Well the news broke not too long ago. It may soon turn out that the super-luminal neutrions detected by the OPERA experiment back in September 2011 were actually quite sub-luminal. That is, that they did not travel faster than light. Instead, a bad connection on a fiber optic cable may have skewed the results.

The OPERA collaboration had originally found that neutrinos generated at CERN travelled 730 km and arrived at their destination 60 nanoseconds sooner than the speed of light limit would allow. This news, of course, threw the physics world into a real hubbub.

A variety of explanations for the results came out, and frankly I was quite pleased to see so many people interested in physics news. But today, a statement from the OPERA collaboration states that they may have found two sources of error in their measurement.

The OPERA Collaboration, by continuing its campaign of verifications on the neutrino velocity measurement, has identified two issues that could significantly affect the reported result. The first one is linked to the oscillator used to produce the events time-stamps in between the GPS synchronizations. The second point is related to the connection of the optical fiber bringing the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock.

These two issues can modify the neutrino time of flight in opposite directions. While continuing our investigations, in order to unambiguously quantify the effect on the observed result, the Collaboration is looking forward to performing a new measurement of the neutrino velocity as soon as a new bunched beam will be available in 2012. An extensive report on the above mentioned verifications and results will be shortly made available to the scientific committees and agencies.

In essence, the team used GPS synchronization to measure the amount of time the neutrinos took to get from Point A to Point B. This is actually quite tricky, and so the groups of neutrinos emitted from CERN may have been given an improper time stamp, throwing off the measurement.

Also a problem is a loose connection discovered between the GPS signal and the OPERA clock. Both could have very drastic effects on the time-of-flight measurements.

But nothing has been confirmed yet, despite wide-spread media coverage of this press release. So let’s be scientific about this and wait for another experiment to be performed and confirm that these problems did indeed skew the results.

But before I wrap this up I just want to say that even if it turns out a loose connection was the culprit here, this is the essence of the scientific process. The OPERA collaboration had a strange result that they couldn’t explain. So they released the result to the scientific community for help, hoping to find a new source of error.

Unfortunately, anything that has to do with Einstein or the speed of light grabs the attention of the media like a celebrity’s nipple. And with the ease of access of information these days, the media firestorm that erupted was inevitable, but not the fault of the scientists. Finding a problem with their measurement or a new source of error was exactly what they set out to do in the first place!

So I anxiously await the results of the next experiment, as I’m sure you all are too. Regardless of the results though, this is a great demonstration of how the scientific process works.

Last night, around 8:45 PM Mountain time, a meteor of approximately 100 kilograms erupted into a firebally show of goodness of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Not only did people report that fireball was brighter than the full moon, some even reported hearing a sonic boom as it raced across the sky.

If you happened to see or hear last night’s event, be sure to report it to the Meteorites and Impacts Advisory Committee.

As my regular readers may notice (assuming I have any left by now) I have been quite absent for that last couple months. And unfortunately, I don’t even have a fantastic or exciting reason as to why.

Truthfully, I’ve just been really busy. My job is picking up and I’ve also been planning my wedding (well, helping my fiancee plan our wedding).

But you guys deserve better than that. So I’m going to keep writing, but I’ll be pacing myself. That being said, I’m going to be much more active on my Tumblr page and Twitter feed, keeping everyone up to date on what’s going on in the wonderful world of science.

So thanks for sticking with me. I still love to write, so I’m gonna keep doing it.

Ladies and gentlemen, A Memory of Light--the final book in The Wheel of Time--has been finished.

December 21, 2011 6:49 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrandSanderson

Brandon Sanderson

Sure, it won’t actually come out for another 6 months or so. But still…SQUEEEEEE!!!!

May the Dragon Ride Again on the Wings of Time!

Rand al'Thor, done by John Seamas Gallagher

A schematic, called a Feynman diagram, of two virtual gluons from colliding LHC protons interacting to produce a hypothetical Higgs boson, a top quark, and an antitop quark. These in turn decay into a specific combination of quarks and leptons that is very difficult to fake in other processes. Collecting sufficient evidence of signals like this one may eventually allow ATLAS collaboration members to discover the Higgs boson.

