Chang'e-3 lands on the Moon 14 December 2013

China successfully landed an unmanned vehicle on the Moon.

The Chang'e-3 mission is named after the goddess of the Moon in Chinese mythology and the rover vehicle is called Yutu (Jade Rabbit) after her pet.
Chang'e-3 landed on a volcanic site Sinus Iridum which is part of Mare Imbrium.

This landing makes China the third country after USA and Soviet Union to have landed unmanned spacecrafts to the Moon.

Good luck to them...

headache caused by increasing e-trash

• http://www.step-initiative.org/index.php/Initiative_WhatIsEwaste.html
• e-waste often contains substances that are harmful to humans and the environment if not properly treated. Effective rules for monitoring and treating e-waste are required for its safe disposal.
• e-waste is a growing problem.  According to a UN report, the amount of e-waste is set to grow by more than 30% by 2017.  The world produced 54 million tons of e-waste in 2012 with the usual suspects, US and China, taking top places.
• By 2017, refrigerators, TVs, mobile phones, DVDs, computers, monitors, e-toys and other products on the dump heap with a battery or electrical cord would fill a line of 40-ton trucks end-to-end on a highway covering three quarters of the Equator!
• Lot of the e-waste finds its way to underdeveloped countries where it is estimated that two-thirds of the recycling is done by unorganized groups.  Because such groups do not follow safe recommended practices, not only toxic substances pollute air, soil and water but the people around are exposed to dangerous gases etc.  
• Electronic gadgets contain valuable minerals like gold, silver, platinum, rare-earth elements etc. and loss of these in unregulated and inefficient recycling of e-waste represents a serious loss of resources.
• What we need is good international regulations for safe and efficient handling of e-waste. The increasing amounts of e-waste is a reality and we just need to learn to cope with it without damaging our health and environment further.  

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Common Sense and the Laws of Nature (Part 1)

Common sense is what we humans live by – it is kind of wisdom gained from experience over many generations. Humans experience the world through the five senses, but importantly we also use our intelligence to perform cause and effect analysis of what has been happening around us to understand how the world behaves. 
Common sense has worked very well and has ensured the survival of the human race; particularly, in the avoidance of dangerous and harmful situations.  Human societies evolved to preserve and enhance the species.  Shared knowledge and effort proved useful in meeting adverse situations and quality of life improved rapidly as humans started to live together in social groups.  
Survival of human societies is a multifaceted situation; they not only have to guard against the hostile physical environment around them but also against other fellow humans who are driven by greed, violence and other undesirable traits.  Humans have always enjoyed exercising power and control over others around them. This is a classic example of conflicting requirements – living in societies is beneficial but at the same time exposes one to potentially dangerous elements of oppression and exploitation.  How humans dealt with this is fascinating and will be discussed in a future blog.
How does our common sense relate to the laws of nature is what we wish to look at first.  The difference is in the scope of the evidence available.

Laws of nature are deduced from experimental observations at all possible levels of space and time.  As human ability improves to expand such observations to wider regions of space and time, laws of nature are modified or even replaced by a different set of laws.  Fine-tuning of the laws is fundamental to their authenticity and acceptance.  The current set is the best available to make sense of what the empirical evidence tells us. 

Common sense is much more restricted in terms of empirical evidence at its disposal.  Without technological aids - and most human experiences have been in such conditions - humans really occupy a small region roughly in the middle of space-time expanse.   Their experiences are limited in size, speed, time, colour, frequency etc.  Quantitatively: We experience

Physical dimensions from ~0.01 mm to a few hundred km. 
Speeds vary from rest to a few tens of km/hour.
Time is restricted to our reaction time of the order of 10 ms to a few hundred years.
Colour is perceived in the narrow wavelength range of 0.4 to 0.8 micron                                       (1 micron = 0.001 mm)
Perception of sound is limited to frequencies less than about 20 kHz.

Animal species do better in colour and sound perception due to the evolutionary need to protect themselves against predators etc.

Humans mainly perceive the world around them through light which travels at the fantastic speed of 300,000 km per second; this gives the feeling of instantaneous communication – things are happening as we see them.

Natural phenomena like rain, thunder, lightening, tides, storms, earthquakes, motion of heavenly bodies, infectious/mental and other diseases etc. were mediated by causes outside the range of human perception.  Theories and explanations were put forward – of course different in different societies – to make sense of such events.  This can give rise to beliefs, customs, rituals, superstitions etc. 
We shall return to this later.

