Simple Country Physicist

I have to admit to reading cartoons. I also must admit to my taste in cartoons changing over the years and there are cartoons whose demise or absence I mourn like Bloom County and Helen. I also have to admit that from time to time I find the message in some comics less than clear.

This happened to me this weekend when I was reading Doonesbury. I have been reading Doonesbury since I was an undergraduate, at least partly because the original characters were undergraduates at the same time I was and some of their situations were identifiable to me. That identifiability has waxed and waned over the years, but it has struck enough near resonances for me to keep reading. I do have to admit that part of this strip is somewhat oblivious to me:

I find myself somewhat at a loss for what a belief tank is. Now, I have dealt with think tanks over my career, and have found often that many have neither thought nor doubt in any great measure. These are more often spin tanks where messages are crafted that seem to seem to provide academic or intellectual, even pseudo scientific, support for some political position or outlook.

The tank part refers to a work force of people whose credentials seem to be largely cosmetic and political and who spend a fair amount of their time in pseudo academic activities. As a rule they are almost entirely creatures of the District. The closest thing we have to a think tank in Greater Metropolitan Arab is the Arab Liars’ Club and Poke Salat Festival Committee, whose most demonstrative products are inaugurating new members and sponsoring the Annual Poke Salat Festival complete with Ugly Woman Contest. And an open microphone session for any local politicians desiring to speak at the price of being pelted with lumps of poke salat, which when cooked is somewhat slimy and unpleasant to feel, much like the message delivered by most politicians.

So, if we strip a think tank of its doubt, or uncertainty, and hence objectivity, would what remains be a seminary?

For those who are interested, there’s a gallery of screen shots of VISTA on WIRED.[Link] The pictures, while good, don’t convey any immediacy of purchase. In fact, the selection of the screens, about 0.20 of which are problems, are the most telling.

Let’s see, VISTA doesn’t work with HP printer. Hmmmm, is this another niche shut out? Is Megahard going into the printer business? And VISTA won’t play well with network or find shared drives.

Hopefully this is all growing pains and will get corrected by SP1. But for now it looks like the live-cd PCLinuxOS disk I’m playing with, and have yet to get it to talk to my network, has as much operability as VISTA.

Granular things have become an important part of contemporary physics, somewhat to the cosmologists and string theorists who would like to be the center of both the limelight and grant awards. However the rise of complexity, started in large part by Piers Bak’s work on how granular things tumble, has begun to come into its own, despite the dilution of all sorts of strange pseudo scientific strap hangers.

It is therefore interesting that Duke U researchers have some preliminary findings on why the granular materials sometimes clump and sometimes flow like liquids.[Link] Unfortunately the reportage has little substance and even comments on differences in shaking and stirring which will bring our the Ian Fleming fanatics.

But while we’re on flowing and clumping, the latest word from a Florida State U research indicates that the “Hobbits” of Flores are not microcephalics as previously indicated but a separate human species Homo florensis. Since current data indicates these folks were around until about 15KYA, this would mean they survived longer than neandertalensis.

Sadly, because they are extinct, we shall be unable to determine their behavior.

Back in 2003 when I was finishing up the first edition of The Physics of War, I included a chapter entitled “Death Rays and Wonder Weapons”. Lately, I have been seeing a lot of stuff in the feeds about such things – this morning there is a PHYSORG article entitled “Ray guns and plastic ice”.[Link] This article talk about the Yankee air corps’ heat beam, which I blogged on recently, and a DARPA thing call “plastic black ice”.

My blot on the heat beam is here.[Link] The idea of the plastic black ice is essentially the old cartoon sight gag of a suddenly extremely slippery surface. As I recall, this isn’t a new idea. I’ve seen a couple of experiments with crowd control “weapons” that made the surface too slippery to permit walking, or even creeping or crawling. One I recall from the ’80’s used an aqueous foam. In those days, the problem was the equipment needed to dispense the stuff was pretty big, usually somewhere on order of a small to medium sized fire engine. But then given DARPA’s reputation for remaking the nature of universal reality, at least in their official propaganda, I’m sure they’ll solve this critical shortcoming.

