MY WRITING JOURNAL

Thursday, August 12

Collide light with light, and poof, you get matter and antimatter. It sounds like a simple idea, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to prove.

A team of physicists is now claiming the first direct observation of the long-sought Breit-Wheeler process, in which two particles of light, or photons, crash into one another and produce an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

But like a discussion from an introductory philosophy course, the detection’s significance hinges on the definition of the word “real.” Some physicists argue the photons don’t qualify as real, raising questions about the observation’s implications.

Predicted more than 80 years ago, the Breit-Wheeler process had never been directly observed, although scientists have seen related processes, such as light scattering off of light (SN: 8/14/17).

New measurements from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider match predictions for the elusive transformation, Brookhaven physicist Daniel Brandenburg and colleagues report in the July 30 Physical Review Letters.

“The idea that you can create matter from light smashing together is an interesting concept,” says Brandenburg.

It’s a striking demonstration of the physics immortalized in Einstein’s equation E=mc2, which revealed that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin. READ MORE

Designing

Remove Your Bird Feeders

Several state wildlife agencies are urging residents to take down their bird feeders as a mysterious illness continues to spread among songbirds.

The illness was initially reported in late May in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. More recently, reports have come in from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.

Birds like common grackles, blue jays, European starlings, American robins, house sparrows, Carolina wrens, and other songbirds have been affected.

Sick birds may present neurological symptoms like dizziness, tremors, or falling over. Their eyes may be swollen and have discharge or crust on them.

Though researchers have been studying the birds to find out what exactly the illness is, they don't have an answer yet.

They have ruled out a few common pathogens, like Salmonella and the avian influenza virus, both of which have not been detected in the sick birds.

There is an investigation to see whether Brood X cicadas are somehow involved with the illness, but it seems unlikely that there is a connection, ornithologist Allysin Gillet told Indiana Public Media.

"There are so many things out there that could possibly be causing this," Gillet said. "I think mystery is a good term to use for this because we really need to look at all the different angles of this disease." READ MORE

Discovery of Maya ruins, c. 1880-1900

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Wednesday, August 11

Populist Press

Liofestyles

Aliens

Surviving

Man With Sword

Just Dogs

Cops Turn Their Backs On Mayor

After two brothers who were on probation shot and killed a young female cop and critically wounded her partner at a traffic stop on Saturday night, at least a dozen members of the Chicago Police Department turned their backs on Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot when she addressed reporters near the officers holding a vigil at the hospital where the wounded officer was fighting for his life.

“Lightfoot was given the cold shoulder by CPD rank and file about midnight Saturday at the University of Chicago Medical Center when she approached them on the as they grappled with the shootings of two fellow officers,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported, adding, “Just moments before about 30 officers turned their backs on the mayor, Lightfoot tried to talk to the male officer’s father, who himself is a retired Chicago police officer.

He clearly wanted nothing to do with Lightfoot, according to two sources who were there. The father excoriated the mayor and blamed her for what had happened.”

Chicago Fraternal Order of Police president John Catanzara told the Sun-Times, “The police officers’ decision to turn their backs on the mayor while waiting with the family on the 7th floor was significant.

Turning their backs on the mayor was an excellent example of how the hundreds of police officers felt waiting outside the hospital. … They have had enough and are no longer going to remain silent anymore.” READ MORE

The Great Escape

Gender Transition

A federal court has blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate that would require doctors to perform transgender surgeries against their consciences.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, granted “a permanent injunction” to the Christian plaintiffs “to be exempt from the government’s requirement to perform abortions and gender-transition procedures.”

“Today’s ruling protects patients, aligns with current medical research, and ensures doctors aren’t forced to violate their religious beliefs and medical judgment–a victory for common-sense, conscience, and sound medicine,” vice president and senior counsel at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Luke Goodrich said Monday.

The plaintiffs are a religious hospital and a group of over 20,000 healthcare professionals, Goodrich noted. READ MORE

Graceful

Unique Exoplanet

The CHEOPS satellite accidentally spotted a rare exoplanet with no known equivalent. The satellite detected this unique exoplanet while looking for two exoplanets in a bright nearby star system.

This planet called ‘Nu2 Lupi d’ is located 50 light-years away in the constellation Lupus (Latin for Wolf), around a star called Nu2 Lupi. It is about 2.5 times the size of Earth and almost 9 times its mass.

What’s more, scientists used measurements with archival data from other observatories and numerical models to characterize the density and composition of the planet and its neighbors.

They found that the planet has a rocky interior. It has far more water than the Earth. However, the water is not liquid; instead in the form of high-pressure ice or high-temperature steam, making the planets uninhabitable.

In 2019, Swiss astronomers announced the detection of three exoplanets around this bright, Sun-like star.

The three exoplanets have masses between those of Earth and Neptune (17 times the Earth) and take 12, 28, and 107 days to circle their parent star.

Yann Alibert, professor of astrophysics at the University of Bern and co-author of the study, said, “We knew that already for the two inner planets, which led us to point CHEOPS to the system in the first place.

However, the third planet is quite far away from the star; no one was expected to see its transit!” READ MORE