Brookhaven arcade celebrates one of the world's first video games

October 27, 2008 | 12:42 pm

Brookhaven physicist Peter Takacs, who helped recreate the original game, with Tennis for Two.

On Friday, October 24, 2008, Brookhaven National Laboratory employees and visitors exercised their thumbs to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s first video games.

Fifty years ago, before either arcades or home video games such as Pong or Pac-Man, visitors waited in line at Brookhaven Lab to play “Tennis for Two,” an electronic tennis game first introduced on October 18, 1958, at one of the Lab’s annual visitors’ days. This two-player, electronic tennis game had separate controllers connected to an analog computer and an oscilloscope screen. Players saw a side view of a tennis court and used the boxy, aluminum controllers to serve and volley the “ball,” a bright dot that leaves trails as it bounces from one side of the net to the other.

The game’s creator, William Higinbotham, was a nuclear physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and lobbied for nuclear nonproliferation as the first chair of the Federation of American Scientists. As head of the Brookhaven Lab’s Instrumentation Division, Higinbotham wanted to “liven up the place” for the visitors and “convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society.”

Brookhaven science writer Kendra Snyder and science-communication intern Satya Shanmugham test out Tennis for Two.

Although the original game was dismantled soon after its premiere, a group of scientists and engineers re-created it about 10 years ago for Brookhaven’s 50th anniversary celebration.

On Friday, Tennis for Two–the guts of which are contained in a computer about the size of a microwave oven–was dusted off and set up in the lobby of the Lab’s Research Support Building. Throughout the day, roaming gamers tested out the rudimentary game alongside more modern games from Atari, Nintendo, and Wii, temporarily turning the building into an arcade showcasing the evolution of one of America’s favorite pastimes.

Read more about Tennis for Two.

Kendra Snyder

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Computing in a grid or a cloud

October 24, 2008 | 11:32 am

In the past year or two, cloud computing (in which computing services are all extracted from the “cloud” of the Internet) has garnered a lot of attention in the press. We talked about its application to high-energy physics here back in May.

Meanwhile, high-energy physics has been working hard to develop grid computing, and one fruit of that development is the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid, which just launched on October 3, 2008.

With two relatively new models of computing floating about, many commentators have been discussing the pros and cons of each, as if it were a face-off with only one likely to be the victor in a fight for dominance, and with cloud computing being a newer concept, some even argue that cloud computing will supersede grid computing. However, an analysis by Ignacio Martín Llorente of the Distributed Systems Architecture Research Group in Madrid, argues that the two technologies are different and complementary. (Thanks to International Science Grid This Week for the link.)

He says that grids are all about interoperability, allowing a lot of different resources to be federated–that is, to come together to work effectively. A cloud, on the other hand, is principally a way to virtualize services (such as computation power or data storage), or take them away from your local place of work and put them wherever they most conveniently sit but still available to you at all times.

I’d recommend Llorente’s post to help understand this better, but we also have a few relevant resources here at symmetry about grid computing:
The Grid in 60 seconds
Meet the Grid (An introductory feature)
What is the Grid? (A conversation between some leading particle physics computer scientists)
Sciences on the Grid (Case studies of science being performed on existing grids)

David Harris

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Seven more science questions for McCain and Obama

October 23, 2008 | 4:39 pm

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have responded to seven questions regarding gender and racial diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The Association of Women in Science and the Society of Women Engineers posed the questions to the candidates earlier this summer.

Questions include, “As President of the United States, how do you plan to address the need for more women in STEM?” and “As President, how do you plan to maintain and/or strengthen existing NSF programs targeted to increasing diversity in STEM education?” Many of the questions mention specific programs, laws and initiatives already aimed at addressing these issues.

The questions follow Science Debate 2008’s 14 key science questions for the candidates; see our earlier post on those.   The new questions are more socially oriented than the previous 14.  They help round out the picture of how the candidates view the state of science in the United States, and how that affects our position in the worldwide scientific community.

Calla Cofield

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Particle physics and the evolution of superconductivity

October 23, 2008 | 12:15 pm

Here’s an interesting and educational photo and graphic essay on the history and uses of superconductors. The story focuses on the use of superconductivity to improve electrical grids, IT networks, and enable Maglev trains. The story also explains the involvement of Fermilab and Stanford University in the technology’s development.

Tona Kunz

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Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS in Second Life

October 22, 2008 | 1:29 pm

A couple of years ago, a few of us were throwing around the idea of building the Large Hadron Collider in Second Life (SL), the virtual world that has been pretty popular in recent years. I was hoping that we could build a virtual collaboration of people to construct the whole LHC in SL (and try to beat the real thing to construction).

