Month: April 2010

You’re Mostly Energy

Mass of the Common Quark Finally Nailed Down – ScienceNOW.

Matter is made up of mostly protons and neutrons – as important as electrons are, they’re only a tiny fraction of the mass of most elements. Oxygen-16, for example, has just 8 electrons, massing just 4.88 MeV, but has 8 protons and 8 neutrons that mass almost 15,000 MeV collectively. Since the 1960s protons & neutrons have been theorised to be made of trios of quarks engaged in a complex dance of exchange gluons & virtual-pair quarks, boiling around in a complex manner. Why so? Because the ‘colour force’ that binds quarks together gets stronger the further apart individual quarks are dragged from each other. This increasing strength pulls new quark/anti-quark pairs out of the vacuum and so the constituent ‘valence’ quarks are never alone.

Now some theorists have managed to compute, the hard way, just how much the valence quarks inside protons & neutrons actually mass. The answer is in this quote from Adrian Cho’s report for Science Magazine…

Now, Davies and colleagues have essentially turned the process around and used lattice QCD to calculate the up-quark and down-quark masses. The individual quark masses usually serve as inputs that get tuned to the appropriate values during the calculation of the hadron’s properties. It might seem like physicists could simply write down those values and call the problem solved, but it gets tricky. The exact values of the quark masses depend on mathematical methods used in the simulation. Moreover, each quark mass comes out with a sizable uncertainty. Davies and colleagues found a way to get around such problems, however. Instead of trying to calculate the mass of each type of quark independently, they calculated ratios of those masses.

Specifically, they calculated the ratio of the charm-quark mass to the strange-quark mass. They combined this with calculations from another group of the ratios of strange-quark mass to up-quark mass and to the down-quark mass. Those ratios come out with much smaller uncertainties, explains G. Peter Lepage, a team member from Cornell University. And they can be combined with an already-known value of the charm-quark mass—which is easier to determine because it’s about 500 times bigger—to finally nail down the masses of the lightest quarks, as the researchers report this week in Physical Review Letters. The team finds that an up quark weighs 2.01 +/- 0.14 megaelectron-volts, whereas a down quark weighs 4.79 +/- 0.16 MeV. That’s 0.214% and 0.510% of the mass of the proton, respectively.

So the up quark is roughly 4 electron masses (0.511 MeV) and the down is roughly 10. Which means most of your mass is tied up as “binding energy” or “kinetic energy” from the vigorous motions of quarks inside the protons/neutrons of the atomic nucleii of the elements of your body. Protons are ‘uud’ (two ‘ups’ and a ‘down’) and neutrons are ‘udd’. That means, roughly speaking, the quarks are zipping around inside those nucleii at roughly ~ 0.99994 c and experiencing a time-dilation factor of ~90. Which poses the question, in my mind, of just how warped reality really is… 😉

Jesus – More than a Carpenter?

Dr. Adam Bradford, a GP in the UK, has written a new book which poses the view that Jesus was more influential in 1st Century Judaism than we’ve been led to believe by the standard exegesis of the Gospels. Bradford isn’t a reputation-making rad-scholar or dismissive sceptic, but appears to be a Christian – he attends the Charlton & Blackheath Christian Fellowship and apparently preaches there.

First, here’s a couple of reviews of his book to get the basics of his thesis…

At the Daily Mail …and repackaged here by Breaking Christian News

Zeenews (India)… Jesus’ father was an architect, not a carpenter: Book

New Book Claims Jesus’ Father Was Really an Architect …at unbeige

Jesus was son of an architect, book claims …at the UK Telegraph.

Claude Mariottini, a Brazilian-born OT scholar at Northern Baptist Seminary, gives a few professional thoughts on the book at his blog… here …and… here …questioning the historical strength of Bradford’s thesis, though Mariottini seems to at least think it plausible.

Finally, the book itself, The Jesus Discovery, is available from Templehouse Publishing, which seems to be a self-press set-up by Bradford. OK. So no “peer review” – though Biblical scholarship isn’t as big on peer-review as the hard sciences.

In a nutshell what Bradford claims is that JC’s father*, Joseph, was a “tekton” – an ‘architect’ not a ‘carpenter’ or ‘construction worker’, as tradition and rad-scholarship claim respectively. More significantly he trained Temple priests in construction on Herod’s Temple – a significant role and one that goes a long way towards explaining JC’s relationship to the Temple establishment. But it also seems to explain the curious traditions that surround JC’s brother*, Jacob/James.

Jacob/James was called James the Just in tradition, a term that Bradford also notes is associated with Joseph – who the Gospel calls “a Just (man)”, except the (man) bit is a translational interpolation. Could he have been “Joseph the Just” just like his son latterly was? Hegesippus has this to say about James…

After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called James. This one was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels’ knees.

If James, and JC before him, were mere Galilean peasants, then how did such a major tradition arise about him, a tradition that gave him High Priestly privileges. Interesting Josephus has more to say about James than JC…

And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests. But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.

