Apr
14
The life of a surf bum physicist, PhD
Filed Under Outside, Science, Recent stories | 1 Comment
In the latest issue of Outside, I have a feature-length profile of Garrett Lisi, a physicist who came up with a potential unifying theory of physics while living in a van on Maui. (The piece is out on newsstands but not yet online.) The very bare bones of his theory, which he first published last November, involve fitting together the four forces of physics — the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity — into an incredibly intricate shape called E8. Lisi was a challenging guy to capture, mostly because the ideas behind his theory are largely unintelligible to the almost anyone who (like me) lacks some — if not extensive — higher-level study of physics. It was clear as soon as I started delving into it that the stories hyping Lisi as “the next Einstein,” or what have you, were doing so with only the flimsiest of notions of whether he is, or even could be, right.
Interestingly, Lisi himself pretty much seemed to feel the same way. He was ambitious in his aims but modest about his chances of succeeding. As he told me — and several extremely accomplished academic physicists agreed — his theory had at best maybe a 5% chance of being at least partly right. So I ended up trying to play around with this notion of “the next Einstein” (as you can see in the cover line) and use it to focus in on what I found most fascinating about Lisi: that despite his ambitions, he refuses to compromise his lifestyle.
It was also interesting to see the divide among physicists when Lisi started showing up in the media last fall. On the one hand, the surprisingly caustic world of physics blogs made quite a show over having to waste precious time debunking such a crank. On the other, I talked to quite a few physicists (including a Nobel Prize winner) who said some version of, “hey, he’s probably not right, but he’s got some good ideas and does proper math, so who cares if he gets a bit too much press? New ideas are always for the good.” Which struck me — at least as an outsider to the community — as a healthier approach. In any case, no physicist who had actually bothered to talk to Lisi actually thought he even remotely approached being a crank. In fact, they all seemed to kind of admire his outsider approach. He certainly wouldn’t be the first physicist to make contributions working outside of academia.
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20
Wired makes it five straight
Filed Under Wired | Leave a Comment
In what’s becoming a yearly tradition, and roughly as safe a bet as UNC making the NCAA Tournament, Wired picked up it’s fifth straight nod as a finalist for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.” A win would make it three out of the last four. One of the three issues the magazine submitted is the October one with the cellulosic ethanol story on the cover, giving me a sliver of a role in the nomination. That issue and its stupendous cover art also make an appearance in the Design category, a well-deserved nod for creative director Scott Dadich and the rest of the art folk. The magazine picked up a third nomination in the Magazine Section category.
The real fun of the NMA announcement each year, however, is looking up the nominated stories — in the Feature Writing, Essay, and Reporting categories — that I somehow missed. Last year’s Essay winner, “Russell and Mary” by Michael Donohue in the Georgia Review, was stunning.
If any piece was a sure-bet finalist this year, I’d have put money on John Anderson’s New Yorker story about poppy eradication in Afghanistan.
UPDATE: The Huffington Post tracked down links to all the nominated stories.
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19
Cellulosic ethanol makes the energy bill
Filed Under Environment/Energy, Recent stories | Leave a Comment
It’s official: no more excuses for cellulosic ethanol. President Bush signed the new energy bill today, which contains the incredibly overdue provision raising CAFE (federal fuel) standards to 35mpg. That was probably the single most important action the federal government could have taken to push along new energy technologies. But the bill also raises the amount of mandated alternate fuels — “mandated” being used somewhat loosely since there is not a clear enforcement mechanism for the mandate — to 36 billion gallons by 2020. Of that, 16 billion gallons is required to come from cellulosic ethanol. There seems to be a good chance that next year’s Farm Bill will contain biofuel subsidies to go with those standards. The presidential candidates on the whole seem to be enamored with biofuels.
All of which means that the cellulosic researchers and entrepreneurs I wrote about two months ago — all of whom were arguing for a stronger federal mandate and more money to get cellulosic ethanol out of the lab — have gotten their wish: a chance to prove that a cellulosic-ethanol driven transportation system is viable. Now they’ve got to actually make it.
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18
Magazines
Filed Under Vintage magazines | Leave a Comment
Your world of ideas and products
back cover of Cavalier magazine, August 1964
del.icio.us Digg RedditDec
12
China’s syndrome
Filed Under Discover, Environment/Energy, Recent stories | Leave a Comment
My latest piece for Discover, for their January issue highlighting the top science stories of 2007, explores the environmental challenges created by the blistering pace of development in China. It clocks in as the number one science story of the year, mainly because 2007 was likely the year when China passed the United States in greenhouse gas emissions.
Recounting the litany of environmental problems facing China can paint a pessimistic picture, to say the least. But there are some spots of hope to be found in the determination and limited success of the NGOs that have sprouted up in the last decade. And the 2008 Bejing Olympics — for which the head of the IOC has hinted at canceling the marathon, among other things, due to poor air quality — offers a moment in the spotlight that could drive the Chinese government to up their enforcement of environmental regulations.
