The Persuasive Wizard

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The blues melodies of George and Ira Gershwin never crooned so doleful as when they moaned for “Someone To Watch Over Me.”  My mother would have warned, “Be careful for what you wish.”

This week, the Wall Street Journal wrote that FBI agents had located and nabbed the “Hacker,” one Daniel Rigmaiden.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation found their man using an electronic box called Stingray, a Harris Corporation invention.  The Stingray masquerades as a surrogate cell tower, takes a call from a known cell number, and then, as the Stingray is driven about in a van, triangulates the cell phone’s location.  (Possibly, it does not require that the phone even be used, just turned on.)

Now, I have no knowledge of Daniel Rigmaiden or his heinous hacking crimes, but undoubtedly his lawyers will plead “violation of his civil liberties.”  Were any rights violated?

There’s probably no group farther to the left than the American Civil Liberties Union, and I’m not riding in their truck, but the Stingray did give me pause.  I began to count the pieces of technology that I, a law-abiding citizen, might consider as an invasion of my privacy.  In other words, how many pieces of equipment is Big Brother using to “watch over me?”

First, note that my biggest crime of this decade has been the “so-called” running of the red light on Park Road.  “The light was pink.”  Regardless, the spy camera took a photo of my plate and the police department sent me a copy, along with a bill for $75.  If I want to protest, they would be happy to schedule a court date at their convenience.  I don’t believe any human ever touched, viewed, or otherwise noted this violation; it was all done automatically.

So, the first thing I write down on my list, since this is fresh on my pocketbook, is that all the red-light cameras are an invasion.  Perhaps it was okay this time because the light was a deep, deep shade of pink, but what prevents the intersection spies from taking pictures of every car, all the time, just to keep records of who goes through the intersection and when they go through?  Nothing prevents that.  You ask, “Why would someone want to do that?”  Exactly.

Two murders have been solved in my fair city through the use of the Toll Tag records from the nearby toll road.  There are no toll “booths.”  There are no toll people.  None.  For a while the system used RFID (radio frequency identification) Toll Tags, but now they simply have cameras that automatically take a picture of the license on all cars going through.  A toll tag is not needed.  In fact, the sign above the lane says, “Keep Going.  We’ll Bill You.”  The software automatically recognizes the license number, automatically tracks down the owner through state registration, and automatically bills the owner.  No humans are involved.

I noticed that my bank has more video cameras than I have dollars.  Do they need to take my picture the entire time I’m in the bank, just in case?  Well, okay.  The convenience station where I buy my gas takes my picture, too.  Do they need it?  Why does my grocery store need to do that, also? And Walmart?  Does every store I enter, every parking lot I use, every road I travel, every intersection I cross need to keep a record that I’ve been there, just in case I happen to be a criminal?  Really?  Do they?

And now, Facebook is spending its resources on automatically identifying and annotating faces.  Ostensibly, you’re to be excited that your “friends” posted a photo of you doing whatever you were doing that you wish you had not been doing.  Every camera has a time, date, and (soon to be) location stamp.  That will put a whole new meaning to “what happens in Law Vegas stays on Facebook.”

I saw the infrared camera used at the World Series.  Now, that was cool.  (Ha. Ha.  Little Pun)  It showed a red spot if the foot of the runner touched the base. (How does it work?  When the toe contacts the base, that interaction generates a small amount of heat in the foot and that small amount of heat shows up on the IR camera).  I can hardly wait until those camera are installed everywhere.  Then, they will be able to inspect my physical prowess and measure my emotional state at the same time.

In only a few years, all the cars will have global positioning systems (GPS).  Marketing encourages that device to be able to store your driving habits, where you have been and when you were there.  In fact, one major automobile insurer has a device you plug in to keep track of your driving habits -speeds, locations, distances, and uses that information to adjust your rates.

Which brings us back to the cell phone.  The cell tower, itself, knows where you are.  Well, at least it knows which cell you are in and knows when you switch from one to the other.  (That’s why you leave your phone on.)  Triangulation from closely spaced towers is simple enough, already, without the Stingray.  A record of all your calls is kept, as I have learned from watching many reruns of Law and Order Criminal Intent.

There are other invasions astir.  It seems that before I can speak to a real person on the phone, I must be informed that the conversation is being recorded.  “Really?   I’m just calling to see which day you’re scheduled to pick up my trash.”  I have no idea why every business now finds they must record my every phone call.  (I’m certain there’s a lawyer benefiting somewhere.)  My bank does it, my credit card company does it, my bookseller does it.  It seems everyone needs to record every conversation.  Why?

The department stores already know everything I buy.  Those who are older than dirt can remember Ollie North being slammed for a pair of nighties he bought.  Those records are used routinely for targeted marketing.  (In Ollie’s case it was something his wife asked him to buy for their daughter but it sounded, oh, so different in court.)

My internet carrier knows everywhere I’m been on the web, every email I’ve sent, and every email I’ve received.

I suspect that I missed some things and you can write and add to the list.  One could argue that no one uses this information, “as long as you’re innocent.”  To which I say, “Then why collect it?”

I think I’ll get the ol’ six-string out and pluck a few bars of Someone To Watch Over Me.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

To get an automatic email reminder of every new post, send your email address to lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com.  Make the subject Notify Me. I will not sell or otherwise distribute your information.

Until last week, Texas had 25 universities that offered undergraduate physics degree programs.  On October 27, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) voted unanimously to phase out 6 of them, namely,

University of Texas at Brownsville

Texas Southern University

Midwestern State University

Prairie View A&M University

Tarleton State University

West Texas A&M University

The reason?  They did not graduate an average of five physics majors per year over the last five years.  THECB denies criticisms that these cuts in physics will undermine STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields.  The reasons stated are that dollars will be saved and the universities can focus their efforts on programs that graduate more students.

In early October, members of the American Physical Society (APS) met with THECB representatives and pleaded to retain these programs.  On Monday, three days before the THECB vote, the APS sent out an “URGENT ALERT TO THE APS TEXAS MEMBERSHIP” requesting every member to write THECB and tell them how devastating this will be for Texas.  The dozens, if not hundreds of pleas, were denied.

Texas Southern University is a historically black institution.  Prairie View A&M University is a historically black institution.  Brownsville is about as far south as you can go without entering Mexico.  Midwestern State University, where I serve as a regent, sits in the oil country of north Texas.  Ann Work, reporter for the Wichita Falls Times Record News wrote an article as to the impact to Midwestern.

