My Dark Little Secret

All these years I've been trying to keep my true citizenship a secret.


Darn you, kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com for finding my birth certificate!

Noctilucent Emissions

There's a new study suggesting that "noctilucent clouds" are caused by the plumes of space shuttle launches, which is somewhat ironic for me. For those that don't know, noctilucent clouds are the highest clouds found in the Earth's atmosphere. They are ice crystals floating high in the mesosphere, where large amounts of moisture are not typically found, and are usually only seen in twilight when the setting sun illuminates them against the dark sky. There is also evidence that these clouds are a modern phenomenon, within the past century, and so they may be related to human activity, or perhaps climate change.

Noctilucent clouds over Lake Saimaa. Photograph taken by Mika Yrjölä. Permission by Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License (from Wikipedia).

Early studies have suggested that noctilucent clouds were caused by space shuttle launches. The space shuttle exhaust plume is composed mostly of water vapor. As the shuttle launches into orbit, it can dump significant amounts of water vapor into the upper atmosphere as it passes through it. More recent studies by Dr. Michael Kelley have added credence to that idea: shuttle launches in 2003 and 2007 produced corresponding noctilucent clouds.

NASA launched a satellite called AIM in 2007 to study noctilucent clouds. AIM stands for Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere. AIM continues to study the phenomenon using several instruments, including two imagers and a meteoric dust measuring device.

The part I find ironic is that NASA launched a satellite to study a phenomenon caused... by the launch of NASA satellites!

OK, there are far more noctilucent clouds than can be entirely explained by shuttle launches, so this is not a complete exercise in navel-gazing. The shuttle-noctilucent connection was known before AIM was selected by NASA.

Update 2009-07-30: Added noctilucent cloud image from Wikipedia.

Solar Dud or Doozy?

There is some news in the past few days that the a few new sunspots are appearing, it may be that the next period of solar activity has begun. Will it be a dud or a doozy?

The sun has a quite regular cycle that repeats about every 11.5 years. Each cycle represents a reversal of the the sun's magnetic field -- magnetic north becomes south, south becomes north -- so it actually takes 23 years for the sun's magnetic field structure to return to its starting configuration.

During one of these 11.5 year cycles, the sun's magnetic field gets tangled and wound up in its circulating convective zone, located in the outer third of the sun. Once in a while, the magnetic field pokes out from the beneath the surface, and a sunspot appears. So sunspots are indicators of the how chaotic the magnetic field is within the sun.

Solar activity is a problem for us on the earth since the energetic particles ejected during solar storms can affect communications, power grids and the orbits of satellites. Being able to predict the the solar cycle, both timing and strength, is a valuable tool that can save lives and equipment. Unfortunately, predictions have been more of an art than a science.

I was really intrigued by a presentation at the 2005 AAS conference several years ago by Peter Gilman and Mausumi Dikpati, which claimed an improved method for solar cycle prediction. Their solar model showed that the solar convective zone had large scale circulations, almost like oceanic currents on earth. They also showed that it takes approximately three solar cycles for the solar flows -- which are almost like conveyor belts -- to make one circuit. Thus, they could train a reasonably accurate predictive model, based on the known solar activity from three cycles before (with the added benefit, that it produces predictions for about three cycles into the future as well). Their prediction was that the current solar maximum would be delayed by 6-12 months, but 30-50% more intense than the previous cycle. The "conventional" predictions were calling for the beginning of the cycle to begin in early 2007, while Dikpati and Gilman's group were calling for activity starting in the late 2007 to 2008 time frame.

Well at this stage, it's clear that both the conventional and new Dikpati/Gilman predictions were wrong, since we're past halfway into 2009 before any serious solar activity has appeared. But it's interesting that the onset of the cycle has indeed been delayed from its expected appearance, which indicates that perhaps there is something behind the Dikpati/Gilman model. The "conventional" prediction was recently revised, and now claims that the next cycle will be a dud -- weaker than usual. I've had a little harder time determining if the Dikpati/Gilman group has revised their forecast for the strength of the cycle.