Limited scope of human experience, nevertheless, provided some quite sensible and workable theories about the way the world operates – kind of ‘limited’ laws of nature.  In good true scientific spirit a law would get modified when the evidence against it became overwhelming.  Sometimes it would require great sacrifices as changing a law might encumber on the interests/dogma of the powerful in the society. 

Situation started to improve about 500 years ago with the acceptance that experiment based evidence could not be ignored and must be taken into account in formulating so called laws of nature.  Technological advances helped in removing many of the limits to observations – in space, time and other areas.  Common sense inspired laws of nature started to be replaced by the new physics at the turn of the 20^th century and in the short span of 25 years the acceptance of the new laws of relativistic and quantum physics was overwhelming. 

While common sense laws are arrived at through observations, mostly visual, and rely on the behaviour of matter around us at the macroscopic scale of dimensions greater than about 1 micron (0.001 mm), laws of nature (physics) are determined in the way elementary particles, typically of dimensions less than 0.001 micron, interact with each other.  These interactions are of four types:

gravitational (G), 

electromagnetic (EM), 

strong nuclear (SN) and 

weak nuclear (WN).  

G and EM are long range and affect matter at all distances. SN and WN are relevant only at nuclear dimensions with distances of the order of a billionth of a micron or less!   
Chemical and biological properties are determined by EM forces acting between atoms and molecules at distances of the order of 0.001 microns and may not be properly understood through evidence from everyday experience. Old theories based on human experiences have been unable to make good sense of chemistry and life sciences.
Motion of heavenly bodies is governed by gravitational forces but mostly involves distances far greater than our senses can be sensitive to.  That is why there has been so much confusion about this subject in historical accounts.  Newton's laws of gravitational attraction explained the way heavenly bodies are organised in the sky but a proper understanding of the Universe had to wait for the theories of relativity and the development of nuclear sciences. 

The world of atoms and nuclei was latent to our ancestors as the distances involved were unimaginably small and even their existence could not be contemplated. Understanding the true nature of atoms and nuclei only started at the turn of the 20^th century and this has created the atmosphere in which modern industry could start.  Nuclear energy, Nanotechnology, Computers, Biotechnology, Space Exploration all owe their success to the laws of nature enunciated through empirical evidence acquired through development in technology in the 19th and 20^th centuries.  Without this mind-set, modern industry would not even be science fiction.

Another interesting aspect of this discussion is the emergence of paradoxes.  A language that is weakly developed will be unable to describe a situation that is highly complex – the vocabulary is just not there.  A good example of a paradox is the wave-particle duality in classical physics (mostly based on common sense observations).  In our daily lives we see objects behave like material particles or as undulating waves in motion.  We do not have objects that switch between being waves and particles at different times.  This was the situation until the end of the 19^th century when light was observed to exhibit properties akin to waves in some experiments but behaved exactly like a stream of particles in others.  The situation was resolved and explained by quantum description of light in 1925.  Now, we know that everything in the universe shows wave-particle duality and it is just our attempt to classify things as either waves or particles that is flawed.  We are using the wrong language for our description.

It is not that there are no paradoxes in the modern theories.  There are many and this simply points to the fact that, while we have a much better understanding of the world we live in, we have more to learn and the laws of nature will be rewritten differently in the future. 

Returning after a big gap... Welcome to the science blog

It has been a long holiday; not in the normal sense but happenings in my life have kept cropping up leaving little or no time to sit down and write something down.

A year ago, Gerry Peterson introduced me to the idea of harnessing nuclear energy from Thorium.  It looked interesting and I presented a seminar at Glasgow University in January 2013 about the promise of Th as an energy source.  There are aspects in Th energy that are very attractive but the way I see nuclear energy is a stop-gap measure until we have sufficient renewable energy available - optimistically by 2075.  Uranium technology is much more firmly established and that is the way most new nuclear plants will be built over the next 30 years to fill in the energy gap being created by forsaking fossil fuels and waiting for ample supply of renewable energy.

Sometimes the pessimist in me gets the upper hand and the feeling that we won't actually reduce our use of fossil fuels ignoring all warnings about climate change issues.  The task of achieving a harmonious world order will get more difficult with misery for billions of people.  The rich countries will probably suffer much less and majority of pain will fall on the poorer populations of Africa and Asia.

Other exciting developments that I struggle to keep up with are in Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology (NAIB).  Research is moving too rapidly there and while I thought many times of preparing a series of talk on these subjects, a feeling of being not quite ready always dominates.  It is nevertheless good to read with excitement what is happening in these fields and feel thankful that retirement has given me the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of labour of so many researchers throughout the world.

