Eureka! Vol. 1 - Thayer Academy Science Students

EUREKA!

VOLUME 1

2015-2016

EXPLORING THE FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME

A NEW COLONY STAKING CLAIM TO THE UNEXPLORED MARTIAN FRONTIER

SHORTCUTS THROUGH SPACE Investigation into the mystery of wormholes

CHERENKOV RADIATION

Explaining the workings of Cherenkov’s discovery

THE GREAT INVENTOR

A look into Tesla’s most famous inventions

SEEING LIGHT IN THE DARK

Observing and examining cosmic rays and their origins THAYER ACADEMY

ARTIFICAL LIMBS

Exploring the future of prosthetics

COPYING LIFE

Discovering new ways to duplicate Earth’s lifeforms

ELUSIVE DARKNESS

Detecting and locating dark matter

NEW ELEMENTS

Searching for new elements in the island of stability

EUREKA! CONTENTS EDITORS NOTE 03 SPECIAL THANKS 04 FINDING THE ELUSIVE 06 DARK MATTER Searching for dark matter

REBUILDING THE HUMAN 09 BODY The history of prosthetics

WHO WAS NIKOLA TESLA 14 The famed inventor

THE NEW ELEMENTS: 16 SEARCHING FOR A MAGIC ISLAND Searching for new elements

CLONING 19 Duplicating the genome

COSMIC RAYS AND 22 SUPERNOVA REMNANTS The hidden power of the universe

SENDING MAN TO MARS 26 Journey to colonization

WORMHOLES 27

Shortcuts through space

CHERENKOV RADIATION 28 The mysterious blue glow

BIBLIOGRAPHY 32 ________________________ 2 | Eureka!

The Thrill of Discovery Naming our magazine was not a task that we took lightly. After all, we couldn’t go back and change it if we made a mistake. We finally settled on “Eureka!”, which comes from an old tale about the Greek mathematician Archimedes. Sometime between the years 300 and 200 BCE, the story goes, King Hiero of Sicily gave a goldsmith a sizable amount of gold to make him a new crown. After receiving the crown, Hiero grew suspicious that the smith had replaced some of the crown with less valuable silver, keeping the extra the gold for himself.

Hiero instructed Archimedes to determine whether or not the crown was pure gold while leaving it intact.

Archimedes thought and thought, but could not find a solution. But one day, while entering a communal bathtub, he noticed that the water rose as he entered. Archimedes realized that because silver is less dense than gold, the goldsmith would have needed to add more silver to make up for the weight of the stolen gold and that a partially silver crown would have more volume, and therefore cause the water to rise higher, than a block of pure gold the same weight. Excited by this discovery, Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub and ran home naked, shouting “Eureka!”, Greek for “I’ve found it!”, all the way. While this legend is most likely a myth, our goal in writing Eureka! is to share that same thrill of discovery with ourselves and with you. These student writers have done an incredible job and we hope that you learn as much reading this magazine as we did making it. We invite you to read on and to discover more!

Editors-in-Chief Tessa McCabe Matthew Gilbert

Design Director Dat-Thanh Nguyen

Contributors Brianna Cedrone Charlotte Nickerson Emily Feng Mia Vaida Ruby Lippert Huy Nguyen

Enjoy!

Tessa McCabe Matt Gilbert Editors in Chief

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SPECIAL THANKS

Mr. Formato

Ms. McGurn

In the fall of 2014, Mr. Formato called a few students in for a top-secret meeting. There, he shared his plan to start a small collection of student-written science articles on topics that would be of interest to our peers. Little did we know then that his marvelous idea would evolve into a whole magazine. For those of you who don’t know Mr. Formato, he worked for many years at Thayer as a physics teacher, but he is so much more than that; he is one of the most intelligent and caring men we have ever known. We would like to thank him for inspiring us to undertake this endeavor and for sparking our interests in the incredible world of science.

After Mr. Formato unfortunately left Thayer, Ms. McGurn reached out to us the next year, hoping that we could continue the project we had started the previous year and see it through the publishing phase. She has been present at every meeting this year and has helped us nurture our interests into a collaborative work that we hope you have as much fun reading as we did writing. We would like to thank Ms. McGurn for her patience and guidance, without which we would never have been able to complete this magazine.

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ABOUT US Matt Gilbert ‘17

is a soccer player, tennis player, trivia team member, and Mathlete. His greatest accomplishment is that he once untangled a Slinky. If he could name a new element, he would name it after physicist Stephen Hawking.

Tessa McCabe ‘17

enjoys playing soccer, basketball and track. Also being a part of stage crew for the plays, her next goal is to climb off the catwalks in the CFA. Over the summer she plans on interning at MIT. She periodically tells horrible science puns. Ha ha ha oh, she’s sorry.

Dat-Thanh Nguyen ‘17

is a Tech Fellow, tennis player, Mathlete, and Class Commissar. Known affectionately as “Ho Chi Minh” by his peers, he enjoys very much programming and studying revolutionary theory. Brother of Huy Nguyen.

Charlotte Nickerson ‘19

gets to school on the T at 7 o’clock in the morning. Some day, Mr. Chiari thinks, she will become a writer. Her greatest accomplishment is not crying while getting a rabies shot. Some day, Charlotte hopes to walk across the United States, visit every continent, live in a tiny house, and colonize the plastic island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Mia Vaida ‘18

is a three season varsity athlete. She plays lacrosse, runs cross country, and swims. Mia is also a GoPro enthusiast.

Ruby Lippert ‘19

plays soccer, is on ski team and is attempting track and field. She is secretly spiderman and is not so secretly a huge Alice Cooper fan and a groovy feminist. Her favorite holiday is Halloween and she loves theatre. She was a vegan for 4 ½ months but then she gave up.

Emily Feng ‘19

plays softball, loves sailing and spends time with her dog, Doudou.

She loves playing with her phone until 11 o’clock before finishing her homework. She had dreams of being a zoologist, astronaut, physicist. But she is now trying hard to achieve her latest dream: becoming a great truck driver who could have an ice cream the size of her face while driving.

Brianna Cedrone ‘17

is co-president of the creative writing club and a member of the instrument ensemble and the trivia team at Thayer.

She is proud of having unintentionally committed portions of Harry Potter to memory. She enjoys reading, playing the saxophone, occasional forays into theater, and trivia!

Huy Nguyen ‘19

loves playing tennis and basketball.

He plays the piano and is a professional karaoke guy. Also known as “the best” by his peers. Brother of Dat-Thanh Nguyen.

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Finding the Elusive DARK MATTER Dat-Thanh Nguyen

For

years now, scientists have been trying to devise ways to detect dark matter, whose existence is supported by evidence but whose nature is shrouded in mystery. There is hard evidence that dark matter truly does exist from observations of its gravitational effect on matter, stemming from discrepancies between visible matter and galaxy movement in clusters.

Many proposals hypothesizing the composition of dark matter have been made in the scientific community, but they cannot be verified until it is directly observed. However, new methods are being proposed to detect and observe this elusive dark matter, and we may soon be able to discover the secrets of this strange material that makes up 27 percent of our universe.

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BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS DARK MATTER? Galaxies, planets, stars, your cat: they’re all made of matter.

You can see and touch it. It’s known to scientists as baryonic matter, which is made up of atoms, which are in turn made up of subatomic particles. Dark matter, on the other hand, doesn’t behave like our normal matter. You can’t see it, and it passes right through you. Interestingly enough, it does exert gravitational forces, a sure sign that it is indeed matter, and we know this because its force acts upon matter we can see. By measuring this gravity, scientists have concluded that dark matter accounts for about 27 percent of the universe while our baryonic matter only amounts to five percent. Other than through gravity, dark matter doesn’t interact with normal matter, and It neither absorbs nor emits light. Even though it is untouchable and invisible, dark matter plays a massive role in the movement of celestial bodies and contributes to most of the matter in galaxies and clusters.

