"Vulcan" and "Cerberus"...popular names for Pluto's moons

"'Vulcan' wins Pluto moon name vote"

February 25th, 2013

SpaceDaily

 In a voting campaign to pick names for two of Pluto's smallest moons one clear winner is "Vulcan," proposed by U.S. actor William Shatner of "Star Trek" fame.

Online ballot casting allowing the public to vote for the name of two recently discovered moons of the dwarf planet -- for now known as just P4 and P5 -- ended Friday, with Vulcan in first place followed by Cerberus.

Although a late addition to the candidate names the public could vote on, Vulcan piled up a big lead after Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk in the popular television series and movies, campaigned for the name on Twitter.

Vulcan was the home planet of Kirk's first officer, Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.

Officials at SETI, which conducted the public poll, said they considered it an appropriate candidate since Vulcan is also the name of the god of fire in Roman mythology.

"Vulcan is the Roman god of lava and smoke, and the nephew of Pluto. (Any connection to the 'Star Trek' TV series is purely coincidental, although we can be sure that ['Star Trek' creator] Gene Roddenberry read the classics,)" SETI scientist Mark Showalter wrote in a blog when the name was added to the list on Feb. 12. "Thanks to William Shatner for the suggestion!"

Although Vulcan and Cerberus won the name poll, the final decision on names for the moons will rest with the International Astronomical Union.

Astronomers have found five moons around Pluto so far, with three of them named: Charon, Nix and Hydra.

P4 was discovered in 2011, and P5 in 2012; both are only about 20 miles in diameter.

Vulcan [Wikipedia]

Cerberus [Wikipedia]


Name those moons...Pluto's children

Col. Griffith J. Griffith's contribution to astronomy

A preliminary sketch showing a plan for an observatory near Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. The sketch was done about 1932 by architects John C. Austin and Fred M. Ashley, who went on to design Griffith Observatory.

"A cosmic gift to L.A."

Col. Griffith J. Griffith had a life-changing experience when he peered through a telescope on Mt. Wilson. It inspired him to fund an observatory for the people of L.A.

by

Larry Harnisch

February 25th, 2013

Los Angeles Times

One night on Mt. Wilson about 1908, a short, powerfully built man with a handlebar mustache looked through the largest telescope in the world. What he saw transformed him, and would put Los Angeles at the forefront of a movement to make astronomy the people's science.

We may never know whether Col. Griffith J. Griffith saw the rings of Saturn or another celestial object with the then-new 60-inch reflector telescope, but we can be sure that it inspired his vision of a world-class observatory for the people of Los Angeles, allowing the masses a glimpse of the heavens.

"If all mankind could look through that telescope," he said that night, "it would change the world."

Griffith's contribution was not just his namesake observatory, but his rejection of the notion more common in his time that an observatory belonged on a remote mountaintop and should be restricted to scientists.

Griffith sought to make astronomy a public science — a notion embodied by Griffith Observatory, built near what is now the middle of the city, where it is accessible to anyone.

Or, as observatory Director Ed Krupp says: "Location, location, location."

The observatory has embraced this public-spirited view of science in other ways too: From its beginning in the 1930s, it was popularized by Hollywood, becoming a movie icon in its own right.

"Griffith had an inkling of the power of motion pictures and he wanted a motion picture theater of some kind incorporated into this public observatory," Krupp says. "The planetarium hadn't been invented at the time ... and so a movie theater was really the closest thing that he could imagine to an immersive experience in astronomy and in science."
The 1955 film "Rebel Without a Cause" made the observatory an international emblem of the city, but even before the building opened in 1935, it was used to film scenes in Gene Autry's bizarre cowboy-science fiction mash-up "The Phantom Empire," Krupp says. "At the time, the building seemed classic yet futuristic, and that made it a draw for science fiction," Krupp says. "It was, in fact, the palace of Ming the Merciless on the Planet Mongo in the Flash Gordon space opera."

Today, "its stardom attracts a steady stream of visitors from all over the planet," he says.

Griffith and the observatory were a main focus of a program titled "Making Astronomy Public, Los Angeles Style" held during the American Astronomical Society meeting held earlier this year in Long Beach.

