Antimatter from lightning flashes the Fermi space telescope

November 6, 2009 | 4:58 pm

Artists rendition of a satellite and a terrestrial gamma-ray flash.

Violent and massive events in our universe create brilliant gamma-ray displays that will keep the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope busy for a decade. But recently, Fermi has turned its eyes back to Earth, where it can see evidence of Terrestrial Gamma Flashes, or TGFs, which are believed to originate at the tops of thunderstorm clouds. Fermi announced that it has detected positrons from TGFs, a first result and a major clue about what actually causes them.

Scientists now believe that what they detect as TGFs could be two different phenomena: actual gamma rays, and accelerated particles. Current theory suggest that TGFs originate when electrons caught in lighting storm electric fields become accelerated and collide with air particles, producing gamma rays. The electrons may also eject more electrons from the air particles, causing an avalanche of particles in the electric field, resulting in the second kind of TGF. Fermi has detected a total of 17 TGFs, which are identified as such based on their correlation with lightning flashes.

At the Fermi Symposium, Michael Briggs, a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, reported that Fermi has detected TGF gamma rays measuring 511 keV, the exact energy of gamma rays ejected as a result of positron decay. “Fermi’s results on positrons are a first,” wrote Briggs in an email after his talk. “They don’t contradict existing theory, but require an extension.” Eventually, Fermi’s results could confirm the existence of two separate phenomena. Briggs is preparing the results for publication.

Calla Cofield

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Bread-bombing bird interrupts LHC cooling

November 6, 2009 | 2:05 pm

Yep, it’s true:  A bird dropped a baguette on some outdoor electrical equipment at the Large Hadron Collider on Tuesday, interrupting the cooling system that chills two sectors of the collider.  CERN issued a statement today saying that the incident was similar to a power outage:  failsafe systems came on, the cause was identified, and the two sectors are now back to normal operating temperatures.

According to the statement,  the bird escaped unharmed but lost its bread.

Update, Nov. 9: See “LHC rebounds from baguette attack; sends beam around half the ring“

Glennda Chui

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Dark matter at the Fermi Symposium

November 5, 2009 | 8:52 pm

A prime motivator for building the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was to search for signals of dark matter. After one year of data collection, scientists have learned a lot from Fermi and are improving their models of the universe, which will eventually provide road maps to this elusive phenomenon. But as far as actually finding definite signals of the stuff: not yet.

Simona Murgia of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC gave a presentation at this week’s Fermi Symposium about the many ways Fermi is searching for dark matter, but reported that its initial explorations haven’t turned up any smoking guns.

But astrophysicists aren’t deterred. What was perhaps most promising was that some of the items that Murgia listed as needing improvement in order to advance the dark matter search were already being presented as new results by other scientists. Other speakers reported finding potential new sources of the diffuse gamma ray background or untangling the many gamma ray sources at the galactic center, where we expect to find a dense concentration of dark matter. The work of scientists in various sub-areas is clearly linked by a common need to understand our gamma-ray universe.

Murgia also made an announcement in relation to the dark matter search by Fermi’s predecessor EGRET (Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope). EGRET detected an excess of gamma rays in the GeV range during its nine years of observation. It was theorized that this detection might be evidence of some new phenomenon, possibly dark matter.

To determine if there is an excess of gamma rays, you first need to define what is normal. Scientists can use models to approximate the number of gamma rays we should see coming from individual point sources in the galaxy and the rest of the universe, and add them all up. When researchers subtracted that total from the EGRET data, they found that there were more gamma rays than they had accounted for. That immediately suggests that either an as-yet-unidentified source, possibly dark matter, is emitting gamma rays, or more likely that the model needs to be refined in any number of ways. Any claim of an excess relies heavily on the strength of the model, which relies on an ever-growing understanding of astrophysics and a growing library of observations.

Murgia announced that Fermi has not found the same excess reported by EGRET. This does not necessarily negate the EGRET result, but brings into question the models on which it was based. The final answer may lie somewhere in between.

“You make a model that includes dark matter, and if your observation doesn’t match your model then sometimes you really have to rethink your parameters,” said Murgia. “Maybe the right one is one we haven’t even thought of yet.”