DARK MATTER

HOW DO WE KNOW IT EXISTS?

DETECTING DARK MATTER

Dark matter was originally discovered in the middle of the 20th century as astronomers were trying to measure the mass of galaxies. In order to do so, they had to track the speed at which stars moved around the galaxies’ centers. In doing so, the scientists made some perplexing observations. In theory, stars near the center should move faster than those farther out.

Strangely, the stars at the edge had the same velocity as the ones near the center.

From this it was inferred that there exists a form of matter yet to be observed that is responsible for the gravity that causes the outer stars’ speed.

Over time, scientists have tried to find a plausible explanation for this force to replace the idea of dark matter but instead have provided the theory with even more evidence. For example, researchers tried to find pools of hot gas to account for the mass thought of to be made up of dark matter. Instead, they found not only that there wasn’t enough gas but also that “there must be about five to six times as much dark matter as all the stars and gas” in order to provide enough gravity to stop the gas from escaping.

Furthermore, since clusters of galaxies have immense mass, they bend light as it passes through, acting as sort of a “gravitational lense.” By measuring the angle of this bend, the mass of the clusters can be found. This method has added more evidence to dark matter as the mass calculated by the light bend is greater than the measured amount of visible mass, showing that there is invisible matter.

Though we’ve clearly observed the effects of dark matter and its gravity, we have yet to directly observe the matter itself. Scientists are able to detect where it is and how it is distributed throughout the universe by using the gravitational lensing that was originally used to support the dark matter theory, but detecting dark matter as it passes through Earth is a whole different story. New possible ways of doing so, ranging from using satellites to counting atoms, are being suggested by the scientific community, and it seems that its mysteries will soon unfold.

Atomic clocks for more than just telling time When one thinks about GPS use, navigating cities and highways usually comes to mind. To two researchers, Andrei Derevianko of the University of Nevada and Maxim Pospelov from the University of Victoria, however, GPS satellites and atomic clocks could be the key to finding dark matter.

According to Derevianko, their research is based on the assumption that dark matter is “organized as a large gas-like collection of topological defects” . They claim that as these “energy cracks” sweep through the Earth, they would pass a series of atomic clocks. The dark matter would interfere with the clocks and throw them out of synchronization, thus telling scientists when the dark matter passed.

Best of all, there’s already a massive array of atomic clocks spread all over the planet: the GPS constellation. Derevianko has stated that the GPS network may be “the largest human-built dark-matter detector” .

He is working with Geoff Blewitt of the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory, which contains a GPS data processing center that can process data from 12,000 stations worldwide. The duo is beginning to test their idea with 30 satellites, all of which have atomic clocks.

The researchers expect that, as dark matter sweeps through Earth, the clock systems will desynchronize over 3 minutes. They will be able to detect it if the clocks go out of sync by more than a billionth of a second.

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DARK MATTER

SURFACE DETECTION

Doctor Andre Derevianko

FLIPPIN’ ELECTRONS Pierre Sikivie from the University of Florida suggests that we observe excited atoms of electrons to detect and measure dark matter particles.

Sikivie’s research is based on the possibility that dark matter is made up of axions, which are light, low-mass particles. Axions can interact with matter, and they will sometimes collide with an atom or molecule and “place it in an excited state” . By counting the number of atoms in this excited state, we can work backwards and determine the quantity and mass of the axions.

However, exciting an atom requires energy 100,000 times the energy of axions. Instead, “axion[s] can excite the spin states of electrons”. Electrons inside the magnetic field made by other electrons and the nucleus have a ‘preferred’ lower energy orientation. By applying our own magnetic field, we can control how much energy is required to ‘flip’ the electron to the higher energy orientation. If we make it so the energy required is the same as the axions’ energy, then the axions will flip the electrons, which will bring the atoms to the excited state. Then all that is left is to count the excited atoms.

However, there are some problems that need to be addressed.

First, the difference of energy between the normal state and the excited state is so small that thermal energy is enough to cause the flip. Therefore, the atoms need to be stored at extremely cold temperatures “well under 1 Kelvin”. Also, there would already be a substantial amount of excited atoms from the very beginning. In order to counteract that, you would have to count the change in the number of excited atoms rather than the raw total.

As for counting the excited atoms, Sikivie is thinking of using laser absorption. The idea is to use the laser to force only the excited atoms into a massively higher energy state, which is much easier to detect and count.

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Traditionally, dark matter detectors have been placed deep underground to avoid interference from cosmic radiation. This is based on the idea that dark matter doesn’t interact much with baryonic matter on its way through the Earth, so there is still enough energy for it to trigger the detector.

However, it may not be the case that dark matter only interacts weakly with normal matter. If this assumption is wrong, “dark matter [particles] can lose energy as they travel underground before they hit the detector” , and so the particles might not have enough energy to trigger the detector.

Recently, scientists have found that dark matter may actually be able to interact significantly with atoms. Because of this, deep detectors can be almost useless. Chris Kouvaris and Ian Shoemaker from the CP3-Origins of the University of Southern Denmark propose that detectors be positioned in shallow sites to prevent energy loss. This brings back the original problem of cosmic background radiation. As a remedy, the duo suggests that scientists watch for “a signal that varies periodically during the day” instead of just one detection.

The basis for this argument is that, as the Earth rotates and the particles come from various directions, different amounts of dark matter is measured. This creates a point during the day where there is a high amount of detection, which then cycles to little to no detection in 12 hours, and then back to high after another 12 hours. This pattern can be easily discerned from the cosmic noise.

THE FUTURE As the search for dark matter continues, scientists will develop new methods of searching for this elusive substance. In order to accurately measure the amount of dark matter in our universe and analyze its properties, we must first find a way to consistently detect it. Countless researchers are seeking ways to do so, and it will not be long before such techniques are discovered. It seems that soon, with the aid of our ever-evolving technology, the secrets of dark matter will be unlocked.

REBUILDING THE HUMAN BODY Prosthetic Devices (and Limb Transplants): Past, Present and Future BRIANNA CEDRONE

Mentally walk yourself through your day. How many times and for how many tasks do you use your hands? Your arms? Your legs? Now imagine life without one or more of these. What’s next?

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PROSTHETIC LIMBS

A BRIEF HISTORY

Today, the word “prosthetics� calls to mind not only war veterans and accident victims but also cutting-edge mechanics and lives transformed. About three thousand years ago, however, the science of prostheses had just begun.

From then until now...

Prosthetics from Hindu Mythology to World War II Undated ancient myth -- The mention of Vishpala, a female warrior with a leg of iron, in a Hindu myth is the earliest known reference to a prosthetic device.

Between 950 and 710 B.C. -- An apparently functional wood-and-leather big toe meant to ease pressure while walking is constructed in Egypt.

424 B.C. -- Greek thinker Herodotus writes of a seer who amputated his own foot to escape imprisonment and made himself a functional wooden foot. c. 300 B.C. -- A below-the-knee prosthetic leg made of bronze, iron and wood is created in modern-day Italy.

Between 218 and 210 B.C. -- A Roman general uses an iron hand to hold his shield in place after an arm amputation. c. 476-100 A.D. -- During the Dark Ages, simple, often ill-fitting devices become more common, including hook-shaped hand replacements and wooden leg extensions. Iron is a popular material in such constructions. Prostheses, however, are often cosmetic disguises rather than functional tools. c. 1400s-1800s A.D. -- Interest in science and anatomy is sparked during the Renaissance (1300-1700). Gradually more complicated prostheses often involve iron, steel, copper, and wood.

1508 -- Prosthetic iron hands that can be manipulated with a spring-and-release system are created in Germany.