Speakers at the meeting sought to expand the conventional view of Griffith, who donated about 3,000 acres for a city park in 1896, shot his wife in the head in 1903 and served two years in prison for assault with a deadly weapon.

He was a despised character in Los Angeles after the shooting, says Anthony Cook, an astronomer at the observatory who spoke at the conference. But although many have questioned whether the observatory was an attempt to buy back the goodwill of the city, Cook says the gift was sincere.

"He came out of San Quentin after two years really a reformed person. He stayed away from alcohol, he actually supported his ex-wife, any philanthropic enterprise that she wanted to do, helped his son maintain caring for her, and also turned his attentions to what he hoped would benefit everybody, which was by developing Griffith Park."

A onetime newspaper reporter who covered mining and became wealthy as an expert on the subject, Griffith remained a popularizer throughout his life. In drafting the observatory's detailed specifications, he had lengthy discussions with George Ellery Hale, who with Andrew Carnegie founded the first astrophysical telescope in Los Angeles, and Walter Adams, who later became director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory.

Although an observatory — or at least a tower with a telescope — had been suggested for the highest point in the park as early as 1897, it wasn't until Griffith's epiphany on Mt. Wilson that he broadened his vision into an ambitious plan for a large observatory and hall of science.

"Griffith was very civic-minded," Cook says. "He wanted to do things unifying the huge, diverse population settled in Los Angeles."

Before Griffith died in 1919, he established a generous trust fund to build an observatory in Griffith Park — when the time was right. Perhaps due to his lingering notoriety, nothing was done until the 1930s, when a handful of major U.S. cities began building the newly invented planetariums. But unlike those being constructed elsewhere, Los Angeles' planetarium would be a part of what is primarily an observatory.

A competition was held for the design of the building — Richard Neutra proposed a sleek Art Deco structure that raises tantalizing possibilities of what might have been — and prominent civic architects John C. Austin and Frederick M. Ashley were chosen.

The result was what the Smithsonian Institution's David DeVorkin — a former observatory tour guide — calls "the hood ornament of Los Angeles."

True to its public aspirations, the observatory emphasized showmanship. The facility's Hollywood connections meant it could tap skilled studio artists and technicians for exhibits and planetarium shows.

The philosophy from the beginning was to turn visitors into observers in a building full of scientific instruments, Krupp says. In fact, the $93-million renovation and expansion of the observatory in 2006 was guided by the concept that the entire building is an instrument.

Krupp returned to Griffith's famous quote on Mt. Wilson: "If all mankind could look through that telescope it would change the world."

It reflects Griffith's view that seeing into the cosmos could affect people personally, and perhaps transform society. That's what makes his observatory so special, Krupp says: "He wanted a place that would make the universe intelligible to the public through personal engagement with the sky."

Griffith Observatory website

Griffith Observatory [Wikipedia]

We may never know everything

"Explain It to Me Again, Computer"

What if technology makes scientific discoveries that we can’t understand?

by

Samuel Arbesman

February 25th, 2013

Slate

When scientists think about truth, they often think about it in the context of their own work: the ability of scientific ideas to explain our world. These explanations can take many forms. On the simple end, we have basic empirical laws (such as how metals change their conductivity with temperature), in which we fit the world to some sort of experimentally derived curve. On the more complicated and more explanatory end of the scale, we have grand theories for our surroundings. From evolution by natural selection to quantum mechanics and Newton’s law of gravitation, these types of theories can unify a variety of phenomena that we see in the world, describe the mechanisms of the universe beyond what we can see with our own eyes, and yield incredible predictions about how the world should work.

The details of how exactly these theories describe our world—and what consists of a proper theory—are more properly left to philosophers of science. But adhering to philosophical realism, as many scientists do, implies that we think these theories actually describe our universe and can help us improve our surroundings or create impressive new technologies.

That being said, scientists always understand that our view of the world is in draft form. What we think the world looks like is constantly subject to refinement and even sometimes a complete overhaul. This leads us to what is known by the delightful, if somewhat unwieldy, phrase of pessimistic meta-induction. It’s true that we think we understand the world really well right now, but so has every previous generation, and they also got it wrong. This is why scientists love Karl Popper, who says we can never prove a theory correct, only attempt to overturn it via falsification. So we must never be too optimistic that we are completely correct this time. In other words, we think our theories are true but still subject to potential overhaul. Which sounds a bit odd.