In the meantime, I’ll wait to see if they ask me for advice or just tell me they’ve decided to classify my certified for public release book.

Now that V day is here, the warts and cancers are emergent. One that was expected is that VISTA frutzes game play.[Link] I say expected because Megahard, all the way back to DOS, has always done things that are fundamentally antithetical to game needs of operation. Thus, even back in the good old days when floppies were 5.25″, hard drives were measured in MB, and all programs had to include drivers, one had to learn how to disable and tweak the OS to get the games to work – and usually reboot after the game was over to reset critical parameters.

Such behavior will not do in this modern world where WINDOWS is rock
stable and adamantine, even if it means that games sold by Megahard
itself will not operate. So much for Megahard peacefully cooperating
with the rest of the IT industry. Wonder how many companies will go
bankrupt from customer frustration before the Yankee government gets
around to investigating monopoly violations?

Interestingly, this type of conflict has always been excused by “security”, as I suspect this one will be. Invariably when we get deeper into it, it will likely emerge that the folks implementing the security measures either got lazy and threw out baby with bath water, or they got it wrong. Humans are inherently risk takers – that’s how come we can walk upright – and security folks are risk avoiders. They never lose sight of the fact that the most secure computer possible is one that isn’t turned on in a bank vault with no one allowed to use it.

On a somewhat more positive note, the head of Megahard in Norway has demonstrated VISTA running on a MAC.[Link] This in itself isn’t so much interesting as the opposite is intriguing. How about running the MAC OS on a PC? If VISTA will run on a MAC,since a MAC is basically just a slightly unusual PC these days, why can’t a normal PC run the MAC OS?

As for me, I am going to continue to experiment with LINUX and prospect for LINUX equivalents of my need-to-have programs.

Ordinary Joe Consumer humans argue over important things like where to eat a meal, which NASCAR driver is best, or what (American) football team is the most capable. The proclivity, as one might expect, applies also to scientists. In this case, [Link] its the substance of the upcoming global warming report from the International Panel on Climate Change. The argument proper is over whether the sea rise in the next century will be less or more than a meter. It arises because the climate simulations don’t incorporate models for the melting of the arctic and antarctic ice masses.

This just goes to show that even scientists act human sometimes. In the meantime however, the Yankee government will continue to stonewall the whole matter as New York and San Francisco slide under the waves. But this pleases (modern) Republicans because it opens up so much new oceanfront property.

Another example of this is given by the founding within the U Pennsylvania Medical Shul of a Center for Spirituality and the Mind.[Link] Apparently the physicians have run out of things they can investigate to debunk homeopathy and chiropractic and are now going to work on faith healing? While we may admire the administrators’ courage in wrestling with the age old question of whether humans can do science on humans – that is can they be objective enough? – we also have to wonder about an activity that seems guaranteed to offend as many as possible, both religionists and real scientists.

Sunday mornings have a different character to the news. A friend of mine who works newspapers once told me that about the refocus of the news coverage on Sunday to the religious, and the concern over the various ways of offending folks – those who observe Shabbat on Friday night or Saturday may be offended that the news coverage is on Sunday while the majority who observe on Sunday may be offended with the (to them) excessive coverage given to minor sects and heathen cults. I recall offering to solicit news items from the local Wicca and Druid groups to assure a more democratic representation just to watch him reach for a bottle of analgesic.

Nonetheless, one result is that some items creep through the media mill without proper grinding, giving them a different mental taste than on other days of the week. I note, for example, an article in the PHYSORG feed [Link] entitled “Washington Wakes Up to Global Warming”. Of course the article has nothing substantive to report but it does illustrate the cycle of reaction in large organizations:

• initial awareness (called the ‘duhhhh” stage by some;)
• denial of existence;
• admission and debate;
• planning and filibustering;
• action introduction;
• friction and disillusionment; and
• announcement of victory and disengagement.