I appreciate what THECB desires to do; they want to lower the cost of education.  But at what price?  And what is really saved?  I strongly disagree with the THECB decision and argue that it hurts most the poor, the first-generation college students, and the underprivileged.  I attach here the email that I sent to THECB that explains my position.

My disappointment is too great to say more at this time.  I welcome your comments.

(For details of US physics undergraduate degrees look here.  For details of US physics graduate degrees look here.)

Commissioner Parades,

You and I met several months ago when you visited Midwestern State University and spoke to our Board meeting.  As a member of the Board, I appreciated very much your concern and interest in MSU.  Your work with THECB is commendable.

I do understand the difficult choices that THECB must make.  However, the proposed closure of several physics programs, especially the one at MSU concerns me greatly.  I beseech you to reconsider.

Today, every technology we touch is derived from physics.  The global positioning systems, the cell phones, the computers, the iPads, the handheld devices, all these are the product of investments in physics education. While it is true that, today, engineers build those systems, the principles behind them are discovered and made known by physicists.  Engineers will make improvements, but without physicists, we stand no chance of competing with world technology.

I understand that one argument might be that “physics courses can still be offered, but just not a degree in physics” at those affected universities.  This does not accomplish what you think it might and is counter to STEM advancement in Texas, as I will explain.

The persons most affected by closure of physics at MSU will be the first-generation-students, Hispanics, minorities, and the poor.  The rich will send their physics students elsewhere, to Austin, to College Station, to Stanford, to Chicago.  The poor and the uneducated will have no choice.

Let me tell you my own story.  I was born in Electra, 30 miles from MSU.  My father worked in the oil field, and his father before him.  I was a first-generation college student.  I majored in physics and graduated from MSU.  I went on get a Ph.D. in physics at UT Austin, went on to become General Manager of a medical company, Vice-president of the first company in the entire world to launch a commercial imaging satellite, and a Chief Technology Officer of Raytheon, the nation’s fifth largest defense contractor.  None of this would have been possible without a physics major at MSU. None of it.  At least, not for me.

Your argument might be that students can get loans and go elsewhere.  I could not have gotten a loan because my family would never have thought we could pay it back.  We would not have believed the payback was there because we would not have known.  Plus, there is the uncertainty of not finishing.  You might argue that I could have gotten a scholarship.  But, such words are spoken by those who know, by those who are educated, already.  Unless you have been there, you cannot appreciate how difficult it is to know how even to apply when you have no idea what is out there or how to go about it and do not even know to ask for help.  These things are known by the educated, not by the uneducated.  Even if I had gotten a scholarship, my family could not have afforded the “extras” that are not covered.

And now, here I am.  Back at MSU trying to help others in the same situation as I, the first-generation-students, Hispanics, minorities, and the poor.   We need a physics major at MSU.  I ask you and the THECB to reconsider the situation for MSU and to put it on “probation” rather than “closure” so that we might have more time to invest (we do have people willing to invest) and create a larger program (we do have some creative ideas).

Unquestionably, Physics is difficult.  For a physics major, calculus is the beginning math course.  It goes on to Legendre polynomials, Bessel functions,  and Fourier transforms – subjects most people stumble over just in pronunciation.  Physics courses include classical mechanics, electromagnetic fields, quantum mechanics, and relativity.  These course are not taught at the same level, nor in the same way to engineers.  If we abandon a physics program, it takes years and years to get back up to speed, to get qualified professors to come to MSU, and attract students at the level to even begin.

So, I ask that THECB reconsider the situation at MSU and think about the people who will be most affected by “closure.”  I ask that you move to a decision of “probation” so that we might have time to put corrective efforts in place.

Thank you for your consideration,

Lynwood Givens, Ph.D. (physics)

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

I spent this afternoon deriving the Riemannian curvature tensor.  I started with the notion of parallel transport and applied the covariant-derivative around a small closed path.

Hold on!  Don’t hit the mouse button!  You don’t have to comprehend General Relativity to appreciate what comes next.  It can change your life.

It goes like this …

Observe technologists, like myself, like yourself.  They spend hours scribbling mathematical minutiae.  They exhaust nights checking C++ code.   They take weeks isolating a pathogen, months formulating one milligram of antigen.  If there’s a needle in the science haystack, they will chew and spit out every straw.

Technologist are born and bred to ferret details.

But, ask those same technologists to make a single phone call.  Request a report be filed.  Have them fill out paperwork for a delivery, or heaven forbid, require attendance at a managerial meeting.  Then, you will hear weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  You will see grown men and women cry, that is, those who have not rolled over to play dead.  You will be rewarded with procrastination personified.  The one thing you will not receive is action.

So, there you have the issue.  If the details are technical, however so great, technologists will exhaust a career solving them.  It the details are managerial, however so slight, they will spend a lifetime avoiding them.

Well, so what.  Everyone has this problem.  Hamlet was no better.

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Had the great bard been a technologist instead of a playwright, he would likely have written,

“Devil, Thy name is Detail!”

As a technologist, the first step toward resolving this problem, and it must be resolved if you are ever to be happy and successful, is to realize that those other details are also part of your job.  A very important part.  I tell college graduates that the best they can hope for is to find a job in which 60% of the job is something they love to do.  The other 40% is to ensure that they keep the part of the job they love.  I tell them that if the ratio ever becomes 40/60, then look for another job.  But, the important part is this.  No one, absolutely no one, gets to spend their entire day doing only things they like to do.  Not the CEO, not the president, not anyone.

The people around you are important.  As a technologist, it is not just about you.  Customers are important.  The managers are important.  The salespersons are important.  The janitors are important.  People are important and you must interact with them and appreciate their importance.  Whether peers, managers, suppliers, investors, or customers, that interaction will take about 40% of your time.

Most technologists hate that 40%.  They hate it.  So, here’s what you do.  Start the day out by completing those things you do not like to do.  Make the reports, attend the meetings, talk to the customers, make the phone calls to suppliers, whatever.  As much as possible, do all those dreadful things first.  That leaves the rest of the day to do the things you enjoy.  And you will enjoy them because the part you hate will be out of the way.  If you do it the other way around, you will never get to the 40% and it will metastasize like a cancer.  You will find yourself more and more uncomfortable with the job and its requirements.  Do not let yourself get to that point.

What was the reason you couldn’t eat your dessert first?  What was it mom said?  “It will spoil your appetite,” she said.

Trust me.  No one can chase a bowl of cherry cobbler with spinach.

