Harry C. Butcher papers: A Perspective into the Cold War

Reblogged from American Heritage Center (AHC) News:

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The American Heritage Center recently finished processing the papers of Harry C. Butcher. Butcher was a member of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s staff during World War II and wrote of his experiences in his book “My Three Years with Eisenhower.”

In addition to materials related to Butcher’s experiences during World War II, there is also correspondence with Eisenhower during his presidency, personal correspondence to Butcher’s family and a great deal of material chronicling Butcher’s career in the broadcast industry, both radio and television, before and after World War II.

Read more… 340 more words

Berlin Wall Watchtower

Reblogged from Fototype:

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This is the last remaining original watchtower of this type which was part of the Berlin Wall border construction. As it happened, a gentleman from a citizen's association to preserve the tower was at the site. He had been talking to a couple of young Berlin policemen and showing them the tower because they had not known it was there or what it had been for.

Read more… 60 more words

Obama’s ‘Iron Curtain’ descends on America... "Under the Marxist rule of President Barack Hussein Obama, Uncle Sam morphs day by day into ‘Uncle Satan’. Ironic when contemplating that Iran has long called America “the great Satan”."

Reblogged from NOW BLOG THIS! ~ GUNNY.G: AMERICAN !:

By Judi McLeod Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Under the Marxist rule of President Barack Hussein Obama, Uncle Sam morphs day by day into ‘Uncle Satan’. Ironic when contemplating that Iran has long called America “the great Satan”.

Far more wily than Uncle Sam or Uncle Sugar, ‘Uncle Satan’ lures scores of U.S. citizens motivated by entitlement mentality with food stamps, free cell phones and unquestioned access to social security, into a trap from which they will never escape.

Read more… 682 more words

Hanford Nuclear Site- What You May Not Know

Reblogged from Environmental Communications:

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Image Source

“If you are concerned about the fluoride debate, you should be REALLY concerned about the Hanford site.”                                                 -Green drinks guest speaker

This Months Portland Green Drinks featured a presentation on the Hanford Nuclear Site. Two guest speakers from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR Oregon Chapter) highlighted the Particles on the Wall exhibit, which utilizes art and science to tell the Hanford Site story.

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White Sands,New Mexico,

Nazis secretly developed plot to drop radioactive bomb on New York from supersonic space rocket.

Nazis secretly developed plot to drop radioactive bomb on New York from supersonic space rocket..

 

‘Tsunami bomb’ tested off New Zealand coast.

‘Tsunami bomb’ tested off New Zealand coast..

Rare photo of atom bomb split cloud found in Hiroshima

Rare photo of atom bomb split cloud found in Hiroshima.

 

7 Signs We Are Heading for a Mass Extinction

English: A timeline of the largest mass extinctions on Earth in the past 500 million years. Made using the numbers at Extinction event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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http://io9.com/7-signs-we-are-heading-for-a-mass-extinction-5950630

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7 Signs We Are Heading for a Mass Extinction

Today, many scientists believe we are on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction which could wipe out most life on Earth as we know it. Here are seven signs that they could be right.

Image of Australian wildfires from space, via NASA

A mass extinction happens when over 75 percent of all species on the planet die in a period of less than two million years. That may sound long to you, but it’s the blink of an eye in geologic time. There have been five mass extinctions on Earth over the past 540 million years, sometimes caused by catastrophic disasters, and sometimes by quiet, insidious events like invasive species taking over the planet.

7. Earth Is Bubbling with Super Volcanoes
Yellowstone Park in the United States is actually a volcano caldera, a thin cork of earth that sits on top of a massive cache of broiling magma. And this super-volcano could blow any time. The last time Earth witnessed an explosion of this size was in 1812, when Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted so profusely that the Earth’s climate cooled for several years afterwards. Even more frightening is the prospect that another kind of super volcano, called a large igneous province (LIP), could become active sometime in the future. A now-inactive LIP, called the Siberian Traps, erupted 250 million years ago. It spewed so much sulfur, carbon other greenhouse gases into the air that the Earth experienced a climate change catastrophe, vacillating wildly between extreme heat and cold until 95 percent of all life had died. This mass extinction was so bad it’s been nicknamed “the Great Dying” by geologists. Yellowstone is not a LIP, but if it explodes into a super eruption, the damage will be incredible. Super volcanoes are an ever-present threat, that have haunted the Earth for millions of years.
Related
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Further evidence that the Yellowstone megavolcano could blow without warning

Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a giant volcanic caldera, or an earthen cap that covers a huge reservoir of superhot liquid rock and poison… Read…
Why did nearly all life on Earth die 250 million years ago?

