Official "Science News" Thread

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

they weren't the only ones doing this sort of thing:

Nevada Test Site | NuclearRisks.org

And that pales relative to the radiation released in the US' Pacific-islands testing:

So the Nevada tests released O(10^6) times as much radiation as the 2017 Russia incident, and the Pacific tests another 42x that.

And like the FSU, we have our own long list of accidents-waiting-to-happen nuclear waste dumps. Pot, meet kettle.

One might point out that there's an obvious distinction between atmospheric nuclear weapons testing and nuclear reactor accidents, and so reasonably believe someone was trying to change the subject.

However, on the subject of nuclear reactors -- particularly those involved in producing plutonium, the situation at Hanford -- though not involving a "loss of coolant accident" -- could at some point have dire consequences if the plume of radioactive crud moving through the groundwater gets into the Columbia River.

But since you brought up nuclear weapons testing, and "Pot, meet kettle,"...

The Soviets were also conducting atmospheric tests, at the Semipalatinsk Test Site In Kazakhstan.

The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities and has only come to light since the test site closed in 1991.
<snip>
The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities. The general consensus of health studies conducted at the site since it was closed is that radioactive fallout from nuclear testing had a direct impact on the health of about 200,000 local residents. Specifically, scientists have linked higher rates of different types of cancer to post-irradiation effects. Likewise, several studies have explored the correlation between radiation exposure and thyroid abnormalities. A BBC program claimed in 2010 that in the worst affected locations one in 20 children born were with genetic defects. British film-maker Antony Butts documented some of the genetic health impacts in his 2010 film After the Apocalypse.

In regard to the dolorous consequences of US atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada, American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War by Carole Gallagher will curdle your blood good and proper. If memory serves, one of our Pacific tests resulted in the deaths by radiation sickness of some crew members of a Japanese fishing boat. I also recall seeing video of millions of dead butterflies floating on the surface of the ocean. They had been killed by radiation.

[ewmayer]

In the latest "WTF?" news, allow me to present

Dark Matter May Predate the Big Bang, New Math Suggests Science Daily

The hype - and note the quote is from the *author* of the study, not some overzealous copy-editor looking to make for a more click-baity article:

The study, published August 7 in Physical Review Letters, presents a new idea of how dark matter was born and how to identify it with astronomical observations.

"The study revealed a new connection between particle physics and astronomy. If dark matter consists of new particles that were born before the Big Bang, they affect the way galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way. This connection may be used to reveal their identity and make conclusions about the times before the Big Bang too," says Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and the study's author.

So, allegations of physics occurring 'before' the Big Bang, i.e. before there were such things as 'spacetime' and 'matter/energy' ... I believe 'interesting' is the polite response-word here. Next, though, we see this, underlines mine:

While not much is known about its origins, astronomers have shown that dark matter plays a crucial role in the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Though not directly observable, scientists know dark matter exists by its gravitation effects on how visible matter moves and is distributed in space.

For a long time, researchers believed that dark matter must be a leftover substance from the Big Bang. Researchers have long sought this kind of dark matter, but so far all experimental searches have been unsuccessful.

"If dark matter were truly a remnant of the Big Bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already," says Tenkanen.

Using a new, simple mathematical framework, the study shows that dark matter may have been produced before the Big Bang during an era known as the cosmic inflation when space was expanding very rapidly. The rapid expansion is believed to lead to copious production of certain types of particles called scalars. So far, only one scalar particle has been discovered, the famous Higgs boson.

Wikipedia on cosmic inflation, underlines again mine:

In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10⁻³⁶ seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to some time between 10⁻³³ and 10⁻³² seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the universe continues to expand, but at a less rapid rate.

So an august publication like Physical Review Letters is now publishing articles on cosmology written by people who don't grasp the distinction between "before the inflationary epoch" and "before the Big Bang"?

[ewmayer]

Another nuclear accident in Russia:

Russia Admits Mysterious Missile Engine Explosion Involved A Nuclear 'Isotope Power Source' (Updated) - The Drive

That nuclear-powered cruise missile sounds worrisomely like an early-1960s U.S. program, Project Pluto:

Since nuclear power gave it almost unlimited range, the missile could cruise in circles over the ocean until ordered “down to the deck” for its supersonic dash to targets in the Soviet Union. The SLAM, as proposed, would carry a payload of many nuclear weapons to be dropped on multiple targets, making the cruise missile into an unmanned bomber. After delivering all its warheads, the missile could then spend weeks flying over populated areas at low altitudes, causing tremendous ground damage with its shock wave and fallout. When it finally lost enough power to fly, and crash-landed, the engine would have a good chance of spewing deadly radiation for months to come.

On May 14, 1961, the world’s first nuclear ramjet engine, “Tory-IIA”, mounted on a railroad car, roared to life for a few seconds. Three years later, “Tory-IIC” was run for five minutes at full power. Despite these and other successful tests, the Pentagon, sponsor of the “Pluto project”, had second thoughts. The weapon was considered “too provocative”, and it was believed that it would compel the Soviets to construct a similar device, against which there was no known defense. Intercontinental ballistic missile technology had proven to be more easily developed than previously thought, reducing the need for such highly capable cruise missiles. On July 1, 1964, seven years and six months after it was started, “Project Pluto” was canceled.