1500s -- French surgeon Ambroise ParĂŠ modernizes amputation procedures and contributes to the creation of more advanced prosthetics. c. 1690 -- Dutch surgeon Pieter Verduyn develops a below-theknee prosthetic device with modern features such as hinges and a piece of leather to fit snugly around the knee.

1812 -- A prosthetic arm is developed with straps connecting to the opposite shoulder, allowing for controlled use of the arm.

1840s -- Anesthesia is introduced, allowing for longer and more careful amputations. Surgeons are now able to operate with the need for a fitted prosthesis in mind. Other surgical advancements improve survival rates, causing a greater demand for prosthetic devices.

1861-1865 -- The bloody American Civil War causes a steep increase in the need for prosthetics in the United States.

1945 -- At the close of World War II, the need for prosthetic devices is higher than ever. The American National Academy of Sciences establishes the Artificial Limb Program especially to help WWII veteran amputees and to contribute to research and improvements in the field.

Modern day -- In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the advent of computers and the technology boom yield immense gains in the field. The use of electrical signals (with which the human nervous system operates) makes for huge improvements in prosthetic capabilities.

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PROSTHETIC LIMBS

WHAT THEY DO AND HOW DO THEY WORK Some modern prostheses are purely cosmetic, meant to appear real but not necessarily to function. Some are strapped, attached or harnessed to the body without surgery and can support weight or perform motions without a direct connection to the nervous system. Some complex, surgically-implanted prostheses use electromyography (the study of the electrical impulses traveling through the human body) to link the device to the already-existing nervous system, providing a direct pathway from the brain to the prosthesis. Some especially recent prostheses, largely still being tested, rely on machines programmed to recognize the patient’s thought patterns -- helpful to paralyzed people without a fully functioning nervous system. Below are a few examples of the options available.

FROM TRIED & TRUE TO NEW & EXCITING: THE WIDE WORLD OF MODERN PROSTHETICS

Myoelectric Prostheses

These electric prostheses are expensive but useful.

The human nervous system is essentially a network of traveling electrical signals which cause muscle fibers (called filaments) to interact with each other, making the muscle either contract or relax.

In myoelectric prostheses, electrodes (small electrical conductors) are implanted within the device. The electrodes sit upon the skin on the remaining part of the limb. When the user tries to move the prosthetic limb, generating certain electrical signals, the electrodes register these signals as they travel through the muscle, amplify them, and send them through to the prosthesis, which has been programmed to move in specific ways upon receiving specific electrical signals. Thus, the prosthesis can become a literal extension of the body.

Though fine motor skills can be hard to achieve, myoelectric prostheses are a popular choice for those who can afford them.

Feeling- and Touch-Sensitive Prosthetic Hands

Imagine trying to pick up a potato chip without feeling in your hands. How would you know how much pressure to apply to hold the chip without crushing it?

SynTouch’s BioTac finger, among others, aims to fix this problem in prostheses. Myoelectric and other prostheses can move and function, but equally important, according to SynTouch scientists and other research teams, is feeling.

In the BioTac finger, the electrodes are surrounded by fluid.

When an object presses on the finger, it presses on the fluid.

Thus, under the pressed-upon area, the fluid thins and spreads out, which registers in the electrodes as increased or decreased impedance (pressure) and can be sent through signals to the back to the person’s nervous system. Likewise, vibrations caused by textured surfaces travel through the fluid to the BioTac’s pressure sensor, each texture causing a different level of vibration and thus a different “reading” by the sensor, providing tactile sensations to the user.

Stanford researchers report that good brain-device communication is a great challenge, especially because sensations from natural human touch are so precise and vivid. But Stanford is also enthusiastic about the concept of touch-sensitive prosthetics: they have developed (though not yet perfected or made available) an entire two-layer plastic “false skin” to provide feeling across the surface of prosthetics.

Things to Consider

AZoRobotics’ Kal Kaur explains that “the following [patient] preferences are important” in designing prosthetic hands: • Ability to grasp objects of a range of sizes • “Intricate finger movements” (e.g., pinching) • Comfort for the user, including weight and physical appearance • Active joints built into the fingers for a good range of motion

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PROSTHETIC LIMBS

3D-Printed Prostheses

The latest tech trend enters the world of prosthetics.

3D printers follow a digital model to create a 3-dimensional object by layering print material (often plastic). The rapid expansion of the 3D printing industry has, among many other creations, inspired 3D-printed prostheses. Often much less expensive than traditional prostheses, these devices are quickly gaining popularity.

Groups such as e-NABLE and its smaller volunteer group Limbitless Solutions aim to “synthesiz[e]... engineering principles with natural anatomy... to replicate the human form in printed plastic” in order to provide easy-to-use prosthetic devices to children and to people who can’t afford complicated myoelectric devices. One group, ROMP (the Range of Motion Project), established by David Kruda and Eric Neufeld of the University of Illinois, provides 3D printed prostheses to patients without access to high-quality medical care in countries including Ecuador and Guatemala. Recent advancements have also allowed for personalized, durable and affordable polymer devices meant for athletes of all kinds. 3D printed prostheses often appear much simpler and less lifelike than typical myoelectric devices, but they can be just as functional. In fact, Smithsonian magazine recently reported that a California company had worked with 3D-printing innovator Scott Summit to create an entire 3D “exoskeleton” with sensors that can detect weight shifts and make the battery-powered legs walk accordingly!

Limb Transplants

Though they are not true prostheses, living tissue transplants are an important part of the limb-replacement field In 2014, quadruple amputee Will Lautzenheiser made headlines as the recipient of a double arm transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Human tissue transplants, being non-artificial, are not true prostheses, but such operations are still watersheds in the field of limb replacement. On the plus side, such operations give surgeons direct access to nerves already present in the to-be-attached limb -- no complex artificial creations are necessary. On the downside, the very complexity of the human nervous system makes the surgery long and challenging. Lautzenheiser came through his nine-hour procedure successfully and is slowly gaining use of his new arms.

The long list of transplantable body parts also includes faces and hands.

Osseointegration A more secure connection

Osseointegration is the surgical insertion into bone of a metal rod to which a prosthesis can be attached. Thus, “there is no skin to prosthetic contact, thereby eliminating the sores and rashes many amputees suffer,” notes WCSH journalist Cindy Williams. “Because the titanium [rod] becomes part of your skeleton, patients say walking is much more stable.” Scott J. Grunewald of 3dprint.com adds, “the socket would be the only permanent implant, meaning the limb could easily be removed as needed.” For those who have suffered discomfort or irritation from their prosthetic devices, osseointegration could be a timely and practical solution. It is being widely explored, from 3D printing labs to Naval Medical Research Center clinical trials.

Osseointegration procedures largely began in late 2015 after their FDA approval (for above-the-knee amputees who had struggled with other devices) earlier in the year.

Osseointegration can relieve irritation, overexertion, and physical stress. Despite the questions and obstacles bound to accompany a new procedure, osseointegration appears to be an exciting and practical option.

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PROSTHETIC LIMBS

Thought-Controlled Prostheses: Brain-Machine Interfaces A more direct connection between brain and machine

Thought-controlled devices “learn” (in other words, are programmed) to recognize the user’s thought patterns and act upon them. This is essentially what myoelectric prostheses do, but unlike myoelectric prostheses, these devices do not depend on signals traveling from the brain through the nervous system. They capture the signal at the source (the brain) and act upon it right away.

Scientists and doctors, such as the team behind the BrainGate and BrainGate2 neurotechnology projects that originated at Brown University, aim especially to help paralyzed or partially paralyzed people, whose brains cannot control their bodies due to spinal cord problems.