This gets us into the third stage. With the upcoming political elections, its not clear that this matter will survive even the early debates. Unpleasant reality is seldom as socially meaningful as political fiction.

The new version of WINDOWS (R), VISTA, is coming on sale for Joe Consumer today, and the warning of its problems are already emerging like the giant ants of “THEM”. Monkey Bites [Link] details how an early purchaser discovered VISTA wouldn’t let him have anti virus protection because it would interfere with the operation of the OS. Hmmm, more likely it will interfere with Megahard’s plans for IT domination.

I discovered one click down off the MSN home page this morning a major spread on WINDOWS LIVE One Care [Link]  advertising various security measures including anti virus. It emerges epiphanily that Megahard is shutting out the Symantecs and the Macafees so they can take over the anti virus marketplace. Hurray for IT ecology niche cleansing, the consumerism equivalent of racial purity.

More constructively, and obviously an error, is a reprint of a Popular Mechanics article from December on “The Digital Ice Age”. This [Link] is to the original article since the MSN posting is so ephemeral, especially once the web master gets reminded of how the content is a strong implied criticism of Megahard. The article details two aspects of the inherent fragility of our modern ITized world.

Since we store much of our original information in computer files, we run into two problems. One is mechanical in that recording media wear out. Hence, that hard drive on our computer will, not may, fail and carry all of our valuable original information with it. The modern equivalent of the act of nature destroying the home place.

This is relatively easy to fix with a bit of discipline, which makes it inherently anathematic to Joe Consumer, by never storing original information on the computer hard drive, and having multiple copies. The efficacy of using actual file names and suffixes, and keeping a log of file names, dates, contents, and locations is so self-obvious in this context that it is never practiced by Joe Consumer who prefers the cute graphical file icons that convey no distinguishing information of note but are another empty Megahard WINDOWS selling point. Hence my growing tendency to laugh like a Kim Possible villain when I am asked to assist in the resurrection of hard drives. Oh, how I love the smell of baked hard drive bearing grease in the morning.

Sadly, the second problem is more insidious – file creep. We generate new information and store it using the program we crated it in, which is reasonably current at the time. A couple of years later we need to access the file, try to do so with an updated version of the same program, and, lo!, can;t read the file because the program manufacturer has improved the file structure without bothering to give us notice or make provision for us to read our old files. After all, they’re not his files, are they? Should I comment that Megahard is one of the worst in this matter?

There is no good way to do anything about this. The best way is to only use file formats that have some life outside the memoryless, careless environment of software manufacturers, like ASCII. The second best is to only use software that has a read back capability (Did I mention that WordPerfect is a LOT better about this than WORD? Often the second best guys are better this way.) and periodically take all the old files and resave in new file formats – and make back up copies.

Incidentally, if the information lends itself to being saved in an ACROBAT-like file, there’s some slightly better alternative to inscribing the information on sheets of osmium or platinum. The Yankee government has coerced the ACROBAT people into implementing a publicly defined file format called PDF ARCHIVE or pdf/a. The ACROBAT people don’t advertise this very much because since the file format is archival and essentially fixed, and they have to implement ability to read it, now and tomorrow, if you use this file format you don;t need updated software as often. Hence, if you use the pdf/a format, they lose money. (Remember the fight between ACROBAT and MEGAHARD over the latter implementing a write directly to pdf?) So one way of preserving that information is to store it in this archival pdf format.

Incidentally, while we’re picking on Megahard, did I mention that VISTA is designed to reduce hard drive life? It implements a “feature” (reminiscent of the Edsel) that preloads into RAM pieces of programs you MAY use. Now since this fills up RAM, if you run a big program (and which ones aren’t these days?) and if RAM is occupied, you have to use Virtual RAM which is IT speak for HD space. Hence added wear and tear on the hard drive since its metric for failure is the number of bit level read/write events. And since RAM is full, the programs run slower. Who else but Magahard could make the equivalent of arteriosclerosis of the computer a selling point?