And by way of background (pardon the radiological pun), a bit of recent history on the renewed ramping-up of nuclear weapons R&D in both the U.S. and Russia - neocon extraordinaire John Bolton, former NatSec advisor to W. Bush and currently mis-advisor to Trump and arguably the world's most dangerous human, looms large, as does the year 2009 and then-president Obama. Bipartisanship!

[GP2]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

So an august publication like Physical Review Letters is now publishing articles on cosmology written by people who don't grasp the distinction between "before the inflationary epoch" and "before the Big Bang"?

But inflation wasn't observed directly, since we weren't around during the Big Bang. Rather, it is inferred indirectly from the current structure of the universe.

But the inflation model that you would infer on the assumption that all the matter in the universe was created in the Big Bang would likely be different from a model where you assume some pre-existing dark matter.

It's unlikely that Physical Review Letters would publish an outright crank.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by GP2

But inflation wasn't observed directly, since we weren't around during the Big Bang. Rather, it is inferred indirectly from the current structure of the universe.

But the inflation model that you would infer on the assumption that all the matter in the universe was created in the Big Bang would likely be different from a model where you assume some pre-existing dark matter.

It's unlikely that Physical Review Letters would publish an outright crank.

If you click on the PRL link at bottom of the article, the very first line of the abstract reads:

"Dark matter (DM) may have its origin in a pre-big-bang epoch, the cosmic inflation."

Is there a different-from-Guth heterodox theory of cosmic inflation which predates the Big Bang?

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

If you click on the PRL link at bottom of the article, the very first line of the abstract reads:

"Dark matter (DM) may have its origin in a pre-big-bang epoch, the cosmic inflation."

Is there a different-from-Guth heterodox theory of cosmic inflation which predates the Big Bang?

Penrose produced a cyclical cosmology a few years back which has a similar basis.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

Penrose produced a cyclical cosmology a few years back which has a similar basis.

Interesting ... but 2 things argue against this being the theoretical context of the above PRL paper:

[1] The PRL abstract makes no mention of a heterodox framework - it uses the language of 'classical' BB cosmology, including inflation;

[2] Penrose appears to be arguing *against* the need for dark matter/energy:

"The curvature properties of Penrose's cosmology are also convenient for other aspects of cosmology. First, the boundary between aeons satisfies the Weyl curvature hypothesis, thus providing a certain kind of low-entropy past as required by statistical mechanics and by observation. Second, Penrose has calculated that a certain amount of gravitational radiation should be preserved across the boundary between aeons. Penrose suggests this extra gravitational radiation may be enough to explain the observed cosmic acceleration without appeal to a dark energy matter field."

[ewmayer]

Posting this in the Science thread, as a great example of the poor state of scientific backgrounding among modern so-called journalists, in this case at the UK's Daily Mail. I suppose it's a bit of a silver lining that they're not - yet - blaming Teh Evil Roosian Hackerz:

Fury at power cut that brought Britain to its knees: Government launches probe into mystery simultaneous failure of wind farm and gas-fired power station as officials insist there is ‘no evidence’ of a cyber attack | Daily Mail

Oooh... "mystery" ... sounds so, well, mysterious! When in fact to the folks working in the power-generation business, there should be no mystery. Using public internet sources, NC reader Clive helpfully explains exactly what went wrong:

I’m going to use this as a worked example of the abominable state of our mainstream media, clueless so-called journalists and possibly deliberate misinformation by private-sector operators.

Everything that is (or was) necessary to assess the power outage and its almost-certain root cause is readily available via publicly-accessible information sources. Within less than 10 minutes of the supply interruption being reported, I was able to get plenty sufficient information to ascertain exactly what had gone wrong and who was to blame. That’s one of the benefits of the internet I suppose — what would have previously relied on a network of contacts and phone calls is there for the taking in a few clicks, if one has a list of genuinely useful website addresses. In this case https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main told me everything I needed to know (as the real-time displays have now moved on in the dashboard, you’d need to look back to last Friday between 16:00 and 17:10-ish GMT and the historic data, but it’s still all there — it was a lot easier to read the dashboard contemporaneously).

The problem wasn’t excess demand. It was a warm, but not hot day (temperatures crept up to 27.5C or thereabouts, let’s call it 80F). So neither high cooling demand was a factor, nor was line sag due to high ambient temperatures. Industrial demand and domestic demand were also flat.

Electrical supply incidents are down to three possible factors: Too much demand. Too little supply. Distribution network issues. That’s it. There is no more. And we’ve already discounted one of our three possible culprits.

What about the distribution network? No outages were reported so that’s not a contributing factor. So, now, hardly needing to be Sherlock Homes’, we’re left with supply problems. On Friday last week, there was plenty of supply available. It was a very windy day but it was also bright and sunny, predominantly. Of the c. 20GW installed capacity of solar generation, at least 5-10GW must have been outputting at that time of the day. And for wind, nearly 10GW was being supplied. No problems there, then?

