Cop Car's Beat

Their very own Tardis

For the past couple of decades, I've enjoyed the whimsy shown by the post box at the curb of a house nearly catty-corner across the intersection from the school that was, when Dudette and Bogie were teenagers, the Senior High School but is now a middle school. I should note that WichiDude is a Doctor Who fan, but we've not (to my remembrance) discussed this Tardis.

Below is a photo of the school to which I referred, above. Unfortunately, the street to the west of the school is blocked off by street work and for construction of a new fire station across that street from Derby Middle School.

Below is the new fire station that is to open on July 4th.

Photon momentum - linear and angular

Johanne Kepler, German astronomer, suggested that "ships and sails proper for heavenly air should be fashioned" to allow space travel. That was about 400 years ago. He was a bit off in his analysis; but, about 250 years later, James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that photons imparted momentum to the surfaces on which they impinged.¹

I recall reading a science fiction story, "The Winds of Space", in my teenage years; but, I can find no evidence that it actually existed. Somehow in the succeeding years, I may have become confused with a short story that was published in 1963².

Yesterday, Slashdot.com led me to an article in Science³ that contains the latest news on the properties of light. Below are excerpts from the article.

Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Light beams carry both energy and momentum, which can exert a small but detectable pressure on objects they illuminate. In 1992, it was realized that light can also possess orbital angular momentum (OAM) when the spatial shape of the beam of light rotates (or twists) around its own axis. Although not visible to the naked eye, the presence of OAM can be revealed when the light beam interacts with matter. OAM beams are enabling new applications in optical communications, microscopy, quantum optics, and microparticle manipulation. To date, however, all OAM beams—also known as vortex beams—have been static; that is, the OAM does not vary in time. Here we introduce and experimentally validate a new property of light beams, manifested as a time-varying OAM along the light pulse; we term this property the self-torque of light.

….

CONCLUSION

We have theoretically predicted and experimentally generated light beams with a new property that we call the self-torque of light, where the OAM content varies extremely rapidly in time, along the pulse itself. This inherent property of light opens additional routes for creating structured light beams. In addition, because the OAM value is changing on femtosecond time scales, at wavelengths much shorter than those of visible light, self-torqued HHG [High Harmonic Generation] beams can be extraordinary tools for laser-matter manipulation on attosecond time and nanometer spatial scales.

In conclusion, I'll have to say that I just don't see it ; ) Thankfully, I don't have to understand all of the new developments to realize how valuable they may come to be. Well done to the huge team responsible.

__________________________

1. Historical data are from A Brief History of Solar Sails
2. Clarke, Arthur C. The Wind From the Sun. 1963
3. Generation of extreme-ultraviolet beams with time-varying orbital angular momentum. Science

Elusive Neutrino - 10 fun facts

A couple of years ago, I had a short posting, Elusive Neutrino¹, which included reference to a couple of books^{2, 3} that I had found interesting. Just for fun, today, I'm posting an excerpt from the All Things Neutrino website developed and owned by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  |  Managed by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. (The link to the website is included in the right-hand sidebar under 4 Fun & Enlightenment.)

Ten quick facts about neutrinos:

1. Trillions of the harmless particle stream through you every second, night or day.
2. They are the second most abundant particle in the universe (after particles of light called photons).
3. Neutrinos rarely interact with anything—a lightyear of lead would stop only about half of the neutrinos coming from the sun.
4. About 15 billion neutrinos from the Big Bang are in the average room.
5. Neutrinos interact only through two of the four known forces: the weak force and gravity.
6. So far, scientists have discovered three flavors of neutrinos: electron (ν_e), muon (ν_μ), and tau (ν_τ).
7. They oscillate, or change flavor, as they travel.
8. Their masses are very tiny, but not yet known.
9. Their speed is very close to the speed of light, but also not known exactly.
10. They could be the reason that matter exists in the universe.

I had been noodling about various places on the Internet to see if the next solar eclipse will provide an opportunity "to look for lunar neutrino occultation, getting a tomograph of the moon's interior" as Stu of Eunoia had opined in a comment to my previously cited posting. Alas, I think not.