But when properly internalized, this can be wonderfully exciting. A professor of mine once taught a class on a Tuesday, only to read a paper the next day that invalidated what he had taught. So he went into class on Thursday and told the class, “Remember what I told you on Tuesday? It’s wrong. And if that worries you, you need to get out of science.” Science is always in this draft form and this is most clear at the frontier: where scientists work and why they find their inquiry so exciting.

As I discuss in my book The Half-Life of Facts, this is not always a process of completely forward progress, but overall we are improving our view of the world and reducing error in our understanding. This was delightfully encapsulated in a quote by Isaac Asimov: “[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
As we have improved our understanding of the shape of our planet, we have overhauled what we thought it looked like, moving from flat to perfectly spherical to an oblate spheroid. And along the way, we have reduced the amount of error in the measurement of our surroundings.

But whether or not science is always moving forward or whether we think we have the final view of how the world works (which we almost certainly do not), we pride ourselves on our ability to understand our universe. Whatever its complexity, we believe that we can write down equations that will articulate the universe in all its grandeur.

But what if this intuition is wrong? What if there are not only practical limits to our ability to understand the laws of nature, but theoretical ones?

On the practical side, it’s unsurprising to recognize that science might move less quickly than it should simply due to the massive size of what we know: A single individual can comb through only so much of the literature. For example, imagine there are two papers somewhere in the literature, one of which says that A implies B, and another that says B implies C. With the incredible growth of the scientific literature, it’s impossible for anyone to be familiar with all of the papers published in all scientific disciplines, let alone the new research in one’s own subfield. So these two papers remain uncombined, until a computer program finds some way to stitch these two ideas together, recognizing that A implies C, a discovery that was practically impossible due to the vast size of the literature.

These sorts of limits are exciting because we can construct algorithms to help us with these kinds of problems, in which we become able to discover in partnership with machines. But once shown such a computationally discovered insight, we readily can grasp its meaning and the explanatory power it can provide.

But what if it were possible to create discoveries that no human being can ever understand? For example, if I were to give you a set of differential equations, while we have numerical and computational methods of handling these equations, not only could it be difficult to solve them mathematically, but there is a decent chance that no analytical solution even exists.

So what of this? Does such a hint of non-understandable pieces of reasoning and thought mean that eventually there will be answers to the riddle of the universe that are going to be too complicated for us to understand, answers that machines can spit out but we cannot grasp? Quite possibly. We’ve already come close. A computer program known as Eureqa that was designed to find patterns and meaning in large datasets not only has recapitulated fundamental laws of physics but has also found explanatory equations that no one really understands. And certain mathematical theorems have been proven by computers, and no one person actually understands the complete proofs, though we know that they are correct. As the mathematician Steven Strogatz has argued, these could be harbingers of an “end of insight.” We had a wonderful several-hundred-year run of explanatory insight, beginning with the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, but maybe that period is drawing to a close.

So what does this all mean for the future of truth? Is it possible for something to be true but not understandable? I think so, but I don’t think that that is a bad thing. Just as certain mathematical theorems have been proven by computers, and we can trust them, we can also at the same time endeavor to try to create more elegantly constructed, human-understandable, versions of these proofs. Just because something is true, doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to explore it, even if we don’t understand every aspect.

But even if we can’t do this—and we have truly bumped up against our constraints—our limits shouldn’t worry us too much. The non-understandability of science is coming, in certain places and small bits at a time. We’ve grasped the low-hanging fruit of understandability and explanatory elegance, and what’s left might be possible to be exploited, but not necessarily completely understood. That’s going to be tough to stomach, but the sooner we accept this the better we have a chance of allowing society to appreciate how far we’ve come and apply non-understandable truths to our technologies and creations.

As I’ve argued, if it’s our machines doing the discovering, we can still have naches—we can take an often vicarious pride and joy in the success of our progeny. We made these machines, so their discoveries are at least partly due to humanity. And that’s exciting, as these programs of the future begin to uncover new truths about the universe.

They may just inject a bit more mystery into the world than we might have bargained for.

