The Godless Particle

By: | July 11, 2013

Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 11.35.53 PMLast July I ended a post on the Higgs boson with an admonition: “Just don’t get me started on this ‘God particle’ business.” But did Christie listen? “I’m sharing it with my husband,” she emailed me about the post. “This whole ‘god particle’ thing has been driving him completely crazy.”

The term, at least in the popular imagination, dates to The God Particle, a 1993 best-seller by Leon Lederman, a Nobel laureate for his work on neutrinos and at the time the director of Fermilab. Most physicists loathe the term “God particle”; it trivializes and misrepresents their work. Peter Higgs himself has railed against it. Lederman’s response: Beyond the God Particle, scheduled for October publication. Continue reading →

Science Meets Bird, Bird Meets Science

By: | July 10, 2013

tailorbird.jpg

Late last year, during a reporting trip in Cambodia, I shared a car for a couple of days with Simon Mahood, a British ornithologist who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Phnom Penh. Mahood, a devoted birdwatcher since childhood, was full of stories about the rare birds and remote places of Southeast Asia. But there was one story he kept to himself.

On the floodplains around Phnom Penh, within sight of the new skyscrapers in the city center, Mahood and his colleagues had seen a bird they couldn’t identify. They knew it was a tailorbird, a wrenlike bird that stitches a cradle for its nests out of leaves and spider silk. But this bird didn’t look or sound quite like the tailorbirds they were familiar with. Maybe it was just an odd individual, they thought. Over several weeks and several early-morning trips, they saw another of the unusual birds, and then another.

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Out of my skin

By: | July 9, 2013

shutterstock_startleThis month I’ll be writing from the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. They’ve assigned me a writing studio in the woods and each day I make the short hike to work from the hotel-style residence rooms. In the hallway this morning I press the elevator button and the door opens.

I gasp. My hand flies to my heart.

The strength of my startle reflex scares, in turn, the man who was the cause of it – a cleaning staff member readying to drag a cart out of the elevator. I have learned to mutter-whisper “sorry” reflexively after every startle response because I invariably alarm others, like a bolting animal in a herd. Continue reading →

Remembering Randy Udall

By: | July 8, 2013

7947425228_5965988c8b_zLate last month, 61-year-old Randy Udall shouldered a backpack and set out, alone, into the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. It was a habit of his: Randy was an experienced outdoorsman, and he periodically retreated from his busy, public life into the solitude of the Wind Rivers. He told his family that he would be home in western Colorado on June 26.

On July 3, after an intensive search, Randy’s body was discovered along the off-trail route he’d planned to follow. He had died suddenly, with his pack on his back and hiking poles still clutched in his fists, apparently of a heart attack or stroke.

Randy Udall was often identified by his relations. After all, he was a son of longtime Arizona congressman Morris “Mo” Udall, a nephew of Interior Secretary Stuart Udall, a brother of Colorado Senator Mark Udall, and a cousin of New Mexico Senator Tom Udall. The Udalls, descended from Mormon pioneers, are the Kennedys of the Rockies, and for generations they’ve championed the region’s often-overlooked landscapes and people.

Randy was an energy-efficiency expert and cofounder of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, which promoted the use of renewable power in and around Aspen, Colo. Unlike many of his relatives, he worked outside the national spotlight. But as a journalist, I got to see the power and reach of what he did.

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The Last Word

By: | July 6, 2013

Jshutterstock_137241884uly 1 – 5

This week, Erik traveled to Bolivia in search of water that’s more acidic than battery acid. He succeeds: “Opening my eyes I see that it looks like an orange sort of runny syrup and feels like it’s full of lead.”

DNA “rots” in the heat, which is why ancient genomes are always being sequenced from remains pulled out of freezing regions. Erika wondered what we’d find out if we could decode stuff from the nicer climates.

Ann explained Abtruse Goose’s poke at the people who have the dirty job of dealing with reality.

You can’t go home again — thanks especially, as Christie found, to climate change.

And finally, to celebrate independence day, Ann told us her science writing origins story.

 

 

 

Returning to my roots

By: | July 5, 2013

NiwotRidgeConverge_ 30 copyEarlier this week, I had the privilege of spending a few days at a place that nurtured my interest in science. The Mountain Research Station was where I conducted my first independent research project (funded by an REU grant from the NSF). As I’ve written previously, my experience studying the evolution of an alpine plant’s reproductive strategy was hugely influential. It taught me how science is done and introduced me to the highs and lows of the scientist’s pursuit. Most importantly, it gave me an opportunity to take a project from conception to completion. My advisor, Pam Diggle, gave me a chance to present my research at a scientific meeting and publish the results in a well-respected journal.

They say you can’t go home again, and it’s true that the place feels different. The station itself has hardly changed. Sure, there’s a new classroom and lodge, but the Megaron still has a dance floor and a pingpong table, and, except for the computer lab, the Marr Lab remains much like it was when I worked there in the early 1990’s. It’s the landscape that’s shifted. Continue reading →

Science Writer Stares Out Window

By: | July 4, 2013

girlWhy are the clouds moving so fast? Is the wind that’s pushing the clouds faster than the wind that’s blowing the trees?  I remember, back when I lived in tornado country, hearing that when the winds aloft and the winds on the ground were moving in different directions, a tornado could form.  Was that true?  Why don’t I know that?

What should I write about for an LWON post on the Fourth of July?  How did those guys, Washington and Adams and Jefferson, think they’d ever get away with declaring independence?  Did they really expect Mother England wouldn’t smack them down? Did they really think they could make a living out on their own?  Why don’t I know that?

Or should I write about fireworks?  What is it about fireworks that makes people think “JOY!” rather than “DUCK!”? the rise into the sky like Gothic arches, maybe?  Why have people been celebrating with fireworks for so long – seventh century, Wikipedia says?  Fireworks’ different colors are caused by compounds made of certain elements – that’s sweetly right, isn’t it? if you want blue, go copper.  Are the element colors in fireworks the same as the element colors in atoms that astronomers use to figure out what stars are made of? what the sun is made of?  Why don’t I know that?

Speaking of sun colors, I saw a double rainbow the other day.  Part of its doubleness was an indisputable second rainbow.  But the first rainbow also seemed to repeat itself, ROY G. BIV — that is, once it got to violet, it started over with red and orange again.  Is that even possible?  Why don’t I know that? Continue reading →

Searching for the World’s Worst Glass of Water

By: | July 3, 2013

It takes a few days to adjust to life at 13,300 feet in Potosi, Bolivia. As soon as I touched down in the tiny airport, I remembered the time I climbed Mt. Whitney and got desperately sick in camp at 13,000 feet. Whitney is the highest point in the lower 48 at 14,500. To visit Bill Strosnider’s research sites here, I’ll have to go way above 15,000.

I was sent here by Rotarian Magazine for an assignment to look at mining discharge. Strosnider, an environmental engineering professor from Saint Francis University who studies water pollution here, takes me around to a few pools whose pH gets down to the mid twos (about equal with lemon juice or vinegar). Their water is a deeply disturbing orange and and any fish are long since dead. But on the last day Strosnider takes his students to another site, far from his standard research area, on a quest to find something very special. Continue reading →