PC WORLD magazine has an article this morning [Link] of “15 Reasons to Switch”. This has been a hot topic in the Greater Metropolitan Arab Computer Colloquium, and the general consensus has been to not switch until you have to buy a new computer and the manufacturers (Dell, HP) don;t give you a choice (except maybe Linux), but even if tempted by the Potempkinism, not before Service Pack One is issued. Accordingly, I thought I would review and comment.

1. It’s the Interface, Stupid Perhaps the best thing about Windows Vista is the most obvious: its new interface. With transparent animated windows that swoosh into place, subtle and elegant colors, a new Start menu, and plenty of other changes, this is the most beautiful version of Windows you’ve seen. If you’ve ever had Mac envy, this is the Windows you want–it’s the most Mac-like interface yet.
This one is pretty ridiculous. Does anyone think that there won;t be patches/clones to give XP this capacity within thirty days? The interface that counts is getting stuff done, aesthetics, while important, is no better than secondary
2. Flip Over Windows Flip 3D Switching between open windows using Alt-Tab in previous versions of Windows was always a shot in the dark, as you never quite knew to which window you’d switch, or even which ones were open. That has all changed in Windows Vista. Press Alt-Tab, and Windows Flip 3D springs into action, displaying thumbnails of all your open windows in a gorgeous, 3D stack. You can then flip through them until you find the one you want.
Wonderful, another source of clutter and confusion on the desktop. When is Megahard going to do something constructive instead of eye candy?
3. Live Thumbnails Do you run a lot of programs and visit a lot of Web sites simultaneously? If so, you’ll appreciate Live Thumbnails. Hover your mouse over any window on the Taskbar, and a thumbnail of the window pops up, with the program and document name, or the Web site name, just above it. The thumbnails are truly “live,” so if a video is playing in a window, you’ll see the video playing in the thumbnail too.
As someone who only wants to use thumbnails for files that are graphics – JPEGs, GIFs, and the like, – sometimes,depending on purpose, and real file names with extensions for all other circumstances, this is no inducement. Its another piece of obstructionist eye candy.
4. Boost Performance With ReadyBoost Windows Vista includes a quick way to enhance system performance: ReadyBoost. It preloads files and programs you often use into RAM so that they’re there when you want them, and you don’t have to wait for them to load from the hard disk. You can buy an inexpensive USB flash drive and use up to 4GB of cheap RAM to boost your system performance.
This is not a new idea. Its been around since DOS 3.0 and its never worked very good. The problem with loading up RAM with a bunch of stuff to make some program you may run load faster is that this assures that all of your programs will run slower, unless you’ve got 20-30 GB of RAM! Spend the extra money on a little bit of extra RAM ~ 4 GB, and a SCSII HD instead.
5. Cool Performance Tools If you’re the kind of person who tends to peek under the hood and tinker, you’ll find a lot to like in Windows Vista, which contains plenty of applets and utilities. Probably the best of them all is the Reliability and Performance Monitor. It keeps tabs on every aspect of your PC in exquisite detail, including the CPU, hard disk, network usage, and RAM use, and it includes plenty of charts, reports, and logs for your inner geek. The Reliability Monitor module is particularly noteworthy, as it charts the reliability of your PC over time and shows you every single problem or failure in a calendar format.
This is Little Tykes play toys. Megahard doesn’t want Joe Consumer tinkering because they don’t want their minuscule help staff inundated or having to tell you you’ve fried your WINDOWS install and have to put back in. Of, and remember that license limit on reinstalls? This is designed to make money for Megahard I suspect.
6. Better Security At every level of Windows Vista, you’ll find improved security. The firewall is now two-way, including inbound as well as outbound protection. Windows Defender offers spyware protection, and Internet Explorer has an antiphishing filter to protect against Web scams. A slew of security holes have been plugged in Internet Explorer, and the browser now operates in what’s called Protected Mode, which guards system files against external attacks. There’s plenty more under the hood as well, including Windows Service Hardening, which protects vital files and settings. (Note: BitLocker’s automatic drive encryption and other advanced Vista security options are available only in the Business and Ultimate versions.)
From what I can tell, yes the security is better for what’s there, but its a lot harder, maybe impossible, to get the not-Megahard SW that you need for reasonable security to work with VISTA than XP. So I put this one down as advertising bordering on an outright falsehood.
7. Find Anything Fast With Search Can’t remember where you put an important file? It’s no longer a problem. Windows Vista integrates a new search technology throughout the operating system–on the Start menu, within Windows Explorer, and just about everywhere else you look. It uses indexing and is lightning fast, and it literally searches as you type. A powerful advanced search tool lets you narrow your search by date, file size, author, tags, and location. It also accepts Boolean searching. You can even save your searches for future reference.
Given what I’ve seen of some of Megahard’s prototype search utilities, I seriously doubt this one too. Neither the existing EXPLORER, nor the prototypes is as good as freeware search utilities already out there. Of course, if you use real file names and extensions instead of the graphical drek WINDOWS defaults to, and keep a log of your work, then the problem becomes a lot more manageable. But that requires coherent thought and effort on the part of the user.
