Brain-Munchingly Good Valentines!

Both Kipling West (above) and Tom Bagley from over at the 7 Deadly Sinners blog have art in the Zombie Valentines show at Calgary’s Carbon Media Design. Go check it out now!

Seeing 10th Dimensional Space

Peering backward in time to an instant after the big bang, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised an approach that may help unlock the hidden shapes of alternate dimensions of the universe.

A new study demonstrates that the shapes of extra dimensions can be "seen" by deciphering their influence on cosmic energy released by the violent birth of the universe 13 billion years ago. The method provides evidence that physicists can use experimental data to discern the nature of these elusive dimensions - the existence of which is a critical but as yet unproven element of string theory, the leading contender for a unified "theory of everything."

Don't worry if you can't picture a 10-dimensional world. Our minds are accustomed to only three spatial dimensions and lack a frame of reference for the other six. Though scientists use computers to visualize what these six-dimensional geometries could look like, no one really knows for sure what shape they take.

To learn how to read telltale signs of the six-dimensional geometry from the cosmic map, they worked backward. Starting with two different types of mathematically simple geometries, called warped throats, they calculated the predicted energy map that would be seen in the universe described by each shape. When they compared the two maps, they found small but significant differences between them. link

Vaughn Bode's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Part 8

All art © the estate of Vaughn Bodé

Back in the 60’s Vaughn Bodé illustrated a number of classics that had been rewritten for “reading challenged” kids. The books were published by Frank E. Richards and sold exclusively to schools.

Because these books are almost impossible to find at reasonable prices I’ve been posting all the illos from the best book of the bunch, “Jules Verne’s ’20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” in eight installments. This is the last of them.

Read: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Secret of Ball Lightning Discovered

Brazilian scientists may have solved a shocking scientific mystery by creating ball lightning in the lab.

Art © Steve Ditko; Spidy & Electro © Marvel Comics

People have reported seeing ball lightning in nature for hundreds of years, but there is no scientific consensus as to what causes the phenomenon. Now scientists have created orbs of electricity about the size of golf balls that mimic natural ball lightning. The fluffy-looking spheres spin, throw off sparks, and vibrate.

The balls have been reported to melt glass windows, burn objects, and even kill people—notably the 18th-century electricity researcher Georg Richmann. A few years ago it was proposed that when lightning strikes a surface, like the Earth's silica-rich soil, a vapor is formed. This silicon vapor may condense into particles that combine with oxygen in the air to slowly burn with the chemical energy of oxidation. Pavão and Paiva have spent two years testing the theory with a simple experiment.

Most of the artificial orbs lasted two to five seconds, but at least one has survived as long as eight seconds—approximating natural ball lightning and far exceeding previous efforts to create the phenomenon in the lab.

“Now we are producing balls [of lightning] as a result of silicon combustion. I believe that with our results, ball lightning is losing its status [as a] mystery." Link: National Geographic News.

Here’s the experiements in action:

Demon Machine Finally Invented

David Leigh at Edinburgh University has managed to make a molecular machine inspired by "Maxwell's demon" — a thought experiment that defies the second law of thermodynamics.

Leigh's molecular machine can, he says, drive a chemical system away from equilibrium. According to the second law of thermodynamics — that a system tends towards equilibrium — this shouldn't happen.

The Demon created by jack Kirby but © DC Comics

Fortunately, Leigh's device doesn't completely blow away the laws of physics: he needs to add energy to the system by shining light on it to make it work. The added energy explains how the system can move away from equilibrium.

James Clerk Maxwell came up with his thought experiment in 1867. In it, a demon guards a door between two rooms filled with gas. Using its sprightly demonic powers, the creature could open the door when he spotted a particularly fast-moving molecule coming his way. The molecule could then pass into a room, which would become progressively hotter. Likewise, the demon could allow particularly slow-moving molecules to pass out of the warmer room and into the cooler one. By doing so, he creates a growing temperature difference, and therefore, potential energy in the system, without having expended any energy to do it (assuming our magic demon doesn't eat).

In the real world, researchers have made little devices that might be used to make a demon-like machine. One of these is a ring-shaped molecule, which is slotted onto a tiny molecular axle. The ring can move along the axle between two different sites, A and B. If left to its own devices, the normal, random movement of molecules will shunt the ring back and forth. When there are many devices, at any given time, half of them should have a ring at one site, and half at the other.

Leigh's system uses these devices, but with a twist. The middle of his axle can change shape so that it blocks the ring from moving back and forth, but only when the ring is at position A, and only when light is shone on it. If a light is shone on a number of such machines, the rings at position A will get stuck. And as time goes on, many of the rings at position B will shunt over and also get stuck at position A. From Nature.com News

Where To Find Life On Mars

Art © estate of Reed Crandell

Probes designed to find life on Mars do not drill deep enough to find the living cells that scientists believe may exist well below the surface of Mars. Although current drills may find essential tell-tale signs that life once existed on Mars, cellular life could not survive the radiation levels for long enough any closer to the surface of Mars than a few metres deep – beyond the reach of even state-of-the-art drills.

"It just isn’t plausible that dormant life is still surviving in the near-subsurface of Mars – within the first couple of metres below the surface – in the face of the ionizing radiation field. Finding life on Mars depends on liquid water surfacing on Mars, but the last time liquid water was widespread on Mars was billions of years ago. Even the hardiest cells we know of could not possibly survive the cosmic radiation levels near the surface of Mars for that long."

The best places to look for living cells on Mars would be within the ice at Elysium because the frozen sea is relatively recent – it is believed to have surfaced in the last five million years – and so has been exposed to radiation for a relatively short amount of time. link

Modelling the surface and subsurface Martian radiation environment: Implications for astrobiology. 2007. L. R. Dartnell et al. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS: 34

Happy National Gorilla Suit Day!

What better way to celebrate NGSD than with Elvis Costello singing "Monkey to Man", complete with gorilla suits and go-go dancing bikini girls: