Physics and Nano

Ukraine, Drones, MIC…

A freeze-frame captures a drone exploding, disabling a Russian Tu-95 bomber during Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, a covert drone attack in June. Ukraine’s surprise attack unleashed small drones armed with explosives to destroy dozens of unprotected Russian aircraft at air bases across the country. Ukrainian Security Service / Air & Space Forces Magazine

Topics: 3D Printing, Civilization, Education, Existentialism, Fascism

“It was an attack of astonishing ingenuity – unprecedented, broad, and 18 months in the making.

“On 1 June more than 100 Ukrainian drones struck air bases deep inside Russia, targeting nuclear-capable long-range bombers.

“The scale of the operation dubbed “Spider Web” became clear almost as soon as it began, with explosions reported across several time zones all over Russia – as far north as Murmansk above the Arctic Circle, and as far east as Irkutsk, over 4,000km from Ukraine.

“The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the attacks had occurred in five regions of Russia – Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur – but stated planes had been damaged only in Murmansk and Irkutsk, while in other locations the attacks had been repelled.”

How Ukraine carried out daring ‘Spider Web’ attack on Russian bombers, Laura Gozzi & BBC Verify, 2 June 2025, BBC News

“On June 1, Russia’s Military Transport Aviation Day, a significant holiday for the Russian armed forces, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) carried out a bold and unprecedented coordinated drone strike deep inside Russian territory. The operation targeted four strategic air bases and delivered a major blow to Moscow’s long-range bomber fleet. Codenamed “Spider’s Web”—or simply “Web”—the operation was named for its wide geographic coverage across remote Russian locations previously thought to be beyond the reach of Ukraine’s long-range drone capabilities.

“Using small striking drones covertly smuggled into Russia and launched from hidden compartments inside cargo trucks, the operation struck more than 40 high-value aircraft—including strategic bombers Tu-95MS, Tu-22M3, and A-50 planes used for launching and coordinating missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. The meticulously planned operation marks a significant milestone in Ukraine’s evolving asymmetric warfare capabilities and signals a major vulnerability in Russia’s rear defenses.”

How Ukraine’s Operation “Spider’s Web” Redefines Asymmetric Warfare, Kateryna Bondar, June 2, 2025, Center for Strategic & International Studies

“On 1 June 2025, Ukraine pulled off what many now see as the boldest and most technologically advanced operation of the war: Operation Spiderweb. In a display of ingenuity and precision, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) deployed 117 first-person view (FPV) drones in a sweeping, coordinated strike against five major Russian air bases—stretching from Irkutsk and Murmansk to Ryazan, Ivanovo, and Amur. The damage was staggering. According to reports, 41 aircraft were destroyed or disabled, including some of Russia’s most prized strategic bombers and surveillance planes, amounting to an estimated $7 billion in losses.”

Significance and Implications of Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, Strategic Studies Department, Trends Group/Trend Research, June 3, 2025

2025 – 1945 = 80 years that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) has convinced 15 presidential administrations to continue to fund fighting a potential ground war with Russia by authorizing the increase of funding to new weapons systems – some functional, some not-so-much – cutting domestic programs that would help the citizens of the country.

June 1, 2025, Ukraine through being cut off from resources typically supplied by the MIC, became resourceful: the “bombs” dropped on Russian aircraft were 3D printed.

The Defense Budget for FY26 was nearly a trillion dollars (as much as Elon Musk will eventually be worth). The Defense Secretary is asking for $200 billion so that the bloated defense budget can “kill bad guys.”

The “Moore’s Law Exemption”

Dr. Gordon Moore, emeritus founder of Intel, and former of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1965, said: “The number of transistors and other components on integrated circuits will double every year for the next 10 years.”

Well past 1975, the transistors kept doubling and shrinking. The “Moore’s Law Limit” was supposed to be 7 nanometers (nano = 10^-9, or 10^-9 meters). Current production is 3 and 2-nanometers (nm) modes this year, with plans to go to 1.4 and 1 nm (marketing terms vs physical measurement). Quantum computing is also making an impact.