The meeting did see a little commotion over the dark matter search. Last week, a paper by researchers outside the Fermi collaboration who analyzed the telescope’s publicly available data  reported finding an excess of gamma rays between us and the galactic center. In their paper the group steered clear of claiming that this was a signal of dark matter; but after the symposium talk by Neal Weiner of New York University, the suggestion hung thick in the air (their paper also stirred up rumors of dark matter on the blogosphere). At the end of his talk, when the moderator asked if there were any questions, an audience member immediately went to the microphone and said the excess could be explained another way – namely inverse Compton scattering (which is when energized electrons strike photons and boost their energies) created by a cosmic bubble very near our solar system. Weiner responded quite pleasantly, “Yes, and we’re looking forward to discussing that.”

The person who spoke up at the end of Weiner’s talk was referring to work  by Jean Marc Casandjian and Isabel Grenier of CEA Saclay, which was presented in a poster. Casandjian and Grenier, representing the Fermi collaboration, say the excess gamma rays fit the already known shape of the LOOP 1 cosmic bubble. LOOP 1 might be the remnants of an exploded supernova or other massive event that left a radiating bubble about 100 parsecs from the sun (we are surrounded by a similar bubble called the local bubble). LOOP 1 lies directly in our line of sight to the galactic center, and radiation from the bubble interferes with our view of the busy galactic plane. Casandjian hopes the analysis he is doing will allow researchers to subtract the effects of LOOP 1 and get a much clearer view of the Milky Way and the galactic center. There is more work to be done on their analysis before it is ready for publication.

In response to the notion that the gamma-ray excess could be something other than LOOP 1, Casandjian says other analyses did not take the time to extract the detailed structure of the gamma-ray emissions, but instead saw them as a general haze. From the detailed map that he and Grenier constructed, Casandjian said he believes the emissions are a very good fit to the known structure of LOOP 1, which can also be seen in radio frequencies.  Still, he acknowledged that he could not claim to understand everything going on with the gamma ray excess.

Calla Cofield

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Millisecond pulsar timing could find gravitational waves

November 5, 2009 | 7:24 am

Last summer, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered new pulsars through gamma-ray detection alone and found that millisecond pulsars do emit gamma rays. At the Fermi Symposium in Washington, DC, this week, Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced that Fermi has located new millisecond pulsars based on gamma-ray emissions alone. Fermi may come to greatly assist the radio astronomy community in locating millisecond pulsars, which may eventually assist in the detection of gravitational waves.

“Fermi is giving something back to the radio-astronomy community that I don’t think anyone expected,” said Ransom after his talk at the Fermi Symposium on Monday.

From the Fermi telescope’s frequent scans of the night sky, the collaboration generated a list of noticeably bright sources, which many observatories then investigated in greater detail. Some of these sources (though not the very brightest) turned out to be pulsars, and upon further investigation, NRAO has found three new millisecond pulsars. These discoveries have been made within the last month and have not yet been reported in any academic journals.

Millisecond pulsars are very old pulsars that are thought to increase their rotation speed over the years. While these pulsars are born in the plane of our galaxy, over time they drift out into the darker regions. Astronomers only know of about 80 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy, but they expect that tens of thousands of them could be floating in the darkness all around us.

Because millisecond pulsars tend to drift into isolated areas, they become very difficult to find with radio telescopes. A quick scan of the sky won’t reveal their locations because their radio signals are rather faint, and it would take long exposure times to see them. Ransom says that NRAO can’t dedicate enough time to watching every point in the sky to hope to discover faint pulsars, but Fermi’s frequent scans of the sky eventually make these pulsars visible in gamma rays. With this capability, Ransom says he expects that over time the observatory’s contribution to the search for millisecond pulsars could be significant.

What is perhaps most thrilling about these new discoveries is that the millisecond pulsars can be used to search for gravitational waves. Millisecond pulsars are very accurate time keepers. They pulse in extremely regular, reliable intervals. If gravitational waves pass near them and distort space-time, it could delay the arrival of their signals on  Earth. If astronomers are keeping careful watch on a large number of pulsars simultaneously, they might observe these delays, and find evidence for gravitational waves.

There is currently a project called NANOGrav, or the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, which is leading this gravity wave project. Ransom says the three new millisecond pulsars are particularly valuable to NANOGrav because they are actually quite bright, and a lack of bright pulsars has so far been NANOgrav’s biggest hindrance.

Calla Cofield

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Fermi telescope detects gamma rays from starburst galaxies

November 5, 2009 | 2:24 am

M82, the "cigar galaxy" is one of three starburst galaxies now know to radiate gamma rays. Image courtesy of NASA.

