What's New Friday November 9, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 9 Nov 07   Washington, DC

1. COSMIC RAYS: PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY TRACKS 100 EeV RAYS.
A billion times more energetic than the particles that will be accelerated 
by the LHC, there was skepticism that they even existed when they were 
first reported in 1962, and they are indeed rare.  But in 1992, Alan 
Watson, together with Jim Cronin who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize with Val 
Fitch for the discovery of CP violation, proposed an observatory to study 
them.  This is big science.  It consists of 1600 Cherenkov water tank 
detectors along with atmospheric fluorescence detectors, distributed over 
2000 square miles of Argentine Pampa with the Andes as backdrop.  It is 
the first experiment with ground and atmospheric detectors on the same 
site.  The Pierre Auger Collaboration, including 370 physicists from 17 
participating countries, reports in today’s Science that the distribution 
of these rays is not isotropic and correlates well with active galactic 
nuclei nearby.  It should stir the heart of every curious human to learn 
that scientific exploration of the cosmos is still going on.  As Jim 
Cronin said to the New York Times, "the age of cosmic-ray astronomy has 
arrived."  

2. MOONBEAMS: CHANG’E-1 ENTERED ITS LUNAR ORBIT WEDNESDAY.
The probe, described by China Daily as weighing about as much as an 
elephant, will remain in orbit for a year, studying the lunar surface.  
The plan is to soft-land a robot vehicle on the moon by 2015, followed by 
a robot sample-return mission by 2020.  The Commission of Science, 
Technology and Industry has not announced plans for a manned flight to the 
moon but it has said that the lunar program "aspires" to manned flights to 
the moon and a space station (why not ours?).  WN hopes China includes 
taikonauts in its program.  A Yuan spent on space is a Yuan not spent on 
military adventures.

3. OPEN ACCESS: SANDIA LABORATORIES "TRANSFORMS" THE LIBRARY. 
WN heard from the other side this week about the realities of open access 
in science publishing.  Even my former students blasted me over last 
week’s column.  WN learned this week that Sandia, on the advice of a 
consultant who said it will save money, is closing the stacks.  "We’re not 
closing the library," the information director said, "We’re transforming 
it."

4. GLOBAL WARMING HOAX: OR WAS IT JUST A HOAX OF A HOAX?
There was a wild scramble on Wednesday about the death of the manmade 
global warming theory, except the authors didn’t exist, nor their 
institution, nor the journal.  It took two minutes to find this out, so 
what was the purpose?  Just a prank?

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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