The Sister of Apollo…

The four Artemis II astronauts did a dress rehearsal in December for what will happen on launch day. Clockwise from front left are pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist Christina Koch and commander Reid Wiseman. Credit: Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty

Topics: Applied Physics, Civics, Culture, NASA, Spaceflight

“Artemis is the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, and chastity. As the daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister to Apollo, she is also recognized as a goddess of childbirth, fertility, and the protector of young girls. She is commonly depicted as a young huntress with a bow and quiver.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Artemis-Greek-goddess

https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Artemis.html

April 1^st, 2011, was my last day at Manor High School. I had accepted a job at Applied Materials in a place called Fishkill in upstate New York. I was to leave the next day on a flight with (then) a black Labrador Retriever named Raven, and a Texas Box Turtle named Speedy. I would be alone except their company for about two months.

The reaction and responses from the students were a surprise to me. My hats off to anyone in the teaching profession, K-12 and college, who has to navigate the expectations of school districts, and the disappointment when their product matriculates to college campuses having fulfilled the graduation requirements of their schools and districts, but without the study skills requisite a generation ago.

“This (had) better not be an ‘April Fools’ joke, you bastard!” That was a young Hispanic female (I’ll call her Mary), who I didn’t think my presence in the classroom had much meaning to her.

For a young African American male, I’ll call him Mike, I was the only positive black male role model in his life. Both of his parents were in prison for various offenses, and he was in a foster home that for his foster parent, Mike was just a paycheck.

I also find it ironic that the pilot for the Artemis is Navy Captain Victor Glover, an African American who, I guess, didn’t get purged in all the Project 2025 “anti-woke” focus. He is competently commanding and piloting Artemis in orbital flights around the Moon as he and his crew conduct experiments. It must be a daunting disappointment to the conspiracy theorists who were confident we never visited (and Francis Ford Copula filmed it all on a Hollywood set).

“As the daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister to Apollo, she is also recognized as a goddess of childbirth, fertility, and the protector of young girls.”

It is ironic that childbirth, fertility, and bodily autonomy were legislated away by this Supreme Court in 2022 after 50 years of sacred precedent, that the majority who ripped this away lied about respecting under Oath.

It is ironic that his first two major firings from DHS and DOJ are women, who were not remotely qualified for their government positions, but the majority of massive firings of primarily African American women, were more than qualified for theirs, and mediocre white males are allowed to keep their power and authority because of the obvious formula: pale skin and penises.

It is ironic that Artemis was the protector of young girls. The victims of Jeffrey Epstein could have used her on his “Island of Dr. Moreau,” the young women not being turned into mutants or monsters, but “othered,” thingified, objectified, discarded once passed through the smoldering arms of Moloch.

“Moloch (or Molech) is an ancient Canaanite deity associated in the Hebrew Bible with child sacrifice. Often depicted as a calf-headed, human-bodied bronze idol, sacrifices involved burning children in a fire within or before the statue, specifically in the Valley of Hinnom.”

Perhaps we’ve always had an “Epstein class,” the first island named Monticello, now a national monument. The author of the U.S. Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, a 44-year-old married (then widowed) enslaver forcing himself on a 14-year-old, enslaved soul, Sally Hemming, herself the daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law, making him both a pedophile and practitioner of incest. The Library of Congress is based on the library of this “founding psychopath,” Sally’s half-brother.

“The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival by John Bagot Glubb is a 1978 book that analyzes the rise and fall of empires, arguing they follow a predictable cycle of about 250 years, moving from military expansion to wealth, intellectualism, and eventual moral decay and collapse. Glubb, a British soldier and historian, uses the examples of Rome and Britain to illustrate this pattern, suggesting that modern civilizations face similar challenges and that understanding this historical cycle is key to survival, warning against over-reliance on intellect without self-sacrifice and service.”

https://archive.org/details/the-fate-of-empires-sir-john-glubb

Though I honor and salute the achievements of Captain Victor Glover (he visited the 50^th National Society of Black Engineers virtually from the International Space Station in 2024, prior to what we see now was a consequential; existential election), I’m sure the Captain can recall the sage words of Marvin Gaye, who’s birthday was April 2^nd, words that still hit powerfully today in this moment, months before our nation’s 250^th birthday:

“Rockets, moon shots.