_______________________________

1. List of particles - Wikipedia
2. Solomey, Nickolas. The Elusive Neutrino: A Subatomic Detective Story; ISBN-13: 978-0716750802; ISBN-10: 0716750805
3. Al-Khalili, Jim. Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed

Rude awakening

Not since 1976 have I set an alarm to waken me. That rude awakening I can live without - especially since I have an internal alarm that wakes me at the "correct" time, no matter whether that is 3:00am or 6:00am. You can imagine my surprise, this morning, when a voice woke me at about 5:30am. Hunky Husband was my alarm. His phone had awakened him with a tornado warning and the emergency warning sirens were blaring in our neighborhood.

Quickly, I arose; donned my gardening clothes (old jeans cut off below the knees and an old tee shirt); put on a pair of eye glasses; put our valuables in their emergency hidey-hole; and put my jump boots, a hatchet, and two large screwdrivers (1 blade, 1 Phillips) into our own emergency hidey-hole. Only then did I join HH in the living room to watch the radar returns being shown on television.

By the exterior lighting on our house, we could see cottonwood limbs strewn all over the back yard - including our patio. The television reports soon indicated that the tornado danger that had been indicated for our area had moved on to terrorize other areas east of us; but, evaluation of the damage would need to be made nearer to sun-up when there was sufficient light. By 6:40am, I went outside to the serenade of chain saws, up and down our street, wielded by neighbors whose trees had sustained more damage than had ours.

The sun is not yet up; but, I'll post a few photos of our yard. Our damage was due to straight-line winds that probably gusted to about 70mph.

Our gingko tree in the front yard, planted in 2001, stands tall, straight, and proud. It shed but one small limb.

CORRECTION of 6/23/2019 4:03pm

So far, no one has corrected me (including the family members to whom I emailed a copy of this posting) in saying that our gingko tree had lost a branch. As anyone who looks at the photo can tell: that is no gingko branch, but another of the hundreds of cottonwood branches. It had to have flown over or around our house to end in that position! Sorry if I mislead you.

But two limbs were broken from the cluster of small redbud trees in our front yard, planted in about 2004.

The sugar maple tree in our front yard, planted in 2001, may be sick but it shed no limbs! The large cottonwood which, in any weather, is prone to shedding hundreds of small branches per month, shed all over the back yard. You can also probably see in the background that the creek is up - not out of its banks, but high. (The creek is visible to the right of the table, on which I note that the rain gage was knocked over by the wind.)

Fred's fence took a beating. Since the fence had already met its life expectancy before Fred moved in three years ago, and since one of the connections between sections has repeatedly failed, it wasn't a surprise to see a section of the fence down - plus another couple of boards a foot or so to the right of that section. The only thing on which it fell that I care about is a small red maple tree that I've been cultivating for Dudette.

I came in from taking the photos, without doing any yard work, because I was getting rained upon. I think it has stopped, so it's time for me to get back to work. Below is the section of the Planting Bed along the driveway in which I weeded and spread mulch, yesterday - with leaves added by the storm. Guess what yard work I'll be doing, today? HH has volunteered to help. Yay! Real muscle to apply to the task of cleanup.

ADDITION of 6/24/2019 9:30am - Information from the county emergency management office (excerpts)

The NWS [National Weather Service] determined that straight-line winds hit Derby early Sunday morning on June 23, 2019.  The damage was caused by 75 to 90 mph straight-line winds and damaged primarily softwood trees across southern and southeast Sedgwick County.  The path of the storm was about half a mile to a mile wide that stretched along a nearly 11-mile path from northwest of Peck to Derby.  Public Work crews in Derby are working on clearing debris and restoring power to the residences in the area.

....

Rainfall over the weekend totaled about 1.5 to 3 inches and the current warnings affecting Sedgwick County Rivers are as follows: 

....  