8. Nifty Software Gadgets If you’re a software gadget fan, you’ll love Vista. It includes a variety of software gadgets that live on the desktop and do little tasks such as delivering stock quotes, showing weather forecasts, displaying RSS feeds, monitoring the state of your computer, checking your e-mail inbox, and more. Vista ships with a gaggle of them, but you can find dozens more online–and they’re all free.
Toys, and from what is listed, things that have been around for a long time as freeware utilities. So how is this unique to VISTA, and how is it a reason to buy?
9. Better Wireless Networking Anyone who uses a wireless network at home, at work, or on the road will appreciate the way Windows Vista handles wireless networking. You can more easily find new wireless networks, and save them and manage them as permanent connections. Wireless security has also been improved: When you connect at a public hotspot, security precautions (such as the shutting off of file sharing) automatically lock into place.
The problem we have now with XP is that when networking works, it works very well, and when it doesn’t it is the very devil to get to work because of the obstructions to fixing that Megahard hardwires into it. I don;t trust Megahard to have changed their policy on this and really expect this is a blatant lie if you aren’t using all Megahard hardware and software.
10. Map Your Network Want to see every single computer and device connected to your network–and get instant information about each, such as their IP addresses? The Network Map does that for you. It also lets you make instant connections to any device; double-click a PC, for example, and you’ll connect to its shared folders.
Duhhh! This is what network neighborhood, going back to NT?, is supposed to do and either does very well, or not at all. Again, there are better freeware utilities that do this now.
11. Better Graphics With Windows Photo Gallery Finally, with Windows Photo Gallery Microsoft has shipped a graphics utility that’s worth using. It’s a kind of jack-of-all-trades–you can view graphics and create slide shows, for example. But it also includes a surprisingly good set of simple-to-use image editing tools, including one for eliminating red-eye and another that cleans up photos with a single click.
This is a maybe. Its been promised a lot of times and never delivered. A big part of the problem is too little RAM (remember that feature above?) and too little video capability. Somehow this sounds like marketing trying to find another justification for the video card you have to have for those (useless?) 3-D (fake!) effects. It also sounds like part of Megahard’s efforts to reduce the ecological niches for competitors by doing it themselves worse bot free and hence preying on peoples instincts on cost to value ratio. I’ll stick with the freebie Photoshop junior for now, thank you.
12. Become a Director With Windows Movie Maker Windows Vista comes with a new version of the much-maligned moviemaking tool Windows Movie Maker, and it’s a big surprise–you’ll actually want to use it. Importing video and music, creating transitions between scenes, and syncing music with video are easy. When you’re done, you can burn your creation to DVD with Windows DVD Maker
Read the above. This is graphics card rationalization and niche erosion. Stick with the industry standards.
13. Better Notebook Support In previous versions of Windows, the mobile-computing features seemed bolted on after the fact. That’s not true with Windows Vista, as the Windows Mobility Center puts all the tools you need in one place. You can turn your wireless adapter on or off, change your battery settings, and connect to an external display from a single location. And the new Presentation Settings feature is a big leap forward for anyone who often gives presentations with a notebook. You can customize settings–such as the resolution, mute, background, and so on–and then save them. Afterward you can switch from normal mode to presentation mode in a snap.
Gee, I haven’t had a laptop in about 15 years that didn’t do everything listed here either from the keyboard or at worst in the boot setup. Either the article’s list is broken or this is a blatant effort to dumb down the road warrior.
14. File Sharing and Syncing With Windows XP it was possible to share files among PCs on your network–possible but often impossibly hard, it seemed. That changes with Windows Vista. The Network and Sharing Center lets you turn on and configure file sharing with single clicks. And the Synch Center lets you automatically synchronize files and folders among separate PCs. You won’t have to do anything to keep them in sync; Windows Vista will do it for you.
Again, this is either transparently easy with XP and 2000, or it isn;t, and if it isn’t its a bear to fix because of the obstructionism of Megahard. I don;t trust them enough to think they’ll change, or junk all seven of my home network machines to buy new ones that’ll run VISTA. Besides, what happens when FD SCP and II name a file alike and this trashes one of them? Or I have two different files, of the same name, on two different machines. Zut! There are freeware utilities to do this now and they work fine and with good safeguards.
15. Protect Your Kids With Parental Controls Worried that your children may be exposed to inappropriate content online? Want to make sure they’re not playing violent games? Parental Controls put you in the driver seat. Not only can you determine the kinds of sites they visit and games they play, but you can also enforce rules about when they’ll be able to use the computer at all.
Again, good programs that work well to do this already. Many of these are subscription programs that you download current databases (weekly or so) to respond to the changing internet. Think Megahard will get that right out of the box and not want money for it? Besides, parental controls have to be tunable or you make the situation worse.