The breakfast room was buzzing on Wednesday morning at the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope symposium. The collaboration is definitely excited about the newly observed gamma rays coming from “starburst” galaxies–sites of high numbers of star births and subsequent star deaths. These gamma rays have multiple implications for the astronomical community, most notably providing clues about the origin of cosmic rays.

This is the first observation of gamma rays from starburst galaxies, and astronomers are already eager to revisit other known starburst galaxies, this time looking for gamma ray emissions. If these galaxies emit gamma rays, they would certainly contribute to the diffuse gamma ray background, which is a kind of white noise of gamma rays that comes from every direction in the universe. The source of the background is unidentified but it is expected to have many sources, such as blazars. This background must be subtracted from studies of gamma ray point sources, and it interferes with searches for dark matter, so deconstructing its origins could have widespread implications.

The gamma rays are most likely generated by cosmic rays; but rather than finding that cosmic rays shower down on the galaxies from distant sources, the Fermi results suggest that they are produced inside the galaxies themselves. Cosmic rays are believed to be created when particles are accelerated in the wake of supernova explosions. These cosmic rays then collide with other particles in the galaxy, accelerating them and causing them to radiate gamma rays. So it makes sense that sites of frequent massive star deaths would generate cosmic rays. Fermi scientists also believe the cosmic rays then become trapped in the galaxies by magnetic fields.

The discovery will change the Fermi catalog of objects because “diffuse-gamma-ray-emitting starburst galaxies” are now officially their own object. That is, they will be added as a unique item to the list of objects in the sky. Many point sources of gamma rays have gone unidentified in the past, and Fermi scientists are trying their best to identify and characterize as many as possible.

The Fermi All Sky Map, showing the diffuse galactic background from the Milky Way. Courtesy of NASA/DOE/International LAT Team

What is also notable about this discovery is that the starburst galaxies are more like the Milky Way, and much closer to it, than the very exotic and violent galaxies that contain blazars and other energetic objects more easily seen by Fermi. The Milky Way emits a galactic diffuse emission in gamma rays (which is what creates the colorful band image seen in the Fermi all-sky map). According to a press release from NASA, this is the first time astronomers have seen diffuse emission from star-forming regions in galaxies other than our own.

And there’s more.

Three starburst galaxies were found to emit gamma rays, and two of them, M82 and NGC 253, have also been identified as sources of very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays by HESS and VERITAS, respectively. While Fermi detects gamma rays with energies up to 300 GeV, observatories like VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) detect gamma rays in the TeV range (where 300 GeV is .3 TeV).

This the first example of a VHE gamma ray source associated with a starburst galaxy. VERITAS collected the TeV rays from M82 over the course of two years.

Finding that these galaxies radiate in the TeV and the GeV range implies that there is a spectrum of cosmic ray energies, and this could help scientists better understand cosmic rays, where they come from and what they do.  “The spectrum is where the real science is,” said Keith Bechtol, a graduate student at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, after his talk on Wednesday announcing the discovery of the gamma rays from the three starburst galaxies. “If you want to really understand something, you look at the spectrum.” Bechtol says the next step will be looking and other starburst galaxies for gamma rays.

VERITAS has had a paper accepted in Nature on the subject of these star formation galaxies and cosmic rays.

Calla Cofield

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NOvA neutrino detector gets full construction approval

November 4, 2009 | 4:38 pm

Construction workers prepare to pour concrete for the loading dock at the future site of the NOvA neutrino detector on Oct. 20 in Ash River, Minnesota.

NOvA experiment collaborators have more to celebrate this holiday season.

The neutrino experiment recently received Critical Decision-3b approval from the US Department of Energy. The decision signifies approval for the start of full construction. DOE had approved long-lead procurements and limited construction activities for the NOvA experiment when they granted CD-3a approval in October 2008. Fermilab now can continue construction of buildings on the Fermilab site and in Ash River, Minnesota, as well as complete the Fermilab accelerator upgrades and start neutrino detector fabrication.

“This is a big deal,” said NOvA project manager John Cooper. “This means we can move forward on the full project scope within the constraints of approved funding by Congress.”

