HEFEI, ANHUI — I have spent nearly a week in Hefei 合肥, where a friend of mine from JiDa now lives with her husband. They married in June, but because of exams I and her other university friends couldn’t come then. This was in some ways a make-up trip, though I had already posted a wedding gift.

MeiMei is fully bilingual in Chinese and Russian, thanks to several years living in Minsk as a student. Her English (and maybe her Chinese, though I cannot tell) has a Russian accent. In addition, she’s an excellent pianist.

Her job at JiDa was as translator/interpreter for the exchange students and music teachers from Ukraine, but midway through last school year, there was less call for her linguistic abilities. Meanwhile, still unmarried at the age of 30, MeiMei was facing the Chinese cultural pressure to find a husband before she got “too old.” So, she decided to quit her university job, and go back home to Hefei to find a mate, while living with her parents and supporting herself teaching piano and Russian.

About two weeks ago, she and I were chatting on QQ, and she asked about my plans for the future. MeiMei suggested I consider working in Hefei. Then I asked if I could visit her this month to see what Hefei is like. She enthusiastically said yes. So, in short order, I and her other friend and former neighbor, Ailsa, were planning a week’s trip to Hefei.

August 13th, 2010 | Tags: Anhui, China, Hefei, high speed rail, Physics, trains, travel | Category: China, Physics | Comments (1)

This lovely image is of our home, the Milky Way galaxy, but in a way our mortal eyes cannot perceive it. It doesn’t show stars, but the stuff that makes (or will make) up stars and planets and whatnot — clouds of gas and dust.

Our eyes can see only a tiny fraction of light — the visible spectrum, ROYGBIV (rainbow colors) — but the universe also glows in other kinds of light: gamma ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, infra-red, microwave and radio. And each frequency tells us something different.

The atmosphere blocks some of those frequencies (fortunately for life in Earth), so to view the universe in this exotic light astronomers have to depend on telescopes out in space. The European Space Agency, for example, launched the Planck Surveyor telescope to capture images in the microwave range, like this one here.

Microwave imaging gives us two important sets of information about the Milky Way and the universe we are in.

First, the huge clouds of gas and dust in the galaxy (which are mostly invisible to our eyes) are what eventually turn into stars and planets (and all the stuff that ends up on planets). In the photo, those clouds are all those wispy bluish-white and pinkish-white tendrils stretching out from the center (the galactic equator).

July 5th, 2010 | Tags: Astronomy, Big Bang, microwave, Planck Surveyor | Category: Astronomy, Physics, Science | Leave a comment

A crewmember aboard the International Space Station caught this view of the aurora australis (the Southern Lights) during a geomagnetic storm last month.

Auroras happen when electrically charged particles from the Sun smack into Earth’s atmosphere and ionize the oxygen and nitrogen there. Since the high speed particles follow the Earth’s magnetic field, they primarily end up over the magnetic poles. B ut, when the Sun is especially active (or when it burps out a solar flare, as it did on May 24), the auroral displays can be seen at lower latitudes.

Ionized gases emit light of particular frequencies — colors. Neon, for example, glows a bright red color. Oxygen in the atmosphere typically emits green light, as we can see in the photo.

June 24th, 2010 | Tags: aurora, NASA.photo, space | Category: Astronomy, Physics, Science | Comments (1)

CHANGSHA, HUNAN — While I wait for my lunch companions to show up, I will try to dash off a quick movie review.

Of course, it’s not very current. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened in the USA weeks ago, but I saw it for the first time here just last week. In Chinese. With Chinese subtitles.

I didn’t miss a thing.

Some B-movies have redeeming virtues, despite poor acting, bad direction, cheesy scripts, or lousy camera work. Really bad movies (grade Z’s), though, combine all four to make a US Grade A turkey.

And being a science-fictiony kind of film, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, brought really bad to a whole new level with really awful science concepts.

Here’s a few glaring mistakes.

The Bad Guy (TBG) has a huge underwater lair that puts Stargate Atlantis’ digs to shame. Yet, this underwater metropolis is supposedly a secret. How? Its heat signature alone would be as bright as lighthouse beacon to a spy satellite in orbit.

For argument’s sake, let’s suppose the US government knew about The Bad Guy’s secret underwater lair. Wouldn’t the Defense Department be just a teensy bit interested in why TBG has all of that expensive hardware hidden away, especially since TBG is supplying high-tech stuff to the DoD?

(Then again, maybe not. Consider the DoD’s careful monitoring of Blackwater and Halliburton operations in Iraq.)

And he also has a secret weapons facility in the Arctic! Apparently, he hasn’t read up on global warming.

August 22nd, 2009 | Tags: China, movie, Physics, review, Science | Category: China, Commentary, Media, Physics | Leave a comment

(a) United States
(b) United Kingdom
(c) Manchester United
(d) United Arab Emirates

You have 2 minutes.

{Cue Jeopardy thinking jingle}

The answer is B! Author and theoretical physicist Hawking was born in Oxford, England, 67 years ago and is currently the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, which at last report was still located where it has been for the last 800 years, in England.

Reading comprehension quiz:
Now read this excerpt from a recent (fubar) editorial from the Investor’s Business Daily, and identify the logical fallacy. You have 5 minutes.




The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year."

One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on.

The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Discuss your answers among yourselves for the remainder of class.

Words fail me.

[ADDENDUM: IBD has since corrected its error, by deleting the graf mentioning Hawking.]

August 11th, 2009 | Tags: Cambridge, health care, Investor's Business Daily, Physics, Stephen Hawking, UK | Category: Commentary, Physics, Random rants | Leave a comment

Four students and their teacher in Cataluña, Spain, sent a Nikon Coolpix digital camera into the upper atmosphere recently, and captured some impressive photos. Here’s one:

More photos and a complete report of their experiments are at their blog and their flickr page. The Big Picture at the Boston Globe also has the photos.

Incidentally, the team’s blog is in Catalan, the language of Cataluña, but they have thoughtfully provided an instant-translation link for the Catalan-challenged.

March 24th, 2009 | Tags: balloon, Catalonia, Nikon, photography | Category: Astronomy, Commentary, General stuff, Physics, Schools, Science, evolution, religion | Leave a comment