What's with the sun anyway? Always giving us sunburns and getting us sweaty and gross on the walk to class. Who needs it anyway? Turns out, it's pretty important for a lot of reasons, mainly life on Earth. So what if the sun was dying a little ahead of schedule, what would we do? First we'd watch this movie directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland!Sunshine is an action-packed sci-fi thriller about an epic journey to re-ignite our dying sun. The question is, can director Danny Boyle make a smooth transition from drug junkies to Leonardo DiCaprio to zombie plagues to space mission circa 2050? I'd say the transition works well, and, having watched 28 days later only a few weeks ago, I noticed similar themes between the two movies. 28 Days is all about the psychology of zombie plague survivors and it demonstrated how twisted the morals of people can be in life or death situations. Sunshine is a psychological thriller in the same vein. The feelings of loneliness and abandonment in space is only a few light-years (a pretty small distance in astronomical terms), away from the feelings of being abandoned in a city of flesh-eaters.I was waiting for this movie to be reviewed by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, but he hasn't seen it yet! After I saw the movie I was desperate for some scientific critique but even the SEED review was lacking. So thanks to some Google-ing, Wikipede-ing, and IMDB-ing answers became clear.So I could talk about the character development, or the philosophical/religious discussion in the latter half the movie but what about the science? I have to admit, it was no 2001: Space Odyssey. I had pretty high standards for the science because CERN scientist Brian Cox, who is working on the Large Hadron Collider, assisted in the movie production as Science Director. Much to my disappointment, Boyle glazed over all of his cool science theories and focussed on his space thriller vision. Oh, but he made sure to keep in the hot fact that it takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach earth, I guess Brian Cox's PhD was put to good use after all! Honestly, if you have a reputable science director in the first place, why not include some of his ideas into the script? Luckily information via IMDB and online interviews revealed his input.I'm pretty sure Bill Nye first taught me that the sun was going to around for a long long time before it burns out, like 5 billion years. So if this movie takes place in 2050, what's with the hurry? Well, to quote a Telegraph interview:

"Our back-story for the Sun dying is that a large blob of supersymmetric particles called a Q-ball has drifted into the solar core, and is slowly eating it away," says Cox. "This has been suggested as a possible explanation for gamma-ray bursts," he says, referring to the beams of gamma rays sent out by the most powerful bangs in the cosmos, thought to be created as black holes are born. [Although,] "Our Sun is not dense enough to stop a Q-ball: it would fly straight through," he says.

These Q-Ball's that Cox mentions are the real deal and they hope to actually discover some at LHC when it gets up and running. Wikipedia gives you the scoop on how to construct a Q-Ball, but if one starts eating our sun how do we destroy it? From the Sunshine Blog:

Q: HOW WILL THE STELLAR BOMB DESTROY THE Q BALL?The bomb creates the same super-heated conditions in which the Q Ball was made. To be specific, Q Balls were formed at a particular time after the Big Bang: 10 to minus 35 seconds. The heat at this moment of the Big Bang was 10 to the power of 32 degrees.By recreating these conditions, the Q Ball will split up, separating it into squarks. Squarks on their own decay quickly into normal or stable (benign) supersymmetric particles. Put simply, the Stellar Bomb makes the Q Ball fall to bits.Q: WHAT IS THE STELLAR BOMB MADE OF?Dark matter and Uranium. In the same way that an atomic bomb uses normal explosives to trigger uranium into a nuclear explosion, the stellar bomb uses uranium to trigger the dark matter.In the film Sunshine, mankind has been able to construct two of these Stellar Bombs. The fact that the Stellar Bomb uses uranium is the reason that mankind is limited to only two payloads because Earth does not contain enough uranium to build a third.

If only they had discussed the previous information in the movie then my roommates, also Physics majors, wouldn't be so disappointed after I promised them a scientifically accurate space movie! To worsen my situation, the spaceship in the movie didn't explain any source of artificial gravity. Rotating spaceships have some handy centrifugal forces to simulate gravity for passengers but I think they chose a cool looking ship at the expense of science. From IMDB:

The ships originally used rotating sections to provide artificial gravity. This is not used in the movie, so people experience normal Earth gravity everywhere while aboard the ships. An early storyboard shows the crew boarding the stricken ship and finding that the only gravity is "sideways", towards the bomb.

