WHAT'S NEW for Apr 26, 2002

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

For your information and amusement...



WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 26 Apr 02   Washington, DC



1. TOURIST CLASS: ANOTHER GUEST CHECKS IN AT THE ISS SPACE SPA.  

South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth paid the Russians

$20M up front for a week at the resort.  Dennis Tito, who became

the first space tourist a year ago, was snubbed by NASA.  He was

not allowed to train at the Johnson Space Center, or permitted to

enter U.S. modules on the station unless accompanied by an adult. 

To make his vacation truly lousy he had a sick stomach the whole

time. Shuttleworth, however, could train at Johnson and will even

be allowed to play with the computers.  You might think tourism

would be a great way to pay off the cost overrun on the station -

- just another 200 guests would do it.  Alas, the transportation

is not free.  The budget for the shuttle is $4B.  For that, NASA

manages to launch a shuttle about four times a year.  That comes

to about $1B per launch or 50 times the going rate for a week at

the ISS.  Using the space station as a fantasy adventure for the

too rich is not what taxpayers thought they were buying, but

there's really not much else you can do with a space station. 



2. THE UNIVERSE: AGE DISCREPANCY RESOLVED, NEUTRINOS FOUND.  A

few years ago, the media delighted in reporting that stars had

been found that were much older than the universe.  Reporters

would call and ask, "how can you explain that?"  The answer was

simple, "somebody is wrong."  Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has

been used to make an age measurement based on the cooling of a

white dwarf.  It puts the age at about 13 billion years, which is

consistent with most estimates.  Some still think it might be

even older, but at least the contradiction is gone.  Meanwhile,

at the Sudbury Observatory, deep inside the Creighton Nickel Mine

in Canada, scientists from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. have for

the first time measured the total solar neutrino flux.  Result?

Neutrino oscillation is real; neutrinos really do have mass.



3. NO BIG BANG?  AN OSCILLATING UNIVERSE IS PROPOSED.  Well, the

creationists have always said there was no big bang.  Now we're

hearing it from couple of serious physicists, but creationists

will like this theory even less.  In a paper that will appear in

Science magazine, Neil Turok of Cambridge, and Paul Steinhardt of

Princeton, have proposed an oscillating universe that expands and

contracts in an eternal cycle.  In one form or another, this idea

has been around for a long time.  But according to today's Wall

Street Journal, the authors show that in their model things like

inflation, dark energy and cosmic inflation emerge naturally, and

the theory does not have to explain the beginning of time.  I do

not know if Science embargoed the Steinhardt and Turok paper. 



4. OBITUARY: Victor Weisskopf, a great and beloved physicist died

Monday at 93.  He worked on the Manhattan Project and then warned

the world of the consequences of using nuclear weapons.



THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND  and  THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY

Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the

University or the American Physical Society, but they should be.

-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

We've moved!  Please note our new address:

102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

.....................................................

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