Your work is the same way.  If you do the fun things, first, it will destroy your appetite for doing anything else.  Get the problems out of the way, first, and then spend the rest of the day with things you enjoy.  If you do that, you’ll find that procrastination disappears, management is happy, and you will actually have more time for the fun stuff.

You must practice exorcism, daily.  That Devil, he is in the details.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

Physicists shy away from political commentary.  Not because we are uninformed and have nothing to offer, quite the contrary, but because we are analytical and seldom politically correct.  I steer trepidatiously into the murky waters of social behavior and address the issue of a Palestinian homeland.

The standard argument for Palestinian Statehood does not begin with anything Palestinian.  It begins, not by inquiry and evaluation, but by unequivocally stating exactly why, how much, and where Israel should “donate” land for a Palestinian Homeland.

As a physicist, I prefer a more analytical approach

Having been quite alive in 1967, I remember the Six-Day War as it was, not as it often is portrayed.  What really happened was that after repeated attacks upon itself, Israel retaliated and took effective control of Jerusalem, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights – strategic locations.  It was a decisive victory against an attack by the aggressors Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.  I read the newspapers at the time.  I watched the television news reports.  I have been to the Middle East a number of times.  I have read historical accounts.  I have seen the Six Days War Memorial in Egypt.  I have seen all four countries, up close, and personal.

And now, every year since 1967, those losing nations (and other alied nations that would benefit economically, socially, and ideologically) have been crying, “Give our land back, give it back!  We weren’t the bad guys, really.  It’s not yours.  It’s ours.  Give us your land!”

Hold that thought for a second.

I lay claim to being 3/32 of Native American Indian: a triple-great grandmother on one side (1/32) and a double-great grandmother (1/16) on the other.  Now, 3/32 isn’t much, I admit, but Cherokee genes are hardy.  Notwithstanding, if I should inadvertently smash my thumb with a hammer, I would, indeed, cry out in considerable alarm.  Whereupon my lovely bride would question whether I have real Indian blood in me or not.  I would quickly counter by asserting that the whimpering she heard came from the 29/32 White Man, not the 3/32 Indian who was suffering nobly.  Which is also the reason why the taciturn 3/32 Red Skin is oft dominated by the garrulous 29/32 White Man.  Notwithstanding, the 3/32 rises to speak.

Anyone who has read US history would have a hard time ignoring the ill-treatment, mishandling, and current plight of the Native American Indian.  Without doubt, the American Indian is the most mistreated and least compensated minority in America.  We (the other 29/32 of me) shuffled them off to the worst land we could find and murdered any who objected.  As a minority, they are last in line on everyone’s list; they do not even make most lists.  As a tiny example, the US puts huge government money into the shrines of every minority, but one visit to the horribly neglected and pathetic Wounded Knee Battle Field will be an eye-opener to the injustice and unequal treatment of the American Indian.

In the words of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.  “Where today are the Pequot?  Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people?  They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man as snow before a summer sun.

So, what does all this have to do with the Palestinians?  To begin with, the Palestinians are a mixed group of factions, much like the tribes of the American frontier were three centuries ago.  Considering how the US treats the Native Americans, it is troublesome and incongruous that the US is so knowingly adamant and so quick to tell Israel “what’s right and what’s wrong.”  Contrast the situation of the US and the Native Americans with Israel and the Palestinians.  Israel gained her land by conquering an attacking aggressor.  The US  gained her land by being the aggressor.  There’s a big difference.

When the US attacked and confiscated the lands of the Native Americans, the US took the posture of the ancient Athenians who devastated tiny Milos.  Milos protested against the total destruction of their society by Athens.  Athens countered, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”  Lesson to be learned:  the US should take care of its own issues,  the plight of the American Indian.  Then, it might know better how to advise Israel.  Until then, let Israel take care of Israel.

So, how do the Palestinians find a “homeland.”

First of all, Israel is a tiny, tiny country.  It’s entire width is a nominal 50 miles.  (Many Americans commute farther than that to work each day.)  It is a scant 250 miles long, tip to tail.  The total land area is about 1/8 the size of Florida.  Of that, sixty percent is the Negev – about as close to nothingness as you can get.  The Negev makes West Texas look like an oasis: I’ve seen both.  Think about it.  The US wouldn’t even send the American Indian to the Negev.  (Would they?)  I find it illogical that anyone would want Israel to give up their tee-tiny plot to put a Palestinian state inside it.

Do not the Palestinians have any reasons for statehood other than annihilating Israel?  Surely they have other ambitions in life.

If so, there are better options.  Why not make a Palestinian state in a place where their culture is already accepted, where they can have more territory, and have potential to expand and advance.  Instead of putting a Palestinian state inside the 8,000 square miles of Israel, 5,000  of which is as barren as the moon, why not put a Palestinian state 10 miles away in the neighboring Arab countries where the demographics and politics are better suited?  If ten miles makes that much difference, then there’s something else astir.  It’s not about statehood or homeland.

What at the choices?  Lebanon is out.  It’s too small.  Jordan is over four times the size of Israel.  It’s a candidate.  Syria is 23 times the size of Israel.  Egypt is 48 times and Saudi Arabia is 100 times the size of Israel.  A serious effort by the Palestinians and their Arab allies would consider these and realize they are better options for the Palestinians.

If the Palestinians really want a state, and if the Arab world really wants a state for them, then the solution is obvious.  If this is just political rhetoric to continue a war lost in 1967, then the whole idea of Palestinian statehood is pointless.

Learn a lesson from the US and the Native Americans.

The 3/32 peaux-rouge has spoken.

The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

Each year, the Nobel Prize in physics is awarded to “ the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics.”  To ensure validity, said discovery is tested with time, that is, the winner is not selected until a number of years after the discovery.  While in other more subjective and politically-influenced fields the Nobel Prize has been made laughable and the butt of jokes, the award in physics is still the pinnacle.  If we review the winners, their achievements are breathtaking.  In 1932, for example, German Werner Heisenberg was awarded the Prize for creating quantum mechanics.  In 1935, English physicist James Chadwick for the discovery of the neutron.  In 1969, it was Murray Gell-Mann for identification and classification of the elementary particles that include the quark, the basic constituent of  protons and neutrons (and all other baryons and mesons).  In 2006, John Mather and George Smoot shared the prize for their discovery of the cosmic background radiation, a measurement that virtually assures the Big Bang creation.  The list goes on with unquestionable awards.

But, in 1907, the Nobel Prize was awarded for the biggest nothing in the entire history of physics.