“Spend it all on the have-nots.

“Money, we make it.

“Before we see it, you take it.

Chorus

“Oh, make me wanna holler,

“The way they do my life.

“(Yeah) Make me wanna holler,

“The way they do my life.

“This ain’t living, this ain’t living.

“No, no, baby, this ain’t living.

“No, no, no, no.”

Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues” (Make Me Wanna Holler), Genius Lyrics

Artemis II mission is about to fly humans to the Moon — here’s the science they’ll do, Alexandra Witze, Nature

Steppenwolf and Starships…

John Medland/Paramount+

‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ to End With Season 2 (EXCLUSIVE), Joe Otterson, Variety

Topics: Civilization, Einstein, Literature, Space Exploration, Special Relativity, Star Trek

Magic Carpet Physics

In the TNG Movie, “Star Trek: First Contact,” Captain Picard, Commander Riker, Counselor Troi, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Lieutenant Commander Joardi Laforge, Lieutenant Commander Worf and Lieutenant Commander Data defied Causality and Relativity once again to do the “slingshot” thing their predecessors, James T. Kirk, Spock, et al, were all so famous for doing on TOS (The Original Star Trek for the non-Trekkies out there). Zephram Cochrane (the fictional creator of warp drive) almost scrubbed the mission because of a missing CD playing the appropriate tune, “Magic Carpet Ride,” (by the rock band, Steppenwolf) on the maiden voyage of the Phoenix, which everyone in my theater cheered, unbeknownst to them that it was (to me) a tongue-in-cheek to the absurdity of breaking the universe’s speed limit, and thereby allowing the audacity of time travelers to affect past events.

As an undergraduate physics major, I took “Classical Mechanics,” which did a lot of Newtonian mechanics, but went deep into Lorentz Transformation, pivotal to understanding the Special Theory of Relativity as it relates to time, mass, and length contraction as an object, or a person, approaches the speed of light.

Colloquially, “Warp Factor One” is supposed to be light speed, 186,232 miles/second, or 300,000 kilometers/second. The formulas in Einstein’s Special Relativity, tables, and their implications follow.

Years Mission	Dilation	%Speed of Light (c)
5	11.47	90%
	16.01	95%
	35.44	99%
	111.83	99.9%

Mass (kg), Pounds (lbs.)	Δ Mass	%Speed of Light (c)
77 kg (170 lbs.)	176.65 kg (389.45 lbs.)	90%
	246.60 kg (543.65 lbs.)	95%
	545.84 kg (1203.37 lbs.)	99%
	1722.20 kg (3796.81 lbs.)	99.9%

Let: Δl’ = height of astronaut on Earth	Let: Δl = height of astronaut on Enterprise	%Speed of Light (c)
1.8 meters (m) or 5’10”	0.79 m or 2’7″	90%
	0.56 m or 1’10”	95%
	0.25 m or ~10.”	99%
	0.08 m or ~3.”	99.9%

There are websites you can do these calculations, but I thought it better to talk through these one by one, then discuss the reason for the creative ways screenwriters avoided the conundrum of time dilation, massive astronauts compressed into gelatinous goo, and the hilarious technobabble (Sir Patrick Steward’s term, not mine) of “Inertia Dampeners” and “Heisenberg Compensators.”

The Demise of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and Maybe, Sci-Fi

As I read the screeds of “old heads” (some I agree with, and some points I don’t) that “Star Fleet Academy’s” demise did not start this season, and end next season: the downfall of Star Trek as a franchise began with the premiere of Star Trek: Enterprise, September 26, 2001, fifteen days AFTER September 11, 2001, when the nominal equivalent of Khan Noonian Singh convinced his cult followers to plunge planes into buildings. In contrast, “24” premiered on November 6, 2001, and revenge porn against “evil doers” and “bad hombres” became the zeitgeist of America. We’re more armed to the hilt than any other Western nation, kill each other with such regularity that gun massacres are not “front page news,” ever ready for “jackbooted thugs,” Armageddon, and the Rapture with Jesus parting the clouds with an AR15. Paramount gave us an optimistic Captain Jonathan Archer for five seasons. On the heels of 9/11, it was probably not the best time for a show about humanity living beyond its adolescence.