I feel much more at home now looking back towards the history of science and have started on the preparation of a series of talks on the life and work of some of our great scientists.  The Curies are fascinating for the sheer determination and hard work that they showed over two generations and as a result dominated the field of nuclear physics for more than quarter of a century.  Five Nobel Prizes are apt proof of how significant their contribution was.  Something that I did not appreciate until recently was the wisdom of hoarding Polonium and Radium by Marie Curie in her institute.  This gave her the most powerful radiation source for nuclear research only bettered after particle accelerators appeared on the scene.

I hope to use the blog to comment on some of the current scientific news about Climate Change, NAIB and whatever else looks interesting.

  

Announcing Population Growth and Sustainability Talks in September 2012...

In partnership with Glasgow University and Scottish Enterprise, Lanarkshire, and following the initial announcement of the planned talks
I can confirm that I have arranged

four talks lasting 90 minutes each on
Saturdays 8, 15, 22 and 29 September 2012. 
Talks start at 11 am and end at 12:30 pm. The venue is
James Watt Auditorium, E.K. Technology Park, G75 0QD
with ample free parking on site. 

The talks are free to attend and require no science background. 
The talks are particularly suitable for school pupils and general community. 
Everybody is invited to the discussion of this highly relevant subject -
Talks promise to be informative, exciting, somewhat controversial and I am sure will be followed by thought-provoking exchanges.

The contents of the talks are:

Talk 1:  Population: Exponential Growth and Ecosystem Response
Talk 2:  Managing Climate Change:  Oceans and Atmosphere
Talk 3:  Managing Food and Water Resources
Talk 4:  Managing Energy Resources 

For further information and if you wish to express interest in attending the talks then write to 
Come along to the talks and support the popular community education initiative. 
Inform your family, friends, neighbours about the talks - it is your programme.

Explaining Exponential Growth - its basic features...

One can find examples of Exponential Growth (EG^) in almost all fields of life.  EG^ mathematically describes how some fundamental attribute of a system will change with time.  Systems with EG^ can show non-intutive bizarre behaviours and makes exponential growth a difficult concept to comprehend and accept its conclusions.  
Mysterious as it may sound, an understanding of EG^ is crucial to appreciate what is going on in our daily lives and to plan for the future.

From calculating the interest earned on your capital to using Moore's Law to predict the number of transistors on a chip, or to calculate the power output in a nuclear reactor, EG^ is there to help. Its twin brother, exponential decay (ED^) only differs in the direction of change but shares all the concepts of EG^.

There are three ways to describe EG^ - they are equivalent but one is used in preference to others depending on the situation:  In EG^

1. Rate of change (% Change) depends on the amount present. e.g. 
Annual interest rate is 5% (interest earned per year is 0.05 times the money at the start of the year). 
Inflation index which measures the % change in the cost of a basket of goods over a year, was 2.5%. 
Global population increased by 1.4% per year in the 20th Century.
E.Coli colony increases is size at 3.5% per minute.  etc...

2.  The quantity present doubles after a certain time.
(Doubling Time) 
If you leave your money in a bond, it will double in 14 years
Inflation will double the cost of goods in 28 years.
Global population doubled every 50 years in the 20th Century.  
E Coli colony doubles in size in 20 minutes.  etc...

3.  Doubling steps: 
Accumulate something with the added amount doubling in successive steps.

The only important parameter in exponential growth is
% rate of change or doubling time. 
Rate of change and doubling time are measured in the same units of time - be it years, minutes, seconds, centuries, nanoseconds or whatever. 
They are simply related as follows (called the rule of 70):

% rate of change = 70 divided by the doubling time, and of course
The doubling time = 70 divided by the % rate of change

If we start with 1 unit and the doubling time is T then at time

10T the number of units will be 1,000 (actually 1024)
11T                                          2,000
20T                                              1,000,000
30T                                              1,000,000,000
40T                                                 1,000,000,000,000 
41T                                                 2,000,000,000,000
What quantity (population, money, no of transistors) and  the unit of time (years, seconds, minutes etc.) you choose  depends on the problem.

The thing to note is that at 10T after one doubling time, the growth was 1,000;
while at 40T after one doubling time, the increase was 1,000,000,000,000 - a billion times greater. 
This is true of all systems showing exponential growth - this is simple maths.

Also note that in each doubling time, the increase is as much as has happened in all the previous doubling steps. 
So when we say that energy consumption will double in 40 years; it means that in the next 40 years we shall consume as much energy as we have used since the beginning!  To make it clearer:
From 1970 to 2010 we used as much energy as we had used from 1800 to 1970.  (1800 is used as a reference point - energy used before 1800 was very small)

If we were to plot the quantity against time then the graph will show very little change in the beginning but after 10 or 20 doubling times the numbers would have grown to thousands of times bigger and the graph will show an almost vertical swing.

