Entangled States

Report of measurement of entanglement in atomic nitrogen electron cloud

This is one of those experiments that was expected to give this sort of result. It's a double-check (if you will) on all the various understandings of the electron cloud model of the atom and the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement (which is related to non-locality)

"When atoms form molecules, they share their outer electrons and this creates a negatively charged cloud. Here, electrons buzz around between the two positively charged nuclei, making it impossible to tell which nucleus they belong to. They are delocalized. But is this also true for the electrons located closer to the nucleus?

[...]In order to answer these questions, the scientists first removed the innermost electron located close to the nucleus from nitrogen molecules (N2), using high-energy light from a synchrotron radiation source at the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California.

It is reasonable to assume that these photo-electrons belong to one nucleus and can thus be located. They leave behind a vacancy in the inner core shell, which is then filled by an outer electron. Additionally a second electron (an Auger electron) is ejected from the molecule. This Auger electron acts as a probe that can determine exactly where the original hole was created. Both electrons, the photo-electron and the Auger electron, form an entangled state, which means that as soon as one is measured, the properties of the second are determined as well.

[...]Professor Reinhardt Dörner’s group is the first to prove the existence of such entangled states for electrons, using the COLTRIMS technology, which has been developed in Frankfurt over the last decade. With this experimental set-up, they are able to reveal the pathways of the two electrons created. In the current issue of the highly prestigious Science magazine, the physicists claim that the question of whether an electron is localized or not can only be answered for the complete system.

If the innermost electron is localized, the second electron can be assigned to either of the two nuclei. But sometimes it proves impossible to determine whether the first electron originates from the left or the right 'atom of the first electron. In this case the second electron is also delocalized.

[Thus] it is now possible to explain the observations of the last 50 years in a unified model. Both groups - those supporting the localized theory and those endorsing a delocalized picture - are thus reconciled. Dr. Markus Schöffler, who is responsible for the measurement, sees further exciting perspectives opening up and he plans to continue his work on this topic in Berkeley, funded by a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. "

Read the full article here.

Of course the fundamental question that needs to be asked. (And I'm serious here...) How do the electron know we're looking at them? Because it seems to be the observation that changes their behavior vis-à-vis localization...

Fraction!

We've put a new video up. (Actually a number of them today)

You can see the rest of them here.

(Be sure to check out the Tacky Prom Youth Group video - wherein the Bishop of Arizona gets two pies in the face.)

Vatican "ok's" belief in alien life forms

This really just says it all:

"The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion 'doesn't contradict our faith' because aliens would still be God's creatures.

The interview was headlined 'The extraterrestrial is my brother.' Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like 'putting limits' on God's creative freedom."

Read the full article here.

Of course the theological $64,000 question is "Are the alien races (should they exist) fallen or not?"

Pentecost and Pluralism

I'm knee deep in scholarly papers at the moment as I'm trying to get the sermon into shape for the Feast of Pentecost which we celebrate tomorrow.

In addition to the standard sorts of joys of a congregation's life on Pentecost (baptisms and special liturgical observances) we're also celebrating the coming into the Cathedral proper of our Spanish-language congregation. We started this work in February of this year, and last week there were a total of 87 people in the spanish service. Way too many for us to fit in the chapel. So this weekend they'll moving down the "center ring" of the congregation's life.

With that in mind, I was very much struck by something that Prof. Lamin Sanneh wrote in Theology Today back in 1988 (a year before I was one of his students at Yale.) It's a paper entitled "Pluralism and Christian Commitment" and discusses the missionary work of the Christian Church as it interacts with different cultures as it spreads.