Scientists will use the NOvA experiment to analyze the mysterious behavior of neutrinos and look for muon neutrinos oscillating to electron neutrinos. Ultimately, scientists hope to understand whether neutrinos contributed to the imbalance between matter and antimatter that enables our matter-dominated universe (including ourselves) to exist.

A construction worker placing concrete forms for the NOvA service facility.

The experiment involves 180 scientists from some 28 institutions who have worked hard to get the experiment ready for full construction.

“So many people have worked so long and hard to reach this point within the NOvA collaboration and the project management—it is a great feeling to have this level of support and approval from DOE,” said Pepin Carolan, DOE NOvA project director. “The team is very highly motivated to move full steam ahead to get the work done safely, on schedule, and within budget, and then to get on with the science.”

Carolan also pointed out that the project’s success was made possible by the partnership between Fermilab and the University of Minnesota. A cooperative research agreement between the US Department of Energy and the University of Minnesota supports the construction of a NOvA facility.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided a total of $55 million (to Fermilab and the University of Minnesota) toward completion of the NOvA project. This includes funding supporting purchase of key high-tech components and commodities for the detector from US companies, allowing these firms to retain and hire workers. It also includes the funding for the University of Minnesota’s contract to construct the detector hall in Ash River, Minn., awarded in May 2009.

Read articles about work for NOvA funded by the ARRA.

Rhianna Wisniewski

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Hunting blazars with VERITAS and the Fermi Large Area Telescope

November 4, 2009 | 4:11 am

From VERITAS scientist Wystan Benbow: "Here is the VERITAS sky catalog in Galactic Coordinates (i.e. those with the Galactic Plane at the equator). The sky catalog is all objects which VERITAS has seen (& released publicly). The different colors of dots represent different kinds of astrophysical objects. The blue regions are those best visible to VERITAS. Almost all of the marked objects have also been detected by Fermi LAT." Courtesy of VERITAS.

Two spots in the night sky look a bit brighter this week, thanks to collaborative efforts between the Large Area Telescope, which is the primary instrument aboard the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope, and VERITAS, or the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System, an array of ground-based telescopes in Amado, Arizona. The two collaborations announced last week the discovery of one new blazar and one likely blazar; if the second is confirmed these will be the third and fourth blazars that the observatories have collaborated to find.

Blazars are a type of active galactic nucleus (AGN),  the very violent systems that lie at the center of some distant galaxies. The systems each include a massive black hole, some of which are thought to be billions of times more massive than the sun. Blazars are distinct from other AGN because they emit two jets of energetic gas out their poles, which point toward Earth, making them distinguishable by observatories like VERITAS.  These violent and energetic systems radiate radio waves or X-rays, but they are identified by their emission of very-high-energy gamma rays.

The first new discovery appeared as a bright spot in the publicly available Fermi LAT data, and VERITAS scientists decided to investigate. They confirmed that it radiated in the TeV range, and that it aligns with an AGN, and hope to soon confirm if it is indeed a blazar. VERITAS made an announcement on October 25. The second high-energy source was jointly spotted in the sky by VERITAS and LAT, who communicated with each other to identify it as a blazar. The results were announced in a joint astrophysics telegram on October 29.

VERITAS is a targeted telescope array that looks for light in the TeV range–that means light with energy even higher than the gamma rays being searched for by Fermi (Fermi searches between 10 and 300 GeV, where 300 GeV is equal to 0.3 TeV). These extremely high-energy photons commonly come from very energetic, violent sources in the universe, such as blazars. VERITAS hopes to glean information about these objects, which could also provide answers to larger questions about our universe.

The trouble for VERITAS is knowing where in the sky to look for these TeV gamma ray sources (the trade off is a tremendous increase in sensitivity, making the two observatories complimentary). VERITAS can only look at a section of the sky about as wide as seven full moons. Without being able to scan the entire sky very quickly, VERITAS looks to observations made by radio and X-ray telescopes, and makes a list of objects that they think might radiate in the TeV range. Upon investigation, there are hits and misses: some of the objects on the list do emanate the high-energy gamma rays, and some don’t.

LAT offers VERITAS a tremendous new source list of potential high-energy gamma ray sources. Because the energy range of Fermi is much closer to that of VERITAS than radio or X-ray telescopes, LAT should reveal more potential TeV sources than radio or X-ray telescopes alone, and save VERITAS time and effort by reducing the number of sources they investigate that turn out to be misses.