Once it was running, the idea would be to feed real data from the LHC to the SL version, and have a really detailed 3D virtual tour of the facility, which people won’t be able to get into once beams are running. Unfortunately, like so many plans, I didn’t have time and resources to really pursue it.

However, I see that a dedicated LHC fan has created the ATLAS experiment from the LHC in SL. Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep it built in place as he did it on somebody else’s land for a while and it’s a pretty intensive simulation, with 1300-1500 individual 3D elements. Perhaps one of our readers out there has some SL land they would we willing to provide to the entity known as Professor Panda (SL name Ryushimitsu Xingjian).

Of course, not everything is scientifically accurate–this is done in the spirit of fan art–but I can tell you from having been in the ATLAS cavern while it was being built, that this does a very good job of the look and feel of the real detector.

Xingjian has made a video of his construction while it was still standing. Let’s hope that it can find a permanent home and that LHC construction in SL might continue. Get in touch with me if this is a project you are interested in.

Also Wagner James Au at New World Notes, a Second Life news publication, has a lot more info on this project here.

David Harris

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Physicist parent, musician child, and a documentary about the Everetts

October 21, 2008 | 6:29 pm

Many people have observed the connections between science research and musical aptitude. Today a more specific example of a connection between physicists and musicians hit me: physicist parent (PP) with musician child (MC). Here I’m most interested in musicians who have made a significant international name in their genre, not just anybody who picks up a guitar in their garage.

Two prominent examples are:

PP: Prof. Tunstall (lecturer in physics at the University of St Andrews–if you know more about him, let me know!)
MC: KT Tunstall (broke through with her track “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” on Jools Hollands’ show in the United Kingdom, and had that song covered by Katherine MacPhee on American Idol in the United States)

PP: Hugh Everett (creator of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics)
MC: Mark Everett (frontman of the Eels)

Mark Everett has also produced a documentary called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, which airs tonight on PBS’ NOVA. Hugh revolutionised quantum physics with his dissertation and key paper but then pretty much disappeared from the academic scene and did classified work at the Pentagon.

Everett’s story is a fascinating but tragic one. It’s well worth looking into.

And if you know some more examples of PP-MC combinations, let me know in the comments.

Update: Another example from the comments:

PP: Albert Baez (developed the X-ray reflection microscope)
MC: Joan Baez (American folk singer who ought not need any introduction)

(Thanks to both Jean Deken and Blake Stacey who submitted this one. I’ll also add that mathematical physicist John Baez is Albert’s nephew/Joan’s cousin.)

I also remembered other examples but in reverse with the renowned musician parent and famous physicist child:

MP: Vincenzo Galilei (Italian lutenist)
PC: Galileo Galilei (Yep, that guy)

MP: Constantijn Huygens (Dutch composer–and lutenist–but perhaps better known for his literature)
PC: Christiaan Huygens (demonstrated the wave behavior of light)

Bonus trivia question:

Which National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist wrote a book with a physicist father and two musician sons? What is the title of the book and what are the characters’ names?

Physicist parent, film/TV child

Peter Steinberg responded to this post with his own parallel list of famous film and TV people who have physicists for parents. Some examples: Irene Jacob, Gore Verbinski, Jon Stewart. (You can read his original to find out the other halves of these pairings. And let Peter know if you have more to add to his list.)

David Harris

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The life and times of gamma-ray bursts

October 21, 2008 | 4:49 pm

This week, a gamma-ray burst (GRB) symposium is being held in Huntsville, Alabama, hosted by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST) Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team. Regular readers of symmetry will have heard plenty about the FGST mission, a joint project of NASA, the US Department of Energy, and other international partners, but we have focused more on the Large Area Telescope (LAT), the primary instrument aboard FGST.

The GBM is the secondary instrument, capable of viewing the whole sky at once, and able to detect the direction of sudden gamma-ray bursts, albeit with low resolution. That information can be used to then tell the Telescope to reorient within a matter of minutes to point the LAT at the gamma-ray source for more detailed study.

In combination, these two instruments provide a fantastic new tool for understanding gamma-ray sources throughout the cosmos. Recent results from the LAT have shown its potential to uncover a whole new class of sources, gamma-ray-only pulsars, which LAT team members tell me could make up the majority of those objects currently listed as “unknown” in previous gamma-ray surveys of the sky.

One new result presented at the GRB symposium concerns the kinds of galaxies that tend to be home to gamma-ray bursts. Dauna Coulter has an excellent treatment of the topic, so hop on over to a NASA Web feature about the new results.