It happened like this …

Forty years prior, 1867, two professors conducted an experiment at what is, today, Case Western Reserve (Cleveland, Ohio).  The problem they were trying to solve was this.  How does light travel to us from outer space (or from anywhere for that matter)?  It was well established that light was a wave.  Diffraction experiments clearly showed its wave property.  But, what was the transport mechanism?  What carried the wave?

For example, sound waves travel in air.  A massive tree falls in the forest.  The falling giant swiftly pushes air out of its way as it accelerates to the ground.  Branches break, timber snaps, and all of these actions rapidly push atmospheric air out of their way.  The air rushes back in to fill the void (like the wake behind a boat) and the pulsating air waves travel across the woods to where you stand.  The pulsating air waves vibrate a tiny membrane at the base of your ear canal, shaking an attached little bone and sending an impulse to your brain.  You hear the tree crash because the vibrating air carries the sound waves.

(Don’t even think it.  Don’t ask about the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it.  You could just as easily pose the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and all the loggers are deaf, will they still be able to see it?”  There is, decidedly, such a thing as a dumb question.)

Now, if you slept on the moon and put your windup alarm clock on the moon-rock beside you, you would slumber on in tranquility.  Oh, the alarm would go off, all right, but there is no atmosphere to carry the sound.  You will not hear the sound because there is no air there to carry the sound.  Sound waves must have a transport mechanism.  That mechanism does not have to be air, but it has to be something.  For example, sound waves can also travel through solid objects like a railroad rail.  (Haven’t you seen the old westerns where the Cheyenne Indians put their ears to the rail to warn the painted warriors that the Iron Horse of the white man is only 100 arrow-shots distant?)  Thus, sound waves need some medium of transport.

Water waves travel in water.  Drop a pebble in the water and you see the waves spreading out in concentric circles.  Waves form behind the motor boat for reasons we discussed above.  Ocean waves are disturbances in the water, mostly caused by wind blowing across the water and creating a disturbance that gets transferred by the wave.

The story of waves goes on and on.  (Ha. Ha.  Little joke.)

The problem is. then, what carries light waves?  Surely, there must be something.

For the ignorant, nomenclature is the first line of defense.  (We don’t know what it is, where it is, or how it works, so let’s give it a name and look like we know something.)

So, in 1887, a name it had.   “Luminiferous aether,” the medium that transports light waves.  The name quickly was shortened to just “ether,” without the “luminiferous” and without the beginning “a” in “aether.”

So it is that Albert Michelson (1852-1931), a professor at Case School, and Edward Morley (1838-1923), a professor at the contiguous campus of Western Reserve, decided to find the ether.  They built a simple device consisting of a coherent light source (a laser), two mirrors, one half-mirror (like the spy half-mirrors at the convenience stores) and a detector (a piece of paper will work).  The initial light beam is split by the half-mirror and the resulting beams are reunited like old lovers.  But, like old lovers, the reunited beams are out of phase and interfere with each other to produce an interference pattern.  The interference pattern is a series of light and dark fringes that you see on the piece of paper.  The whole device is called an interferometer, which means a device to measure the interference (pattern) of the two converging light beams.

I bought some mirrors and lasers once and set the experiment up in my garage.  The real problem is vibrations.  I used a big sand table, but the vibrations from the street were too great and my little interference pattern wiggled around like a worm.  Michelson and Morley used a one foot thick slab of stone about 5 feet square. They didn’t have automobiles and tractor-trailers rumbling down their streets, nor air conditioners vibrating their walls, nor refrigerators humming, nor washing machines sloshing.  Furthermore, to dampen all vibrations, they floated the entire stone slab on a bed of liquid mercury.  (The EPA was three-quarters of a century away.)  They controlled thermal variations by conducting the experiment in the basement of a large stone dormitory, keeping the temperature as constant as possible.  (I, myself, relied on the Texas summer remaining a constant 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 21 hours a day.

Anyway, with this apparatus, they investigated the alternating light and dark fringes formed by the intersecting light beams, measured the distance between them, measured the distances between everything else and, knowing the wavelength of light, they calculated the speed of light.  The concept is straightforward and easily understood.  Implementation, to the accuracy required, is extremely difficult.

So, they measured the speed of light, rotated the stone slab floating on the pool of mercury, and measured the speed again.  (Yes, this giant slab of stone could float in liquid mercury.  Review Archimedes’ principle.)  They kept rotating the slab around and measuring the speed of light.  Why?  Because, if the earth is moving through the ether, that would give the ether an apparent velocity relative to the earth (like air swishing by you when you swing at the playground).  With the ether swishing past the earth, the speed of light should be more in one direction than the other.  In other words, the light beam should travel faster upstream than downstream, which seemed obvious at the time.

It is to the great credit of Albert Michelson that he was one of the greatest experimental physicists ever.  No government grant or special-interest funding to chisel away at his integrity.  No “fudging” because he knew the direction of the earth’s rotation (west to east).  His experimental skills and integrity remain in a select class.  When he published his data, no one seriously questioned the data, only the conclusion.

The conclusion was that no matter which way the slab was turned, the speed he measured was always the same.  Michelson and Morley worked for months on this experiment, accumulating more and more data.  There was no change.  They could detect no difference whatsoever in the speed of light, no matter which direction the slab was rotated.  The experiment was null.  They found no direction for the ether.  They could not detect even the slightest movement of the ether.  They found nothing.

This result perplexed every physicist for the next 35 years.  All sorts of weird explanations were concocted to explain why the mysterious ether went undetected.  (It was dragged along by the earth; it had vortices, etc.)  It was not until 1905 that a young Albert Einstein offered the correct (but not really the most obvious) answer.  Michelson and Morley did not find the ether, because there is no ether.  The speed of light is a constant of the universe.  Forget about the comparison with sound and water waves.  That connection is bogus.  Light does not require a medium of transport.  There is no ether and never was.

So, thus, it turns out that in 1907, the Nobel Prize in physics went to Albert Michelson for finding nothing.

P.S. Purists will argue that Albert Michelson had many other significant achievements and this was only one of them, citing that the Nobel was “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid.”  Posh.  No one remembers what those were.  The truth is that without the null ether experiment, Michelson would be just another name in physics and not the winner of the 1907 Nobel Prize.