Big Ark[ansas] at Derby:  From early this morning until Tuesday evening.  At 3:00 AM Monday the stage was 11.6 feet.  Flood stage is 12.0 feet and Minor flooding is forecast.  Forecast - Rise above flood stage by early this morning and continue to rise to near 13.0 feet by this evening. The river will fall below flood stage by late Tuesday morning.  Impact - At 12.0 feet, the river will be out of its main channel and expand to a width near 600 feet wide. Expect flooding of low-lying areas around the river.  The Derby Park facility on downstream east bank of the Market St bridge is inundated.

More from Slashdot.com

In the late 1980s, while working on development of a flight control/autopilot system for a new military aircraft, I fought to keep control in the hands of the pilot(s). Although it wasn't my only reason for doings so, I know that when I've nothing to do, I have a tendency to want to go to sleep in the cockpit and I didn't feel myself to be unrepresentative of other pilots. It seems (what a surprise!) that automobile drivers have the same tendency - as reported at Slashdot.com.

People Keep Spotting Teslas With Snoozing Drivers On the Freeway (arstechnica.com) 16

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday June 22, 2019 @04:34PM from the asleep-at-the-wheel dept.

"In the last week, two different people have captured video of Tesla vehicles traveling down a freeway with an apparently sleeping driver behind the wheel," writes Ars Technica.

Iwastheone shares their report: Both incidents happened in California. Last week, local television stations in Los Angeles aired footage from viewer Shawn Miladinovich of a Tesla vehicle driving on LA's 405 freeway. The driver "was just fully sleeping, eyes were shut, hands nowhere near the steering wheel," said Miladinovich, who was a passenger in a nearby car, in an interview with NBC Channel 4. Miladinovich said he saw the vehicle twice, about 30 minutes apart, as both cars traveled along the 405 freeway. The driver appeared to be asleep both times...

Another video of an apparently sleeping Tesla driver was posted to Reddit over the weekend -- this one from the San Francisco Bay Area. The Reddit user who posted the video, MiloWee, said that she tried "several times" to wake him up by honking. "It worked, but he fell back asleep," she wrote....

Last month, police in the Netherlands pulled over a Tesla driver who appeared to be asleep and intoxicated. Another video posted in January appeared to show Tesla drivers asleep at the wheel. In an incident last November, it took police in Silicon Valley seven miles to pull over a Tesla car with an apparently sleeping driver. He was arrested for driving under the influence. Another driver in early 2018 was discovered passed out behind the wheel of his stopped Tesla vehicle on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the man "attempted to reassure arresting CHP officers onsite that the car was 'on autopilot.'"

 

Another tendency I've observed in myself that I think finds a home in many people is thirsting for information - addressed in the following posting from Slashdot.com.

 

How Information is Like Snacks, Money, and Drugs To Your Brain (berkeley.edu) 53

Posted by msmash on Friday June 21, 2019 @01:30PM from the dopamine dept.

A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain's dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food. From a report: "To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it's useful," says Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, a neuroeconomist. "And just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful -- what some may call idle curiosity." The paper, "Common neural code for reward and information value," was published this month by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Authored by Hsu and graduate student Kenji Kobayashi, now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, it demonstrates that the brain converts information into the same common scale as it does for money. It also lays the groundwork for unraveling the neuroscience behind how we consume information -- and perhaps even digital addiction.

What in the hail?

For the past several days I've been getting myself out into the yard to do yard work at about 6:30am - avoiding the heat and the sun that come later - to work for one to three hours. My primary activities have been centered on the planting bed that resides between our driveway (to the southwest of our house) and Fred's yard. Since taking out the overgrown junipers in about one-third of that planting bed (More tree work done), it is a lot more work for me - mostly pulling weeds and mulching. Each morning I've weeded enough to allow spreading four to eight bags of mulch (my car trunk easily accommodates eight 3-cubic-foot bags, when they are dry). This means I've had to work around our spates of rain (about 5 inches so far in June) to buy mulch that hasn't been drenched, letting the mulch "dry out" in our garage for a day or two, and laying the mulch.

This (below photo) is what six bags of mulch look like while drying out in the garage. The garage accommodates about a baker's dozen of the bags (without their being in Hunky Husband's way and my catching an earful of swearing). That configuration includes another six bags between HH's car and mine, leaning against two more ladders plus one or two bags in the garden cart.

