What's New Robert L. Park 29 April 2011

WHAT=92S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 29 Apr 2011   Washington, DC

1. ANTISCIENCE: THE ALPHA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER.
What happened to all the antimatter after the Big Bang? It's an important=
=20
physics question: the theory is that the putative Higgs boson would=20
catalyze equal numbers of particles and anti-particles.  If matter and=20
antimatter come into contact we get a Big Kablooey, so when antimatter is=
=20
missing it's okay to worry.  Sam Ting at MIT, who shared the 1976 Nobel=20
Prize with Burton Richter for discovering the J/Psi particle, now wants t=
o=20
look for antimatter among cosmic rays, perhaps even determine what=20
direction they=92re coming from. So maybe 17 years ago he went to see Dan=
=20
Goldin the NASA administrator, and proposed to hang his Alpha Magnetic=20
Spectrometer on the space station, bypassing the peer review system.  It=20
was a big mistake but you tend to get away with that kind of stuff if=20
you're Sam Ting.  But although he got around peer review, he landed in th=
e=20
middle of a dying astronaut program, and it's been delay after delay=20
including the Columbia disaster.  Ting had to appeal directly to Congress=
=20
to get on the endeavor mission. The spectrometer should've been launched =
on=20
its own platform, as far away from the astronaut program as possible. The=
=20
AMS is now a massive $1.5 billion undertaking involving 500 scientists fr=
om=20
56 institutions and 16 countries.  . .   WAIT, JUST IN!  12:28 Friday: NA=
SA=20
has postponed today's launch of Endeavour citing a technical problem!  Ev=
en=20
if the problem is minor, we=92re looking at a three day delay.  Time is=20
running out for the shuttle -- and for the AMS.

2. MONARCHY: IS THERE NO CURE FOR THIS AFFLICTION?
In seeking news on the Endeavor non-launch I found the US news media almo=
st=20
totally focused on the royal wedding.  It particularly pains me to watch=20
Americans fawning over the monarchy we fought a war to get rid of, and if=
 I=20
hear "fairytale" mentioned one more time I may become violent. =20

3. NUCLEAR POWER: IN SPITE OF FUKUSHIMA WE STILL NEED IT.
In fact, we need nuclear power more than ever.  However, the Fukushima=20
Daiichi plant in Japan involves not only damage to three reactors, but al=
so=20
the loss of cooling water in at least one pool of spent radioactive fuel.=
 =20
And according to Matthew Wald in today's New York Times that pool was not=
=20
loaded nearly as heavily as pools at similar reactors in the United=20
States.  According to an MIT study, the Fukushima storage-pool problem=20
places more emphasis on getting the geological repository, i.e. Yucca=20
Mountain, up and running.  Engineers involved in the Yucca Mountain proje=
ct=20
say that even if Congress could be persuaded to authorize money for a=20
permanent repository, it would be a few years before the government could=
=20
decide whether the site was suitable and many more years before it could=20
absorb a major fraction of the waste now sitting at reactor sites,=20
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN01/wn113001.html .

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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