Among paleontologists, it’s sometimes called the “Great Dying.” Roughly a quarter of a billion years ago, 90-95 percent of all life on … Read…

6. Invasive Species Are Everywhere
On Earth, humans have aggressively invaded every continent except Antarctica, swelling our population to over 7 billion individuals and eating everything in sight. Like rats and cockroaches, we are the ultimate invasive species, pushing many creatures out of their native habitats — which could, ultimately, kill those creatures on a huge scale. Our population could grow a lot bigger before humans are endangered, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t harm other species. About 359 million years ago, 75 percent of all species on Earth died during the Devonian mass extinction. Geologist Alicia Stigall has evidence that this horrific slaughter was the result of invasive species like sharks (yes, there were sharks hundreds of millions of years ago) aggressively eating all the food in every environment — slowly starving all the creatures who depended on local food sources and couldn’t move to new feeding regions.
Related
Has Humanity’s Explosion Become a Population Bomb?

The world’s population has exploded over the past century, growing from less than 2 billion to 7 billion people. And it’s not stopping. The … Read…

5. Climate Change
The Arctic ice cap is shrinking. Temperatures are rising. Scientists across many disciplines and countries are united in their belief that the climate on Earth is getting hotter. The good news is that humans might not be the only cause of this climate change — the planet has suffered through dramatic shifts in temperature many times over its history. The bad news is that pretty much every time that happens there’s a mass extinction. The Great Dying was caused by climate change. The very first mass extinction 540 million years ago, called the Ordovician Extinction, was set off by a rapid ice age followed by a rapid greenhouse period. Another mass extinction, at the end of the Triassic, was set in motion by an undersea super volcano and massive wildfires (like the ones in Australia, pictured from space in the image at the top of this post) that smothered the planet in smoke and ash. The meteorite that smashed into the planet before the dinosaurs were wiped out in a mass extinction? Nope, didn’t kill those big guys with fire. It killed them by throwing so much debris into the atmosphere that the climate changed. Most geologists agree that when the climate changes, mass extinctions follow.
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What the Hell is happening to the Arctic Sea Ice?

The Arctic Sea Ice extent this September was far smaller than the previous record, set in 2007. At 3.4 million square kilometers of ice coverage,… Read…
America just endured its hottest 12 month period on record. Again.

It’s deja vu all over again. Sweaty, sweltering deja vu. For the third consecutive month, the mainland United States has experienced its hottest … Read…

4. Ocean Acidification
Acid levels in the Earth’s oceans are going up, which is what’s killing all those reefs and making life hard for shellfish. Ocean acidification is also one major reason that the Great Dying was so, well, great. It was also a major part of the Triassic mass extinction 200 million years ago, which wiped out 80 percent of the planet’s species — especially in the oceans. When the waters are too acidic, calcium levels go down. That means shelled creatures simply can’t build their shells, and they die even before they have a fighting chance. When shelled creatures die, the predators who feed on them also die. And the more dead bodies you’ve got in the ocean, the more acidic everything gets. If Earth’s oceans continue to become more acidic, mass extinction could be next.

3. Extinctions Are Happening At A Higher Than Average Rate
Extinctions are normal. In fact, statisticians who study extinction have figured out a typical “background extinction rate,” which is the normal number of creatures who are going extinct at any given time. So a mass extinction is like a big statistical spike of death sticking up far over that background rate. And, unfortunately, there is a lot of evidence that the extinction rate we’ve experienced over the past 500 years is above the typical rate. No, this rate is nowhere near mass extinction levels. But it is going up. Which is exactly what you’d expect to see at the beginning of a mass extinction.

2. All the Megafauna Are Dead
One way scientists figure out rates of extinction is by looking at the diversity of fossils. Based on this evidence, they can figure out how many creatures and plants were alive at a given time, plus how quickly (or slowly) they disappeared from the fossil record. In recent fossil records, from the past 50,000 years, we can easily see a steep decline in species diversity. The Earth was recently home to many species of so-called megafauna, from mastodons and giant wallabies, to giant sloths, and today they are entirely gone. When you see an entire category of creatures wink out that quickly (in geological time), it suggests more than just typical extinction patterns.

1. Amphibians Are Dying Out
Today, we are witnessing another giant group of species going extinct so rapidly we can actually measure it in human time, rather than geologic time. Amphibians, especially frogs, are dying out at such a fast pace that some have called the twenty-first century a time of “biodiversity crisis.” Most have been felled by a fast-spreading, deadly fungus that kills whole communities of frogs in weeks. It’s likely the fungus has reached pandemic proportions because frogs are being forced out of their habitats, and coming into contact with new species they might never have seen otherwise. Just as human pandemics spread more quickly due to travel, amphibian pandemics are spread when frogs move into a new area and infect previously unexposed communities. The more we lose our animal diversity, the closer we get to a world dominated by invasive species. And that scenario really didn’t end well in the Devonian mass extinction. It probably won’t end well for us, either.

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

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Still, as I explain in my book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, there is hope. These are early signs of a possible mass extinction, and we still have plenty of time to do something about it. We can curb fossil fuel emissions to prevent climate change from getting worse, and we can preserve biodiversity by maintaining natural areas where animals won’t be edged out by human settlements. As for megavolcanos and meteorite impacts? Well, that’s going to be a little harder. But it’s not impossible. We can’t bring the mastodons back, but we can still prevent most of the species around us (including humans) from dying out.

If you want to know more about mass extinctions, you can learn about it in my new book, Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction.

