CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Happy Winter Solstice

Image Credit: NASA

Winter began with the solstice at 12:11 p.m. (EST), on December 21.

If you are like me, you were taught that the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year.

Even NASA tells us that in the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year:

The Winter Solstice is the point during the year when the Northern Hemisphere is the most inclined away from the Sun. After the solstice . . . the days begin to lengthen.

So you might be surprised to learn that Patrick Di Justo writes in The Atlantic that is a fantasy that the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year:

Actually, that's a fantasy. The earliest sunset really comes in the first week in December, and the latest sunrise occurs in early January. Yet December 21 really is the shortest day of the year.

Di Justo explains it all has has to do with Earth's non-circular orbit and its tilt in relation to the Sun:

The Earth’s orbital eccentricity (the degree to which the orbit deviates from a perfect circle) makes the distance at perihelion—the point in a year where the Earth is at its closest to the Sun—about 91,402,000 miles. Every go around the sun, perihelion occurs around January 4, two weeks after the solstice. And that makes all the difference to the timing of the earliest sunrise.

Why? As Johannes Kepler discovered in the 1600s, when an object is closer to the Sun, it moves more quickly; when it is farther away, it moves more slowly. On average, the Earth orbits the Sun at 18.508 miles per second. But in December and January, as it gets closer to the Sun, the Earth speeds up, until, at perihelion, on or around January 4, it zooms along in its orbit at 18.664 miles per second. A paltry difference of .156 miles per second at first glance, but it means that near perihelion, the Earth is moving around the Sun just under an “extra” 13,500 miles each day.

In our provincial Earthbound way, we experience this speed change as the Sun moving farther to the east each day. Because of this, the Earth has to rotate a few seconds more each day to 'catch up' to the sun rise, and a few seconds even more to see the sun set. Over the course of the year, this difference of seconds—the “perihelion change”—adds up. On some days of the year, the Sun can rise and set nearly 8 minutes earlier or later than it “should” if the Earth's orbit were a perfect circle.
The Equation of Time reaches exactly zero on December 25.

Then there is the effect of the Earth's 23.5 degree tilt relative to the Sun and the ecliptic plane. The Northern axis is tilted away from the Sun at the December solstice and toward the Sun at the June solstice, spreading more and less light on each hemisphere. At the equinoxes, the tilt is at a right angle to the Sun and the light is spread evenly. You can see the effect in the picture above or perhaps more easily in the video below:

With the tilt as the Earth orbits the sun, the amount of sunlight that falls on any given location changes depending on whether that location is tilted toward the sun, as in summer, or away from the sun, as in winter. Because of this tilt, the sun can rise and set nearly 10 minutes later than it “should” if the planet were not tilted.

As explained by Di Justo, in early November, the orbital movement toward perihelion coincides with the Earth's tilt to put the Sun more than 16 and a half minutes ahead of where it “should” be if the Earth were in a not-tilted, perfectly circular orbit. This +16 minutes dwindles as the Earth continues its orbit: the Sun is 14 minutes ahead by mid-November, and only 10 minutes ahead by early December. This difference is large enough to cause the earliest sunset to occur during the first week of December.

Regardless of Di Justo's astronomical hijinks, many people feel the need to celebrate the Winter Solstice. It might be because the Winter Solstice marks the beginning of the return of the Sun. Just as likely is the celebration of holidays such as Christmas and Hanukkah.

Happy Earth Day

Despite all the attention Al Gore and his global warming awareness campaign the past several years, the average American is no more worried about global warming than they were years ago.

Gallup reports the percentage of Americans who worry a great deal about global warming is no higher now than it was 19 years ago.

Americans have reacted to the ever growing emphasis on global warming in the media:

Americans now are more likely than they have been in the past to claim understanding of global warming, to recognize that global warming could be a threat in their lifetimes, and to say the effects of global warming have already begun.

Gallup Poll Editor in Chief, Frank Newport, summarizes the recent findings in the following video report:

In recognition of Earth Day, the BBC reveals the real agenda behind the global warming movement -- abolishment of capitalism.

Speaking as the keynote speaker at the UN meeting on the rights of indigenous people, the socialist president of Bolivia, Evo Morales said capitalism should be scrapped:

"If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system," he said.

Morales has it all wrong. Two years ago the Heartland Institute issued a report stating that the nations that have the best track records on environmental protection and improvement are those with the highest amount of free-market capitalism:

Nations with the freest economic systems are the ones whose citizens can afford the luxury of protecting their environments. Conversely, persons living in command-and-control economies barely surviving on life's necessities of food, clothing, and shelter use their natural resources to the absolute limit. They have no other choice in providing for themselves and their families.

As family incomes rise, the improving quality of life allows people to devote more resources to solving environmental problems. Thus, with expanding societal wealth under free-market economies, environmental degradation is first arrested and then reversed. Society goes through a form of "environmental transition." After the transition, greater wealth and technology improve environmental quality instead of worsening it.

Glenn Reynolds, better known as Instatpundit, has a column in the New York Post today on global warming, the environment, and what to do about it. Reynolds says we should focus on nanotechnology and solar energy:

But nuclear power is just a stopgap - as more advanced technologies like nanotechnology offer much greater prospects via solar energy and reduced energy consumption.

MIT's Vladimir Bulovic calls nanotech a potentially "disruptive technology" in the solar-energy field, offering a complete shift from today's fossil-fuel environment. And famed inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil projects the current rate of progress in solar power forward and argues, "The power we are generating from solar is doubling every two years; at that rate, it will be able to meet all our energy needs within 20 years."