As of this morning, I've completed pulling weeds and mulching about 2/3 of the planting bed, having spread 40+ bags of mulch.

            

 

 

             

 

              

Notice the white on the ground of the above photos? The next photo shows the white stuff coming down.

Below is a closeup of the white stuff on the ground.

As one may plainly see in the closeup, the white stuff is not hail but cotton from cottonwood trees (the dead leaf in the above photo is from a cottonwood). For the past few days, when the wind has blown, it has looked like a snow storm around our neighborhood. Since we live on a creek, cottonwood trees abound. When the cotton catches on fennel plants, it resembles Liz's Cuckoo Spit (and a yellow-billed cuckoo was calling while I took the photo, below!)

Addition of 6/20/2019 4:07pm:

OMG - this is the day of the cuckoos. While reading "Ball Lightning" a few minutes ago, I was startled by a thump on a nearby window. Peering outside through the vertical blinds, I spied a yellow-billed cuckoo in an Audubon-esque, inverted pose in a chokeberry bush. After a couple of seconds, the cuckoo shook its head, uprighted itself, and flew to another chokeberry bush where it hesitated but a moment before taking flight. It reminded me that, while this house was under construction, I found a dead yellow-billed cuckoo that had flown into one of the dining room windows - a window but about 15 feet from the window today's cuckoo hit. So sad. 

Joared knows

About a week ago, Joared of Along the Way posted REDHEAD AGING NATURALLY UP DATE . For her information, I sent her this selfie (below).

[The above photo shows Joared the color of this redhead's hair at age 81.]

[For comparison, the next photo is at age 41.]

Sounds bad, does good

When first I saw this embedded video from YouTube at Ronni's Time Goes By, I could think of several reasons why the system would be a bad idea. The people in the video answered each of my concerns. Enjoy! Note the spontaneous formation of hexagonal close-pack by the balls.

 

The Three-Body Problem

A few days ago, Stu of Eunoia posted Chinese SciFi in which he addressed an English language translation of a Science Fiction trilogy that was written by a leading Chinese sci-fi author, Cixin Liu. [Note: It seems that, for the English translations, the "normal" ordering of given name then surname was used. I believe that the author's surname is Liu.] Immediately, I went to the website of the Derby Public Library to confirm that the three books were available for checkout, as was a fourth book by the same author - only a bit over one mile distant from our home. Yay! When next I returned books to the library, I checked out all four available Cixin Liu books.

The following can in no way be considered a review of Cixin Liu's work; but, the few paragraphs contain some of my impressions.

Please understand that tackling Cixin Liu's trilogy took a great deal of fortitude on my part. The three books are The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. I was greatly traumatized during my years of studying physics when faced with a 3-semester-hour course on [drum roll!] The Three-Body Problem. (I don't recall the title of the course, but I get chills just thinking about the content!) Thus, I expected the book The Three-Body Problem to burn my fingers as I held it - which it did not. Then, too, I have an issue with reading sci-fi. Although in my high school and college years (1952-1959) I was greatly amused reading sci-fi, it has been many years since I last read a sci-fi book that I found entertaining. Charging, headlong, into a lost cause, I started reading The Three-Body Problem on Wednesday - finishing Thursday evening.

Immediately, within the first few pages, I was struck by the lyrical quality of Cixin Liu's writing; or, I wondered, was the lyricism due to the expert translation of American writer Ken Liu? It was difficult for me to assess writing styles in the translation. By the time I had reached 100 pages into the book, I was enthusing to Hunky Husband about the content and writing of the story.

Many of us in the States lack any but the most trivial background in Asian history. As an American, Ken Liu understood the need for footnotes clarifying historical events and movements in China. He gave excellent footnotes throughout the book! Thank you, Ken Liu!

In a blurb on the back of the book, a quote from The New York Times review was given: "It is a classic science fiction story in the style of the British master Arthur C Clarke." I missed seeing the similarity; but, then, I'm not a specialist in literature! Based on the one book now under consideration, I would say that Cixin Liu writes as engagingly as did Clarke.