Fox Entertainment gave us vengeance and Jack Bauer for nine. Vengeance, in all its forms, from military deployments to Sci-Fi to superhero genres, stuck.

Starfleet and military protocol

Captain Nahla Ake, played by the actress Holly Hunter, as Commandant of Starfleet Academy, walked around the Academy and the Starship Athena in her stocking feet, and curled up in the Captain’s chair with a good book. I’m an Air Force veteran and an avid Trekkie. I have no memory of James T. Kirk, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko, Kathryn Janeway, Jonathan Archer, Carol Freeman (voiced by Dawnn Lewis), Michael Burnham, or Christopher Pike, curling up in the Captain’s chair like it’s their living room! Starfleet was patterned after the US Navy; creator Gene Roddenberry and James Doohan (“Scotty”) were both WWII veterans in the Army Air Force and Canadian Air Force, respectively. “Starfleet Academy and Oxford both serve as elite, historic, and demanding institutions aimed at cultivating elite, knowledgeable leaders. While Oxford focuses on academic tradition, humanity, and scientific research, Starfleet Academy trains students for space exploration and military service, often compared in structure and discipline to institutions like the U.S. Air Force Academy.“ Google AI

A space opera working every modern trope, and patterned after “90210” in the current mood of the country, probably doesn’t have a long shelf life either. As an “old head,” the tropes felt recycled: Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz made history on Star Trek: Discovery as the first openly LGBT married couple in the franchise’s history. There were a lot of crass comments online from “old heads,” the same, I assume, who have issues with Starfleet Academy in its current iteration. I’m sure that even in Worf’s time, there were LGBT Klingons, just as their analog here on Earth were LGBT Samurai. In Picard, Season 3, Episode 3, Worf gave his resume of badassery and offered Chamomile Tea. Riker fell in love with a nonbinary alien in Next Generation. Jadzia Dax, in several of her Trill lives, had been both sexes, often referred to by Benjamin Sisko as “old man” (because, when a younger Benjamin Sisko, before he knew he was a religious icon to the Bajoran people, met the Dax symbiont, their expression was as an elderly man).

Thus, Jay-Den Kraag, as an openly gay Klingon, seemed like a retread of a trope that had been successful in previous iterations of Trek but did not fit the framework of a warrior-class Klingon. Like the Samurai, I’m sure that the Klingon had same-sex relationships, and like wolves, as long as you protect the young in the pack, or Qo’Nos, you’re good! A “pacifist healer rather than a warrior,” who did not perform the first ritual kill with his father, didn’t seem Klingon. I’m as sure as the fictional Klingons having LGBT as having doctors, except, instead of the Hippocratic Oath (“do no harm”), they grant you an honorable death that will land you in Sto’Vo’Kor. I was surprised that his father didn’t try to ritually kill him, rather than scream and abandon him. So “un-Klingon.”

Despite impossible physics, Star Trek, unbeknownst to its detractors, was “woke” from the beginning. Like all good fiction, it’s supposed to be a mirror of the human condition, not a science seminar. “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” was a stark warning on the ultimate result of racial or social class hatred: annihilation on both sides, the haters and the hated. The Original Star Trek was born in the crucible of the Civil Rights movement, beloved by Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, to the point that he convinced Nichelle Nichols not to quit the show after its first season, so that our people could “see themselves in the future” (it was the only show the Kings let their children stay up late to see) Trope pasting is lazy writing and a disservice to an otherwise talented cast.

I wish all the actors well. We will be more likely than starships to build more relationships on the only planet suited uniquely for human life. There are no Vulcans on the horizon. If humanity is to survive, it will do so with cooperation and less hoarding of resources by the rich. No beneficent aliens or superluminal starships: ALL of us.