Sanneh writes:

It can be argued that such an instrumental view of culture, in making possible the gentile breakthrough, opened the door for the modern missionary expansion of Christianity. Christian missionaries assumed that since all cultures and languages are lawful in God's eyes, the rendering of God's word into those languages and cultures is valid and necessary. Even if in practice Christians wished to stop the translation process, claiming their own form of it as final and exclusive, they have not been able to suppress it. At any rate, Christian mission became the most explicit machinery for the cultivation of vernacular particularity as a condition of universal faithfulness to the gospel. In centering on the primacy of God's word, Christian translators invested the vernacular with consecrated power, lifting obscure tribes to the level of scriptural heritage and into the stream of universal world history. Almost everywhere vernacular participation in the Christian movement led to inter- nal religious and cultural renewal, often with immediate consequences for political nationalism. The Christian view that culture may serve God's purpose stripped culture of idolatrous liability, emancipating it with the force of translation and usage.

While this quote, out of context, seems a tad triumphalist, the tone of the paper is not at all. It deals quite carefully with the excesses and failures of the Church as it has sought to evangelize people in diverse contexts.

But his main point is quite right. The Church, by warrant of her experience at the first Pentecost, has been sent out to proclaim the Gospel in ways which are sensible to people of different tongues and cultures. Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism have done this pretty well for the most part when they've moved into new places. But I'm wondering if we're forgetting our need to be willing to invite the cultures we encounter to adapt the Gospel into forms which make sense to them, and especially so when the cultures I'm thinking of are near at hand - like the Hispanic Culture or Native American Cultures are to the Anglo Culture in the Southwest...

Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit

Saw this article in the NY Times this morning about how ridership is WAY up as a result of surging gas prices:

"Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

‘In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,’ said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.

‘It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.’

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited."

Read the full article here.

We're all anxiously awaiting the opening of the light-rail system here in Phoenix. It's supposed to start running in December of this year. The Cathedral I serve is right on one of the major stops, and I live about a mile from a park-and-ride station.

I'm already pricing out the cost of an electric scooter.

Recent Advances in H5N1 Influenza Virus Research

RECENT ADVANCES IN H5N1 INFLUENZA VIRUS RESEARCH

Although the newspapers no longer carry headlines of the fears of a world-wide bird flu pandemic, the threat still remains. Public health officials make it very clear this virus can readily mutate into a virus ever bit as threatening in humans as it has become in birds. For example, India is in the midst of a significant outbreak in poultry and there is much concern by the health experts to keep the disease from spreading into Calcutta, a city of 14 million people. Of significance, a total of 14 countries have reported human infections, with Pakistan and Myanmar being the most recent in reporting their first infections. Moreover, it will be of extreme interest to observe the overall public health effects of the million or so homeless people devastated in Myanmar as a result of the recent cyclone.

To date, approximately 220 humans have died from the avian flu virus. All those who died had close contact with the virus from infected birds and/or fowl. However, the real concern is that the flu virus mutates quickly and the H5N1 virus is no exception. The threat is far from over.

Since the next influenza pandemic will very likely be caused by the H5N1 influenza virus, two recent articles in the March 2008 issue of the "Journal of Virology " indicate strong vaccine possibilities. The paper by Jiao et al reported on the single change substitution of an amino acid that appears to alter the virulence of the H5N1 virus. They demonstrated that serine 42 in the viral NS1 protein plays a critical role in the pathogenicity of H5N1 virus in mammalian hosts. These investigators believe their results provided strong evidence that the NS1 protein is a virulence factor for H5N1 influenza viruses and that multiple domains within NS1 may be targets for the development of a antiviral drugs and attenuated vaccines (J. Virol., 2008, 82:1146-1154).

In the second article, Watanabe and co-workers have been looking at the M2 protein that consists of three structural domains, one of which is a 54-amino acid cytoplasmic tail domain in the influenza A virus. In a previous study they demonstrated that deleting the M2 cytoplasmic tail caused a growth defect in the H1N1 influenza virus suggesting that the M2 cytoplasmic tail plays a vital role in virus replication. In their current study these investigators created an M2 tail mutant H5N1 virus, vaccinated mice with it, and challenged the mice with a lethal dose of H5N1 influenza virus. Their results showed that the mice were protected from death suggesting that the virus could not replicate and therefore be used as a vaccine ( J. Virol., 2008, 82: 2486 - 2492 ).