P.S.S. Purists will also argue that light does indeed have a medium of transport.  That medium is the fabric of spacetime, itself.  To which I say, “Jolly, Good,” and reserve the right to discuss that on another day.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers on Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, blog readers can get the book at a discounted price.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

We continue with the task of predicting research outcomes, how much it will cost and when it will be complete.  Most technologists have only a vague notion of how to do this and, subsequently, they do it inadequately, if at all.  This series has several parts because I want to keep each entry succinct and blog-readable.  If you follow these proven steps, though, you will know how to make good, reliable technology forecasts.  Part V is a toughie.  We consider the Critical Elements.

First a summary.  In Part I, we created a high-level list of research and technology tasks.  In Part II, we prioritized them.  In Part III, we assigned quantity – how much, how long it would take, and how many dollars we would have to spend.  In Part IV, we investigated how to calibrate your input mechanisms: how to read people and assess their capability to be forthright and honest.  Part V forecasts the critical elements.

Critical elements are those components of research that truly involve breakthroughs and new discoveries.  They require new and currently unknown solutions to problems of major importance to your project.  They demand invention and creation.  There will only be 2-3 critical elements in any research project, but they are so critical as to be the sine qua non of the entire project, without which none. If you cannot complete the critical elements, all is lost.  How, then, do you forecast creation, innovation, and discovery and how do you make reality align with your forecast

First, predicting creation, innovation, and discovery is why leaders of technology groups should possess advanced degrees in science and technology and not in accounting or business.  One cannot apply a set of numbers or take an average of things done in the past.  There is no pro forma equivalent of invention.  There is no algorithm.  There is no equation for compilation of thought.  It is not entirely deterministic.

On the other hand, it is not entirely random, either.  It is not alchemy, either.  Not smoke and mirrors.  What, then, is invention?

Plato was the first to identify maternal responsibility when he wrote in his Republic, “Necessity, the mother of invention.”

Paternity being left indeterminate throughout the Dark Ages, Galileo Galilei thought to enlighten us that “Doubt [skepticism, examination] is the father of invention.”

Jonathan Schattke, not knowing that DNA could provide truth, supposedly added, “Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true, but its father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife.”

By now, uncertain of the agents of conception, Thomas Edison sought toassure us that it, at least, was not a one night stand.  “I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.”

Nicolai Tesla was the genius who defeated Edison’s bid to light up the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.  Tesla invented the concept of modern transmission of electricity via alternating current, a huge savings in energy.  Edison was worse than a politician in his petty denigration of his former employee’s invention.  Tush.  Edison’s idea of direct current was demonstrably inferior in performance and immeasurably more expensive.  Tesla, who today has an almost cult-like following, may have been thinking of his victory over Edison when he responded, “I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success … Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

“Oooh.  I sense great labor pains in invention” [the author].

Mary (Godwin) Shelley is best known, now, for her Gothic novel, Frankenstein.  In her day, though, she was best known by her cavorting cohabitation with the married poet Percy Shelley, bearing his child illegitimately, and undoubtedly contributing immensely to the suicide of Percy’s wife.  Afterwards, Mary became the legal Ms. Shelley.  Today, in our politically correct bubble where tolerance trumps all virtues, we will consider only her statement, “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos.”

So, in summarizing these great minds we see that invention comes by a great need, constant iteration, creativity, knowledge, and hard work.  It requires that we make  considerable sacrifices to be successful.  Since only God can create something out of nothing, we mortals must gather the raw materials for invention, those being knowledge, a plethora of ideas, and opportunity.  We need considerable materials on hand because we don’t know which ones we require.  We thus must entertain many ideas and concepts so that we can derive the winning combination.

Or, as my good friend, George Carlsness once enlightened me, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.”

How does one make a technology forecast and then how does one forge that forecast into reality?

1. Create a master schedule.  This is the schedule you turn in to management, the decision makers, the powers that be.  In the master schedule give yourself and your team the longest period of time possible for the 2-3 critical elements.  Bargain and connive for the longest time possible.
2. Create an internal schedule that the team works towards.  For the 2-3 critical elements, the internal schedule should nominally reflect half the time shown in the master schedulefor those tasks called critical elements.  This is the schedule you publish to the team and the only schedule they ever see.  Make no exceptions.  This gives you a 100% buffer to work against: you will need it.
3. Define quantifiable, measureable metrics to gauge the progress of the critical elements towards the end goal, that being completion and success.
4. From day one, treat the critical elements as if they were already impossibly behind schedule.  Schedule extra shifts, order the late-night pizzas, cancel holidays and vacations, and err on excess personnel and equipment.  Plan on exhausting your resources and making a few enemies: it is unavoidable and part of success – see the quote by Tesla.  That not only means your team, but you, personally.
5. Monitor the progress of the critical elements daily.  Do this personally.  The 2-3 critical elements cannot be left to a subordinate.  Check on these elements daily as to quantifiable progress toward the goal.  You do not need to have a meeting and take up everyone’s else’s time but do whatever you must to get quantifiable, measureable data.  Guesses, hearsay, and notions count for nothing and are a waste of everyone’s time.
   1. Continually bring in fresh ideas and insights to the team.
   2. Ensure that all equipment, facilities, and personnel are in place and fully functional at all times, day and night, weekdays and weekends.
   3. Make decisions in a timely manner and stick to them.  A manager who cannot or will not make decisions is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  A manager who cannot or will not stick to his or her own decisions will kill the project and the flying shrapnel destroys all hope for success.
6. Watch professional baseball.  Learn the game and apply baseball rules to your management of the critical elements.
   1. In a professional baseball game, there are three sets of pitchers: the starters, the bull-pen, and the closer.
   2. The starter starts the game and, theoretically, will be able to pitch all nine innings and end the game.  This rarely happens, though, because a pitcher can only throw about 100 pitches.  (Read: there is only so much one person can do.)  The starting pitcher represents your initial ideas and your initial team.  You would hope that they complete their tasks, on schedule, as assigned, but this happens about as often as winning the lottery.
   3. The bull-pen is a set of pitchers who pitch when the starter begins to fatigue.  In a research project, that bull-pen represents new ideas and new methods to try, alternative plans, and different techniques.  Collect your alternative plans on day one.  Keep pitching new ideas and alternatives.
   4. If you cannot get unanimous agreement on the approach to use, set up 2-3 separate teams and have them each work on the project independently.  The teams will be either be successful, independently, or they will converge.
   5. Your biggest mistake will be keeping the starter in the game too long. If you are approaching the half-way point of the internal schedule (the fourth-way point of the master schedule), and still have no solution in sight, it is time to bring in the bull pen.  Do NOT wait until it is too late and the game is out of hand, and lost.  Do it NOW.  Start on day one to implement alternative plans, as and if, required.
   6. When you get near the end of the schedule you have to either fish or cut bait (an allusion to a pathetic red-neck joke).  In other words, know when it’s time to make the final decision and go with the closer.  Sooner is better than latter.
7. Learn to pray and start believing there is a superior power who is concerned about your personal needs.
8. Keep management appraised of your quantified, measured progress against the end goal.  Do not wait until it is too late to ask management for help.  They will usually volunteer help but they have to be part of the success equation.  Use their help to advantage.  No one want to lose the game.  Do not keep management in the dark.