Another little tidbit I wasn't sure about was the exposure to the vacuum of space without a space-suit on. According to NASA, this is fine for a short period of time, assuming you don't have lungs full of air. If you aren't convinced NASA did a nice study here: The Effect on the Chimpanzee of Rapid Decompression to a Near Vacuum and no animals were harmed in the process (unlike some of the other attempts to fire monkeys into space).All in all, a good 6/10 type movie, but if you're interested in science you might be better off reading Jacks of Science!

I don't usually follow politics except when it relates to how much tuition I have to pay. Although, I was glad to see some political commentary in terms that even a layman like me can understand.

Thanks Reddit!

Ever since computers were intelligently designed they have been flirting with the concepts of evolution. I'm mainly referring to evolutionary computation here. If you don't believe me just watch youthful Richard Dawkins flirt up a computing storm in a BBC Horizon documentary from 1987 around the 14:27 and 26:46 (Don't forget to check out an introduction to the optical disk at 9:05). Actually, according to this random Wikipedia fact:

In the fifties, long before computers were used on a great scale, the idea to use Darwinian principles for automated problem solving originated.

So what you're probably wondering is that if computers and Darwinian principles have been flirting for so long, why don't they just marry each other? Well, according to my exhaustive research, I'm proud to say that they are engaged. It's pretty hush-hush right now. We don't often hear about the two together outside the field of artificial intelligence because Evolution has such strong Christian values. That means no sex until after marriage.

The whole situation is the epitome of daytime drama because computers aren't exactly faithful. Darwinian principles and computers have been dating since the 50's but computers were unsatisfied with the relationship. Things just got so monotonous, that in the 80's, computers started seeing Quantum Physics to secretly add some much needed uncertainty to life. But there are plenty of sites out there that discuss that classically forbidden relationship.

Don't get me wrong, Computers and the principles of Evolution get along great. They have achieved many great things together, see "The Hitchhikers Guide to Evolutionary Computation: Applications of Evolution Algorithms", so there's no question that they would make great parents. All they need is to resolve a few relationship issues, consecrate the marriage, and a little Barry White to welcome to the world an adorable baby child! A child that goes by the name of Evolvable Hardware.

Read the rest of this entry »

It's pretty jawesome that robots can play soccer and win a RoboCup for their efforts. In continuation of the future-swoon from my previous artificial intelligence post, it will definitely be the future when we can play robot teams at sports. The beauty is that if they got too good we could lower the difficulty setting! I can even picture the scandals now: performance enhancing CPU overclocking, etc.
But the RoboCup tournament organizers are shooting for a playable robot soccer team by 2050 so I guess I have some time to kill. So how about some nano-soccer under an optical microscope? That's totally doable! Check out this Swiss nano-soccer-bot scoring goals with a nanoball (microdisk) which also competed at RoboCup.

Originally found at OhGizmo and then here about RoboCup 2007.

I was pleased to come across this nice list of The Best Thought Experiments on Wired recently. Many of which are cool to think about and don't require a hefty science background. But for those who are jonesing for some real deep cosmic thinking look no further than Wikipedia (especially those philosophy ones, yikes!). Thankfully for us practical types who don't like to think too hard, I remembered a great thought experiment from  Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman which is especially appropriate for these steamy summer days:

You have an S-shaped lawn sprinkler-an S-shaped pipe on a pivot-and the water squirts out at right angles to the axis and makes it spin in a certain direction. Everybody knows which way it goes around; it backs away from the outgoing water. Now the question is this: If you had a lake, or swimming pool-a big supply of water-and you put the sprinkler completely under water, and sucked water in, instead of squirting it out, which way would it turn? Would it turn the same way as it does when you squirt water out into the air, or would it turn the other way?

To be honest, I haven't quite figured it out! And Feynman only uses the example to lead into some hilarious lab hi jinx with exploding water bottles. Help me out!

Come one, come all. See Iapetus, the hideous disfigured moon. Be warned, it's grotesque two-faced surface and equatorial scar may be disturbing to young children. Great minds are still unsure if the moon was born with the bilateral ridge or if it was due to an unspeakable accident. The moon's erratic behavior in orbit could be due to it's frightening split personality. Originally born a reflective white moon characteristic of Saturn's orbiting bodies, it is rumored that both internal and external sources corrupted it with a coal-black dark side throughout it's lifetime.

To this day, even a partial glimpse of it can be a traumatic experience for both amateur and professional astronomers alike. Due to it's unappealing nature (and distance from flyby probes), it still remains to be completely photographed in the wild but brave individuals may click the image above for an accurate depiction. Closer analysis of it's horrific form should follow from the a flyby of the Cassini-Huygens probe scheduled for September 10th, 2007 providing that researchers have strong enough stomaches to observe its entirety.