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

by

Samuel Arbesman

ISBN-10: 159184472X
ISBN-13: 978-1591844723

Farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman vs Monsanto

"U.S. Supreme Court Hears Monsanto Seed Saver Case"

February 22nd, 2013

Market to Market

PBS

America’s farmers have taken to genetically engineered seeds in a big way.

Modern marvels of the lab include herbicide-tolerant crops, developed to survive exposure to chemicals that previously would have destroyed them along with the targeted weeds.  And no herbicide-tolerant crop has enjoyed wider or faster adoption than Roundup Ready soybeans.

Monsanto first marketed its Roundup Ready beans in 1996.  One year later, the genetically engineered product was planted on 17 percent of U.S. soybean acreage.  And in 2012, Roundup Ready seeds accounted for more than 90 percent of U.S. soybean plantings.

But genetically engineered seeds are not without critics.  Consumer groups, organic food producers, and -- at times – even those planting genetically engineered seeds have found themselves at odds with Monsanto.

In most cases the battles are waged in the court of public opinion.  Increasingly though, the disputes are litigated in the judicial system.  And this week, a case involving Monsanto and one of its own customers was argued in the highest court in the land.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices were poised this week to uphold lower court rulings that favored agribusiness giant Monsanto in a case involving its patented “Roundup Ready” Soybean Seeds.

Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman was a regular customer of Monsanto, whose licensing agreements prohibit saving or reusing seeds once the original crops have grown.  By law, new seeds must be purchased annually.

In 1999, Bowman bought left-over product from a local grain elevator which sells the seeds for ancillary use such as animal feed and milling.  Instead, Bowman used the less-expensive variety for perilous late-season planting.

Successful in his gamble, the farmer continued the questionable practice for 8 years. But in 2007, Monsanto sued Bowman and won more than $80,000 in damages.

The issue for the high court now is to determine how far the patents extend. And Bowman believes the cheaper seeds he acquired from the elevator are no longer covered by Monsanto’s patents.

Vernon Hugh Bowman, Indiana Soybean Farmer:

“I didn't look at it as a loophole because I had always been able to go to the elevator and buy the seed, you follow me? So I just looked at it that when they dumped it in there that they had abandoned their patent. If they want to protect their patent, then it looks to me like it would be required -- they'd be required to have to separate it at the elevator and keep it separate.”

Bowman argues that Monsanto uses its clout as the world’s largest seed producer to bully small farmers into compliance.  Monsanto, on the other hand, claims it spent 13 years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing the seed, which was first introduced in 1996.

And while Supreme Court justices appeared likely to side with Monsanto, the case isn’t exactly a slam dunk.   

Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal: “Under patent law, if a patent holder authorizes the sale of a patented article or invention, after that first sale, the patent holder's rights in that invention or article or product are what we call exhausted. And the purchaser can do whatever he wants with it.”
 
In arguments at the high court this week, none of the justices seemed ready to endorse Bowman's argument that the cheap soybeans he bought at a grain elevator were not covered by the Monsanto patents.

Justice Stephen Breyer said Bowman could make many uses of the soybeans he bought from the grain elevator. "Feed it to the animals. Feed it your family or make tofu turkey." But Breyer maintained patent law makes it illegal for Bowman to plant them. "What it prohibits here,” he said, “is making a copy of the patented invention and that is what he did."

The high court is expected to rule on the case by June.


Farmer sued by Monsanto over soybean seeds

Deceased--Raymond Patrick Cusick

Raymond Patrick Cusick
May, 1928 to February 21st, 2013

Those over sized salt and pepper shaker-looking objects have been a devil-like nemesis of many Dr. Whos.

"Dalek designer dies aged 84"

Raymond Cusick, who gave the Doctor's enemies their enduringly terrifying appeal, has died after an illness

February 23rd, 2013

guardian.co.uk

The man who brought to life Doctor Who's greatest foes has died aged 84, his daughter has said. Raymond Cusick worked as a production designer on the BBC show from 1963 to 1966.

Terry Nation, who died in 1997, wrote the 1963 story The Daleks, in which the "satanic pepperpots" first appeared, but it was Cusick who came up with the machines' distinctive look, including the bobble-like sensors, eyestalk, sucker and exterminator weapons.

