Science Box Newsletter

							Science Box 
                                                                          2005-04-20


                     Science Box Newsletter
Intro
In the beginning there were some moderators and administrators, young and old, men and women.
They had little in common except the fact that they all somehow wanted to give some, or even
more, of their spare time to contribute at a website, and a community, called Science Box. This let-
ter is from that website, and right now you are making history. For this is the first newsletter that
Science Box has ever produced, and we all hope that it will be the beginning of a great trend. We,
the mods and admins at Science Box, have long tried to get the function of sending out newsletters
implemented in the code at the site. And after a long time we got it. However, it was not working.
Typical, isn't it? We waited some more, and much thanks to cereal, employee at the Box network
that is created and partly maintained by cube, we finally got the feature working. And this is the
creation that we give to you, user of Science Box. The Science Box Newsletter number 1.

General info on the newsletter
Why did you even receive this mail; how did we get your address? Your e-mail address is in your
profile at http://science.box.sk and you have checked the box for receiving newsletters from Science
Box. It's as simple as that. If you don't want to get any more mails from us, choose so in the drawer
in your profile or remove your e-mail address; also in your user profile.

Contents
This newsletter, that we plan on releasing approximately every second month to start with, will
cover several things. First, you should be able to find anything with interest concerning Science Box
in here; site updates, new or retired moderators and admins etc. And also, what you might expect in
a newsletter from a science related web site, a great deal of hot topics from the world of science.
What more could you expect? Book and forum reviews, papers submitted by our staff or by users at
the site and discussions, linked directly to our forums! We hope not do disappoint you in any of
these areas, and bring you even more enjoyable and interesting material.

News and events
So, what has been happening in the science world recently? Here are some of the top stories that
have been talked about.

Lab fireball may be black hole:
In the US this March, scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, claimed to
have formed a 'fireball' which had the properties of a black hole. It was generated by smashing
beams of gold nuclei together at near to light speed. However, there were discrepancies about this
claim, which caused discussion.

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6205

Chip reads mind of paralyzed man:
This is the story of a paralyzed man who had a brain implant which was used to tap into his brain
waves in order to control everyday devices around the room. So far he has been able to use the im-
plant to turn on the TV, for example. There was discussion about this story at Science Box.

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6241
Science Box 
                                                                           2005-04-20

NASA claim evidence of present life on Mars:
The story informs us all that there may indeed be life on Mars today! After discovering methane
signatures, it is presumed that life may be thriving in caves by means of small amounts of water.

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6136

Paintbrush Contest!:
Just for fun within the Science Box community, we had a paintbrush contest to see which users
where most talented with Paint! So far the majority of entries have been alien drawings, and to
show appreciation for their entries, received a strange prize from Mickey8! The winner is yet to be
announced.

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6195

Other headlines which were popular recently within the science world include:


http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6263 Black holes 'do not exist'

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6264 Bionic eye will let the blind see

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6263 Plenty of Earth's await discovery

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6165 Ancient life thrives in sea

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6201 Fibonacci's other numbers

http://www.science.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6266 Sony patent takes first step towards real-life
Matrix

/Silverr


Bits of interest
Einstein@Home
Gravity waves, a mystery of General relativity, predicted by the theory and its creator, Albert Ein-
stein. Einstein also considered the effects of these waves to be all to small to ever be measurable,
however, Bruce Allen along with his team has determined to prove Einstein wrong. Not about the
very existence of the waves, but that we will be able to detect them.

To his aid he will use a system called BOINC http://boinc.berkeley.edu/, which lets thousands of
users connect to the same server to calculate and analyze bits of the incredibly complex data that
Allen and 
 his team has gathered from various observations. And what does this have to do with
Science Box? Well, as a site that strives towards a better understanding of science, Science Box has
started an Einstein@Home team, that you can join in the search for gravity waves. All you have
to do is enter this page http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/create_account_form.php?teamid=955 and join
our team.

SETI@Home
Not as new, but still interesting and probably unheard of by many of our users, is another BOINC-
team that was created to gather all the users of the Box network. While SETI@Home uses the same
technique as Einstein@Home, it is not exactly dealing with the same area of science. Some would
Science Box 
                                                                            2005-04-20

probably even raise an eyebrow for me putting them in the same ‘area’. SETI is short for The
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and that is exactly what it is. Since SETI@Home is a much
older project, we already have many members, but we still want more, of course. Aside from the
difference in goal, the two ‘@Home’ projects are the same. In stead of using the computers around
the globe for calculations, SETI mostly uses the gathered processor power to decode signals from
outer space. To join the SETI@Home Box team, just enter this site
http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/fcgi-bin/fcgi?cmd=team_join_form&id=163401.