That’s a great deal to absorb.  Cogitate on those steps and implement them.

Then, you can affirm with John (Hannibal) Smith of the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

The second printing of my book is now available.  Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers on Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  The publisher has permitted me to offer it to my blog readers, for a limited time, at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

Little Jack Horner

Sat in a corner,

Eating his Christmas pie.

He stuck in his thumb

And pulled out a plum,

And said, “What a good boy am I!”

(English Nursery Rhyme variously styled from Henry Carey, 1725)

There was never a plum in Jack’s dessert.  Nor was he eating a pie, really.  “Christmas Pie” was a pudding, a baked slurry embedded with raisins.  The mischievous Little Jack failed to mention the customary topping of brandy sauce, too.  That could explain his chipper mood and confusion of details.

Now, what does Little Jack have to do with you?  Well, Jack Horner, himself, isn’t so helpful, but his plum pudding shook the very foundations of science and brought on the technologies your generation finds inseparable – computers, cell phones, geopositioning, digital photography, and the like.

It goes like this …

Everything about us is composed of matter (mass).  Your computer, your desk, your associate, the bricks in the street, the glass in the window panes, and the rain falling on the umbrellas.  All substance is composed of matter.  As early as the Greek Golden Age, intellectuals speculated on what constituted matter.  Democritus (ca. 460-370 BC) is generally credited with coining the term atom (ατομος), meaning “indivisible,” but Democritus and twenty-three centuries of scientists after him were clueless as to what that might mean.  (It turns out not even to be true.  The atom, as we now know, is not an indivisible entity.)

So, no one had even a hint about the real nature of the atom: not until 1911.  That’s when the epiphany occurred and this year, 2011, we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of that discovery and the abandonment of the plum pudding.

Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was a Brit born in New Zealand.  By the age of 40, he had already received the Nobel Prize for his work in radioactivity.  He was curious about the nature of the atom and devised a straightforward experiment to determine the constituency of matter.

Fifteen years earlier (1896),  J.J. Thompson (1856-1940) discovered the electron.  So, at the time of Rutherford’s experiment, most physicists thought the atom a kind of “plum pudding.”  There were negative charges (electrons) spread about like raisins in a pudding of opposing positive charge.   Rutherford set up an experiment to measure whether the constituency of the atom was like a plum pudding.  It was even called the Plum Pudding model of the atom.

The experiment consisted of alpha particles (helium nuclei obtained from a radioactive source) shot though an ever-so-thin piece of gold foil (hundreds of times thinner, even, than than the aluminum foil in your kitchen.)  The notion was that most of the alpha particles would go virtually straight through, making a “circle” of impact immediately behind the gold foil.  It would be much like a pistol firing thousands of bullets into a bulls eye printed on a piece of paper. The bullets go straight through the paper and the impact holes are variously distributed about the bulls eye.  Not knowing exactly what to expect, though, the prescient Rutherford constructed a circular detector all about the gold foil so he could detect the electrons at whatever angle they came off.

Well, lo and behold, most of those alpha particles did go straight through, as expected, but some of them came bouncing back at highly oblique angles.  Now, if the raisins in the pudding were really electrons (think BB’s) and you hit an electron with an alpha particle (think cannon ball), you don’t expect the cannon ball to come flying back in your direction.  Alpha particles are 7,300 times more massive than electrons.  The cannon ball and BB comparison are scarcely an exaggeration; the bullets and the paper target are apropos.

How did Rutherford explain the cannon ball bouncing back from the BB or, rather, the alpha particle being deflected by the electrons?  To start with, he abandoned the plum pudding model.  The alpha particles were not deflected by the electrons.

Rutherford’s explanation?   The atom had to have almost all of its mass concentrated at the center.  In terms of mass, the electron, then, was an insignificant player.  That was an astounding result and totally contrary to what anyone thought.  (The proton would not be discovered until several years later and the neutron not until 21-years later.)  Of course, today we know that 99.9% of the entire mass of the atom is concentrated in the nucleus.  But, in 1911, no one had any notion the nature of the atom.  Rutherford correctly reasoned from his experiment.

Rutherford’s experiment and critical analysis were the true beginning of the modern day model of the atom.  His experiment is referenced in every physics class in the world.

Little Jack would have awarded him the Christmas pie.

My book is currently off-line while the publisher goes through a second printing.  The new books will be available in about ten days.  At which point, order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for a low price of $12.95.  The publisher has permitted me to offer it to my blog readers, for a limited time, at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

In the media and on the political stage, it is popular to posit science as having all the answers.  A few mass-appeal-scientists do put considerable effort into promoting this myth.  Watch Discovery Channel.  Much of their speculation is leveled against religion, hoping, for reasons that baffle me, to dispel any notion of the Divine.  However, physicists, cosmologists, and biologists know full well that they do not have all the answers and freely admit this among themselves.

There are a great many fundamental unknowns in science.

You happen to be living in a special period of time in which one of the greatest and most mysterious scientific discoveries in the entire history of mankind has been made.

It happens thus…

This week, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics went to three scientists; Saul Perimutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, CA), Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), and Brian Schmidt from the Australian National University. (Make sure you get this right at the office party.  You don’t want to look stupid.  Search for a conversation in which to interject this news, between football and Viagra is a good candidate, and then make sure that you call it Johns (correct) not John (incorrect) Hopkins.  There’s no apostrophe.)  All three physicist will share a prize of about $1.4M.

So, what did they do?

You have to start with a little background.  (The details are in my next book, currently in writing, but I’ll give you a preview of it here.)

In 1916, Albert Einstein published what is now called the General Theory of Relativity. In this theory, Einstein had an equation.  (Really, it was sixteen coupled equations, but mathematically they can be convolved to look like one general solution.  I was temped to include the equation here, to show you what it looked like, but a publisher once cautioned that if you show even one equation, all the readers die and no one will read your book.  So, for those who care nothing about the sanctity of life, click here.)  Einstein’s equation showed that the universe was expanding.