The Daleks have remained fundamentally unchanged in appearance in 50 years, and have remained the Doctor's most popular enemies even since the show's revival in 2005. On Twitter, Tom Spilsbury, editor of Doctor Who Magazine, paid tribute to Cusick's "timeless" design.

Cusick also worked on shows ranging from Z Cars, Dr Finlay's Casebook and The Forsyte Saga to The Duchess of Duke Street, When the Boat Comes In and Rentaghost. He retired in 1987.

Cusick's daughter, Claire Heawood, said he had been suffering from an illness and died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday. He leaves two daughters and seven grandchildren.

"Raymond Cusick, designer of the Daleks, has died. His Nazis on casters were a stroke of genius"

by

Tim Stanley

February 24th, 2013

The Telegraph

Farewell Raymond Cusick, who has returned to the great mothership in the sky. The designer of the Daleks passed away in his sleep on Thursday, leaving behind one of the greatest cultural legacies of the 1960s. The writer Terry Nation came up with the concept of a race of aliens that glide rather than walk, but it was Cusick who put metal on the bare bones of an idea. One story is that he had only an hour to do it and was inspired by a pepperpot sitting on his table. Cusick, however, insisted that he wanted to recreate the shape of a man sitting in a chair and only used a pepperpot as an example of how it might move. Either way, the design was revolutionary because it was so uniquely alien – a monster without humanoid shape is infinitely more terrifying than something you can shake hands with. It did, however, come with a handy plunger, which suggests that even Daleks can get blocked sinks.

These angry pepperpots were basically Nazis on casters. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1966), Nation imagined a London occupied by fascist aliens and it looked an awful lot like it might have done if Hitler had won the war: empty streets patrolled by robotic stormtroopers, plungers fixed in a steely “seig heil” and a ragtag army of defiant Brits hiding out in Baker Street Station. The Daleks were venomous racists who despised anyone who seemed different – imagining that the Übermensch of the future was a blob of jelly in a wheelchair. In Genesis of the Daleks (1976) we learn that they were invented to be a super race that could survive the after effects of a nuclear war. Once they were switched on, they turned against their own creator, Davros. Why? Because he didn’t look like them. The Daleks needed a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

It was only a matter of time before the Daleks found fault with each other: a plunger that was too long, a skirt with one too many pleats. By the time of Resurrection of the Daleks (1984), they had split into two factions. One, called imperial, was decorated like a suburban bathroom – cream and gold. The other, renegade, was battleship grey and black. Both accused the other of being insufficiently pure and the renegades were disgusted that the imperials sullied themselves by deferring to Davros. The World War II metaphor reached full circle in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), in which the two sides fought each other on the streets of 60s London. The renegades actually allied themselves with the leader of the local branch of the National Front. “You have to put your own people first,” intones one Nazi goon, underscoring the moral message of the Daleks that the purer you try to be in form the more corrupt you become in spirit.

The Daleks were the ultimate Dr Who villain because they complemented its philosophy. If the Doctor has a politics, it’s anti-authoritarianism. He’s the ultimate nonconformist – playing truant from his own people, dressed a century behind everyone else. By contrast, the Daleks were the ultimate conformists, to the point that they would destroy every last cell in the universe that didn’t look like their own. Unlike the Cybermen (essentially androids in fetish gear), the Daleks were enthused by their mission. The cry of “Exterminate” was so repetitive and ecstatic that it was almost orgasmic. It is entirely appropriate that one of the Doctor’s former companions posed with one in a men’s magazine. Both were naked.

You’ll notice that in all of the above I’ve quoted stories from the old series rather than the new. My relationship with the new series is rather like Arthur Scargill’s attitude towards New Labour – the project has been changed so much and so poorly that it isn’t worth following anymore. Part of the problem is that CGI has taken away the cheerful amateurishness of kid’s TV. The Daleks were conceptually terrifying but hilarious to watch as they drunkenly swivelled around, knocking down bits of set and waggling their plungers in the wrong direction. Today, they are so souped-up and smooth that they can even fly – taking away one of the finest gags in the English language: “How do you escape a Dalek? Run upstairs.”