Inhabitatio Dei: Types of Ecclesiology

Halden, posting over on Inhabitatio Dei, suggests that there is a four fold axis that can help us describe various denomination's understanding of the role of the Church in salvation.

From the post:

"From my perspective there are two basic polarities which define the shape of a given ecclesiology.  The first is what I term the High-Low polarity, the second I refer to as the Strong-Weak polarity.  Within this framework any given ecclesial body could potentially fall in one of four categories, High-Strong, High-Weak, Low-Strong, and Low-Weak.  Here are my descriptors of these categories and my attending attempt to put various Christian ecclesial bodies in their proper place.  I am sure there will be inaccuracies here based upon my own ecclesial experiences, familiarities and limitations.  So, please correct me if you are so inclined.  It will help greatly my final development of this typology."

Read the full article here.

The post goes on to label the Anglican Communion as "High-Strong" but the Episcopal Church as "High-Weak". The difference is in the difference between the whether or not the local church is necessary to salvation or if it a sign (pointer) to the Kingdom.

It's quite an interesting question. I've always described myself as having an unusually strong ecclessiology (for an Episcopalian). I'm also more concerned than a number of my peers about the implications of the Episcopal Church being "out of communion" with the Anglican Communion. Perhaps I identify more with the "High-Strong" quadrant here than I do with the "High-Weak" and that's part of my issue.

At any rate, it's an interesting thought for the day to ponder upon...

O'Reilly: Fermi's Paradox and the End of Cheap Oil

How could I possibly pass up posting this article on the day that crude oil futures pass $120/bbl?

"I've been thinking of  Fermi's Paradox since I saw the documentary film A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, with its dire predictions of the wars and disruptions that could occur on the downward slope of  the Hubbert curve. While I remain an optimist about the power of human ingenuity to surmount enormous challenges, I have enough sense of history to know that catastrophes do happen, that societies fail to make the right choices, and that civilizations fail.

What if the answer to Fermi's paradox is not the absence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but merely the absence of high technology? The movie makes the case that the extraordinary flowering of our society has been driven by our profligate use of oil as an incredibly cheap energy resource -- and one that won't last. With haunting images of once vibrant oil fields that are now ghost towns, the movie is a thought-provoking counterpoint to An Inconvenient Truth. If the movie's contentions are correct, we're truly caught between  Scylla and Charybdis. Either global warming or peak oil will lead to an urgent transformation of civilization as we know it, or our failure to transform quickly enough might well lead to the end of civilization as we know it. And if indeed cheap oil is a prerequisite to the first flowering of technological civilization, might a Roman-Empire-style collapse due to some future disaster make it difficult to rebuild to spaceflight-capable levels due to lack of said resource the next time around? Many of the large scale energy technologies that we imagine replacing oil are energy intensive to build. They are, in a sense, themselves dependent on oil."

Read the full article here.

(And you really should. It's quite the posit...)

Quantum vs Classical Physics

Physicists often like to play with, what appear on the surface, to be silly ideas. For instance, is there a way for someone who knows about Quantum Physics to be able to do know more about the measurable universe than someone who only knows about Classical Physicists.

One of the ways this question is expressed is to ask whether or not it's possible to win a bit using Quantum entanglement and superposition against someone who is only using a classically based statistical physics paradigm.

For instance, what if one observer (Alice) and another (Bob) decide to bet against each other about whether or not a particle is in one box or the other?

A new paper points out that the observer (Alice) who uses the principles of Quantum Physics has a way of winning 100% of the time:

"Classically, there is a 50% chance of Alice getting it right. If instead she's adept at quantum mechanics, and has a third box hidden away, she can ensure that she always knows what Bob found in his box. All she has to do is prepare the particle in a state that essentially places it in all three boxes simultaneously, through a phenomenon known as quantum superposition. In effect, there is an equal chance of the particle turning up in any one of the boxes.

After Bob looks in one of the two boxes on the table, Alice measures the state of the particle in her hidden box. If she finds it empty, she knows Bob saw the particle in the box he opened. If she finds that the particle is in a superposition between two boxes, she knows that Bob opened the third box but didn't see anything inside. In either case, she always knows what Bob found, even though she has no way of knowing in advance where the particle will turn up or which box Bob chose to look in. "

Read the full article here.