EEI…

In January, 2025, a highly destructive wildfire in Pacific Palisades, California, damaged thousands of houses and buildings. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty

Topics: Climate Change, Economics, Entropy, Environment, Existentialism, Global Warming, Thermodynamics

Note: My apologies. My posting is sporadic due to my commute to and from work (1 hour, 6 minutes in GOOD traffic on IH-40). I have sent myself stories to post, but time and exhaustion take over my evenings. I’ve sadly decided that if this venue is to exist at all, I will make my post in the least impactful evenings during my week: Thursday for this Friday, and Friday to post on Saturday. Thank you to everyone who has ever “checked in” on this WordPress blog. Dr. RLG

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics: “If two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.” https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/zeroth-law-thermal-equilibrium/

First Law of Thermodynamics: “Energy cannot be created, or destroyed, only transferred or converted from one form to another.” The internal energy change ∆U is the difference between heat added (Q) and work done by the system (W), or ∆U = Q – W, The Law of Conservation of Energy. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/first-law-of-thermodynamics

Second Law of Thermodynamics: “The total Entropy (disorder) of an isolated system can never decrease over time and is constant only for reversible processes.” Heat flows from hotter to colder objects, not colder to hotter objects. 100% energy conversion is impossible. “Time’s Arrow” is derived from the Second Law. https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/second-law-entropy/

Third Law of Thermodynamics: Entropy (disorder) of a perfect crystal approaches zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero (0 degrees Kelvin, or -273.15 °C). Time, a measure of increased Entropy, stops in all practicality. Molecular motion slows to a minimum, and a substance cannot be cooled to absolute zero in a finite number of steps. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14538

*****

The past 11 years (2015-2025) have been the hottest on record, with last year being the second or third warmest year since observations began, according to a report released today by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

“We seem to be entering this new era where temperatures will be significantly higher than what they were ten years ago,” says climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, who is from the Australian National University in Canberra. The past three years have seen large changes in temperature that could only be a result of climate change, she adds.

Energy imbalance

For the first time, the report includes a measure of the accumulation of heat on Earth and in the atmosphere. The indicator, called the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI), has been used by climate scientists for at least a decade, and is the difference between the amount of energy that the Earth receives from the Sun and the amount radiated back into space. It allows scientists to monitor the rate of global warming. A positive EEI value means that the total amount of heat stored on Earth is increasing. https://wmo.int/media/news/new-study-shows-earth-energy-imbalance

Last year, the EEI reached its highest level since observations started in 1960, the report states. The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere traps heat on Earth, reducing the amount of warmth that is radiated back into space.

Thomas Mortlock, a climate analyst at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, says that the inclusion of EEI in the WMO report is notable. Typically, the rise in surface temperatures is what makes headlines, but the atmosphere absorbs just 1% of the planet’s excess heat so using it to gauge the severity of global warming is “quite misleading”, he says. More than “91% of all of the excess heat that has been received by the Earth since the 1970s has been absorbed in the oceans”, he adds.

Mortlock suggests that the planet’s energy imbalance is a much better descriptor to understand the true impact of global warming.

Freund adds that EEI is also a clearer measure of long-term changes than comparing average temperatures, which can fluctuate year to year owing to events with short-term impacts, such as volcanic eruptions or the La Niña weather pattern.

The world just lived through the 11 hottest years on record — what now?

Rachel Fieldhouse, Mohana Basu, Nature

Inadvertent Graphene…

Credit: ACS Nano (2026). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5c12759

Topics: Applied Physics, Battery, Chemistry, Graphene, History, Materials Science, Nanomaterials

What do Thomas Edison and 2010 Nobel Prize in physics winners Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim have in common? According to a recent publication from the lab of Rice University’s James Tour in ACS Nano, it could be graphene—an answer that might have confused Edison, who died almost 20 years before physicist P.R. Wallace proposed such a substance could exist, and nearly 80 years before Novoselov and Geim were awarded a Nobel Prize for isolating and characterizing it.