But, then, I’ve always thought, why don’t the Daleks overcome their disadvantage by only invading places with lots of bungalows? If they had occupied Worthing rather than London, they’d have been unstoppable…

"Raymond Cusick 1928-2013"

by

Chuck Foster 

February 23rd, 2013

Doctor Who News

Born in London, Cusick first planned to be a civil engineer, but then after a stint in the army he planned to instead take up teaching. Having taught art, he then took an interest in design and joined Granada Television. This then led to a move to the BBC as a staff designer, which included being assigned to the fledgling Doctor Who. Here, he was to come up with the design of the Daleks, which arguably - alongside the TARDIS interior - is one of the key elements that made Doctor Who the success it was to become.

Talking to Doctor Who Magazine about his original design, Cusick said:

I spent the whole of one Sunday doing rough sketches of what I thought it should look like. I wanted to make sure it wasn't obvious how they worked, at the same time keeping them relatively simple. I didn't want either man shape or man height, so first of all I figured out that the operator would have to be inside the shell. Bearing in mind how long he'd have to be there, I thought it would be an idea to have him sitting, pushing himself along with his feet. A small actor in a sitting position would be only 4'6" high, which killed two problems with one stone.

However, as a staff designer he was never to receive royalties for his iconic realisation of Terry Nation's creations, and his enduring contribution took many years to be properly acknowledged.

As well as The Daleks, he would continue to work on the show during its first couple of years, designing more of the TARDIS in The Edge of Destruction, the futuristic/rugged worlds seen in The Keys of Marinus, The Sensorites, The Rescue and The Chase, the 'giant' items experienced during Planet of Giants, and even delving into history with The Romans; Cusick's last assignment was sharing the design load alongside Barry Newbery for the epic twelve-parter, The Daleks' Master Plan.

Outside of Doctor Who, he worked on a variety of BBC shows including Out of The Unknown, Dr Finlay's Casebook, The Pallisers, The Duchess of Duke Street, Rentaghost, When The Boat Comes In and Play For Today.

Upon his retirement he devoted a lot of time to his hobby, writing about the battles of the Napoleonic era. Retaining his interest over his creations, he was to be reunited with their modern equivalent during Doctor Who Confidential; he also recorded commentaries and appeared in features for the BBC DVD range.

Cusick had been suffering from a short illness. He leaves two daughters and seven grandchildren.

And, from the same source...

Raymond  Cusick was a designer for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He was best known for designing the Daleks, created by Terry Nation for the second Doctor Who story.

Born in London, Cusick became interested in engineering while still at art school, and began attending evening classes. However, his father wanted him to follow a more regular career, so Cusick took a course in mathematics and science, intending to become a civil engineer. Not finding this to his liking, he enlisted instead in the British Army and found himself stationed in Palestine but did not enjoy that experience either. On his return to England he completed a teacher-training course, but then obtained a nine-month position in repertory theatre at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cardiff.

In the late-1950s Cusick took a position teaching art but then noticed an advertisement placed by Granada Television for designers on a show, Chelsea at Nine, which was recorded at the Chelsea Palace Theatre.

Cusick then joined the BBC as a staff designer responsible for set design on a large number of Doctor Who stories, designing not just futuristic settings but also historical sets and diorama. Cusick worked on a large variety of television programmes for the BBC including comedy, variety, drama, single plays, and films.

As Cusick was a BBC employee at the time he designed the Daleks, he was on a salary and not paid royalties. Given the large revenue generated by merchandise featuring Cusick's Dalek design, some feel that he should have been paid a royalty (as was script writer Terry Nation, who created the concept of the Daleks but not their design or appearance). However, this was not in the terms of his contract. Despite this, the BBC did recognise his contribution with an ex-gratia payment. Cusick himself never asked for more money; just to be recognised as the designer.

In the late-1970s, he was a designer for the James Burke BBC programme Connections. He lived near Horsham, West Sussex. After retiring as an art director for the BBC he wrote - as a hobby - about battles from the Napoleonic era, and contributed to a number of specialist magazines and periodicals.

In July 2008 he appeared in an episode of the BBC Three documentary series Doctor Who Confidential, where he spoke of the original Dalek design and how the concept came to fruition. He also contributed commentaries and appeared in features for the BBC DVD range.

Cusick died of heart failure in his sleep after a short illness, leaving two daughters and seven grandchildren. He was 84 years old.

And some humor from Mr. Bean with the Daleks...

