What's New Friday July 20, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 20 Jul 07   Washington, DC

1. GOTTCHA!  I’M 95 PERCENT CERTAIN THIS ITEM IS INSIGNIFCANT.
The Science Times section of the NY Times this week had a story quoting 
Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott III on the need to colonize Mars 
before something bad happens to Earth.  Gott based his imperative on the 
Copernican principle: Things are in the middle 95 percent of their 
existence - with a 95 percent certainty.  WN learned of this deep 
statistical tautology 14 years ago when Gott used it to forecast how long 
humanity would survive.  What’s great is you don’t need to know anything.  
Being perfectly qualified, I calculated the survival of Gott’s theory, 
taking publication of his 1993 Nature article as its birth 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN93/wn060493.html .  If the theory was 
right, its demise would have been before 20 April 94 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN94/wn050694.html .  That was 17 years 
ago.  The numbers don’t lie - if the theory was right it would be dead.  
If it’s still around, it must be wrong.  It’s a good thing.  After looking 
at images from the Mars rovers, I’ll take my chances with an asteroid 
rather than move to Mars.  

2. THE PITS: LANL DELIVERS FIRST PLUTONIUM PIT IN 18 YEARS.
The softball-sized trigger is for the W88 warhead carried by submarine 
launched missiles.  Pits have not been made since the Rocky Flats facility 
northwest of Denver, heavily contaminated by 40 years of weapons 
production, was shut down in 1989.  The new pit was described as a test to 
see if it could be done, but with 10,000 intact pits in storage, it like 
muscle flexing.  We may have to wait for nuclear disarmament by 
radioactive decay.  The minimum lifespan for pits is put at 85 to 100 
years.  

3. TSETSE FLIES: STERILE INSECT TECHNIQUE PLANNED FOR ETHIOPIA.
Today’s issue of Science examines plans to use the sterile insect 
technique (SIT) in one of the world’s poorest countries to eliminate the 
tsetse fly.  But Ethiopia has dozens of species of tsetse flies, and some 
critics believe SIT will fail there.  Developed in the U.S. to eliminate 
the screw worm fly in the Southwest, SIT releases huge numbers of 
radiation-sterilized males to mate with females, which only mate once.  
That rules out using the technique in human population control.

4. ATLAS OF CREATION: GOOD PRODUCTION VALUES, BAD SCIENCE.  Weighing in at 
12 pounds, 800 glossy pages, this lavishly illustrated book by Islamic 
creationist Harun Yahya has been showing up in mailboxes of American 
scientists.  My copy must have been lost in the mail.  No matter: it’s now 
apparently available free on line.  Where does the money come from?

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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