Graphene is a transparent, remarkably strong substance, as thin as a single atom, and useful in several modern applications, like semiconductors. One type of graphene, called turbostratic graphene, can be produced by applying a voltage across a resistant carbon-based material and rapidly heating it to 2,000–3,000 degrees Celsius.

In modern terms, that method is called flash Joule heating. But in 1879, Edison’s method was simply turning on one of his newly patented, stable light bulbs. Unlike modern incandescent light bulbs that rely on tungsten filaments, early versions often used resistive carbon-based filaments, such as Japanese bamboo. Flipping a switch applied a voltage that rapidly heated the filaments, producing light. Or, perhaps, graphene. It depends on the century.

Edison’s 1879 bulb experiments may have unintentionally produced graphene, Rachel Leeson, edited by Andrew Zinin, Phys.org

SiC/SiC Composites, Pulsed Lasers, and Water…

Schematic of annulus-conical water jet-assisted laser machining. Fig 1

Topics: Applied Physics, Composite Materials, Fluid Mechanics, Lasers, Materials Science, Nanoengineering

Abstract

When processing SiC/SiC composites using nanosecond-pulsed lasers, thermal effects such as molten deposition and heat-affected zones (HAZs) will occur. In this study, an annulus-conical water jet (ACWJ) was introduced to assist nanosecond laser machining of SiC/SiC composites, aiming to suppress thermal damage. A comparative investigation between laser processing in air and under ACWJ assistance was conducted. The results demonstrated that ACWJ assistance effectively eliminated molten material deposition and HAZs, significantly improving surface quality. However, despite a short beam path in the water (approximately 2.5–3 mm), turbulence in the water stream during ACWJ processing caused beam divergence and focus drift, leading to a substantial reduction in laser energy density on the target surface, and thus a lower material removal efficiency compared to laser machining in air. Moreover, the beam focal position drifted within the turbulent water stream, resulting in broader and shallower machined features. The material removal rate during ACWJ-assisted laser processing was only approximately 3%–10% of that achieved in air. In groove ablation, achieving the same depth as that in air-based processing required a significantly larger number of scan passes under ACWJ conditions. In hole machining, the resulting hole diameters were approximately 240% greater than those achieved in air.

Processing of SiC/SiC composite using an annulus-conical water jet-assisted nanosecond-pulsed laser, Zhuang Liu, Weicheng Xu, Chenhao Li, Tianrui Liu, Changshui Gao, Journal of Applied Physics

Rogue Planet…

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Astronomers just measured the mass of a free-floating planet without a star for the first time

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, NASA

When we imagine a planet, we think of one like ours, orbiting a star. But some have a far lonelier existence, drifting through interstellar space without a sun to call their own. Known as “rogue” or “free-floating” planets, these worlds are often challenging to study. With no known star and no orbit from which to estimate their size, they’ve generally flown under the radar—until now.

In a new study published in Science on Thursday, scientists show how they measured the mass of one such rogue planet for the first time—a breakthrough that could enable further studies of these strange, lonely worlds.

Instead of looking at the planet’s orbit, the research team, led by Subo Dong of Peking University, instead analyzed how the planet’s gravity bent the light from a distant star, in a so-called microlensing event, from two separate vantage points: Earth and the now-retired Gaia space observatory.

Scientists Just Clocked a ‘Rogue’ Planet the Size of Saturn, By Jackie Flynn Mogensen, edited by Claire Cameron, Scientific American

Quantum Cryptography…

Credit: VectorMine/Shutterstock

Topics: Computer Science, Cryptography, Cybersecurity, NIST, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

Note: As a Communications-Computer Systems Officer in the US Air Force, I was once responsible for Technical Control, Computer Maintenance, and Crypto-Teletype (not that anyone uses a teletype anymore – I hope not!). I also beta-tested DARPANET at Bergstrom Air Force Base, which you are now using as the World Wide Web. It’s humbling to see how things have evolved from Zenith computers, behemoths that required a van the size of a one-car garage as their mainframe, now compacted in our hip pockets or laptops.