So how do such devices, known as brain-machine interfaces, work? BrainGate director Leigh Hochburg describes the three main components: a sensor, a decoder, and assistive technology. The sensor, made up of electrodes and wires, is implanted in the patient’s motor cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for movement. The signals registered by the electrodes are sent to the computer (the decoder), which, with the help of assistive technology programmed specifically for this task, reads and interprets the information. In the newest devices, a less-invasive implant called a stentrode is used instead of a traditional sensor (The Huffington post cites Terry O’Brien of the University of Melbourne on stentrodes: “The current method for accessing brain signals requires complex open-brain surgery and becomes less effective over several months, which means it is rarely applied… The stentrode is less invasive because it can be inserted through a vein in a patient’s neck and placed in a blood vessel near the brain.”)

That’s not to say, however, that all thought-controlled prostheses completely exclude traditional nervous system connections.

Sometimes body nerves are still functional, but there is no partial limb or muscle available to which to attach a device, so if a prosthetic can be attached, it is technically thought-controlled. Such is the case with Les Baugh, a double shoulder-level arm amputee.

Without any remaining arm to work with, his Johns Hopkins team performed surgery to realign a few nerves in his torso to make the attachment process easier, and then attached electrodes around his shoulders to read (and send on for interpretation) the necessary signals. When Baugh thinks in a specific way, the arms move -- the only difference is that the thought signals have a little farther to travel.

Mike McLoughlin, program manager of Baugh’s project, is optimistic about the future of thought-controlled prosthetics.

Despite the difficulties faced by those in the field and the as-yet simple tasks that the devices are capable of performing, he predicts more “phenomenal advancements” in the field -- and soon.

The Fitting Revolution

MIT leads a movement for better-fitting devices Osseointegration is one way to deal with prosthetic fitting problems. Another is MIT’s FitSocket, which uses an MIT-created machine to take a mold of a patient’s limb, registering not only shape and size but also the pressure or lack thereof caused by different levels of muscle and bone hardness and softness. From there, it 3D prints a precise device that distributes weight accordingly to imitate natural weight distribution. MIT anticipates that this will be a big improvement from the current molding process.

With these and many other advancements -- from studies to projects to trials to products -- continually emerging, the world can certainly look forward to prosthetics progress for years to come. ________________________ Eureka! | 13

RUBY LIPPERT

WHO WAS

NIKOLA TESLA

Allow me to present you with a hypothetical situation, one that most of us have experienced before. So, it’s Friday afternoon around, say, four o’clock, and you decide it’s about time to go home. You text your parent to ask for a ride or to let them know you are on your way. You get in the car, start your commute and decide to turn on the radio. You stop at a red light, the same one you always do, take a left, two rights and finally pull into the driveway. You enter your home and head straight for your TV. You flick on the lights and reach for the remote. After channel surfing for fifteen minutes, and coming to the conclusion that there was nothing good on to watch, you switch to Netflix. Now, the question is, which show will you watch? ________________________

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NIKOLA TESLA

Let us exit our hypothetical world. At this point you are you are probably asking yourself, “what in the world did that have to do with anything?” Well, what if I told you that your typical Friday afternoon represents the legacy of one man, Nikola Tesla. All of the objects in the hypothetical situation were, invented, patented, or are a direct result of the theories and research produced by Tesla. Thats right, no Tesla, no Netflix. He patented “wireless telegraphy”, the technology used in streaming, cellular service and radio waves. He also patented the induction motor. This is the same type of motor used in Tesla cars (as well as many others). He invented the technology for remote controls, originally demonstrated with a remote control motor boat. He invented the neon light and the tesla coil (a machine that effectively shot lightning bolts). His most important invention, however, was probably Alternate Current.

ALTERNATING CURRENT So what is Alternate Current? Alternate Current is a form of electrical current whose voltage is fairly easy to change. Alternate current is designed so that it changes directions a certain amount of times in a second, 60 times per second in the US, for example. The charges at the ends of wires switch between positive and negatively charged. When it is positive it is atracted and when negative it is repeled.

Notice, it is called “alternate” current, so you may have asked yourself, what is it an alternative to? Tesla’s direct current is an alternative to Edison’s direct current (DC). Direct current (as the name suggests) is designed to go in a single direction.

THE TESLA COIL

Tesla’s most theatrical invention, the Tesla Coil (named for him later), was made for the purpose of attempting to transmit electricity wirelessly across the globe.This creation (among other things) is what earned him his stripes as a mad scientist. The Tesla Coil effectively shot lightning bolts from a semi-spherical piece of metal. It was also the first demonstration of wireless transmission and so sparked (no pun intended) the radio and telephone. The coil is made out of just a few parts, a primary and secondary coil, a capacitor, a spark gap, a topload, and a transformer. The way it works is the transformer sends voltage to the power source which is attached to the primary coil, the capacitor in the primary coil absorbs the electrical current to a certain point when it can no longer hold the increasingly building charge. The charge then streams into the first coil, when the first coil no longer holds charge the inductor will reach a maximum charge and send the charge into the inductor. The inductor sends a huge voltage into the spark gap which in turn sends the current to the secondary coil. The current goes between the two coils while the top-load capacitor concentrates the current until it is charged enough to shoot off lightning bolt like currents. The coil was built to sustain “resonance”, which is to say that a current passes between two coils to create maximum voltage. In demonstrations, Tesla was known to occasionally have these lighting bolt like currents pass through his body.

TESLA’S LEGACY

This dapper underdog of a mad-scientist captured the fascination of the world with his eccentricity, his fashionable attire, his feud with Edison; who went down in history as the greatest inventor ever, and his weird and wonderful inventions. Tesla died alone in a hotel room in New York City without a penny to his name on January 7, 1953. He had suffered from mental health issues his whole life; towards the end of his life, as his mental health deteriorated further-he developed a crippling fear of pearl earrings, claimed to have made contact with aliens and invented a death ray. He had the incredible ability to design and run tests on machines in his mind as though they were real (or so he claims).

Very few people know about this man even though he has shaped the world we live in today. He was avantgarde and many of his inventions were fruitless ( in terms of profit).

Only later, were they deemed to be brilliant. From cars to Times Square, Nikola Tesla has shaped our world as we know it today.

Diagram of the Alternating Current Tesla, in Colorado Spring’s Laboratory, 1899

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THE NEW ELEMENTS:

SEARCHING FOR A MAGIC ISLAND MATT GILBERT

In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published what he called the Periodic System, a chart that organized the known elements by their atomic mass and their characteristics. Mendeleev’s chart would be improved and expanded by the next generations of scientists, eventually becoming the Periodic Table as we know it today. On December 30th, 2015, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) refined the table once more, officially adding four new elements under placeholder names: Ununtrium, element 113; Ununpentium, element 115; Ununseptium, element 117; and Ununoctium, element 118. Soon these elements will gain official names and the 7th row of the periodic table will be complete. The significance of these discoveries is simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming: while these elements, as far as we know, have never before existed in the entire 14 billion year history of the Universe, they have barely existed at all. These four elements are called transuranic because they are listed after Uranium, the largest naturally occurring element, on the periodic table. And like most transuranic elements, they are incredibly unstable, lasting less Dr. Glenn Seaborg than a second before decaying into new atoms and spewing radioactive particles. Thus, the search continues for the first new stable element in decades, hiding beyond the current periodic table in the rumored “Island of Stability.”

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THE MAGIC ISLAND

ELEMENTAL BEGINNINGS

This idea of an “Island of Stability” comes from Dr. Glenn Seaborg, who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in creating more new elements than any other scientist in history.

But even he hit a roadblock; after finding elements 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 101, and 102, adding more protons to the nucleus caused it to become incredibly unstable- the atoms were ripped apart by what Seaborg coined a “sea of instability”. He hoped that someday, it would be possible to leap over this sea to a “magic island,” where protons and neutrons appeared in just the right numbers to keep an atom together.

The first elements ever created are as old as the Universe itself. 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang formed the first four elements: hydrogen, helium, lithium, and beryllium. Nuclear reactions in the cores of ancient stars fused helium atoms together and created elements from carbon to iron, while all of the heavier elements up to Uranium were formed by supernovae- the colossal explosions of massive stars as they finally deplete their fuel and die. Most elements that make up the world around us were born in the center of a star. As Carl Sagan famously said, “We are made of starstuff.”