Vista goes on sale Tuesday, January 30; tech superstores across the United States will open at midnight to let you get a jump.
PC WORLD has always been a step behind magazine that wouldn’t be worth getting as a freebie because all they do is espouse lame ideas, flaunt manufacturers propaganda, and use slick paper that feces won’t stick to. If anything, this article adds to the onus – VISTA when you have to and not before.

Yesterday’s article on the Yankee Air Corps deploying a heat ray was at once intriguing and disappointing.[Link]

(Note that I’ve opted here for an explanatory graphic rather than a photo of the real thing – which is pictured at the link.) I say disappointing because for a lot of years we’ve been anticipating something on the order of this:

In fact, I clearly recall a discussion in the late ’70’s with a young Yankee Army captain who was the action officer for directed energy weapons (Yankee army speak for ray gun) action officer. He wanted the Research and Development types (the folks I worked with every day and was representing in this discussion) to develop a not heavier than five pound hand held device that would destroy a main battle tank (read M-1) at five kilometers in less than five seconds.Actually, the term ray gun as it is commonly envisioned is a bit misnamed. This depends on whether we settle into the wave or particle view. In wave view, a ray is a curve whose tangent is everywhere the direction of propagation of the wave, while in particle view, a ray is a moving particle, usually emitting radiation. Thus, a ray is either a characterization of a wave, which does not have to have any particular interaction capacity, or a simple particle in motion. The intent of damage is implied by “gun”? (Definitions adapted from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Physics and Mathematics, for the sake of consistency and alleviation of arbitrariness.)

On the other hand, a beam is a concentrated, nearly unidirectional flow of particles, or a like propagation of a wave or waves. Thus, a better smoothly enough off the tongue. Also, science fiction usage seems to be that beam as a term is reserved for nondestructive things like pressor and tensor beams (in the physiological sense – a tensor beam can be defined mathematically, but it hurts the head a bit and is beyond our discussion here.)