Another interesting property of EG^ graph is that it looks the same no matter what section of the graph you are looking at.  For example, in the picture, you can change the x-axis (time axis - doubling steps) from the current range of 0 to 14 to a range from 20 to 34.  The y-axis (quantity) will be changed to start at 1000,000 (the actual value at 20 doubling times) and go to 4,000,000,000 (at a doubling time of 34).  The curve on the graph will be exactly the same. 
Isn't that wonderful?

Here is a chart of how world population grew in the past 

Human Population Dynamics on a Finite Earth....

Growing human population with its habit of over consumption on a planet with finite space and resources provides some fascinating scenarios.   Population quadrupled in the 20th century.  The momentum of population growth will almost certainly take us from 7 billion in 2011 to over 9 billion by 2050. 
Where do we go from there?  the situation is serious enough that I shall deliberately make some provocative statements to start a serious debate.  We need to look at the big picture and come out of the habit of theoretically solving a local limited problem and announce that as a solution to everything.

In examples  1 and 2  we set out the nature of exponential growth.  Example 2 is directly applicable to human population on earth for which the doubling period is not one week (as it was in example 2) but somewhat longer - 50 years in the 20th century and may be of the order 100 years in the 21st century.  The increase in doubling period might partly be a result of humans hitting the earth's resource ceiling although many experts think that we reproduce less as we grow richer and doubling in numbers takes longer.  Some even feel that if we all got much richer then population will start decreasing.  Let me explain the problem with this line of thinking:

On average, about a quarter of us are living very well - are rich.  One third of us (China and India with a combined population of 2.5 billion) would like to increase consumption seriously to reach at least the European levels.  The remainder live at or below subsistence levels.  Currently we use resources in excess (1.5 times) of what is considered sustainable.  To raise every body's standard of living to European level will require resources of 4 Earths; to reach US levels will require 15 Earths.  And we are talking about 7 billion population.  Consumption by 9 billion rich humans will be correspondingly greater.

Look at it another way:  To support US style living for everybody on earth, we need to reduce our numbers by a factor of 15 - the population can only be about 500 million.  The reproduction rate will be no problem according to experts when we are all rich but how do we reduce the population to 500 million.  Please send me an e-mail (ektalks@yahoo.co.uk) if you think I have missed something here.
The conclusion I draw is that we have already hit the resource ceiling and increase/decrease in human population will now be governed by the resource limits of our ecosystem. 
It is not possible for our visionary world leaders to make the 7 billions of us rich quickly.

Some say that science and technology will solve the resource problems.  NanoTechnology (NT) will produce limitless food without waste, will be nonpolluting, even clean up past pollution, etc. etc...  
NT will also improve medical care, may be even allow people to live for ever (much longer than 100 years would not be unreasonable); thus decreasing the death rate drastically.  Population growth is the difference of birth rate minus the death rate.  For stable population birth rate must be zero if nobody dies.  Imagine a world full of 100 year old rich people.  Who will do the work?  Robots probably?  But then will these robots no get fed up with humans and decide to do something about it - after all they will think logically!  Now this is the subject of my blogs in 2013. 
Let us go back to human population scenarios:

The reason I think zero or negative population growth is not possible is the way exponential growth works.  This was explained in example 2.  We looked at doubling steps.  Even if 99% of the population dies the remaining 1% will grow back to original numbers within 7 doubling steps - 350 years in the case of humans.  What this means is that if a natural or human generated catastrophe eliminates 99% of the population - it will be 7 billion again in 350 years.

Nations of the world do not all think the same way.  Population, largely poor, in African and South American (A&SA) countries is doubling in 25 years or less.  Rest of the world might stabilise its population but in 100 years, A&SA will have increased their population by a factor of 16.  India's population is projected to reach 1.6 billion in 2050 from 1,2 billion now.   Indigenous US population is not expected to grow but to do the work they will allow 100 million new immigrants over the next 40 years who will demand US style standard of living.  Effectively US population will grow by more than 25% over the next 40 yaers. European population trends will not be much different from US - I believe.  It seems clear to me that eventhough local population in rich countries does not grow by itself, new immigrants will boost the population - and the arguments about reproduction rates decreasing with prosperity do not hold out - unfortunately.

So where do we go from here - if global population continues to incrase with a doubling period of 100 years then in 1000 years (10 doubling periods) the population will hit a number of 7000 billions.
what it means in terms of space and resources is quite obvious.  As I had said previously - it won't happen.