David Harris

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Watch a constellation for science!

October 20, 2008 | 6:31 am

Last year's observations

As Amber Dance explained in the March/April 08 issue of symmetry,  it’s nearly impossible for an outsider to make significant contributions to particle physics–although that doesn’t stop people from trying! But amateurs can make significant contributions to other fields of science, and starting tonight, you can do that just by walking outside and looking up.

The Great World Wide Star Count is recruiting volunteers to gaze at constellations, determine how bright their stars are and report that information online. The results tell astronomers how much light pollution from cities, brightly lit prison yards, and other sources is dimming our view of the stars. Last year’s count–you can find a report on the results here–gathered more than 6000 observations from all over the world and all 50 states.

Folks in the Northern Hemisphere will be looking at the constellation Cygnus, the Swan; folks in the South, at Sagittarius, the Archer. You can observe on just one night or on lots of them. The count ends Nov. 3.

Glennda Chui

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The first science fiction story featuring antimatter

October 17, 2008 | 12:57 pm

Writer Scott Edelman stands in the doorway of the shack where Jack Williamson wrote the first science fiction story to feature antimatter. Photo courtesy of Scott Edelman.

Fermilab’s Bill Higgins is an avid science fiction fan and an equally avid researcher. One result is a fascinating pair of articles in the current issue of symmetry: An essay explaining how the concept of antimatter–then known as “contraterrene matter”–made its way into science fiction, and a logbook featuring a yellowed page from the manuscript of a story by Jack Williamson.

His story, “Collision Orbit,” appeared in the July 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the pen name Will Stewart. In it, engineer Jim Drake struggles to exploit the energy of contraterrene asteroids by finding a way to manipulate them without touching them, using magnetic fields. (Read the logbook from this issue for more information.)

Williamson followed “Collision Orbit” with three sequels for Astounding that firmly established contraterrene matter—more commonly known as “antimatter”—in the toy box of science fiction, alongside spaceships, ray guns, and time machines.

The accompanying logbook tells how Williamson wrote the story on a secondhand typewriter in a small, unpainted shack he had built on his family’s ranch in New Mexico.

Jack Williamson, then 95, poses with Edelman and a copy of the December 1928 Amazing Stories magazine, which contains his first published story. Photo courtesy of Scott Edelman.

For those who want to see just how small that shack was, here are photos from a 2003 tour of the Williamson homestead, part of the 27th annual  Jack Williamson Lectureship at Eastern New Mexico University.   Williamson had been a professor of English there. The 2003 event celebrated not only his long career in writing and teaching, but also the 75th anniversary of the sale of his first short science-fiction story. Williamson kept on writing and publishing stories until his death at 98. Here we see him at the age of 95, schmoozing with fans and recalling the early days. Thanks to writer and editor Scott Edelman for this photographic trip back in time.

Glennda Chui

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First gamma-ray-only pulsar observation opens new window on stellar evolution

October 16, 2008 | 1:00 pm

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered the first pulsar that beams only in gamma rays. The pulsar (illustrated, inset) lies in the CTA 1 supernova remnant in Cepheus. Credit: NASA/S. Pineault, DRAO

About three times a second, a 10,000-year-old stellar corpse sweeps a beam of gamma-rays toward Earth. This object, known as a pulsar, is the first one known to “blink” only in gamma rays, and was discovered by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a collaboration with the US Department of Energy (DOE) and international partners.

“This is the first example of a new class of pulsars that will give us fundamental insights into how stars work,” says Stanford University’s Peter Michelson, principal investigator for the LAT. The LAT data is processed by the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and analyzed by the International LAT Collaboration.

The gamma-ray-only pulsar lies within a supernova remnant known as CTA 1, which is located about 4600 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. Its lighthouse-like beam sweeps Earth’s way every 316.86 milliseconds and emits 1000 times the energy of our sun. These results appear in the Oct. 16 edition of Science Express.

A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, the crushed core left behind when a massive sun explodes. Astronomers have cataloged nearly 1800 pulsars. Although most were found through their pulses at radio wavelengths, some of these objects also beam energy in other forms, including visible light and X-rays.

Unlike previously discovered pulsars, the source in CTA 1 appears to blink only in gamma-ray energies, offering researchers a new way to study the stars in our universe. Scientists think CTA 1 is only the first of a large population of similar objects. “The LAT provides us with a unique probe of the galaxy’s pulsar population, revealing objects we would not otherwise even know exist,” says Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Project Scientist Steve Ritz, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Read the rest of this entry »

David Harris

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