But among the experts I talked to, the factor that could make the single biggest difference for China’s approach to global warming, in particular, is the U.S. finally taking some action to control its own greenhouse gas emissions. That looks unlikely to happen this year, but at least raises the hope that if the next president takes action on climate change, we could get a two for one with China doing so as well.
For more on this topic, it’s worth reading Jaques Leslie’s comprehensive piece in this month’s Mother Jones, and also the amazing New York Times series on China and the environment.
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3
Saga of a dinosaur CAT scan
Filed Under Science, Recent stories | 1 Comment
I made a rare foray into daily news over the weekend, with a story posted at Wired online about the discovery of a dinosaur “mummy.” (In quotes as it’s a naturally preserved dino, not mummified in the sense of ancient Egypt; so don’t get excited you old-earth creationist folks.) The short piece was actually many months in the making, although it might not look it. I found out about the discovery from National Geographic Television over the summer but have had to keep it under my hat since then.
Back in June, I flew down to Boeing’s research office, in the hills outside of Canoga Park, near Los Angeles, to observe the dinosaur heading into the company’s giant CT scanner. It didn’t go exactly as planned. The researchers, led by Phil Manning from the University of Manchester, had trucked the body from South Dakota, only to discover that they’d built a frame around it too wide to spin on the CT bed. As a result, most of the day was spent hacking and sawing away at the corners of the dino’s plaster, trying to shrink it enough to fit. Read more
Nov
27
The NPR double
Filed Under Media appearances, Science, Environment/Energy, Wired, Recent stories | Leave a Comment
A little late posting this, but I made a pair of appearances on National Public Radio recently, both times discussing the ins and outs of cellulosic ethanol based on my Wired piece. Both shows are archived for your listening pleasure:
First off, “Talk of the Nation Science Friday,” on October 5.
Followed by “Fair Game,” November 15.
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6
Site changes
Filed Under Site business | Leave a Comment
UPDATE 11/18: The site has changed over to www.atavist.net, along with the emails. The old links and emails will continue to work, but please update to atavist.net from here on.
As previous visitors will note, I’ve made some changes to the site in the past week. Please let me know if you come across any errors, broken links etc. (The site has also been down off an on for a few days, due to unrelated trouble at my hosting company, but that is hopefully now resolved.)
Also, please note that in the next few weeks the whole site will be migrating to a new domain: www.atavist.net (in fact, if you go to that domain now it will bring you here.)
My email addresses will also be changing, from @atavistic.org to @atavist.net. The old addresses will continue to forward, and the old web site links will work.
del.icio.us Digg RedditSep
25
Pipe dream to tailpipe?
Filed Under Science, Technology, Environment/Energy, Wired, Recent stories | 2 Comments
My latest feature for Wired, about the science of cellulosic ethanol, begins its run on newsstands this week. The full story is also online, here. That’s a stalk of switchgrass adorning the cover, but the cellulosic ethanol described in the story actually involves making fuel from a wide variety of different plants—e.g. poplar trees, wood chips, other grasses. (Call it editorial discretion, but illustrating the cover line “THESE PLANTS ARE THE FUTURE OF ENERGY” might have cluttered things.)
The current method of producing ethanol (in the U.S.), from corn kernels, has been much castigated in the news lately. Although it seems a lot of the ethanol backlash is only tenuously based on actual research (especially when it comes to the energy balance of what goes into corn ethanol versus what you get out), there’s little doubt that corn ethanol has serious problems, enough to at least call its massive subsidies into question.
There is, however, another way of making ethanol, using a biological or chemical process to extract the cellulose, or “structural” part, from plants (rather than the starch, as in the case of corn ethanol, or the sugar, as in the case of the sugarcane ethanol in Brazil). Cellulosic ethanol usually makes the last couple paragraphs of ethanol stories; it’s declared to be some indeterminate number of years off, a biofuel holy grail awaiting a scientific breakthrough. There is general agreement that if we could make it, cellulosic fuel avoids most if not all of the problems of corn ethanol. Meanwhile, our federal energy targets (which are closer to hopes than targets, really) essentially assume that hundreds of millions of gallons cellulosic ethanol will soon be arriving. So, what gives? Read more
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27
Armchair cartography
Filed Under Technology, Wired, Recent stories | 1 Comment
“Cartographers manufacture power,” the eminent geographer J.B. Harley once wrote. So what happens to that power when cartography goes digital? That’s the question I endeavor to tackle in my latest feature for Wired, “The Whole Earth Catalogued.” It’s just out, in the July issue that features the Transformers movie on the cover (or alternately, if you for some reason elected to have your cover “personalized,” it features my story and you on the cover. It’s just like that booth at Six Flags!) In any case, the story is also online here.
As the online version’s headline implies (or possibly, overstates to the point of self-parody), it’s about how Google Maps and Google Earth are altering the way people relate to geography. Perhaps more interestingly, it’s about how thousands of people have taken the tools made by Google and other companies to become their own mapmakers.