, it was.

A $30 million class action suit filed by the FTC determined "there is no credible evidence that Airborne products, taken as directed, will reduce the severity or duration of colds, or provide any tangible benefit for people who are exposed to germs in crowded places."

 

Powerade

The Cola Wars hit another fever pitch in 2009 when Coke and Pepsi had their sports drinks pitted against one another in a lawsuit filed by Pepsi.

Coke was taken to task for claims made in its Powerade campaign which alleged that it was a superior drink because of two electrolytes missing in Pepsi's Gatorade: calcium and magnesium -- albeit in 0.5% daily recommended values.

In the end, Powerade won the suit when the judge ruled Pepsi "[had] not shown either a likelihood of irreparable injury or a likelihood of success on the merits" and found the "failure to present any concrete evidence of harm" striking.

 

Target

Even though we're moving into the second decade of the 21st century, the term "organic" is still considered a nebulous term given how often it's misappropriated.

Part of the blame lies with Silk brand soy milk's now-discontinued "organic" label and a recent string of Target newspaper ads which mistakenly echoed the claim.

The farm policy advocacy group Cornucopia Institute filed a complaint against the retailer after noting Silk has quietly moved to the "natural" classification, leaving it legally open to pesticides and unregulated chemicals. Legal action is still pending.

 

Nike

The Greek God of Victory wouldn't be Mark Kasky's first symbol choice for the company accused of turning a blind eye to sweatshops.

After Nike vehemently denied news accusations that it tolerated sweatshop conditions in Asian countries via press releases, advertisements, and direct letters, Kasky filed a lawsuit claiming the company lied in its response -- which constituted false advertising.

Since several investigations determined Nike does contract foreign factories with inadequate regulation, the California Supreme Court ruled against the company.

The parties subsequently settled out of court after appeal.

 

Procter & Gamble

While some folks might have hate it, it wasn't because it was beautiful.

An ad for Pantene Pro-V airing in China cast dubious claims about the shampoo, alleging it would "supplement amino acids to make hair stronger for a lifetime" and make it "up to 10 times" stronger.

After numerous complaints questioned the ad's authenticity, a British advertising authority determined that the ad wouldn't be shown with those claims.

A similar factual discrepancy in a Procter & Gamble ad dealt with a skin cream that claimed it would make skin look "12 years younger." Apparently, folks took issue with the specific time span..

 

Dell

Besides receiving one that refuses to work, realizing you've been overcharged for a tower or laptop is the most infuriating aspect of the computer-buying process.

In 2008, a New York judge vindicated many scorned owners when he ruled Dell Inc. engaged in false advertising -- not to mention fraud, deceptive business, and abusive debt collection practices.

Specifically, the offense entailed ads which promised "no interest" or "no payment" only to have customers slammed with higher rates via the company's financing arm.

 

For the entire slideshow from Minyanville Click Here.

GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time in the $10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs, organizers said.

The true test will be in first two months of 2010, when scientists plan to start colliding protons to see what they can discover about the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles.

The Large Hadron Collider has been advancing faster than expected in its startup phase that began Friday night, said Rolf Heuer, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

"It went much faster than foreseen," said Fabiola Gianotti, who speaks for the Atlas experiment, one of four major detectors in rooms the size of cathedrals about 100 meters (300 feet) underground. "We're all very happy."

It is possible that some unintended proton collisions began Monday or will occur soon at the places where the two beams cross as a side-effect of trying to synchronize the timing of two beams.

Intentional proton collisions could begin within the next 10 days, mainly to check how the machine is working, said spokesman James Gillies.

Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang — which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.

The collider was started with great fanfare Sept. 10, 2008, only to be heavily damaged by an electrical fault nine days later. It has taken 14 months to repair and add protection systems to the machine before it was restarted.

The protons on Monday were traveling at almost the speed of light — 11,000 times a second in each direction around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

Initial signs are very good, physicists told a news conference. The beam is of superb quality, with the protons tightly packed into hairlike lines and guided by some 1,600 superconducting magnets — some 15 meters (50 feet) long — operating at temperatures colder than outer space for maximum electrical efficiency.

So far the machine is operating at 450 billion electron volts of energy, which is relatively low compared with its design capability of more than 14 times that. It soon will overtake the world's current most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago, which operates at 1 trillion electron volts, or TeV.

Myers said the CERN collider should be ramped up to 1.2 TeV by Christmas. CERN might decide to make the first collisions at the current low energy or at 1.2 TeV, but that will be more for calibration purposes than for making scientific discoveries, he said.

Physicists said the discoveries could begin in the first half of next year when the collider reaches 3.5 TeV. CERN is hoping to have the first collisions at that energy in January or early February, said Gillies.

"That would really mark the start of the research program," he said.

Myers said the collider may even go up to 5 TeV before the end of 2010.

Tejinder S. Virdee, a physicist from London's Imperial College who represents more than 2,000 scientists on CMS, another of the experiments with its own detectors at CERN, said it could take several years before the collider discovers the elusive Higgs boson, a particle that theoretically gives mass to other subatomic particles, and thus everything in the universe.

That is because the Higgs boson is believed to be hard to see and needs powerful energy to be revealed, Virdee said.

"This is going to take a few years," he said.

Director-General Heuer said CERN was being as cautious as a driver would be with the first production model of a new car.

"We'll never accelerate this the first time with a kick-start to its maximum velocity," he said.

Once it is tested out, he added, "we can open windows into new physics and that could happen already next year. It depends on how kind nature is to us."

I finally watched Into the Wild last night and I recommend it if you have not already seen it. It is a great and touching transcendental journey.