Making the first few transuranic elements was based on a fairly simple idea. Through decidedly complicated machines and calculations, Seaborg and other scientists would take an element and add a single proton, thus creating the next element.

Eventually these new atoms became more and more unstable and it became impossible to create new elements one proton at a time. A radical new approach was required.

SEARCH FOR THE MAGIC ISLAND

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THE NEW ELEMENTS

SUCCESS AT LAST

Research in the 1950s led to the realization that the best way to make new elements was to add many protons and neutrons to a nucleus at a time, not just one. For example, a lab in Germany created element 117 by accelerating element 20, calcium, into element 97, berkelium. Particle accelerators slam lighter elements into heavier ones for years at a time in the hopes of producing one perfect, lucky collision that forms a new, larger atom. This method proved successful for making some elements past 102, and then decades later, particle accelerators and scientific research allowed scientists to reach all the way to 118. Unfortunately, quite few of the new elements have survived long enough for us to know anything about them, often decaying into smaller atoms in less than a second. Element 117 was confirmed by the detection of its products; 117 decayed into 115 and decayed several more times before becoming a new isotope of Lawrencium, 103, that was stable enough to have a half-life of 11 hours- an eternity compared to that of 117. Element 117 itself disappeared before we had the chance to observe it, much less study it.

Yet there is hope; science moves forward. In the 1950s, scientists discovered that, much like the ordered orbitals of electrons, protons and neutrons can form ring-like structures in the nucleus as opposed to simply a blob of particles. When protons and neutrons align correctly, they form a nucleus with remarkable stability. Stability in the nucleus is achieved by having a “magic” number of protons or neutrons to properly fill their rings, and if both are present in the proper number, it’s “doubly magic” and extra stable. Element 114, in theory, has these numbers: 114 protons and 184 neutrons. But so far, nobody has been able to create a nucleus with enough neutrons for the atoms to last.

In 1998, a joint effort by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and at the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia created an isotope of 114 just ten neutrons shy of that magic 184. While close, this was not enough for the element to survive. But these teams eventually succeeded, officially naming element 114 Flerovium in 2012, as well as 116 Livermorium. Some atoms of 114 lasted as long as 30 seconds before decaying, a tremendous accomplishment, considering it often decays in microseconds. Also, this serves as a further evidence for Seaborg’s magic island, as the “magic” numbers significantly increased the stability of the nucleus in element 114. Hopefully, some isotope of the four most recent elements or a yet undiscovered member of the next row of the periodic table will finally have that perfect combination.

Until then, we can only imagine the properties and uses of superheavy elements. Scientists believe that 114, Flerovium, will be a heavy metal like lead, or possibly a gas. The properties of the groups of the periodic table are expected to continue downwards to the superheavy elements, but we can’t know for sure. Even more mysterious are the possible uses of these new elements. The superheavy element Americium is used in smoke detectors, while Curium and Californium are used for neutron-based medical procedures. If stable, these elements could have incredible uses, or perhaps none at all. Either way, we won’t know until we finally reach the shores of the magic island.

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SEARCH FOR THE MAGIC ISLAND

SEARCH FOR THE MAGIC ISLAND

CLONING

Cloning sounds like an idea from a futuristic movie that we may think is way out of reach during our lifetime. It is not as far off as you might think; cloning is already happening around us.

TESSA MCCABE

Cloning is an idea that has been deeply rooted in the science world for many years; no one scientist can be accredited for the process. It has fascinated people all around because of the sense of mystery and crypticness surrounding this concept. In reality, cloning is ubiquitous and a (usually) safe endeavor with many practical uses. While we know more about natural cloning processes, the artificial production of genetic copies also has a very promising outlook. However, with all these amazing advancements, there will be always more questions of ethics and more to learn before any application can begin.

Believe it or not, you probably know an example of cloning, twins. Cloning naturally occurs when an embryo splits in two.

In everyday life, nature applies cloning techniques to reproduce and repair organisms and genes. Cloning occurs naturally whenever your body replicates DNA to make these changes in cells to keep you functioning. Quite often, cloning sounds so mystical and advanced because the majority of people think of cloning as the artificial development of cells. And yes, scientists have figured that out (for the most part) too. Artificial embryo twinning, and somatic cell nuclear transfer are the two ways that lab cloning are possible.

The majority of the world was first introduced to the idea of cloning in 1996 when scientists successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly. But in reality, research in this area has gone back centuries with some the first documented experiments starting as early as the late 19th century. Many famous scientists - including Dreisch, Willadsen, and Bromhall - have devoted their lives to the progression of cloning techniques and the understanding of simulated reproduction in many different species.

Dolly the Sheep

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Cloning

AN ERA OF CLONING

1902

Spemann used a hair strand to disconnect two young salamander cells. He discovered that it is possible duplicate embryos from more complex organisms, however, the further the stage of development, the harder it becomes.

First, Prather, and Eyestone created two cloned cows. However, mammal cloning remained limited to the donation of nuclei from an embryo.

Spemann, while working with salamander embryos, conducted the first known instance of nuclear transfer and proved that a nucleus can substitute for a fertilized egg.

Bromhall was the first to successfully form a mammalian embryo using nuclear transfer. He used a pipette to transfer the small and difficult to manipulate rabbit cells into an enucleated embryo. Although Bromhall never completed this experiment by placing the embryo into a rabbit’s womb and observing the development, this was a huge step in mammal cloning.

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1987 1996

1996 - The Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland cloned Dolly the Sheep bringing worldwide attention to the subject of cloning.

1997

Scientists added monkey embryonic cells to an enucleated egg and after placing them in surrogates, successfully cloned one of our closest relatives.

Scientists were able to clone many animals including cows, goats and mice-through somatic cell transfer.

1999

1975

Gurdon created a genetically identical frog by inserting the cells of a tadpole into a still developing frog egg.

1984

1885

Willadsen chemically divided an 8-cell lamb embryo. After shocking it to fuse with an egg, the cell began growing. He then placed the cells into a surrogate mother. The mother sheep successfully gave birth to three lambs.

1958

Dreisch demonstrates artificial embryo twinning with by separating two sea urchin cells and vibrating the two cell embryo. The two grew and developed independently and successfully.

1928

Below is a timeline of some the most important experiments that have occurred in cloning since the first known work done by Dreisch in the late 19th century. Since that time, many scientists have contributed to make cloning as successful as it is today. Although work began on less complex organisms, recent innovations in mammal cloning is evidence of a promising future.

All images courtesy of the University of Utah

Artificial Embryo Twinning (AET) and Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer In a lab environment, there are two different methods to create a genetic copy: artificial embryo twinning (AET) and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Artificial embryo twinning involves stem cells: a unspecialized cell that has the potential to be used for many things, including the repair of damaged tissue. Stem cells can be retrieved from an embryo, or even later in the life cycle, however, using adult stem cells immensely complicates the process. To start, AET works in a way that is similar to the natural formation of twins. When an embryo splits a few days after fertilization, it is still consists of unspecialized cells. Each embryo continues to develop normally on its own.

Because they originated from the same embryo, twins have the same DNA (which of course may be altered by mutations later on). In AET, however, the cells are divided manually in a petri dish then surgically placed back into a surrogate mother.

Unlike AET, which uses embryonic stem cells, the SCNT process uses somatic cells. A somatic cell includes any cell that is a specialized “adult” cell, but not a gamete or sex cell. SCNT begins with the removal of DNA from a somatic cell. This DNA is added to an unfertilized egg (which has had its DNA removed previously). This operation creates a fertilized egg without the usual addition of sperm because DNA set being added already is adult and therefore has both sets of genomes. The embryo is then placed into a surrogate mother and will continue to grow and develop normally.