“The degree to which LAT can help us can’t be overstated,” said University of Delaware Professor of Physics and Astronomy and VERITAS researcher Jamie Holder, after his talk at the Fermi symposium. In his talk, one of his slides read, “The LAT is changing the way we do TeV astronomy!”

And VERITAS can help Fermi, too.

In the first three months of Fermi data collection, VERITAS identified the blazar RGB J0710+591. They alerted LAT, which searched its data and found that the blazar radiated lower energy gammas as well.

Shortly after, and still within the LAT’s first three months of data collection, LAT saw a bright spot in the sky and alerted VERITAS, which confirmed that the spot radiated in the TeV gamma ray range. This blazar, PKS-1424+24, was the first Very High Energy Gamma Ray Source that was identified as a result of the LAT data.

As Fermi continues to collect data, and its resolution increases, the likelihood that VERITAS will identify a bright source first will decline. At the same time, there is a rare type of blazar that, at this point in its data collection, LAT does not see. Over time, the rare blazars could appear in the LAT data, and together the two observatories hope to learn more about these powerful objects.

Calla Cofield

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This week’s Fermi Symposium

November 3, 2009 | 2:58 pm

The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is holding its second collaboration symposium in Washington DC this week. The symposium began Monday morning (see our post about the announcement of some new pulsars) and stretches until noon on Thursday.

The symposium features talks by both Fermi collaboration members and outside scientists who are using  Fermi data, on subjects including pulsars, dark matter, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei, gamma ray bursts, magnetars, blazars and many more.

The Fermi telescope’s main instrument, the Large Area Telescope, was assembled at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and launched by NASA in June 2008. The Fermi collaboration consists of scientists from all over the world, and the Fermi data is made publicly available, so non-collaboration members can analyze  it,  as well.

Calla Cofield

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Fermi Telescope finds more new pulsars

November 2, 2009 | 3:26 pm

Clouds of charged particles move along the pulsar's magnetic field lines (blue) and create a lighthouse-like beam of gamma rays (purple) in this illustration. Credit: NASA

Today at the 2009 Fermi Symposium in Washington DC, postdoctoral researcher Lucas Guillemot of the Max Planck Institute reported that the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected eight more pulsars that had not been seen in other wavelengths of light, bringing the total of these gamma-ray-only objects to 24.  It also bagged one new gamma ray millisecond pulsar.  However, Guillemot said these results are preliminary and have not been submitted for publication yet.

Pulsars are the remnants of supernovas – stars that run out of fuel, expand and then collapse into masses heavier than the sun but with an average radius of only 10 km. Pulsars emit powerful jets of radiation, and as they rotate the radiation sweeps across the cosmos like the beam from a light house.  From Earth, it looks as though the neutron star’s light is pulsing on and off.

The vast majority of pulsars emit radio waves; that’s how most of them were detected. But in blind searches of the sky, Fermi has found previously unknown pulsars that appear to radiate only gamma rays. It may be that these pulsars emit  in radio wavelengths, too, but their radio beams are simply not visible from Earth; follow-up observations should reveal if they radiate in other frequencies, including radio.

Fermi’s discovery of a new gamma ray millisecond pulsar, or MSP, brings the telescope’s tally up to nine. The pulse of light from an MSP has a period of milliseconds, meaning the neutron star is rotating hundreds of times per second and appears to blink rapidly.  The gamma ray MSPs studied by Fermi had  already been identified by radio telescopes; Fermi was the first gamma ray telescope to identify MSPs that radiate gamma rays.

Including these nine new pulsars, Fermi has identified 55 pulsars that radiate in the gamma range, in just one year of data collection. This can be compared to the 5 new pulsars discovered over nine years by Fermi’s predecessor EGRET (Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope).  Guillemot said in an interview after his presentation that the great benefit of finding so many pulsars is being able to look for trends and similar characteristics among them.

“If you have less than ten detected pulsars, they’re all black sheep, they’re all different from each other,” he said. “When you have lots, you can start to categorize them and draw trends; and that is how you understand how things work.”

Fermi has posted a “catalogue” of its confirmed identified pulsars on the arXiv: 16 gamma-ray-only pulsars (not including the 8 new ones), 22 radio loud pulsars (already identified by radio telescopes), and 8 gamma ray MSPs (not including the newest one).