Raymond Cusick [Wikipedia]

Hanford Nuclear Reservation container tanks leaking...about 300 gallons a year

At a grocery near you soon.

"Washington State nuclear waste tanks 'leaking'"

February 23rd, 2013

BBC NEWS

Six underground storage tanks at a nuclear site in the US state of Washington are leaking, authorities say.

Governor Jay Inslee described the situation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation as "disturbing news".

But he stressed that there was no current risk to human health.

Nearly 200 ageing containers hold millions of litres of radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

"There is no immediate or near-term health risk associated with these newly discovered leaks, which are more than five miles (8km) from the Columbia River," Mr Inslee said in a statement.

"But nonetheless this is disturbing news for all Washingtonians," he added.

Last week, a leak was reported in one of the storage tanks. Officials said it was leaking at a rate of up 300 gallons (1,136 litres) per year.

They said that tests had not detected higher radiation levels near the tanks.

Established as part of the Manhattan Project in 1943, Hanford was home to the world's first full-scale plutonium production facility.

It was part of America's bid to build the world's first nuclear weapon during World War II.

The site produced the plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Production at Hanford continued until 1989.

Under a costly clean-up proposal, the waste will eventually be treated in a special plant. It will then be safely disposed of underground in stainless steel canisters.

Deceased--Robert Coleman Richardson

 Robert Coleman Richardson
June 26th, 1937 to February 19th, 2013

"Robert Richardson: Nobel Winner Dies, Leaving Legacy On Field Of Physics"

February 21st, 2013

The Inquisitor

Nobel winner Robert Richardson has died at age 75, leaving behind a legacy of groundbreaking work in the field of experimental physics.

The Cornell University professor shared a Nobel Prize for a discovery that involved work on low-temperature physics. His work contributed to research ranging from properties of microscopic mater to astrophysics, The Associated Press noted.

“Bob Richardson was an extraordinary physicist who used his deep understanding of the scientific enterprise to shape the course of research at Cornell and nationally,” said Cornell President David Skorton.

The Nobel winner died Tuesday in Ithaca, New York, from complications of a heart attack.

After growing up in Washington, D.C., Richardson earned his bachelor and masters degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a doctorate from Duke University.

He moved on to Cornell in 1968, holding a number of titles including Floyd R. Newman Professor of Physics and the university’s first provost for research from 1998 to 2003.

At Cornell, the Nobel winner was remembered as a mentor for students and professors alike.

“Bob … was a wonderful person and a great mentor to all in the low-temperature group at Cornell,” Douglas Osheroff, a then-student who shard the Nobel Prize with Richardson, told Cornell news services. “He was a role model for us all, not just in our research, but as mentors to our own graduate students.”

As the Nobel winner dies, he also leaves behind a legacy of pushing sciences in the United States. Richardson was co-author of a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report that called for the US to mobilize resources to ensure it remains globally competitive in science and technology.
 

"Robert C. Richardson Dead: Nobel-Winning Physicist Dies At 75"

February 20th, 2013

The Huffington Post

Robert C. Richardson, a Cornell University professor who shared a Nobel Prize for a key discovery in experimental physics, has died. He was 75.

Richardson died Tuesday in Ithaca from complications of a heart attack, Cornell said Wednesday.

He and fellow Cornell researchers David Lee and Douglas Osheroff were awarded the Nobel for 1996 for their 1971 work on low-temperature physics involving the isotope helium-3, which has contributed to research ranging from the properties of microscopic matter to astrophysics.

Richardson was born in Washington, D.C., earned his bachelors and masters degrees in physics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a doctorate at Duke University, where he studied with the physicist Horst Meyer and later served as a trustee.

He joined Cornell in 1968 and was named Floyd R. Newman Professor of Physics in 1987. He was also Cornell's first provost for research from 1998 to 2003.

"Bob Richardson was an extraordinary physicist who used his deep understanding of the scientific enterprise to shape the course of research at Cornell and nationally," said Cornell President David Skorton.

As co-author of the 2005 National Academy of Sciences report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future," Richardson called for the U.S. to ensure it remains globally competitive in science and technology.

Lee, now a physics professor at Texas A&M University, and Osheroff, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, both praised Richardson as a role model and mentor for colleagues and graduate students.