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer

So What?

So what does this mean for us? No, you can’t create a copy of yourself to vote for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton or be in two places at once. People are a culmination of experiences, memories, and mutations which can’t yet be replicated by science.

Cloning processes have also not yet been implemented in humans because, biologically, to perform this procedure would create an offspring genetically identical to the parent. Like many other potential topics in science, that is too ethically controversial.

But cloning does have some practical applications in the real world. Scientists have been working on using this technology to increase the populations of and remove the threat of extinction on endangered animals, like the gaur and mouflon. Some research groups have begun using cloning abilities in therapeutic research trials involving diabetes. Other potential uses include on salmon farms, where fish could be modified to grow bigger and faster, thereby reducing costs the cost and increasing the efficiency of production. Even now, while many of these ideas remain far off in the future, scientists continue to work on perfecting cloning techniques.

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COSMIC RAYS AND

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SUP

PERNOVA REMNANTS EMILY FENG

In the early 1900s, Austrian physicist Victor Hess made an incredible discovery: that particles from space continually bomb Earth’s atmosphere, producing showers of secondary particles. He named them “cosmic rays,” but actually they have nothing to do with light rays (visible light rays). Cosmics rays are subatomic particles (99% simply nuclei: 90% are simple protons, 9% are alpha particles, and 1% are called HZE ions; 1% solitary electrons, similar to beta particles) that have been accelerated to nearly the speed of light. After Enrico Fermi’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) collected data for a few years, scientists finally had a chance to decipher the mysteries of cosmic rays .

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cosmic rays and supernova remnants

A picture of the crab nebula taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula

When a star becomes a supernova, its core turns into a black hole or a neutron star, jettisons matter into space at 9,000 to 25,000 miles per second in an enormous explosion.

These events are powerful enough to produce many chemical elements in the universe, including some such as iron and carbon, which make up our planet and even ourselves. Gaseous structures, supernova remnants, form when blast waves from the massive exploding star plow through interstellar material, including dust and gases, and sweep it up into shells, which will eventually form planets in the future. The shock waves that form in supernova remnants have the right amount of

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energy to accelerate protons and other particles to the levels of energies measured in the lower-energy cosmic rays striking Earth’s upper atmosphere. Previous X-ray observations strongly suggest this is actually occurring. .

But how did scientists use GLAST, a gamma ray telescope, to explore the truth of cosmic rays? To answer the question, you have to know the difference between gamma rays and cosmic rays. Gamma rays are produced from the interactions of high-energy particles with light and ordinary matter; they travel straight from their sources. Cosmic rays carry electric charge; therefore their direction changes as they travel through

magnetic fields. By the time the particles reach Earth, their paths are completely scrambled. We can’t trace them back to their sources. As a result, scientists must locate their origins indirectly; that’s where Fermi comes in. In 1949, he worked out that what he called a “magnetized cloud” could accelerate cosmic rays. Later studies showed a variant of his method, called Fermi acceleration, fit especially well in supernova remnants. Confined by a magnetic field, high-energy particles move around randomly. Sometimes they cross the shock wave. With each round trip, they gain about 1 percent of their original energy. After dozens to hundreds of crossings, a particle moves at nearly the speed of light and is finally able to escape. If the supernova remnants reside near a dense molecular cloud, some of those escaping cosmic rays may strike the gas, and produce gamma rays.

But electrons and protons form gamma rays differently. When cosmic ray electrons are deflected by passing near the nucleus of an atom, they form gamma rays. Accelerating protons may collide with ordinary protons and produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion. These pions quickly decay into a pair of gamma rays. Both of these emissions, at their brightest, look very similar. Scientists can only determine which process is responsible for the creation of gamma rays with very sensitive measurements at lower gamma-ray energies. The result of the GLAST telescope shows that supernova remnants are accelerating protons. When they strike protons into nearby molecular clouds, they produce pions and ultimately the gamma-ray emission GLAST sees. But NASA is still detecting gamma rays from more supernova remnants and is now trying to figure out whether accelerated protons are always responsible and what their maximum energies may be.

Nature can accelerate cosmic rays far faster than we can at our biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire,

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST)

Physicist Enrico Fermi built the prototype of a nuclear reactor and worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb.

French: European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN).

There is more value in studying cosmic rays than only knowing their origin. According to Dr. John Wefel from the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Louisiana University, studying cosmic rays can help us learn more about dark matter. He said that “the whole idea here is that, if there are dark matter particles out there, of one sort or another, and they’re their own antiparticle, so they annihilate with each other, when they do that, they turn into normal particles, i.e. they turn into electron positron pairs, or they turn into proton antiprotons, or they turn into various kinds of W bosons... things like that. But when they do that, their mass energy, their rest mass, becomes their kinetic energy. So they suddenly appear at these very very [sic] high energies, as a particle zipping around, just like the cosmic rays, so the idea is [that] you may be able to find them within the cosmic ray beam. Now to do that, we have to look and see if we can find some kind of anomaly in the electron plus positron spectrum, or we also have a capability to measure very high energy gamma rays, [to] see if we can find a signature in the gamma ray region, at these ultra high energies.”

With more observations and research, scientists may discover more secrets of the universe.

The mystery of dark matter will be better understood with the help of GLAST.

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SENDING MAN TO

“Considering all of the above, we do indeed think it is ethically conscientious to allow people to emigrate to Mars.�- Mars One

MARS MIA VAIDA

People have been awaiting the moment when a manned mission to Mars would be possible, and that moment has finally come. Discoveries and advances in technology over the past 25 years in deep space exploration have finally made this long awaited journey to Mars possible. Mars One has already started contracting established aerospace companies to work on the required systems. All systems that would potentially send the first humans to Mars still require design, construction, and testing, but no scientific breakthroughs are required to send humans to Mars and to sustain life there.

The Mars One project is planning on sending an unmanned mission to Mars in 2020 to deliver the supplies the crew will need, and later in 2026 the first manned mission to Mars will begin its journey.

Mars One’s goal is not only to send one crew to Mars, they have plans for sending at least four people every two years in an attempt to populate Mars. Mars One believes that Mars is sustainable for human life, and that it would be possible to grow a community on Mars. Permanent settlement is not easy but it is far less complex and requires much less infrastructure sent to Mars than return missions.

The most risky part of the mission, though, is not getting to Mars, but rather the return trip. It is unlikely that a return trip would be possible due to the complexity of developing rockets with launch capability on Mars, which means that the crew may be signing up for a one way trip- which raises the question: is

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this even ethical? A one way trip to Mars is currently the only way for people to get to Mars within the next 20 years. There would be a possibility for a return trip for the original crew sometime in the future, but that is uncertain. Mars one comments that all those emigrating to Mars will do by choice. Extensive preparatory training would be provided for them so that they know what to expect. The crew in training has the option to drop out at anytime, with backup available. Those making the journey to Mars would have unlimited access to email and other communication channels to keep in touch with friends and family back on Earth.

S

WORMHOLES HUY NGUYEN

What

is a wormhole? A wormhole is somewhat of a shortcut - it is a hypothetical passage through space-time that connects two distant points. This is only a theory; there is no observable evidence provided, however equations rooting from the theory of general relativity contain solutions relating to wormholes.

John Archibald Wheeler was an American theoretical physicist who created and popularized the term “blackhole” as well as “wormhole”. He referred to it as a wormhole because he compared the space-time shortcut to a worm burrowing through an apple and reaching the other side, passing through the center, as opposed to traveling around the apple.The wormhole is also a window of sorts, enabling those at one end to peer at the other.

The idea of wormholes is only a theory because of the lack of observable evidence. However, there are solutions rooting from the theory of general relativity that approve of its existence. Wormholes are a byproduct of general relativity, and exist mathematically within the theory, but scientists believe that it would be extremely unlikely that wormholes exist naturally.

