New Tokamak Fusion Reactor turns on in Japan

 What is now the world's largest tokamak (sort of like a toroid shaped reactor) thermonuclear fusion reactor is now working north of Tokyo, Japan. The continued work towards the 'Holy Grail' of energy production is making progress towards the dream of unlimited energy (can get the 'fuel' from water, which is deuterium and tritium, the isotopes of hydrogen), with no risk of meltdowns, no radioactive waste, and no greenhouse gas emissions. This is a big attempt to show fusion is possible, and can scale up to industrial and commercial production levels. Let's hope this works and shows scientists and engineers the next steps of accomplishing this long-term dream! 

For those interested in this, it is a major multidisciplinary area of research and engineering: nuclear and plasma physics, math modeling, nuclear and plasma engineering, mechanical and electrical and computer engineering, civil engineering, environmental sciences, city planning, eventually governmental energy and patent regulations and policy, and so much more!

                                                            From BYJUs.

A Dangerous Era for Science Funding

 Here is how politics instantly affects science (STEM in general) research. At the professional level, most university funding comes through grants. One must write a proposal to foundations, businesses, individuals, or a huge amount from the federal government. The largest amount of federal funding comes through the National Science Foundation, or NSF. But with new directives from the current administration, and its obsession to get rid of anything that they think smells like 'DEI' (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), one can lose their federal funding, and who knows if other legal consequences will be part of this. 

Check out this article to see a LIST OF WORDS that will get a scientific paper FLAGGED FOR DEI. Apparently, federal agencies like NSF, the CDC, and likely every other one, are scrubbing published papers on their websites to remove these words. This is outright censorship, and we all need to be aware of this in K-12 research because so many programs and opportunities to help all sorts of students may have federal funding behind them. This could include anything a school does with colleges, special education, food programs, different grants or fellowships through the Dept. of Education (which is being significantly downsized, with a stated goal of the president to be eliminated), and anything a school is doing that has to do with helping students of color, girls (yes, FEMALE and WOMEN are on the banned list), LGBTQ kids, or any group that is underrepresented in anything...ALL of this can get your work or funding flagged for DEI. 

This is a new era for science research, and we all need to be aware of it. This is dangerous, and is what authoritarians and dictators do to control countries and its citizens - the notion of any ideas that differ from 'the state' are banned and outlawed, and has been done throughout history by all sorts of regimes. Be safe, be strong, and resist this nonsense! 

Interesting experiment to investigate sound from clapping hands

 This is an interesting study into the sound created when we clap our hands. And what's more, this is a potential project setup for research of your own. The technique used was filming the patterns of air coming out from one's clapping hands by using baby powder. If you have access to any level of high-speed video tools, you could study these patterns, and compare them between various shaped objects coming together in a clapping manner. Investigate similarities and differences as functions of shape, size, mass, size of the cavities formed when the two objects come together, and anything else you can think of! If you have 3-D printers, you can design different shaped objects and cavities, and so on. 

Here's a brief video of this technique. 

Interesting binary star simulator, showing eclipsing data

 This looks like a pretty interesting binary star system simulator, with the added twist that it shows the eclipsing consequences of the radiation flux we observe from earth. 

If we see a system more from a side view of the plane the star's orbits are on, at certain times one of the stars blocks or partially blocks the other, resulting in dips in the light intensity we detect. This is a great way to measure the orbital periods, which are also needed to determine the masses of the stars. Pretty cool! 

                                                             From Tychos.info

South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly being watched

 The Earth's magnetic field is quite complex, and includes global reversals where the north and south magnetic poles flip-flop. While scientists have studied it for centuries, the complexity still holds mysteries about the magnetic field. 

The first thing to note is all magnetism we know of comes from moving electric charges and electric currents. For something like a planet, the question then becomes where are the currents? 

The Earth has a solid inner core, but then a molten iron outer core - that is the key. As my students are well aware, metals are special because they have free electrons moving throughout (the 'electron sea'). Normally these free electrons are moving randomly through the metal. But then, we need to remember that the earth rotates. The rotation causes the molten iron to flow in one direction, and suddenly we have a circular current of electrons, and this contributes to the magnetic field. 

Fluid dynamics is complex and very challenging mathematically. Turbulence happens, and because Earth is spherical, that geometry introduces different rotational velocities in different regions of the molten iron. The complexities of flow and the electric currents that result causes the Earth's magnetic field to be dynamic - it is constantly changing, and on occasion when turbulent regions develop, and sometimes the flow locally can be opposite the main flow, irregularities exist within the global magnetic field. This is likely what is happening in the outer core to cause the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly. It has grown over the past few decades, and is a region where the magnetic field has already 'flipped' polarity. At some point, perhaps in the coming centuries, the global field may undergo another reversal, where our compass needles will point opposite where it points today. We'll see how this plays out! 

In science, nature always is harder and more complex than what our textbooks tell us, so there are always magnificent mysteries waiting to be solved! Have some fun and take on one of those mysteries that fascinates you!

                                       From Science Alert, 1/29/25

Science never rests - New idea questions whether universe is expanding

 Science is a process that never sits still. Unlike something like religion, which tends to deal in doctrine and more absolute or unbendable ideas and rules, scientific theories and models and ideas must change if contradictory observations and experimental evidence are discovered. And sometimes new ideas emerge that are just different, and look at problems with a different lens. 

This is the case with some new ideas proposed by theoretical astrophysicist Lucas Lombriser from Vienna. He has been thinking about the expansion of the universe, and the measurements that suggest the expansion rate of the universe is actually accelerating - to explain this, astronomers have been suggesting things like 'dark energy' to explain that acceleration, despite having no idea what dark energy actually is. Lombriser proposes there is not even a need for an expanding universe, which goes against the thinking in the field for the past century. Something like this is exciting, and keeps science alive and moving forward. His idea is that an expanding universe is basically an illusion, caused by the time evolution of the mass of particles (like protons and electrons), which is also a new idea. But according to Lombriser's mathematical model, if particle mass is not constant, then the consequence is gravity changes, and things like the expansion of the universe, dark energy, and perhaps dark matter, are not even necessary! 

There is no experimental test, yet, for any of these ideas, so we must all consider them but not run too fast with them. I suspect many researchers over the coming decade will be thinking about all this and trying to find any sort of observational or experimental clues that support or deny any pieces of this new model. This is how science is supposed to work. We must be patient and see what Nature is trying to hint to us! If correct, though, WOW! This would make for a paradigm shift in astronomy, and I am sure many other theories and observations would need to be questioned and viewed through this new lens. I love science and this wonderful, and sometimes frustrating, process! 

These 7 initial discoveries in 2024 that need independent confirmation

 Science News has a good article for 7 science discoveries this past year that could become BIG DEALS, should additional work confirm and strengthen them. Have fun with it, and remember that in science research, replication and independent confirmation of one's work is a necessity before the scientific community will begin to put real weight behind the discovery. 

Science is an organic, always evolving process that attempts to figure out how the world and universe work, based on physical evidence and observations, and we shouldn't want to take a single study's conclusions as 'fact' without independent studies and confirmations.