In effect Josephus squarely places the opposition by the Pharisees to Ananus, as being because of his illegal acts against James and his fellow Nazorean Jews. Later traditions, quoted by 4th Century Church historian Eusebius, indicate that many felt the Zealot War against the Temple Establishment, and its Roman patrons, was due to Ananus’s condemnation of James & the others in c.62 CE, which eventually lead to open hostilities in 66 CE. Some scholars, most notoriously Robert Eisenman, have claimed James was a Zealot leader, though clearly a peacemaker since his removal meant the advocates of violent action won the day. As the Gospels all appeared to have been redacted into their final forms post the First Jewish War (66-73 CE), and the Synoptics focus on prophecies by JC about the War, there would be a natural tendency to silence the Zealot connection and advocate a peaceful Gospel, not a Zealot-like opposition to Rome.

So was JC more important than we’ve imagined to the 1st Century Jews? Josephus is our chief source, outside the Gospels, for details of that time and JC isn’t mentioned very much. He seems a minor flicker of interest for Josephus, rating less copy than John the Baptist or even James the Just. But then Josephus was trying to appeal to the Romans, who may well have faced Jewish “riots” in Rome over JC in c.49 CE, plus suppression of Roman Christians by Nero in c.65-66 CE. Would you write much about a possibly illegal sect of your religion when trying to impress your patrons about your religion – a religion that, one version of which, had inspired a recent War that saw the deaths of a million or so Jews & Gentiles alike?

*by ‘father’ and ‘brother’ replace with the relevant familial relationship your Church teaches about JC’s ‘relatives’ if you’re Orthodox, Catholic or otherwise believing in Mary Ever-Virgin.

The first metazoan living without Oxygen

Abstract | The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions.

Three species of multi-cellular eukaryote, phylum Loricifera, have been found in totally anoxic conditions. They have no mitochondria, instead replacing those oxygen-burning energy generators with endosymbionts that look a lot like hydrogenosomes, an organelle seen in unicellular lifeforms in anoxic conditions. Thus ‘complex’ life can live without oxygen – a proof of principle discovery. Only a millimetre long, so maybe oxygen-free life isn’t suited to big lifeforms, but who knows? In the right conditions – a hydrogen and sulfur rich environment – larger forms might evolve.

Faint Young Sun, Warm Dark Earth

Early Earth absorbed more sunlight — no extreme greenhouse needed to keep water wet.

Researcher unravels one of geology’s great mysteries.

The two news pieces discuss a single PreCambrian conundrum – the puzzle of liquid water on an Earth illuminated by a Sun at just 70-75% of today’s luminosity. The solution was previously thought to be lots and lots of carbon dioxide, but new chemical evidence has nixed that idea. Now the solution might be that Earth was, on average, darker because it had fewer and less reflective clouds than it presently does. The single study that spawned the two news-bites suggests different cloud chemistry – but what if the triggering factor for cloud formation was reduced?

Christoffer Karoff at the University of Birmingham suggests that Galactic Cosmic Rays were reduced to the much higher frequency and severity of Coronal Mass Ejections by the early Sun…

A Solution to the Faint Young Sun

…a scenario ably discussed at TechReview’s arXiv blog. As odd as it seems, but that “faint young sun” was incredibly violent and active, producing up to 1000 times more extreme UV and solar wind than it does in its warmer, but more sedate middle-age.

Of course the two effects could have operated in parallel and amplified each other. Coupled with possibly higher levels of nitrogen, thus a more effective CO2 greenhouse, and the conundrum isn’t so puzzling anymore.

Einstein-Rosen Wormholes versus Schwarzschild Black-Holes

Our universe at home within a larger universe? So suggests wormhole research.

Nikodem Poplawski, a physicist at Indiana University, has recently had this paper, Radial motion into the Einstein-Rosen bridge, published by Physics Letters B. The news bite elaborates on some of its implications, that a black hole may well form an Einstein-Rosen bridge into another Universe, one created by the white-hole explosion of the collapsed star that became a black-hole in our Universe. Infalling particles from our Universe will immediately cross the Event Horizon and end up in the ‘Big Bang’ of the daughter Universe, though the time connection between the two isn’t necessarily a direct one.

White-hole cosmologies have been suggested by a number of researchers, notably two “Young Earth/Old Universe” creationists, Russell Humphreys and John Hartnett, but also by more mainstream cosmologists. Cosmological physics doesn’t really care, the equations can be deployed by anyone, though Hartnett and Humphreys fiddle with “achronal regions” and “Space-time expansion” to allow light to travel billions of light-years, but be seen by an observer on a ~6,000 year old Earth. While I disagree violently with their messed up geology-bashing, I do find their critique of accepted cosmological assumptions interesting. Plus their basic idea, of Intelligence making white-hole Universes, might be right.

That’s where the rubber hits the road – the potential validation of Prof. Louis Crane’s ideas about cosmic natural selection and the role of intelligent life in the lifecycle of kosmoi. If artificially generated black-holes form an Einstein-Rosen bridge and a white-hole detonation of the “other side”, then intelligent life will be making black-holes and new kosmoi, which will in turn make new life.

What about natural black holes? Stellar black-holes and their super-massive cousins are likely to be out-numbered by their smaller kin. But large extra-dimensions mean particle collisions can make micro black-holes… but briefly. They may not last long enough to form the E-R bridge and are effectively ‘still-born’. Intelligent activity will be needed to proliferate E-R bridges and new white-hole universes. We won’t be gods by making such kosmoi, as they’re cut off from us by the event horizon – the only way to enter the new kosmos is via infalling. Immanence without transcendence, probably as a spray of high-energy particles in the new kosmos.