Wormholes were first discovered by Ludwig Flamm, but in 1935, Albert Einstein & Nathan Rosen calculated the mathematics of a wormhole and published their results; hence the previously used term, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Its discovery was coincided with the discovery and research of the black hole. The Einstein-Rosen Bridge mathematical wormhole, although a significant discovery of its time, proved to have no practical use with the current research. Following Einstein’s and Rosen’s publishing, Wheeler and Fuller argued that they were horribly unstable. When the two points connected to each other, the connection only lasted a short period and time and proceeded to split off, crushing anything inside at the current moment.

Because of the short window of opportunity, this theoretical wormhole is not traversable. Scientists have decided to research with the hopes of discovering a different type of wormhole that allows inside movement. Hope arose when scientists determined that negative matter, also known as exotic matter, could stabilize the wormhole. Wheeler’s quantum foam hypothesis is a concept based on quantum mechanics which states that wormholes have the ability to suddenly appear and disappear

in a short span of time, at random points of time. Wheeler also added that these wormholes were very small, and impossible to identify its presence, since its size is tiny and has little to no effect on surrounding matter. In order to make it operable, scientists needed to augment this miniscule wormhole by adding exotic matter. Unfortunately, scientists found two problems that would rule out this solution as impossible: exotic matter comes in inadequate portions, and scientists were worried that gathering enough to construct a wormhole was impossible, and that even if they stabilized the wormhole to be large enough using exotic matter, anything other than exotic matter being placed inside it would make the wormhole unstable and small as it was previously. Anything placed in this exotic matter wormhole would be destroyed in an instant.

Wormholes are rarely mentioned in modern culture, but still interest many when they are encountered with the concept. Fictitious novels and films have based themselves on time travel and wormhole itself, while others have even developed their own theory or idea on the subject, such as Interstellar, a film that introduced the possibility of interuniversal travel.

Scientists are still continuing research on the subject, but none know the results that will come; unless you travel through a wormhole, of course.

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CHERENKOV RADIATION CHARLOTTE NICKERSON

Somewhere in the high deserts of eastern Idaho, on the outskirts of nowhere and a city of 58,000, is the Idaho National Laboratory. The 890-square mile complex looks unassuming from the outside - It’s little more than a labyrinth of concrete buildings - but inside of them is something called the Advanced Test Reactor, one of only three surviving reactors on the site; half a century ago, there were fifty-two whose job it was to generate neutrons. Serpentine fuel plates glow bright under the water the water which it is encased in. But there are no lights reflecting through the water. The cause of the pale blue glow lies in atomic physics: Cherenkov Radiation.

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Aerial view of the Idaho National Laboratory, housing the Advanced Test Reactor - a nuclear reactor which produces Cherenkov Radiation as a byproduct of its processes.

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Cherenkov Radiation was originally predicted to exist by a self-taught electrical engineer, mathematician, physicist, and general renaissance man, Oliver Heaviside. Heaviside was the ghostwriter of the physics world - even his most famous accomplishment, the Maxwell Equations, were under a name that wasn’t his. In 1934, however, Pavel Cherenkov, a Soviet physicist, discovered the strange phenomenon when observing a water bottle bombarded with radioactive particles.

So, what causes the pale blue glow (Get it? It’s a play on Pale Blue Dot!)? You may have heard that Cherenkov Radiation is caused by particles moving faster than light, but this is a halftruth - at best. If particles could move faster than light in vacuo (in a vacuum, or a space where there are no other particles), or through a body where absolutely no particles exist, they would violate Special Relativity, for reasons better left for another article.

Light, however, moves more slowly through media with particles than in those without. In general, the denser the medium, the more slowly that light travels through it relative to c, or the speed of light in vacuo. Photons again maybe a briefing on photons themselves will always move at a constant rate of c. However, they can be absorbed, and then emitted by other particles. When photons are absorbed, it doesn’t affect them other than forcing them to take a longer “route” than they would in vacuo. The more often the photons are absorbed and reemitted by other particles, the more “slowly” that they propagate through a liquid. This is measured by something called the refractive index. As denser liquids have a greater abundance of particles, they tend to have higher refractive indexes - photons move faster in a vacuum than through air, and through air faster than water. The last of these has a refractive index of about 1.33, which means that light moves at a speed of 0.75c in water.

The slowing down of photons through absorption and emission makes it relatively easy for a particularly energetic particle to move faster that light, in that liquid. Since nuclear reactors are hotbeds for fast-moving particles, and are often

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Pavel Cherenkov

CHERENKOV RADIATION

kept underwater for the sake of keeping the reactor cool, many particles, for example electrons, are able to break the speed of light, in water, at once.

The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458, or about 3*10^8 meters/second; a quarter reduction in it can be quite significant.

That isn’t the only aspect of Cherenkov Radiation. Charged particles disturb electromagnetic fields; as they move through the medium they emit photons in a series of waves.

It’s akin to throwing a stone into a pond and watching the water ripple from where the pebble hits the water - at least when the particle is completely stationary. When the charged particle moves through the medium faster than the speed of light in it, however, the waves looks a little different. Rather than making rings around a single point, the rings form around points which depend upon where the particle is when it emits it. It’s very similar to a sonic boom for sound, or, adding onto the pebble analogy, skipping stones across a pond. Some people even call Cherenkov Radiation “The Sonic Boom of Light”.

But why the brilliant blue glow? Since Cherenkov radiation is generally the result of high energy particles moving at speeds beyond that of light (not in a vacuum), they emit photons with shorter wavelengths and thus higher frequencies. Most Cherenkov Radiation is actually ultraviolet radiation, that is, light with a wavelength smaller than that of visible light, and when it’s within the spectrum of visible light, Cherenkov Radiation appears to be blue, since the color also has waves which have a high frequency compared to others on the spectrum of visible light.

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REBUILDING THE HUMAN BODY

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SENDING MAN TO MARS “Is This Ethical?” Mars One. Mars One, n.d. Web. Mars One. “Mars One Home.” N.p., n.d. Web. Massey, Alana. “Should Humans Really Go to Mars?” Pacific Standard. Pacific Standard, 29 Sept. 2015. Web. Mazza, Ed. “Man On Mars? NASA Says It’s Happening — And Soon.” Huffpost Science. Huffington Post, 21 Sept. 2015. Web. Shah, Tina. “Is a One-way Mission to Mars Ethical? Is It Sane?” Tech Times.

Tech Times, 06 Aug. 2014. Web. Teitel, Amy Shira. “Mars One Mission Could Go Horribly Wrong -- If It Ever Gets off the Ground.” Physicsfocus. Physicsfocus, 24 Apr. 2013. Web. Zoloth, Laurie. “Is a Trip to Mars Ethical?” Cosmos Magazine. Cosmos Magazine, 31 Aug. 2015. Web.

WHO WAS NIKOLA TESLA Dickerson, Kelly. “Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works.” LiveScience.

Purch, 10 July 2014. Web. Ghose, Tia. “Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison: Who Was the Better Inventor?”

LiveScience. Purch, 10 July 2014. Web. Kurtus, Ron. “Alternating Current (AC) Electricity.” School for Champions. Ron Kurtus, 13 Feb. 2016. Web. Pappas, Stephanie. “Engineers & Eccentrics: Why Nikola Tesla Has So Many Fans.” LiveScience. Purch, 10 July 2014. Web. Tesla, Nikola. Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy. Nikola Tesla, assignee. Patent US1119732 A. 1 Dec. 1914. Print.

Toro, Ross. “How the Tesla Coil Works (Infographic).” LiveScience. Purch, 9 July 2014. Web. “What Is Alternating Current (AC)?” All About Circuits. All About Circuits, n.d. Web.

