Based on the current best measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe, 73% of the total mass-energy is cosmological constant, a.k.a. dark energy; of the remainder, 90% is dark matter of various sorts. The remainder is 90% intergalactic gas, and the rest luminous matter.

For short: 97% of the universe is poorly understood; 3% is hot air; and the rest is on fire.

Any resemblance to other projects is purely coincidental, I promise.

Now, this is neat: A superheavy element (Z=122, A=292, tentatively named "eka-Thorium" or "unbibium") which is relatively stable (t_1/2 ≥ 10⁸ yr) has been observed in nature, in natural Thorium samples. (It's called eka-Thorium because it would sit directly below Thorium on the periodic table; as a result, it's chemically very similar to Thorium, which means it can mix in to Thorium ores and stick there because it doesn't separate very easily)

This is a whole 30 atomic numbers above the next-largest naturally occurring element, Uranium. (Z=92, A=238) It's the first empirical proof that superheavy nuclei can actually exist and be stable.

Edit: Some history - the last time an element was discovered in nature was Francium (Z=87), which was discovered in 1939 by Marguerite Perey. It was thought highly likely that that would be the last time anyone ever did.

Edward Lorenz, meteorologist and founder of chaos theory, passed away today at the age of 90. He discovered the chaotic properties of nonlinear systems as a result of an unexpected result while running numerical weather simulations in 1961, and changed the way we think about complex systems.

For those of you with a mathematical background, I recommend taking a look at his 1963 paper "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow," in which he proves one of the most basic results of chaotic dynamics (that nonperiodic flows are unstable against small perturbations), applies it to a simple problem in fluid dynamics, demonstrates vividly and in pictures the way that the system becomes unpredictable, and reflects on its significance for weather prediction. It seems a fitting way to mark his passing, and the paper is great; very straightforward¹ and well-written, and full of the best pictures that 1963-era computing could produce.

¹ By comparison to most technical papers in mathematics, that is, and especially to most papers on differential equations. I realize that this is not the best definition of "straightforward."

Several people have been posting, here and more broadly, about Garrett Lisi's new candidate unified theory of fields and gravity. (Even slashdot seems to have picked it up) This got encouraged by Lee Smolin, of loop quantum gravity fame, getting publicly excited about it, and it makes for great news because Lisi isn't currently a practicing physicist -- he's currently a surf bum with a PhD. The biggest problem is that this paper is wrong in some rather key ways.

( Really technical digression, of interest only to physicistsCollapse )
Anyway, that was really technical and is mostly for the reference of any physicists who still read this. The non-technical version is that it makes for a great news story and all, but this is the sort of idea that most high-energy physicists come up with sometime during grad school, think about for a few minutes, and then realize why it doesn't work.

What's more amusing is watching Lee Smolin go off and praise it, just because it's a non-string-theory theory of quantum gravity. :)

The latest round of news about polar ice melting being a lot faster than any models have expected -- new satellite data from the ESA. What's exciting about this one is that they show that the Northwest Passage, a fabled sea route from Europe to Asia via the northern coast of Canada that would shortcut both the Panama Canal and the much longer Cape Route, which explorers searched for in vain from the 15th century to the 20th, is for the first time in recorded history navigable by sea traffic from one end to the other.

Let the gold rush begin.

Very interesting op-ed piece by Shankar Vedantam in the Washington Post today about the effect of "campaign contributions." He argues that the main impact of these contributions on elected officials isn't to get them to change their mind about issues (which is why groups rarely contribute to politicians on the opposite side of the aisle from them) but rather to change their prioritization. He gives an interesting example, recounted by a former aide to Sen. Daschle about how they were working on a hunger relief bill when a drought started in South Dakota, and they context-switched to work on a relief bill for dairy farmers. According to this aide,

Daschle did not stop caring about hunger because he was working on dairy issues. And he did not start working on dairy issues merely because of campaign contributions. He genuinely cared about dairy issues, too. Money that people in the dairy industry spent on campaign contributions and lobbying did not have to buy Daschle's views -- he was in their corner to begin with. But what campaign contributions and the subsidization of legislative work that lobbyists provide do obtain is a subtle alteration in politicians' priorities

The article further backs this assertion by noting that the distribution of funds by groups favors politicians who already favor them, not politicians who are on the fence or on the other side.

The conclusions that derive from this are interesting: it means that you shouldn't care too much about who's funding politicians you don't like (except insofar as you can use that to make political hay), but you should be very alert to see which other groups are funding the ones you do like; they're the ones competing with you for actual slices of the politician's efforts.

There are two things on the internet which are very worth your time at the moment.