Solar research is progressing rapidly, and recent research suggests that "quantum nanodots" may offer dramatic improvements, perhaps on the order that Kurzweil predicts.

Nanotech offers dramatic improvements on the side of energy consumption, too: As computing and other devices become smaller, they become more efficient - and nanotech will allow drastic improvements in both size and efficiency.

Nanotech is starting to yield super-strong, super-light materials, too. Imagine how much more efficient a family car could be if you cut the weight in half, even if you kept burning gas. But nanotech is also likely to produce better batteries and better motors, meaning that your lighter car may also be electric, powered ultimately by those nanodot solar panels.

All of these things are in the works now to greater and lesser degrees, but they could happen faster if there were more research and development support.

Ultimately, we're probably better off putting our energies into promoting cleaner, more advanced technologies like these than in trying to get people to reduce the scope of their lives through "hair-shirt environmentalism."

As Glen is fond of saying, read the whole thing.

In the meantime, we should practice the "conservative" approach to global climate change by using free market principles and property rights to develop the technologies which will enable us to become green and smart.

Exploding Water Balloon At 2,000 Frames Per Second

This is really cool. At 2,000 frames per second, the water contained in an exploding water balloon holds its shape for a few thousandths of a second before it succombs tp gravity:

Via WIRED Science.

Faster Than The Speed Of Light

A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light:

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - traveled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

If true, the achievement would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
Einstein's special theory of relativity requires an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second - so it shouldn't be possible.

Can someone explain to me how you can determine whether something travels faster than 186,000 miles per second in three feet?

Sexual Desire Is Genetic

Your sexual desire, or lack thereof, could be determined by your genes.

Scientists, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered that individual differences in human sexual desire can be attributed to genetic variations:

The study is the first to provide data to show that common variations in the sequence of DNA impact on sexual desire, arousal and function, the researchers said.

According to Professor Richard Ebstein, the presence of a certain gene can make people a little bit less functional in terms of arousal while the presence of another rare gene gives people an edge in those areas.

The effect is small, but significant, as it shows that sexuality is not completely psychologically determined.

Professor Ebstein hopes this study will not only open up new ways to tackle and treat sexual problems, but will also discourage people with lower sexual drives going to the therapists’ office.

Wanted: Computer Users To Look For Stardust's Cosmic Particles

MSNBC reports researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are calling on computer users to join the Stardust@Home project and help find tiny grains of interstellar dust captured by NASA’s Stardust probe.

Scientist will rely on army of volunteers using on an online “virtual microscope” that will allow participants to sift through the anticipated 1.5 million aerogel images for interstellar dust tracks.

Volunteers must go through a web-based training session and pass a test to qualify to register to participate. After passing the test and registering, participants will be able to download a virtual microscope (VM). The VM will automatically connect the participants to server and download so-called "focus movies" -- stacks of images that we will collect from the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector using an automated microscope at the Cosmic Dust Lab at Johnson Space Center. The VM will work on participants' computers, who will search each field for interstellar dust impacts by focusing up and down with a focus control.

Volunteers who discover stardust particles will get to name their finds and will appear as a co-author on any scientific paper by the Stardust@home collaboration announcing the discovery of the particle.

If you are interested in participating in the search for the Stardust cosmic particles submit your name here.

Ion Trap Leads To Quantum Processor

University of Michigan researchers have created a computer chip based on quantum mechanics.

Using an ion trap the Michigan team was able to trap a single atom within an integrated chip and control it using electrical signals:

Electrically charged atoms (ions) for such quantum computers are stored in traps in order to isolate the qubits, a process that is essential for the system to work.

[. . .]

In the chip created at Michigan, which is the size of a postage stamp, the ion is confined in a trap while electric fields are applied. Laser light puts a spin on the ion's free electron, enabling it to flip it between the one or zero quantum states.

The spin of the electron dictates the value of the qubit. For example, an up-spin can represent a one, or a down-spin can represent a zero -- or the qubit can occupy both states simultaneously.

According to NewsFactor Magazine, the quantum processor is made of gallium arsenide in a layered structure and etched with electrodes using lithography. Each electrode is connected to a separate voltage supply, and these various electrical voltages control the ion by moving as it hovers in a space carved out of the chip.

Monster Killer Waves Common

Severe weather has sunk more than 200 ships exceeding 200 meters in length during the last two decades. Monestrous killer waves ten-stories tall are now believed to be a leading cause of large ship sinkings.

"Two large ships sink every week on average," said Wolfgang Rosenthal, of the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany. "But the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather'."

The European Space Agency reports that results data from the space agency's ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these monsterous killer:

Mariners who survived similar encounters have had remarkable stories to tell. In February 1995 the cruiser liner Queen Elizabeth II met a 29-metre high rogue wave during a hurricane in the North Atlantic that Captain Ronald Warwick described as "a great wall of water… it looked as if we were going into the White Cliffs of Dover."

And within the week between February and March 2001 two hardened tourist cruisers – the Bremen and the Caledonian Star – had their bridge windows smashed by 30-metre rogue waves in the South Atlantic, the former ship left drifting without navigation or propulsion for a period of two hours.

Three weeks of 2001 data from European Space Agency's ERS-1 and 2 satellites 2001, showed more than ten individual giant waves around the globe of over 25 metres (80 feet) in height. Previously "dismissed as a nautical myth" such monster waves were thought to occur only once every 10000 years.

The fact that monster waves are actually common presents major safety and economic problems, because ships and offshore platforms are built to withstand maximum wave heights of only 15 metres, not the 25 metres of these monster waves.