Not so fast. “Conventional” sources of supply — gas, mainly for the UK, were barely ticking over (about 5GW from an available capacity of nearly 20GW). There was 6GW from nuclear, but that’s what you always have, you can’t turn nuclear generation on or off at the drop of a hat. There was also between 1 and 2 GW from biomass. So, of the 30-40GW demand, only 11-12GW or thereabouts was from “conventional” generation.

Why does that matter? Because of “reactive loads”. Electrical motors (such as in traction motors for trains, elevators, compressor motors in chillers for office blocks and hospitals and so on) present a uniquely challenging load profile for electrical supply grids and generation. I won’t dwell on how reactive supply and reactive loads interact and why they are important, a good explanation is given here. But on the 9th August, reactive loads were high and reactive electrical generation supply availability was low. Such modest levels of natural gas generation supply was kept online purely (or almost) for satisfying reactive loads. It wasn’t at all needed for meeting the baseload or peaks.

At around 16:55, the Little Barford combined cycle gas turbine facility developed a fault and tripped out, disconnecting this supply. The positioning of the power station is key. It is in Bedford, in the south east (ish) of England. Reactive generation has a limited travel ability in the distribution grid (as grid impedance increases with distance of line length). The load centre of the reactive loads was also in the south east of England, especially around London. While the loss of generating capacity (c. 600MW) was a mere trifle in the 30-40GW of online generation supply potential, the effect on the ability of the grid to meet the geographically sensitive reactive load was dramatic.

Frequency in the grid dropped rapidly (in about 30 seconds) from c. 50Hz (remember the UK runs on 50Hz supply frequency, not 60 like the US does) to nearer 49Hz. Anything more than a 0.5Hz drop is very significant. It was at this point that events rapidly escalated.

Wind power supply (the same applies to solar, too) is inputted into the grid by invertors, which take the wind turbine output and modulate the supply frequency to match that of the grid. But if the grid supply frequency drops, to protect the equipment, the invertors are designed to trip out, until the frequency on the grid is restored to normal range parameters. When the frequency on the grid fell, the Hornsea wind farm (nearly 1GW capacity) disconnected. This caused a genuine capacity shortfall in terms of generating output and load shedding (high consumption users being preempted) to be activated. High consumers of reactive supply — like traction motors on trains and areas with a lot of motors like city centres full of office blocks — were cut off from the grid. This was entirely correct, supply frequency had dropped, following the Hornsea wind farm disconnect, to 48.5Hz and if load shedding hadn’t been put in place pretty pronto, base-load coverage from the nuclear generating power stations would have also force-disconnected and you’d have a full-on cascade failure.

Here, then, we can point the finger of blame. There should have been more reactive generating capacity available on the grid where there was the reactive loads. Remedial action — like starting up of the Dinorwig Power Station (a pumped storage facility with a huge 1.8GW supply potential available within 15 seconds) was fine for the overall peak lopping (required following the loss of the gas generation supply) but completely useless in terms of meeting the reactive load in the south east (Dinorwig is a long way away from London, in north Wales).

Why hadn’t this been put in place? Ah, regular readers will be stunned, just stunned, to learn the answer. National Grid sweating the operators’ generating assets and cutting margin to the barest of the bare minimum. And not understanding load profiles and supply capabilities — especially the susceptibility of wind generation to grid frequency excursions. Neoliberalism and privatisation, in other words.

If I could work all this out fairly easily, the lack of proper journalistic ability and the resultant failing to hold those in the positions of power (government, the National Grid, the regulators) to account says a lot about our so-called democracies, our media and our capability to manage our societies as a result of these deficiencies. It’s no use the mainstream media lauding itself on being a reliable source of the truth, if it lacks the wherewithal to do basic research and provide subject matter expertise to bring about penetrating commentaries and enquiries.

[xilman]

It may be life, Jim, but not as we know it.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

It may be life, Jim, but not as we know it.

I am glad to see recognition of such possibilities. It has always seemed narrow-minded to look only for water-based life.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by kladner

I am glad to see recognition of such possibilities. It has always seemed narrow-minded to look only for water-based life.

+1

I've long been open to the idea that intelligent life, let alone life in general, could exist on the surface of neutron stars or within interstellar molecular clouds, let alone relatively familiar (and therefore widely thought of as friendly) environments such as the atmospheres of Jovian planets and liquid hydrocarbon / tholin rich surfaces such as we see on Titan.

I'm sure that an unbiased observer would conclude that the atmosphere of Jupiter is by far the most likely place in the solar system to find life. It's immense, chemically rich and complex, and has a variety of sources of free energy.

In case you think Jupiter is too weird, consider there is a region which is at approximately (Earth) room temperature and pressure. Life on Earth, to a very good approximation, is confined to a thin layer within 10 km of sea level. The corresponding layer on Jupiter is at least ten times that thickness and the volume is around a thousand times greater.