In a press conference given today, scientists at CERN gave an update on the hunt for the Higgs boson.

Now let me be very clear. They did not find the Higgs boson. Not yet.

What they have found, are some “excesses which are intriguing” around the 124-125 GeV range in their search for the Higgs.

The “excesses” are only at a statistical certainty of about 2-sigma. In order to claim a discovery, the data must show a certainty at the level of 5-sigma. So they have a long way to go (I’ll put up a more detailed post later with what these terms actually mean).

A good thing is that two experiments at CERN, ATLAS and CMS, both show this fluctuation.

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. [BBC]

What happens now? Now we wait a few more months until they get some more data and this fluctuation in the data will be concluded to be the Higgs boson, or it will turn out to be nothing.

In this photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011, a canned powdered milk for infants Meiji Step, manufactured and sold by Japan’s major food and candy maker Meiji Co., is shown.

Traces of Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 have been found in a Japanese company’s baby formula.

The story was reported in The Associated Press, and the machine of churnalism has spread the story like nuclear fallout.

Traces of radiation spilled from Japan’s hobbled nuclear plant were detected in baby formula Tuesday in the latest case of contaminated food in the nation.

Major food and candy maker Meiji Co. said it was recalling canned powdered milk for infants, with expiration dates of October 2012, as a precaution.

The media has hit a gold mine with this one: radiation and babies!

Now, there’s no doubt about it: radiation is scary.

I mean, its invisible, it comes from nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, and can be very harmful to your health. There are many different types and it is hard to know how to protect yourself.

But radiation is everywhere. Even now, you are being bombarded with cosmic rays which are depositing a radiation dose into your body. Right, Carl Sagan?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvHHZO2wmmg

But the funny thing is, the more we understand about radiation, the less scary it becomes in everyday life.

For example, those cosmic rays I was just talking about? Well they give an annual radiation dose of about 0.3 to 1 milliSieverts. (a Sievert is a unit of radiation dose; for a good explanation on dose units, check out this link)

How does this compare to other radiation sources? Well the Potassium in your body actually produces radiation as well, and gives a dose roughly equivalent to the yearly background radiation dose.

If you took all the natural sources of radiation, be it from your own body, cosmic rays or the air and soil, the total radiation dose you get every year is about 4 milliSieverts.

So now lets talk about radiation released in nuclear power plant accidents.  If you lived within 10 miles of the Three Mile Island power plant during their little snafu, you received a dose of about 80 microsieverts (50 times less than normal background radiation).

The Chernobyl accident in 1986, the most famous and perhaps most catastrophic nuclear power plant accident in history, citizens who lived in highly contaminated areas near the plant between the years of 1986 and 2005 received a total dose of >50 milliSieverts  (about 270 000 people).

Citizens in less contaminated areas received a dose of about 10 – 20 milliSieverts between 1986 and 2005 (about 5 000 000 people).

For comparison sake, the average radiation dose from normal background radiation from 1986 to 2005 is about 80 milliSieverts. The dose from a normal, whole-body CT scan is about 12 milliSieverts.

Ok, now we have some perspective, so let’s talk about this baby formula.

So the company that makes the product is doing this recall voluntarily. The amount of radiation detected in the baby formula was

well below government-set safety limits, and the company said the amounts were low enough not to have any affect on babies’ health even if they drank the formula every day.

So, just how much radiation did they find?

The levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 in the milk were up to 31 becquerels per kilogram, which is below the government limit of 200 becquerels per kilogram set for milk.

So 31 Becquerels per kilogram (31 bq/kq). Now, 1 Becquerel means that 1 atom in a sample undergoes radioactive decay in 1 second. Thus 31 Bq/kg means that in 1 kg of the baby formula, 31 atoms are undergoing radioactive decay in 1 second.