Uncharacteristically, Einstein lost faith in that part of his theory and introduced a “cosmological constant” (read: fudge factor).  He, and most physicists of his day thought that the universe was static, that all things were in equilibrium and nothing was changing (on a macro scale).  Well, it was not long before astronomer Edwin Hubble (the man the Space Telescope is named after) and others collected data that the universe was expanding.  Einstein abandoned his cosmological constant in 1932 calling it “the biggest blunder of my life.”  He acknowledged, unequivocally, that the universe was expanding.  What it means is all the stars (like our Sun) are moving away from all the other stars.  By the 1950’s this led to the theory of the Big Bang.  All data now showed that there was a single point in time, perhaps in space, where the universe began.

Every scientist now believes in the Big Bang.  (The theory was widely rejected at first because Georges LeMatire, a Belgium priest and considerable mathematician, first calculated that the universe had a beginning.  It took more than a decade for science to accept this, in large part because it sounded “too religious” seeing as how it came from a priest and reeked of creation.)

So, if you were in school in the 1960’s you would have been taught that the universe began with a Big Bang some 14 billion years ago (give or take a billion).  The real question at that time was would the universe keep expanding indefinitely or was there enough mass to attract it all back together, to collide again and maybe even produce another Big Bang?  The data showed that the mass of the universe was just at that critical point, that it could go either way.  No one could say.

(We now know that even if it attracted back together, there could not be another Big Bang.  Sorry, I cannot diverge from this current story.)

American Poet Robert Frost (1864-1963) captured the opposing views as early as 1923 when he wrote Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Well, by the early 1980’s it became clear that all was not so clear.  When cosmologists calculated the movement of stars and galaxies, they discovered something absolutely astounding.  Without doubt, there was “mass” in the universe, considerable mass, that we could not see or detect by any means except by its gravitational attraction to mass we can see.  This possibility had been postulated as early as the 1930’s, but now we had to come to grips with its true existence.  This un-seeable and otherwise undetectable mass was given the name “dark matter.”  To make it even more interesting, there was not just a tiny bit of it here and there, it existed all over the universe and in vast, vast quantities.

(Strike one for the religious leaders who slept through this opportunity.)

So, in 1987, our just recently named Nobel physicists began to search for distant stars to calculate the rate at which the universe was slowing down, mostly due to all this dark matter that clearly should be slowing it down and bringing it all back together.  The world was probably going to end in “fire” (another Big Bang of sorts).  They worked and worked, separately, with each thinking the other was researching down the wrong path.

Eleven years later, 1998, the three independently published the same conclusion.  The data were clear and unambiguous.  The results were so astounding that they were awarded the Nobel Prize last week for this work.  (The scientific community waits many years before awarding the Nobel Prize to make sure the discovery is correct and documented by others.)  You ask, “What was their discovery that was thus worthy of the coveted Nobel and so astounding that it is epochal?”

They discovered that the universe is not slowing down in its expansion, nor is it stationary and standing still.  No, it is not slowing down, it is expanding, true.  But, it is accelerating in its expansion, and at an unbelievable rate.

“What?  Who asked for that,” they questioned?

Too bad Robert Frost was already dead.  He could have whispered, “Ice.”

What is causing this acceleration?  Well, after years of data collection and research it is apparent that there is some energy out in space, yet undetected except by the observed accelerated expansion,  some mass-energy that is accelerating the expansion of the entire universe.  Something is pushing the matter out farther and faster, not attracting it. Something is repelling gravity.  It is some type of mass, or energy, (mass-energy) that is gravitationally repulsive, not gravitationally attractive like all the other mass we know.  It is called “dark energy” as you would have guessed.

(Strike two for the religious folks who watched this one go right over the plate.)

The award of the Nobel Prize cinches it.  It is accepted, almost unequivocally, by scientists, that the universe is accelerating in its expansion.  To top it all off, the data show that as much as 75% of the entire mass-energy in the universe is dark energy, and 21% is dark matter.

That means that the universe we see and feel, all the universe we love and have come to know, represents only about 4% of all the stuff that’s out there, the 96% we cannot see and feel or detect, yet, by any means except it’s gravity, its presence.

There’s something else out there.  It’s gigantic, and it’s everywhere, and it’s pushing the universe apart to be there.

What is all this other stuff?  What is it doing out there, where is it going, and why is it such a hurry to get there?

(Ask yourself, too, “Where did all the space come from that the universe is accelerating into?”)

Will the religious leaders stand there for the strike out?

And, you thought Global Warming was important.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for a low price of $12.95.  The publisher has permitted me to offer it to my blog readers, for a limited time, at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

Shutting Down the Tevatron sounds like a new movie about the demise of the Tron brothers.  It could not possibly be the plot for a movie, however, because the sad ending would discourage all attendees.

The Tevatron is an humongous machine built in 1985 at Fermilab.  At that time, it cost $120M but the current total investment would easily exceed a billion dollars.  (Of course that’s counting the tens of thousand of technology jobs it produced and the money that went into US companies to build and maintain the facility.  Be circumspect how you evaluate “cost.”  It certainly produced thousands more real jobs than the silly programs currently headlining the newspapers and costing considerably more by the same measure.)

Fermilab is one of 13 National Laboratories, this particular one being about 40 miles west of Chicago.  (Other National Labs include names like Los Alamos, Sandia, Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge).  Fermilab is named after physicist, Enrico Fermi, (Italian, 1901-1954) who won the 1938 Nobel Prize for his “discovery of new radioactive elements.”  Fermilab is specifically chartered to conduct basic research in high energy physics.

The Tevatron is a machine for putting a tera-electron-volt (10¹² eV) of energy into a stream of protons, sending them around a four-mile track and then colliding them.  A “tera” is one million million electron-volts of energy.  That sounds like a lot of energy, but the electron-volt (eV) is tiny, tiny.  In macroscopic terms the 2 TeV Tevatron produces only about one ten-thousandth of one millionth of a Calorie – the kind you consume by the hundreds at Whataburger.  “What?”  You say.  “A half-billion dollars for a 40-foot tall machine that produces one ten-thousandth of one millionth of a Calorie of energy?”

Well, “Yes.”  But, the problem is not producing that tee-tiny amount of energy.  It’s putting that tee-tiny amount of energy into one proton.  That proton doesn’t think it’s tee tiny because it kicks butt around the track at fractions of the speed of light.