/rhevin


Books and papers
Review for "Flatterland… Like Flatland, Only More So", by Ian Stewart
It seems no review of ‘Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So’, by Ian Stewart, would be com-
plete without first mentioning that no review of Flatterland would be complete without mentioning
the novel’s predecessor, Flatland.

Written by Edwin Abbott in 1884, Flatland managed to provide a neat little analogy of experiencing
higher dimensions, by telling the story of a two dimensional character, namely A. Square, who vis-
its the astonishingly three dimensional Spaceland.

Since the time that the classic was written, mathematics and physics have grown somewhat, with
new concepts, new geometries and new applications. Whilst building on the story line of the origi-
nal, Ian Stewart has chosen not to focus too much on extra Euclidean dimensions, but rather on the
massive number of new geometries that current mathematics deals with. The book speeds through
n-dimensional space, which is described somewhat differently than expected after reading the first
book, and then goes on to fractal geometries (in The Fractal Forest), hyperbolic geometry (other-
wise known as Platterland), topology (with Moobius the single-sided cow), and a host of others,
before finally moving on to vaguely related accounts of their applications in this universe (were us
Planiturthians live).

Following the style of the original, if not more so as suggested, the book is very unique in how it is
written. With a pun or mathematical joke on every page, literally, the cuteness with how it is written
will either be loved or hated, and makes it a bit difficult to read at times. I must admit, while I was
reading it, I occasionally laughed at such anecdotes as the song “You ain't nothin' but a hadron / nu-
cleifyin' all the time", and occasionally struggled to work out what (in hell) he was talking about. It
is easier to appreciate the humor, though, if you already have a decent knowledge of the material.

This book is best suited for one who does not want the meticulous seriousness often found in popu-
lar science writings, but still wishes to learn a great deal of probably useless knowledge. Unless you
are advanced in geometry, you will learn something from this book, and probably a good deal of
new concepts and new ways of thinking. And, if you can endure the odd bad pun, then the book will
also provide more laughter than the average popular science account.

/fredrick


Did you know?
If you drop a ball of negative mass, what way does it fall?
Before answering this question, I’m sure at least someone is asking ‘What is negative mass?’.
Negative mass is a purely hypothetical counterpart to normal, ‘positive’ mass. The idea arose
Science Box 
                                                                             2005-04-20

probably through an analogy of electric charges, or which there are both the positive and negative
variety. While no one actually knows if negative mass exists, or if it can exist, it’s always a good
pastime for physicists to contemplate the properties of their abstractions…

So, the first part in answering the question would be with inertia. If ordinary mass could be said to
have positive inertial properties, then negative mass should have negative inertia. The inertia of
normal mass is such that it is repulsed by a repulsive force, and attracted by an attractive force. It
follows, then, that negative mass would do the opposite, and would rather be pulled by a pushing
force, and pushed by a pulling force.

Then we have gravity, the favorite thing that science fiction writers like to speculate on when it
comes to negative mass. Gravity is an attractive force, always pulling ordinary matter towards it.
So, straightforwardly, it would appear that it would do the opposite with negative mass, repulsing it
and creating something of an anti-gravity device out of Star Wars. Gravity is mutual attraction. An
ordinary ball of positive mass attracts the Earth in the same way that the Earth attracts the ball; with
obviously different effects because of the size of the two. Newton’s law of gravity is

                                                     Mm
                                              F=G
                                                      d

 with m being the mass of the ball, M being the mass of the Earth (in this instance, of course), d be-
ing the squared distance and the product being the gravitational attraction. So, the trick with our
case is that m as a ball of negative mass is not a positive number and the product of –m * M will
also be a negative number, i.e. Negative, repulsive gravity. Negative mass is repulsed by ordinary
mass’s gravity…

So does this mean that a negative mass ball would fall upwards when dropped? Nope. As said
above, negative mass has negative inertia, meaning it is attracted to a repulsive force. The negative
mass ball falls downwards, just like any other type of ball. This is, of course, only extrapolation.
There is no real negative mass for physicists to play around with, so we can’t really know. How-
ever, unless there is some property of negative mass unforeseen, it should fall downwards unless the
gravitational properties or the inertial properties are the same as positive mass… however Einstein’s
General Relativity strongly suggests that they would be either both positive or both negative, indeed
that they are essentially the same thing.

/fredrick




"No one can do everything, but everyone can do something"

/Science Box staff