What is cryptography?
For centuries, royal figures, government officials, and military officers — along with spies and assassins — have used secret codes to protect their confidential messages. These individuals were performing early versions of cryptography — employing mathematical techniques to protect the security of information.

These secret codes, known as ciphers, could be as simple as taking a message and shifting each letter of the alphabet by a certain number of positions so that A became D, B became E, etc. But cryptography has evolved greatly since these earliest examples.

Nowadays, digital devices such as computers routinely carry out mathematical operations to scramble information in highly complex ways. In addition to being much more technologically advanced, modern cryptography frequently includes authentication — verifying that both the sender and the receiver of information really are who they say they are.

What is quantum cryptography?
Quantum cryptography is a set of methods that uses the quirky — but well-understood — rules of quantum mechanics to securely encrypt, transmit, and decode information. Quantum cryptography employs quantum devices, such as sensors capable of recording individual particles of light (photons), to protect data from an adversarial attack. Although technically challenging, quantum cryptography promises advantages over classical, nonquantum cryptographic systems. For instance, the quantum approach has the potential to better detect and thwart eavesdroppers who try to intercept data.

One early example of a quantum cryptographic protocol, known as quantum key distribution (QKD), uses a string of computer bits or characters (called an encryption key) shared by two trusted partners to scramble and unscramble data. Although the encryption key itself is not quantum, it is transmitted using quantum particles — photons. In 2004, Austrian scientists employed QKD to establish a secure connection for the transfer of funds from a bank to Vienna City Hall.

QKD systems, however, still have technological and theoretical loopholes, some of which could make it possible for eavesdroppers to intercept and decode messages. Because of these current limitations, the National Security Agency does not recommend using QKD for national security systems.

What Is Quantum Cryptography? NIST

Almost the Twilight Zone…

Topics: Computer Modeling, Mathematics, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics

The concept of a fourth dimension is so elusive and mysterious that many of us find it almost impossible to comprehend. But could an additional layer of spatial reality truly exist, hidden beyond our three-dimensional worldview? Tantalizingly, scientists now claim to have built a fourth dimension of space.

Scientists build a window into the fourth dimension, David Stock, New Scientist

You’re traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are those of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call “The Twilight Zone.”

Rod Serling

Hitchhikers…

Topics: Astronautics, Astrophysics, Moonbase, NASA

One of the key challenges in building and sustaining a permanent settlement on the moon, as in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is finding a reliable and economical means of transporting essential resources, such as water and energy.

The good news is that while the moon may look like a barren wasteland — and, according to NASA, be a hundred times drier than the Sahara — it is not quite as desolate as it first appears. This is because for billions of years, particles have travelled from our atmosphere to its surface via the Earth’s geomagnetic field, scientists at the University of Rochester reported in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

“By combining data from particles preserved in lunar soil with computational modeling of how solar wind interacts with Earth’s atmosphere, we can trace the history of Earth’s atmosphere and its magnetic field,” Eric Blackman, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a distinguished scientist at University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), said in a statement.

A previous analysis of these soil samples found light volatile elements, such as hydrogen, helium, neon, argon, and nitrogen. Crucially, these substances have been found in lunar soil but not in lunar rock, meaning they must have come from elsewhere. While their presence can, in part, be attributed to the steady stream of particles that emanates from the sun (solar wind), the volume of nitrogen in the soil suggests there is at least one additional source.

A few theories have been put forward, including those that suggest the light volatile elements arrived on interplanetary dust, through asteroid collisions, or from the gas of lunar volcanoes. However, one leading theory is that the particles have a terrestrial origin.

If this is indeed the case, the question is: when and how did they travel from Earth to the moon? In 2005, a separate team of researchers made the case that the particles made the journey before the formation of Earth’s magnetic field. Twenty years later, Blackman and co put that theory to the test.

Terrestrial Particles Travel to the Moon by Hitchhiking Along Earth’s Magnetic Field Lines, Rosie McCall, Discover Magazine

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