Why would someone want to do that?

To discover how nature works at a fundamental level.  And, if we can discover how nature works, we can discover how we work and what we can do about it.  We can create new ideas that advance our existence and our livelihood, that’s why.  Many of the medical treatments and diagnostics we use today are the product of what was then research into the fundamental behavior of matter.  Some of you are alive to read this because of such fundamental research.  Similar fundamental research is responsible for every electronic device you own, computers, navigation, cell phones, and whatever you are using to read this blog.  Technology is essential to our existence.  (If you don’t think so, then let’s have the government confiscate all computers and cell phones and then give me an opinion.)

Rest in Peace, noble Tevatron.

Last week, the government shut down the Tevatron.  It’s heir apparent was once the Superconducting Supercollider, but congressional wisdom aborted that back in 1993.  The Superconducting Supercollider was aborted while hardly even a fetus.

So, without the Tevatron, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland attracts all the research in high energy physics.  Yes, Geneva, Switzerland.  (That’s not in the US.)  The LHC is the new heir for high energy physics.  LHC came to life a year or so ago.  It is not a product of US technology or ingenuity, but our scientists are flocking there to work on it.  That means more jobs lost in the US and more technology leaving our country.  And this technology at the very fundamental levels of physics.  The level that produces major jobs for the future.

Oh, to be sure, some US physicist will make a (joint) discovery that will fill the US newspapers.  No doubt, Congress and the Administration will credit someone with the greatest discoveries since Einstein.  But, it won’t be supported by US technology.  Those won’t be US technicians running and maintaining the equipment.  They won’t be US grounds keepers and janitors and administrative assistants, security personnel, and facilities managers, supply chain experts, contractors, painters, plumbers, and technical publications.  It won’t be US grocery stores and markets around the facility. Shall I go on?  Those are not US jobs and it is not US technology.

You can argue about cost.  You can wage politics.  But, there’s no arguing that fundamental technology is being driven out of the US.  Our public policies are creating high-paying and high-benefit government jobs and a slew of short-term minimum-wage jobs.  We are salvaging our bulging banks and ballooning our service companies instead of starting the technology engines that generate real jobs and keep them coming in the future.  We are killing our technology and throwing out the babies (yes, with the bath water).

The Tevatron is just the latest example.  I can only pray that it never rests in peace.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for a low price of $12.95.  The publisher has permitted me to offer it to my blog readers, for a limited time, at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

On June 30, 1905 a 26-year old Albert Einstein, working in the Swiss Patent Office, submitted a paper to what then was the most prestigious physics journal in the world, Analen der Physik.  The English translation of the title being On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Over the next several years, the theory he proposed in that paper gained the name Special Theory of Relativity (to distinguish it from an expanded General Theory of Relativity he published eleven years later).  An outcome of that 1905 theory, validated by a century of experiments afterwards, is that the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) is an ultimate speed that no particle having (rest) mass can ever achieve.  Approach, yes.  Achieve, no.

After more than a century of validation, scientists agree and firmly believe that nothing, absolutely nothing with (rest) mass can travel faster than the speed of light.  This property has been proven over and over and is demonstrated every second of every day.  Every global positioning satellite (GPS), every electronic device from cell phone to iphone, every planet and every star, as far as we can tell obeys and confirms this law.  No particle with (rest) mass can travel faster that the speed of light.  None.  Nada.

Within the last month, however, there are validated data, made by respected physicists, that measures neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light.  Is the data valid?  Can it be that something with (rest) mass actually travels faster than the speed of light.  Or, it in an error in measurement?

First, I must explain what a neutrino is.  Most readers will at least remember learning that the atom is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons.  If that’s all you remember, you’re back at about 1930.  Between the 1950’s and early 1960’s, physicists discovered that there were not just proton, neutron, and electron, but hundreds, literally hundreds, of elementary particles that are either in the atmosphere or are part of the nucleus of every atom.  They have classifications like hadrons, leptons, and muons and individual names like Kaons, Pions, Lambda, Xi, and Tau.  In  the midst of these hundreds of particles is a tiny, tiny particle called the neutrino.  First postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, the neutrino was not verifiably detected until 1956.

Most of the neutrinos intersecting the earth emanate from the sun and there are a bazillion of them.  These little neutrinos are so numerous that if you held your thumbnail out in the sunlight, more than 65 billion neutrinos would pass through your thumbnail every second. We have yet to detect any interaction of a neutrino with matter, except a direct collision, and those are extremely, extremely rare. The neutrino is so tiny that if the 93 million miles between the Earth and the Sun were entirely filled with lead, only one or two neutrinos would actually collide with any lead atoms.  Most would pass right on through like there was nothing there.  Put it this way.  Imagine there are only two birds on the entire earth, tiny finches, and they can neither smell, hear, or see.  Imagine that these tiny finches could fly anywhere from ten feet above the earth to 100,000 feet.  What is the probability that those two would collide in midair somewhere?  Now, you understand how tiny and non-interacting is the neutrino.

For a long time, it was thought that the neutrino was massless, like light beams.  Now, however, we know that the neutrino does have a tiny, tiny (rest) mass, although it is so small we can only put a lower bound on how small, not actually measure it (yet).

Now the exciting part – maybe.

Scientists in Geneva, Switzerland may have clocked neutrinos traveling faster that the speed of light.

In the latest experiment, physicists at the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, fire neutrinos through the earth, under the Alps, to a detector in Gran Sasso, Italy some 440 miles away.  As we said, there are almost no collisions, so the Alps might as well be invisible.  Using GPS and atomic clocks, the scientific team clocked the neutrinos as traveling ever so slightly faster than the speed of light, ever so slightly.

This is not the first time this has occurred.  Similar measurements were taken in 2007 at Fermilab outside Chicago and similar results were reported.

Is this true or are there errors in the measurements?  Today, no one knows for sure.  No physicist actually believes that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light, yet no physicist has yet been able to show what might be wrong with the measurements, either.

Now, if we do discover that something can travel faster than the speed of light, well, we’ll not only have to rewrite physics, but who knows what else might come out of that Pandora’s Box.  That would almost be too exciting to imagine.  The impact to science would be HUGE.

At this point we can only say that it is a mystery how two separate measurements, taken years apart could show that something with mass can travel faster than the speed of light.  It is a mystery where the error might lie.  It is a mystery whether there be any error.

Perhaps the data are real?

Personally, I believe that an error will be found in the data but that’s the excitement of physics and the cutting edge of today’s discoveries.