Calla Cofield

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Imagine Science Film Festival: Documentary Shorts

November 2, 2009 | 8:08 am

When I left the Imagine Science Film Festival Documentary Shorts screening, it was almost impossible to wipe the grin off my face. All of the films were gorgeous and creative; nearly all of them used science in ways I’d never seen or thought of. The variety of storytelling methods was tremendous; the film festival truly displayed how science in film is not limited to educational documentary, but instead offers a playground of new possibilities. The fact that these films are out there and I might never have seen them otherwise is the only tragedy. We need more festivals like this. In the meantime, you can watch many of these shorts online by following the links below.

A few months ago I came across Magnetic Movie, from Semiconductor films, floating around the internet, and was so happy to see it at the festival. It ended up winning the highest prize that the festival had to offer, the Nature Scientific Merit Award. Very much earned. I wish all the films were available, but am especially happy that this one is free to watch:

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

What’s the Matter at CERN, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the LHC (which you can watch here) takes a stab at dispelling the accusations that the LHC will create a black hole and destroy the world. It worked best to convey how the scientists at CERN were certainly shocked by the claims, mostly because they got so much attention, yet were so outlandish. One scientist even says that if the founders of these claims really believe such a thing, he respects them for bringing them forward. On the other hand, he points out with a shrug, he knows the claims are wrong. Like the scientists, the filmmaker is almost giggling at the fringe groups that have taken these claims and run: the funniest moment came from the inclusion of some homemade videos, found on Youtube, depicting a black hole originating at CERN and swallowing the Earth.

The second film about the LHC, Big Bang Day, captured the excitement and buzz that filled CERN on the day the LHC sent proton beams around the ring in both directions. It includes footage of the camera crews that arrived and the scientists who stopped working to assist with all the visitors. But the best part of Big Bang Day were the quiet, yet powerful words of graduate student Adam, who is featured as the film’s centerpiece. Adam talks openly about how sometimes the routine of work makes him forget what an exciting facility CERN is. But he also conveys the thrill and privileged of working at CERN as the LHC is finally starting, and what it feels like to reach the end of your training, to become an expert in your field, and realize that if you want answers to your questions, you have to find them yourself. This film is just one in a series (reported on by symmetry earlier this year) called Colliding Particles: Hunting the Higgs, by director Mike Paterson. If you’re at all interested in the LHC, these are really a treat. There are currently five in all, with new episodes still appearing.

A definite crowd favorite was Hairytale (watch it here), the story of former hair dresser Ronn Thompson, who now collects hair clippings and makes a fiber-glass-like building material out of them. This film was materials physics in disguise. The director pushed the conservation angle–Thompson was motivated by a desire to reduce human waste products, so he now rescues many tons of hair from landfills every year. He hopes to create a substitute for fiber-glass, which takes a tremendous amount of energy to make and is dangerous once it’s disposed of. The incredibly strong properties of hair have long been known by biologists, but Thompson displays just how far mother nature’s design can go. While a fiberglass brick cracks under about 65 tons of pressure, the brick of hair holds up to 87–stronger, softer, and more environmentally friendly than fiberglass. Once the audience got over the “ew” factor (all the hair was kind of gross) and saw that the material is hardly recognizable as hair once it’s finished, people were whispering, “wow!”

Another crowd favorite was the most amateur of the whole festival–the actors, at least, were astronomy students rather than film students. But the creators put so much heart and genuine silliness into their product, that people were laughing out loud and cheered at the end. The Agony and Ecstacy of Planet X (free to watch) was the only mockumentary in the bunch, and featured staged interviews and a made-up historical film reel that followed Clyde Tombaugh during his discovery of Pluto. It ended with a pie fight.

Also of interesting note was Decoding Alan Turing, a film less about Alan Turing’s life, and more about how his life is remembered now. Books, films, statues, art projects, and rock songs have been dedicated to the man who broke German codes in WWII, laid the foundation for modern computers, and did it all in the face of potential imprisonment for his homosexuality. The poetic connections in Turing’s life make him one of the most fascinating people in 20th century mathematics, or even just in the 20th century.

The night also included the short film Babbage about Charles Babbage–the man who invented the first computer and then failed to build it (see a trailer here). Things wrapped up the night was the visually savory Planes Lapse; only two minutes long with no words.

That’s all from the Imagine Science Film Festival! Keep your eyes out for science films coming to your area–most of these films won’t have wide release but are appearing at multiple film festivals.

Calla Cofield

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