Now lets think on the gun part of our ray gun for a moment. What we basically have mechanically is a tube (barrel) of some length L and radius (half the diameter) R. Usually, we have L >> R. In fact, for most projectile guns, L/R ~ 100.

Something happens at the end nearer the shooter that generates the ray (beam). We can consider this as one or more particles (obvious analogy to a projectile (bullet) gun (or shotgun), or a wave. We can consider the source of this to be approximately a point. (Especially is L/R ~ 100) So the wave is spherical in form (as opposed to a plane wave,) but confined in a beam defined by the solid angle defined by the dimensions of of the barrel. That is the solid angle defined on a sphere of radius L by a circle of radius R. The particle picture is similar with the solid angle forming the range of the probability space of the trajectory of the particle. If there are multiple particles, there are multiple trajectories inside the solid angle (cone).

Let me emphasize that this cone is a simplifying approximation but hopefully consistent with the level of our discussion here.

The first problem we incur with this is that there is some distance that the wave has to propagate to get to the target. Since the wave stays in the cone (solid angle), the further it has to go, the bigger the base of the cone gets, and thus the amount of energy per area steadily decreases. A similar thing happens with particles. Because the area of the base represents the probability of a particle hitting the target, and the target has fixed area, the probability of hitting the point aimed at on the target gets smaller with range. For multiple projectiles, this translates into fewer particles hitting the target.

The second problem is that if there is matter between the ray gun and its target, the ray (beam) may interact with the matter. For example, if the beam is generated electromagnetically – the particles have distinct charge – and the intervening matter has distinct charge, then the charges interact electromagnetically, and the ray (beam) may get degraded. And recall that light is comprised of photons, which are the propagators of electromagnetic force, so they have charge. The only common particles that don;t have charge are neutrons and because they don’t have charge its hard to propagate them.

So the ray (beam) coming out of your ray gun is sort of like the beam of water coming out of your garden hose. It loses strength steadily until it just collapses. This is the fundamental problem with ray guns, you have to start with a lot of energy, enough to destroy the shooter in fact, and lose most of it before it gets to the target.

But let us not forget our gun analogy. If you’re shooting at a flock of birds that are moving fast, you use a shotgun that propagates a host of pellets and hope one (or a few) hit a bird (birds) hard enough to knock them down. The Yankee air corps ray gun is that way. It fires a spherical wave that basically interacts with the boundary of solid objects to heat them up. This is somewhat akin to a microwave oven. So this ray gun isn’t supposed to kill the folks its shot at, only give them the all over equivalent of a hot foot so they’ll run away (ala Monte Python.) IOW, it a crowd control weapon.

But thinking of ray guns, and science fiction, I noticed another instance [Link] that some movie/TV outfit is considering taking on Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars. This is interesting for a couple of reasons, like a lot of old science fiction, Burroughs’ work is viewed as simplistic and scientifically incorrect. Of course, the same will be true fifty years from now of today’s science fiction. Additionally, while Burroughs work was viewed as scandalously licentious when written, today its viewed as inexcusably sexist and exploitative. That’s probably why it enjoys such continual popularity with teenage boys. But I read them still because the absurdity of details strains one’s suspension of disbelief to a point that demonstrates the excellence of the story telling.

Of course, the John Carter series had the occasional ray gun, but the real weapons were good honest swords amazing similar to those invented in the transition between the Bronze and Iron ages. As well, since the science and technology is infuriating, even to the level of knowledge that high shul boys had in the Containment era. It was not until I got through a year of college biology however that the most crucial inconsistency question arose to me:

“If the Martian females of intelligent species/races (of which there are obviously several) are oviparous, why do they have mammaries?”

But I await seeing what kind of adulteration Hollywood makes of a set of good adventure yarns. Just as I await hearing of the Yankee air corps’ blazing success with their heat ray. They may learn something about the instinct called fight or flight.