Either way, I think it will be an interesting cycle to watch. I actually hope this solar cycle is an extreme -- either a dud or a doozy -- rather than an average one. Extremes are much better test cases for theories than boring average cases. While I have something to lose if this cycle is a strong one, at least it would be lost in advancement of science.

Ipod 3.0 software update

The iPod3.0 touch software update doesn't look that compelling for the iPod touch first generation. Here's what they advertise as new:

• cut and paste - want
  
• landscape keyboard - kind of want
  
• spotlight search - meh
  
• buy media on your ipod touch from itunes - do not want
  
• stereo bluetooth - could not use (2nd generation only)
  
• head to head games - could not use (2nd generation only)
  
• shake to shuffle - do not want
  
• parental controls - do not want
  
• new languages - do not want
  
• automatic wifi hotspot login - do not want
  
• push notifications - probably won't use
  
• itunes store account creations - do not want

My question is whether I will have to pay the $9.95 just to keep
up-to-date with security updates and bug fixes for the older
version of the iPod touch operating system.

Damn the Torpedoes

Warning: spoilers!

Recipe of the Star Trek movie: (1) One part damn the moral dilemma, full action ahead! (2) Two parts damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! (literally) (3) Three parts damn the bridge procedure, I'm going on the away team! (4) Most. powerful. mining ship. evar. (5) Seasoned to taste with a pinch of red matter. (may substitute deus ex machina juice if required) Smooth over plot holes with a frosting of computer graphics. Served as a non-stop space action movie with a Star Trek logo pasted on top.

The tasting: I liked it for the action part, I quite liked the acting and character interactions, but as a Trekkie film, it wasn't really there for me.

Pick a Side, Any Side

Does it matter what we believe, as long as we believe something? That's what a television news commentator would urge us to do:

Believe in something! Even if it's wrong! Believe in it!

-- Glenn Beck, Mar 2009

The video is in this Comedy Central clip, around time 3:10:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
IndigNation! Populist Uprising '09 - The Enragening
comedycentral.com

OK, you might argue, this is just a typical opinion
entertainer on one of the several "news" networks, trying to
fill up on of the 24 hours the network is on the air, every day.
Let's even excuse the fact that Beck seems to believe all of what
he is saying, down to the teary-eyed professions of love for his
country and the little guy (see video above). Is there something
to what he says?

As it turns out, perhaps. A recent survey by Anthony Leiserowitz asked television viewers which of several "news" shows they watched before the general election in 2008, and about their general beliefs. Of those who watched the specific shows of interest, they broke down approximately evenly between left-leaning (such as Olberman, Colbert and Stewart), and right-leaning shows (such as O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh).

What fascinated me was this question,

We should always be willing to fight
for our country, whether our country is right or wrong.

A whopping 70% of those who watch right-leaning shows agree
with this statement. Which means if our country is wrong, no
matter how egregiously wrong, 70% of these viewers would still
support military action? The left-leaning shows are really not
much better, with 30-40% of viewers responding that they agree
with the statement. Of the respondants that didn't watch any of
the specific shows, about half agreed that we should be willing
to fight no matter what.

Note that the question was not about whether we
should "support the troups," although that phrase has it's own
moral ambiguities. No, the question was whether we should
support our country, in military action, even when that action is
something we know to be wrong. I wonder if the right-leaning
watchers still agree with this statement, now that a Democrat
holds the presidency.

I'm a little taken aback by this philosophy. It basically
says that a large number of citizens place country above
morality. Or rather, that our nation creates its own
morality by virtue of its existence. These respondants are
willing to hold and support beliefs that they know to be wrong,
simply because the name of their country is attached to it. I
guess I would prefer it to go the other way: that our country
earns the respect of the righteous by actually doing the right
thing in the first place.

Der Party Starter

One of the Superbowl commercials that I really laughed at...