The first one has to do with US politics. I'll simply refer you to this post by Brad Hicks, since he wrote an excellent summary of what's really important. It has to do with James Comey's testimony to Congress a few days ago. The short version is that, when John Ashcroft was AG and critically ill, Alberto Gonzales (then the top White House lawyer) and Andrew Card (Bush's Chief of Staff) went in to the hospital to try to force Ashcroft, while under sedation, to re-authorize mass wiretapping, even though he had concluded (while conscious) that it was illegal. Comey was acting AG while Ashcroft was sick, and rushed to the scene to try to stop them. He succeeded, the program was declared illegal, and the next day Bush ordered it to continue anyway, despite the formal advice of the Department of Justice. Comey's testimony is stunning, and you should at least read the transcript -- but if you have 20 minutes, it's worth watching the video and seeing for yourself. If this is not cause to open an impeachment hearing -- the deliberate and knowing violation of laws, the doing of such an action to attempt to expand police powers in direct and specific contravention to a law (FISA) designed to prevent that, and even the simple human action of browbeating a man under sedation to abet them in so doing -- then nothing is.

(Edit: The most moving section of the testimony may be the earlier part, where Comey talks about the night meeting in the hostpital. But the key statement happens at [end of tape minus 4:31])

The second one is a bit lighter, but really great: The 26 Most Common Climate Myths. From the New Scientist, a detailed discussion of the 26 most common misconceptions about climate change, together with explanations, figures, graphs, and references to the original papers. This is a great bit of science journalism.

If you have any free time today, and are at all interested in either the political future of the US or in climate change, these are good things to look at.

Polar ice retreating much faster than climate models predict.

Something I've been saying for a while: The ice modeling in the current gold-standard models (like GISS-E) is Just Plain Wrong: it doesn't adequately account for positive feedback in ice-melting, such as the way meltwater changes the ambient environment for ice, or the way that ice melt affects ambient atmospheric properties. A calculation like that is pretty much guaranteed to predict that ice melts only very slowly and adiabatically, instead of quickly and with marked "tipping points".

Conclusion: We're going to have a seasonally navigable North Polar Sea a lot sooner than many people anticipate.

I open up the news quickly, just to see if something interesting is up in the world, and what do I see?

Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the hand-crafted tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.

Which is pretty damned interesting from an anthropology (and primatology) perspective, although not the most cheering thing to read.

Hi everyone, lots of significant news stories today. Top of the line: the new Int'l Panel on Climate Change report is out. Or at least, the Summary for Policymakers; their web site is such an utter mess that I can't find the actual report anywhere. Haven't read it yet, will post once I do. (Maybe to climatepapers) Here's pretty good news coverage from NYT. However, this report needs to be taken with a very serious grain of salt: Apparently they caved to political pressure and seriously damped the prediction about sea level rise, to basically assume that nothing bad ever happens to an ice sheet ever again. This is unfortunately total nonsense since ice sheets have been collapsing all over the place, and so it means that a lot of the predictions in this document are probably very off -- in the conservative direction.

Next story, more fighting between Hamas and Fatah. Palestinians fall deeper into civil unrest. Subtext of this: After Arafat died, there was no central strongman. Hamas has been thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian agents and is working on its own little agenda, which is part of why it started shelling Israel a while ago and kidnapping soldiers (they did it before Hezbollah, when the latest Lebanese war started! These groups work in sync now) without bothering to ask the Palestinians if that was a good idea. And Fatah, Yassir Arafat's old party, specializes mostly in corruption, despite what appear to be good intentions by its current leader Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah has the presidency and Hamas the parliament, and both have their own armed forces. So the two factions of Palestinian government are busily killing each other. If it weren't for the fact that this is wholly destructive of any remaining bits of functioning civil society and infrastructure in the Palestinian territories, and thus one of the few ways left to make life systematically worse for the average Palestinian, I would say that these batch of idiots shooting one another is the best thing they could do with their time.

And yet another report on Iraq indicating that the place is a mess and deteriorating rapidly. (Shocking!) On the same day, a suicide attack in southern Iraq killed 60 and wounded 150.

OK, for anyone who hasn't figured this out yet, something important to understand. Majority rule is not the defining feature of democracy; there have been plenty of dictatorships that had the support of the majority. The key feature is protection of the rights of the minority. This is the center of the "deal" in democracy: when group X loses an election, they relinquish power, because they trust that the group taking power will not use that power to, say, brutally kill group X, or take everything X owns, or change the laws so that X is never again allowed to be in power. Without that level of trust, any election is simply a sham. In Iraq, there has never been this basic level of trust, because the basic level of political alliance is to tribe (and sect, and so on). A Sunni would have to be out of his mind to vote for a Shi'ite candidate, or even to let a Shi'ite candidate take power, because they know that the Shi'ites would have no compunction at all about killing them if they had the instruments of power, and vice-versa. In a situation like this, hopping for democracy is utterly ridiculous; civil war is the only possibility, ended either by one group seizing power forcibly over the others or by stable partition.

Please, please, please, don't forget that. Having elections does not make you a democracy any more than going to a garage makes you a car.

OK, back to work for me.

(PS: Sorry, I'm just linking to the NYT stories today; these are being covered everywhere, check your favorite news outlet for details. Except for the climate report, which I couldn't find anywhere at all on Fox News' web site; what a shock)