A great example of how to use non-locality for fun AND profit.

Of course we can't do this game just yet...

Is time subjective?

Saw this on Mark Vernon's blog today.

It's part of a short essay about a book he's reading by Yourgrau entitled "A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein". The subject of the book deals particularly with a set of solutions to Einstein's equations by Gödel that would point to a form of "time" that is more subjective than we tend to think of it.

From his blog entry:

"If I've understood it right, Gödel demonstrated that the existence of intuitive time - time that we experience as flowing minute by minute - is inconsistent with the time 't' of special relativity, since the latter is really spatial, a fourth dimension on top of the usual three. In short, if you have 't' you can't have the time of day, as it were.

He then generalised his find to embrace general relativity, where time is tantamount to the movement of mass in spacetime. This appeared to make for a kind of return of intuitive time, or 'cosmic time', associated with the mean distribution of mass and motion. However, Gödel went on to find some solutions of the equations of general relativity, representing fast rotating universes, in which time travel is possible, or at least 't'-time travel. Again, though, this possibility is bought at the cost of cosmic or intuitive time. In other words, if time travel is possible, intuitive time - time as we experience it - is not. Gödel then took a further step which persuaded him that time is actually ideal - perhaps in agreement with Augustine, who wrote: 'In the Eternal nothing passeth away, but that the whole is present.' (Not that Augustine thought he had it sussed, for he also said, 'What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.'

Now, apart from being a fascinating reflection on time, this is interesting since it is quite fashionable in physics books these days to speculate on the possibility of time travel, not least on the basis of Gödel's rotating universes. Michio Kaku does it here. However, what Kaku appears to forget is that Gödel's time travel is bought at the cost of intuitive time, this side of eternity at least."

Read the full article here.

Which is an interesting point to make. Interesting especially in terms of the theological connections. I'll probably have to add this to me reading list for the summer...

Global warming or global cooling?

Which is it?

An article today reports on research that the Antarctic iceshelf is expected to disappear relatively soon:

"Last summer sea ice in the North shrank to a record low, a change many attribute to global warming.

But while solar radiation and amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are similar at the poles, to date the regions have responded differently, with little change in the South, explained oceanographer James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What researchers have concluded was happening, was that in the North, global warming and natural variability of climate were reinforcing one another, sending the Arctic into a new state with much less sea ice than in the past.

'And there is very little chance for the climate to return to the conditions of 20 years ago,' he added.

On the other hand, Overland explained, the ozone hole in the Antarctic masked conditions there, keeping temperatures low in most of the continent other than the peninsula reaching toward South America.

'So there is a scientific reason for why we're not seeing large changes in the Antarctic like we're seeing in the Arctic,' he said.

But, Overland added, as the ozone hole recovers in coming years, global warming will begin to affect the South Pole also. "

And then there was an article in the BBC that reported that the climate forecast was for global cooling for the next few years (at least until 2015 or so)

"A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.

However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.

The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.

The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.

It may partly explain why temperatures rose in the early years of the last century before beginning to cool in the 1940s."

(NB: this effect would only slow the increase in global warming if the model that predicts if verifies.)

So which is it: global warming or global cooling?

The answer is that the system scientist are trying to understand is extraordinarily complex. And the interrelations in the system between various inputs is not yet well understood. It's because of this difficulty that I've consistently tried to use the term "Climate Change" on this blog rather than global warming. If what we're seeing happen continues, parts of the globe are going to get warmer, but some areas, like Arizona and northern Europe might well get cooler. That's why Climate Change is really a better phrase.

The additional question that folks are trying to answer is how much of the change is happening on account of human activities and the changes they bring to the environment. The majority of scientists believe that a significant portion of the change is due to human causes. But not all scientists agree, and even the ones that do agree, don't agree on the degree. (Of course if there's any degree of contribution, assuming that the change is bad, stopping our contribution will at least slow the rate of the change. Which may not seem like such a big deal to people who can manage the change by turning up the level of air-conditioning another notch - but it is a big deal to folks who are losing their crops and being forced into chronic hunger as a result.