"Robert C. Richardson, Laureate in Physics, Dies at 75"

by

Kenneth Chang

February 21st, 2013

The New York Times

Robert C. Richardson, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics for coaxing a rare form of helium into a bizarre liquid state that had never been seen before, died on Tuesday in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 75.

The cause was complications of a heart attack he suffered three weeks earlier, according to Cornell University, where Dr. Richardson had been a physics professor since 1968.

In 1971, Dr. Richardson and two colleagues — David M. Lee, also a physics professor, and Douglas D. Osheroff, a graduate student — collaborated on a technically challenging experiment, exploring the properties of atoms a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

They cooled helium-3, a lighter variant of helium, to within a few thousandths of a degree of absolute zero. Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature, at which motion comes to almost a complete stop.

In that deep freeze, liquid helium-3 turns into what physicists call a superfluid — a liquid that flows without friction.

“I quickly tell people it has no practical applications,” Dr. Osheroff said in an interview on Wednesday. But the discovery has enabled scientists to study a variety of scientific problems, including basic quantum interactions at the atomic level. The Nobel Prize committee deemed the experiment a breakthrough in basic physics.

Decades earlier, scientists had discovered that helium-4, the common form of helium that fills balloons and airships, becomes a superfluid at minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 3.5 degrees above absolute zero. But because helium-4 has one additional neutron, it exhibits very different properties as a superfluid from what the Cornell physicists discovered.

In fact, the helium-3 data turned out to be so different from what theorists had predicted that the three researchers initially misinterpreted what they had created.

The experiment was also one of the first uses of nuclear magnetic resonance to generate images out of radio waves emitted by the atoms. That is the same principle that underlies the M.R.I. machines that doctors today use to peer inside patients’ bodies.

Dr. Richardson was later a member of the National Science Board, the policy-making body of the National Science Foundation. He was one of the authors of a National Academy of Sciences report in 2005 that urgently called for better science education and other measures to keep the United States competitive in a global economy.

Robert Coleman Richardson was born on June 26, 1937, in Washington, the first child of Robert F. and Lois Price Richardson. (A sister, Addie, was born two years later.) The family lived in Arlington, Va. His father, the son of a rural general store owner who traced his family to early Colonial times, worked for a telephone company; his mother grew up an orphan in North Carolina and earned a master’s degree in history.

Robert attended Washington-Lee High School in Arlington. “There was nothing exceptional about the math and science training at Washington-Lee,” he wrote in his autobiography for the Nobel Prize. “The idea of ‘advanced placement’ had not yet been invented. I did not take a calculus course until my second year of college. The biology and physics courses were very old-fashioned.”

He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

“I was not an especially diligent student but nevertheless obtained a reasonable education in physics,” he wrote. “I graduated with a B average and fourth in a group of about nine physics majors.”

At the time he thought he would go to business school, with the aim of becoming a corporate executive. But he remained at Virginia Tech for one more year to obtain a master’s degree in physics. Afterward he served in the Army for half a year rather than the usual two-year enlistment. He called his abbreviated service a “great piece of good fortune” when “the Army ran short of money.”

In the Army he received training in managing a platoon that repaired jeeps and tanks. The experience, he said, soured him on becoming an executive. He decided to return to physics and graduate school, this time at Duke.

There he began working with helium-3, which was then still a rare substance, a byproduct of the atomic age. The common form, helium-4, has a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons. Helium-3, with two protons and only one neutron, is extremely rare in nature. But it forms in the decay of tritium, a key ingredient of the hydrogen bomb.

With the advent of nuclear arsenals in the 1950s, helium-3 became available for physicists to experiment with. For his doctoral research, Dr. Richardson studied solid helium-3 using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques.

“He was very quick in understanding what was going on,” said Horst Meyer, his thesis adviser at Duke. “He was a very persistent and hard worker. All qualities that very much endeared him to me.”

Dr. Richardson moved to Cornell in 1966 as a postdoctoral researcher and was promoted to assistant professor two years later.

He served as Cornell’s first vice provost for research from 1998 to 2003 and was a member of the board at Duke from 1997 to 2007. He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Richardson is survived by his wife, Betty; his daughter, Jennifer Merlis; and four grandchildren. 

Robert Coleman Richardson [Wikipedia]