CHERENKOV RADIATION Cerenkov, P. A. 1937. Sydney: Society, 1937. Web. Cerenkov, P. A. Visible Radiation Produced by Electrons Moving in a Medium with Velocities Exceeding That of Light. Sydney: Society, 1937. Web.ihep.su.

15 June 1937. Web. “Cerenkov Radiation.” Causes of Color. Web Exhibits, n.d. Web. Gibbs, Philip. “Is There an Equivalent of the Sonic Boom for Light?” The Original Usenet Physics FAQ. University of California Riverside, 1997. Web. Hubbell, John H. “Faster Than a Speeding Proton.” This Week’s Citation Classic 34 (1991): 10. Eugene Garfield Library. University of Pennsylvania. Web. Kirsch, Fran. “Cherenkov Radiation.” YouTube. YouTube, 03 Sept. 2013. Web. O’Connor, J. J., and E. F. Robertson. “Oliver Heaviside.” School of Mathematics and Statistics. University of St. Andrews, 2003. Web. Springob, Christopher. “Does Cerenkov Radiation Travel Faster than Light?

(Intermediate).” Ask an Astronomer. Cornell University, 2016. Web. Thompson, Lee. “The Discovery of Air-Cherenkov Radiation.” CERN Courier.

CERN, 18 July 2012. Web.

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WORMHOLES Redd, Nola Taylor. “What Is a Wormhole? | Facts, Theory & Definition of Wormholes | Space.com.” Space.com. N.p., 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

“Wormholes - Black Holes and Wormholes - The Physics of the Universe.”

Wormholes - Black Holes and Wormholes - The Physics of the Universe.

Luke Mastin, n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

“Wormhole.” Wormhole. The Worlds of David Darling, n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

Wright, Matthew. “Interstellar Travel: The Mathematics of Wormholes.” Chalkdust. N.p., 24 Mar. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

FINDING THE ELUSIVE DARK MATTER “Dark Energy, Dark Matter - NASA Science.” Dark Energy, Dark Matter NASA Science. NASA, n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.

Harris, William, and Craig Freudenrich. “How Dark Matter Works.” HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.

“Hiding in Plain Sight: Elusive Dark Matter May Be Detected with GPS Satellites.” ScienceDaily. University of Nevada, n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.

Lee, Chris. “Physicists Propose Flipping Magnets to Detect Dark Matter.” Ars Technica. Ars Technica, 09 Dec. 2014. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.

“New Way to Detect the Existence of Unknown Matter and Energy?” The Daily Galaxy. The Daily Galaxy, 18 Nov. 2014. Web. 09 June 2016.

CLONING Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. “How Cloning Works” 26 March 2001. HowStuffWorks.com.

The Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, and David Jones. “A Submission to The House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research.” The Linacre Centre. The Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, 2000. Web. Silver, Lee, Jamie Grifo, and George Annas. “Human Cloning: How Close Is It?” Interview by Mark Sauer. PBS. PBS, 2014. Web. Smith, Wesley J. “Scientists Cloned 60 Cows and All But 14 Died, Just Wait Until They Start Cloning Humans.” LifeNews.com. LifeNews.com, 26 Oct. 2015. Web. “What Is Cloning?” Learn.Genetics. University of Utah, n.d. Web.

COSMIC RAYS AND SUPERNOVA REMNANTS “Cosmic Rays.” COSMIC RAYS!How to Make Your CRaTER Mini Comic 1 2 (n.d.): 1-2. NASA. NASA. Web. Naeye, Robert. “Cosmic Rays and Supernova Remnants.” NASA. NASA, 06 Sept. 2007. Web. NASA Johnson. “Space Station Live: Cosmic Ray Detector for ISS.” YouTube.

YouTube, 19 Aug. 2015. Web. “NASA’s Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays.” NASA. NASA, 14 Feb. 2013. Web. “Supernovae: Cosmic Explosions.” National Geographic. National Geographic, n.d. Web.

PICTURES

MARS https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/664/21418170014_e4178c2692_b.jpg https://www.crowdedcomics.com/sites/default/files/styles/view_cartoon_with_ caption/public/captions/6132.jpg http://www.tampabay.com/resources/images/specials/2014/07/NA_384397_ MADD_mars.jpg TESLA https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Tesla_circa_1890.jpeg http://deepfriedneon.com/graphics/wiring.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Tesla_coil_4. svg/2000px-Tesla_coil_4.svg.png http://sanjindumisic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/nikola-tesla-laboratory-photo-1.jpg http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/5-1.jpg DARK MATTER http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-10-a-xlarge_web.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/A_Horseshoe_Einstein_ Ring_from_Hubble.JPG http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2014/hidinginplai.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/1e0657_scale.jpg

PICTURES CONTINUED

ELEMENTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Glenn_Seaborg_-_1964. jpg http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/astro/astro98/aprojfolder/fireball/text. htm https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Island-of-Stability.png http://iupac.org/what-we-do/periodic-table-of-elements/ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Periodic_table_ large.svg/1800px-Periodic_table_large.svg.png https://www.thayer.org/uploaded/Parent_Welcome/New_Faculty/Erin_McGurn_200_px.jpg http://cuaweb.mit.edu/Pages/Contact/GetPhoto.aspx?ContactId=5149 https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/40/99/28/409928ed3cbd38e42c86077efff5cd67.jpg PROSTHETICS http://www.stripes.com/va-budget-plan-calls-for-10-percent-increase-in-funding-1.215980# http://media.web.britannica.com/eb-media/71/113271-004-76331F60.gif http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/exo_0003_Layer-3.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/media.wbur.org/wordpress/11/files/2015/01/0105_lautzenheiser2.jpg http://www.weareastepahead.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2.png http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/11/Max-Ortiz-1-690x330. jpg COSMIC RAYS http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cosmicrays2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Crab_Nebula.jpg http://a3.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,h_1200,q_80,w_1200/MTE5NDg0MDU0OTYzMjU4ODk1.jpg http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/193250main_glast_rendering_lg.jpg CLONING http://images.usatoday.com/tech/_photos/2006/07/05/dolly.jpg https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/7e77aadf-f17c-4787-8080-5c16096fc4f7/8104a41f-70ce-4ffa-845c-631677baeca8.png http://www.paperhi.com/download/view?resolution=1600x1200&file=MTE1N3gxMDQ5LzIwMTMwODA2L2Jpb2xvZ3kgZ2VuZXRpY3Nfd3d3LnBhcGVyaGkuY29tXzQuanBn&name=YmlvbG9neV9nZW5ldGljcw== WORMHOLES http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/GLOB/crop/3670x2446+0+269/resize/1200x800!/format/jpg/quality/85/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/ midas/6d5658b214639d85bd5e15912744e28a/200440790/99312262.jpg http://www.space.com/images/i/000/028/510/original/shutterstock_25016035. jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&fit=inside%7C660:* CHERENKOV RADIATION https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3491/4034904283_737571c4a5_o_d.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Cerenkov.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Laser_Interference.JPG/768px-Laser_Interference.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/RA6cab.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Advanced_Test_Reactor. jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/9/c/89c9660fd1b5257122c2a05482959920. png TABLE OF CONTENTS http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/GLOB/crop/4235x2353+0+0/resize/630x350!/format/jpg/quality/85/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/ midas/7475d229c53b967881b93eb64d9f9ed5/201768115/149868893.jpg http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-10-a-xlarge_web.jpg http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/425985main_Cas_a_composite_unlabeled. jpg COVER https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/664/21418170014_e4178c2692_b.jpg

________________________ Eureka! | 33

Notes

Notes

THE MISSION OF THAYER ACADEMY IS TO INSPIRE A DIVERSE COMMUNITY OF STUDENTS TO MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, AESTHETIC, AND PHYSICAL EXCELLENCE SO THAT EACH MAY RISE TO HONORABLE ACHIEVEMENT AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMMON GOOD.

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