One of Cixin Liu's interesting devices was to equate the micro world with the macro world. For instance, at one point, Liu had a computer comprising many people whose actions mimicked AND, OR, and other computational gates in order to follow an algorith in calculations that pre-computer beings would have been unable to do within their lifetimes. In a later instance, complex calculations were performed using the interior mechanisms of a proton. The proton had been subjected to multiple "foldings" into different dimensionalities, one version of which  allowed the etching of "printed circuits" onto the 2D presentation of the proton - a sheet that formed a globe, enclosing a planet. The resulting computer, the size of a proton, was dubbed a "sophon".

I do not plan to post about the remaining three books; but, if the first book is any indication, I shall enjoy reading them, very much. Thanks for bringing the books to my attention, Stu!

Addition of 6/14/2019 7:22pm:

Having received a suggestion by email, I'll at least tell you the premise of The Three-Body Problem. The premise is that contact is established between humankind and technologically superior beings on a planet in the Alpha Centauri A and B group. Consequently, knowing that the aliens would reach the Earth in about 400 years, humankind splits into factions either welcoming an invasion, to put an end to human corruption, or abhorring that thought and wishing to repel the aliens or to prevent the invasion.

Tale of an Acrosonic, by Baldwin

About six months before my parents moved our nuclear family from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Kansas City, Missouri, my widowed maternal grandmother married a widower who lived in Kansas City - she, living in Nevada, Missouri, 100 miles south of Kansas City. Within a short time, my Step-Grandfather (SGF) decided to sell his home and furnishings. Mom and Dad bought his dining room suite, a bedroom suite, and his piano. This would have been in about 1947 or 1948. Up until that time, we three kids had played on an old upright, the source of which I never knew.

Mother with the piano in 1949

At some point, in the early 1960s, Mom asked if I would like to have the piano. I said "Yes!" and, as I recall, paid her and Dad $200 for it, which is probably about what they had paid SGF for the piano. Shortly thereafter, Hunky Husband, our daughters, and I moved to the Seattle, Washington, area. Not wanting the piano to be exposed to the rigors of crossing the mountains, I sent the piano back to Mom and Dad. In 1967, HH, our daughters, and I moved back to Kansas. When we completed building a new house in May 1968, I had Mom and Dad ship the piano back to me. Since that time, the piano has stayed with me, wherever I have lived - Derby, Kansas; Wichita, Kansas; Panama City, Florida; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and back to Derby, Kansas.

HH and I have entered the serious stages of downsizing to fit our age. We wish to minimize the hassle our progeny (three generations) experience in distributing our belongings after our deaths. Over the years, I've asked family members if they wanted the piano. The answer has always been "No." (I hasten to add that, by then, Dudette and WichiDude had long-since purchased a very nice spinet piano - on which Dudette taught children as a sideline.)

When Elder Brother was in town in May (Family Week), we sat around our dining table discussing many topics. I don't recall how the conversation went, but the subject of music came up - perhaps because Next Generation 1 and Next Generation 2, our great-grandsons, had asked if they might play on our piano - a first! Something that Rachie said caught my attention and I asked if she wanted the piano. Shockingly, she said, "Yes!" Thus, our piano will be moving within the next few weeks.

The piano is not large, but it is heavy. I struggle to move it by lifting one end and pivoting about the other. Thus, I suspect the cartage fee for moving it up to Rachie and Wonderful GrandDaughter's home will exceed the monetary value of the piano. I see offerings of similar pianos for sale, online, in the order of $200-$300. It is certainly worth the fee, to me, to see that the piano remains with our family.

The piano is an Acrosonic, by Baldwin, which was one of the most popular home piano models ever sold in the USA. According to the Serial Number Block on the back of the piano, it was probably manufactured in 1939 when I was but one year old.

It's too bad I cannot foresee whether the piano will remain in the family in future years and for how many more generations, if it does. Use the piano in good health for at least as long as I've owned it, Rachie. Although I've played on that piano, off and on for 71 or 72 years, now, I've owned it for but 57 years! My mother would be pleased.