Also, I’ll be on book tour this month! You can see me in tomorrow night in Phoenix, at Changing Hands Bookstore. That’s followed by appearances in Seattle (this Wednesday night!), Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Berkeley. Click here for dates and places!

Primary sources linked within the post. A previous version of this io9 flashback was published in October 2012.

The fraud who worked with EinsteinSExpandEmil Rupp spent

English: Albert Einstein, official 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics photograph. Français : Albert Einstein, photographie officielle du Prix Nobel de Physique 1921. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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he fraud who worked with Einstein

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Emil Rupp spent the late 1920s and early 1930s being lauded as the most impressive experimental physicist in the world. He managed to pull off experiments that no one else could. He worked with Einstein. And he’d made it all up.

Emil Rupp was born in Germany in 1898; he had an interest in physics, which meant that he was born at the perfect place in he perfect time. Germany was a nearly holy site for physicists throughout the first part of the 20th century — people traveled there to learn, to collaborate, and to become the best in the world. By age 27, Rupp was the best in the world.

His work focused on canal rays, which were produced in little glass tubes. On one side of a tube was an anode, a positively charged electrode. At the center of the tube was a cathode, a negatively charged electrode with little holes — sometimes called canals — drilled in it. Positive ions would shoot from the anode to the cathode, and some would shoot through the holes; these would continue into a vacuum on the far side of the tube, where they emitted enough light that they could be studied with the naked eye.

Rupp was one of the researchers studying these rays, particularly their interference patterns as they came through the canals and the coherence of the beams in the vacuum. He came up with some remarkable results. Basically, his observable phenomena, from interference patterns, to wave trains (a series of waves traveling in sync), to beam coherence were larger than anyone else had every observed. By studying them, he noticed that the rays underwent two different kinds of Doppler shift. One shift was due to the acceleration of the ion in the ray. The other was thermal Doppler shift, the shift that comes about from the random jiggling of the ion.

Everyone took note of Rupp’s experiments and their strong, observable results. Even Einstein noticed, and the phenomenon that Rupp observed gave him an idea for an experiment. He wanted to know if waves emitted by atoms were emitted over time, or emitted instantaneously. The large coherence and the interference patterns for the canal ray beams given by Rupp gave him hope that he could set up experiments with observable results using hydrogen atoms. What Einstein didn’t know was that Rupp only got such lovely results because he was making everything, from the experiments to the data, up as he went along.

Not everyone shared Einstein’s confidence. Robert Atkinson noticed that Rupp’s atoms in motion seemed more easily observable than atoms at rest. Thermal motion alone should make this impossible. A hydrogen atom at rest has thermal motion because it is bumped by other hydrogen atoms. Accelerate it incredibly fast in one direction and it should bump into even more atoms, be more jittery, and less observable. When Einstein inquired about this, Rupp said that Atkinson was right, but his experiment had compensated for that — although he hadn’t mentioned the problem at all before Atkinson had brought it up.

What followed would have made a decent farce. Einstein noticed a flaw in Rupp’s experiment and corrected for it. Reasoning that Rupp had already seen the flaw, corrected it, and forgotten to mention it, Einstein wrote to Rupp about the correction. Rupp said yes he had corrected it, and thanked Einstein for reminding him. Rupp started on the experiments and wrote to Einstein about his results. Einstein had a problem with the results. Rupp said he’d use a ‘purer canal ray’ and try again. Rupp wrote again with data, which Einstein analyzed and which seemed to agree with Einstein’s predictions. Einstein noticed another problem with the experiment, and puzzled about why the data had come out right when the experiment was wrong. Rupp wrote back saying that, yes, it was all very puzzling.

At length, Rupp came up with an answer that seemed plausible to Einstein, and Einstein himself presented the work that they had done together. The connection launched Rupp’s career. He was given what he wanted, and pursued any experiments he wanted to pursue (though he must have been relieved to have severed the connection with Einstein after their difficult collaboration), and published several more papers — until 1935.

In 1935, he went a bit too far. People were getting new and better results with canal rays, and so Rupp wrote that he’d managed to get beams of positrons accelerated in ways that no one ever had before. At last, the physics community in general turned its eyes to him and asked, “Oh yeah? With what?” Rupp had tripped himself up in the most obvious way possible — he didn’t even have access to the equipment necessary to create such beams.

At last, people started combing back over his papers, finding flaws, omissions, and sometimes outright impossibilities. Knowing the game was up, Rupp published a retraction covering five recent papers that could absolutely be proved wrong. He included a doctor’s note saying he suffered from psycasthenia, a state which gives people obsessive compulsions, and that he’d written the papers in a “dreamlike state.” He withdrew from scientific life, and his work was quietly buried.

Einstein walked away from the mess relatively unscathed. His notes to and from Rupp survived, and it was clear he had mainly been guilty of giving Rupp the benefit of the doubt. That guilt was shared by most of the physics community by that time, and so the matter was left in the past. There’s little to read about Rupp and his 10 years of fame nowadays. Although, if he were somehow able to write his biography, it would probably make for fascinating reading.

[Via History and Philosophy of Physics]

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