My distinguished and esteemed colleague Total Angular Momentum Coupling, otherwise know as Eye of the Tyger [Link] has raised two excellent questions in regard to my recent blot:[Link]

Question: Don’t germs themselves contain a certain amount of water in their little cells? I admit to total ignorance on things biologic, but it would seem that the microwave energy would heat the little devils to the point of bursting???

I’ve also recently seen (someplace) that the microwave is also an effective device for sterilizing tooth brushes.

The original blot commented on some work originally done at U Florida. The principal author’s web page is [Link], and the original shul announcement is [Link]. Sadly even this article is written in what amounts to idiotese, so i’ll wing answering the questions.

To continue to use a somewhat hackneyed science fiction catch phrase, biological (carbon based) life, at least the cellular type, is a sack of dirty water. The distinctions are largely the nature of the sack, and the nature of the dirt, since the water is a given. For our purposes, we’ll treat the germ as if its a (not very elastic) balloon filled with water and consider the two cases where its surrounded by a gas and by water.

Now the rest of the discussion is primarily concerned with lengths of different things.

We can hypothesize two ways of destroying a germ: either we mess up its genetic material so it can’t function; or we disrupt it. In mechanical terms, we can either stick something in the gears so they won’t turn, or we can take the gear train apart.

If we want to tear up the chemical compounds that make the germ work, we have to sever some molecular bonds. Since the germ’s chemicals are organic, all of the bonds have energies ~ 6E-19 Joule. So to sever a bond with a single photon, we need photons with wavelengths that are equivalent to ~ 3E-7 meter in wavelength. This magnitude of wavelength corresponds to Ultraviolet radiation while the microwave over uses photons with wavelength ~ 1E-2 meter. So blasting apart germ chemicals with microwaves is not very effective, the photons are just not energetic enough.

This leaves disrupting the germs. Now microwaves are very good at heating up water, at least to the boiling point. Beyond that point you start running a considerable risk of blowing up the oven, but that’s another story. And germs, being a goodly part water and having a not very elastic wall around them, will fracture if the pressure in them gets too high – if the water boils or comes close to boiling.

The problem however, is still the absorption of the photons. Basically, photons bounce around in a microwave oven until the get absorbed, and the probability of them being absorbed is a Poisson process in the amount of absorbers the photon goes past. In simple terms, the more water the photon goes through, the more likely it is to be absorbed. And the more photons that are absorbed, the more energy converted to heat and the hotter the water gets.

Now, if there is no additional water in the sponge, we can view the germs as adhering (in the main) to the walls of the sponge canals with gas on the other side. Gas doesn’t absorb photons as well as water does (usually – lower density) but it removes heat from the surface well. So we hit the sponge+germs+gas with microwaves and the germs absorb a few photons, produce a little heat, and much of it gets taken away by the gas. Also, most of the absorption of photons is done by the sponge structural material, which may heat up too much and catch on fire. That has the advantage of getting rid of the germs but you can’t do much with a burnt sponge.

If there is water in the sponge and the germs are in the water, then the water, inside and outside the germ, absorbs a lot of photons, gets very hot, and the temperature is pretty much evened throughout the water. And fewer photons are absorbed by the sponge material. And the germs get disrupted as the water gets near the boiling point.

You can do the same thing with toothbrushes but you want to put them in as small an amount of water as will cover the bristles. The reason for this is the stochastic nature of the photon absorption. In effect there is a maximum amount of energy that can be absorbed from the oven and the more water you have the longer it takes it to get to boiling. So there is a trade-off between the time to boil and the amount of water.

Incidentally, they sell commercial toothbrush cleaners that use ultraviolet photons, which do the germs in directly. This doesn’t work well with sponges since the infrastructure material tends to also absorb ultraviolet light strongly.

And the physics term for the absorption process is the Beer-Lambert-Bouger Law.