How does this compare to other foods? Well a banana has a radioactivity of about 15 Bq due to the presence of potassium-40 (bananas contain about 0.5 grams of potassium, and radioactivity of 1 gram of potassium is about 31 Bq). A banana has a mass of, oh let’s say 150 grams, so the radioactivity of bananas per kilogram is:

Bearing in mind, of course, that these are rough numbers, but some sources suggest that this is actually a conservative estimate.

Comparable levels of radiation can be found in carrots, potatoes, red meat and brazil nuts.

So while it is good to keep a close eye on radiation levels, particularly after an earthquake and tsunami hit a nuclear power plant, let’s try and keep everything in perspective.

If you are worried about radiation levels closer to home, Health Canada monitors radiation levels across the country on a regular basis. Since the Fukushima disaster, they have found

Health Canada’s data does not show an increase over and above the normal day to day fluctuations. However, very minute levels of isotopes in the radiation have been attributed to the release in Japan. The actual increase in radiation measured is in the order of 0.0005 µSv per day, which is so small that it is extremely difficult to measure against normal background radiation.

So an increase on the order of 0.0005 microSieverts per day. That’s an incredibly small amount and absolutely nothing for us to worry about.

Drawing conclusions from medical research is not as easy as you might think.

I received a wonderful breath of fresh air this morning.

I came into work, sat at my computer and immediately ignored the dozen emails in my inbox to read the news.

Now, The Globe and Mail is usually my first stop for Canadian news. The news sections are generally quite good, though I have sometimes criticized their science reporting.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see this headline in the “Life” section:

How to Spot Bogus Research

The article discusses how scientific evidence, particularly medical studies, can be mis-construed and bastardized to prove pretty much anything the author wants.

By citing examples such as this review article claiming that cigarette smoking can increase running performance, the Globe article shows how we shouldn’t believe everything we read. (The review article in question was actually written as a joke to make exactly this point)

Common  methods used by proponents of alternative medicine and pseudoscience, such as cherry-picking data, are succinctly explained and accompanied by real examples of these tactics in action.

It is a good introduction to thinking critically about studies discussed in the news, and how to defend yourself from getting suckered in by false claims. Give it a read.

Well, this guy doesn’t.

Or these guys…

But everyone else loves the Muppets.

Now, since I also love physics I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that when I went to see “The Muppets” recently, I was delighted to see that Prof. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker had taken their leave of absence from performing to do research with the ATLAS detector at CERN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY3afeUuN8w

Poor Beaker.

Chad Orzel, author of the blog “Uncertain Principles” is counting down the days ’till Christmas (also Isaac Newton‘s birthday) with an important physics equation every day.

An explanation, as well as some history of each equation will also be given. For example, today’s equation is the full form of Newton’s Second Law:

Why is this important? Because it’s the foundation of physics as a mathematical science.

The F=ma form that everybody learns in grade school (in an ideal world, anyway) is an approximation to the full expression, assuming an object with constant mass and low velocity. If you want to know how high you can throw a baseball, or how quickly you can stop a car, this is the form to use.

Should be an interesting month. This advent calendar could only be better if it had chocolate.

About two weeks ago, a machinery operator for Syncrude stumbled upon a nearly complete skeleton of a Plesiosaur. 

Maggy Horvath, the woman who found the skeleton, said

As operators we always keep our eyes out for a find.

Can you imagine coming into work on the first day and you supervisor has to tell you to “be on the lookout for dinosaur bones”?

From the Syncrude press release:

“This is a very rare find. It’s a long necked plesiosaur, which is a marine reptile with a very long neck, small head and short body. The last one that was recovered was 10 years ago; it was recognized as a new kind and given the name Wapuskanectes,” said Dr. Don Brinkman, Director of Preservation and Research at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. “We are hoping that this is another specimen of this kind of plesiosaur. The new specimen is particularly important because it looks to be nearly complete.”

Plesiosaur on land

Well, that’s it. Now I have to go to the Royal Tyrrell Museum again and see me some dinosaurs!

(To the hardcore dino-fanatics: I know the plesiosaur is not technically a dinosaur, but damn it if it still makes me want to go see me some T-Rex skeletons)