Happy Ascension Day btw

I should have mentioned it already... sorry about that.

Happy Ascension Day. This most mysterious of feasts (at least to me) is one of the least kept liturgically in the Christian Calendar.

I remember a friend of mine talking about how he found the feast's meaning in the idea that now, beside the throne of God, there beats a human heart. And that heart knows what it is to be created as a co-mixture of the eternal and the temporal.

For me following up on that phrase, the idea that Jesus is gone to his Father is an invitation to meditate on the ways in which, in Our Lord, our human nature has become entangled into the divine.

And now we are one!

Jim Naughton, the editor in chief of Episcopal Café posted this on the "Lead" blog this morning:

"We are celebrating our first anniversary today. We actually began operations in this incarnation on April 19, but we’ve decided that today is easier to remember, and probably represented the first day we had most of the bugs worked out and were getting a relatively clean read on our Web statistics.

We’d like to thank all of our visitors, especially those who make us a part of their daily routine. You make doing this work seem worthwhile.

[...]In our first year, we received about 1.36 million visits and 3.36 million page views. Our biggest sensation was an essay on a Japanese tourist begin kicked off a train for taking pictures, which drew nearly 60,000 visitors to the site in November—not quite double the 30,000 visitors (and 125,000 visits) per month we’ve been averaging since then. More people visit The Lead, our news blog, than any of our other offerings, but all of the blogs receive an average of at least 250 visits per day.

While people visit to keep up with the Anglican controversies and news of the Episcopal Church (and to read rip-snorting essays like this address by Marilyn McCord Adams to the Chicago Consultation), we’ve also had some off-beat hits like this April Fool's piece on the Episcopal Church being named the official denomination of Major League Baseball and Carol Barnwell’s interview with one of the students portrayed in Denzel Washington’s recent movie The Great Debaters."

Read the of his post here.

If you'd like to give some money to support some rennovations we'd like to do to the site (to make it more user friendly) Jim has posted a link over there that you can use to do that.

500 Scientists question human contribution to Global Warming??

The news that a sizable number of scientists had signed a document that questioned the commonly accepted wisdom that human activities contribute to the observed effects of global climate change was announced with some glee by people opposed to that view.

Apparently a number of the scientists who's names appeared on the letter are reporting that they were not contacted in advance, and that they do not agree with the letter to which their signatures are appended.

From the Smog Blog:

"Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland 'Senior Fellow' Dennis T. Avery[,] purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list. So far - in less than 24 hours - three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery's conclusions and demanding that their names be removed."

Read the rest here.

Gosh. Who'd have thunk it...

Shell Oil reports record breaking profits last quarter. And it turns out the Hudson Institute has some interesting connections to Exxon Mobile.

Drink lots of water every day?

Saw this in the Science Times this morning...

"Drinking a lot of water is supposed to be healthy, but there is apparently little scientific support for the belief. A review of clinical studies has found no evidence that drinking eight glasses of water a day, the usual recommendation, is beneficial to a healthy person.

Numerous claims have been made about water — that it prevents headaches, removes dangerous ‘poisons,’ improves the function of various organs and is associated with reduced risk for various diseases. But none of these is supported by scientific evidence. The authors were not even able to find a study leading to the ‘eight glasses a day’ rule, whose origin remains unknown.

The researchers, in the June issue of The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, say some studies have found evidence that drinking extra water helps the kidneys clear sodium, and long-term sodium retention might increase the risk of hypertension, but no clinical significance for the phenomenon has been established. Water also helps clear urea, but urea is not a toxin."

Read the rest here.

Of course it's a little bit different here in Arizona. One of the firs things I discovered when I moved here was that I had to be really intentional about constantly drinking water. The dry air and the heat combine to dehydrate you pretty quickly. Once you learn the signs it's not too hard to keep on top of, but for the first year I was here I kept wondering why I was always so lightheaded...