Our resident scientist updates us on what’s happening in the science world
Every now and again, there’s so much going on in the realm of scientific research, that it’s impossible for me to pick just one story to focus on. That’s right, it’s time for another Research Roundup!
Scenes From A Ringed Planet
In 2004, after a seven-year journey from Earth, Cassini became the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn. Since 2004, Cassini has given us a treasure trove of fantastic science: Lander on the surface of Titan? Check. New Saturnian moons discovered? Check. Gorgeous images of Saturn, it’s rings and moons? Check.
But, alas, all good things must come to an end. So, on September 17, 2017, the Cassini craft will use the last of its fuel to dive into the atmosphere of Saturn, destroying itself and making sure that it doesn’t contaminate any of Saturn’s moons with either debris or microbes from Earth. (Yes, some of the tiny things that live here could possibly have survived this entire time in Cassini’s guts. Earth life is tough.)
Before it does that however, Cassini will perform a series of extremely complicated (and dangerous) “ring-grazing” orbits that will take it closer to Saturn’s rings (and Saturn itself) than it’s ever been. It performed the first of these orbits at the end of November, sending back some amazing pictures of Saturn’s hexagonal North Pole cloud system. With nine months, and dozens more ring-grazing orbits to go, 2017 should be full of amazing new results from the ringed planet.
ER = EPR
Quantum Physics has a…problem. Well, it’s not really a problem, per se, it’s more of a thing that freaks some people out. You see, if you take two particles (say, photons) and entangle them, something strange happens. What you do to one particle effects the other, seemingly instantaneously, regardless of how far apart they are.
Einstein didn’t like this and famously called it “spooky action at a distance.” He then spent a big chunk of his time trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with Quantum Theory so he could dismiss it. He never succeeded, and that “spooky action” is today an accepted part of how reality works.
But, that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to know how the spooky action itself works and lots of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. A couple of years ago, two physicists, Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind put forward “ER = EPR” to explain it.
While it looks like math, it’s not. Instead, it’s a conjecture that “ER,” which stands for the Einstein-Rosen Theory of Wormholes, is equivalent to “EPR,” which is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Conjecture that tries to explain how entangled particles communicate their information instantaneously.
In other words, wormholes (“ER”) are the means by which information is passed between entangled particles (“EPR”).
While this is all conjecture and hypothesis, the implications are pretty immense if true. Wormholes are a feature of General Relativity, while entanglement and spooky action are features of the Quantum realm. Tying these two domains together is something that’s eluded physicists for the last century, and this conjecture could be the first step in bringing it all together.
Climate Change In the News
Meanwhile, back in our macroscopic world, the effects of global climate change are beginning to really ramp up and take hold.
In Tibet, researchers have concluded that climate change destabilized the Aru Glacier, which led to a devastating avalanche earlier this year. Seventy million tons of ice and snow broke off from the glacier, burying 3.7 square miles of villages beneath it when it finally settled.
In Antarctica, a 70-mile long, 300-foot-wide crack has opened up in the fourth-largest ice sheet there. Once the crack makes its way fully across the sheet, the resulting iceberg will be the size of Delaware.
Closer to home, record droughts and a lack of rainfall earlier this year led to ideal conditions for the wild fires that destroyed entire towns and wiped out the livelihoods of thousands of people. (And it didn’t help that 2016 was the hottest year on record.)
Hopefully, 2017 will be the year that Americans demand that we get serious about global climate change. Because, if not, things are just going to get much worse.
Steven Disbrow is a programmer who specializes in e-commerce and mobile systems development, an entrepreneur, comic-book nerd, writer, improviser, actor, sometime television personality and parent of two human children.