The neutron

I do believe a Nobel Prize is a-coming for our NIST: where neutrons meet silicon.

NIST took advantage of the neutron's wave-properties at the quantum-level, measuring the pendellösung (vibrations) in the silicon after firing a noot at it. They get an average of those vibrations after measuring a bunch of noots on their way out. I'm not told if they bothered aiming the neutrons but if it was all scattershot, they may not have had to. I just hope nobody was in the room when they ran the tests.

What they got, was a better understanding of the silicon lattice - to start with. This may push back on that nanometer problem.

For the theoreticians amongst us, we now got an actual cross-section of the free neutron. Our textbooks like to offer a chart of three quarks tied together with gluons, but at the quantum-level obviously that is not how they look anymore than a hydrogen atom has electrons in orbit. In place of that, NIST offer a charge-density chart. Turns out, the neutron is net positive in the centre and wrapped with the negative charge on the outside. All summing to zero of course. The grade of charge diffusion is related to a constant, the Charge Radius, now given a decent measure: -0.1101 ±0.0089 square femtometers. I take it the negative number reflects that electric charge.

Next, and perhaps least, NIST didn't find any "fifth force" between the distances measured, 20 picometers to 10 nano (referring to Yukawa here). Physicists couch that in terms of Constraint. UPDATE 9/18: Turtle Island is on this beat.

And the technique itself is rated Awesome so they're going to use it on other crystals. And on crystals at the supercold state, which they call "quantum ground". Wonder if that means Einstein Bose.

Where's Cesar Chavez when we need him

Jekan Thanga from Arizona is back. Now he's talking robot miners on the moon so NASA don't have to hire Mexicans to do it.

I wish I could say I was kidding, but: As a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the university was eligible to receive funding through NASA's Minority University Research and Education Project Space Technology Artemis Research Initiative.

At least they got some actual engineering out of this one. They are hinting that, besides cutting labour costs, they also might not need as much water.

As an aside, Arizonian institutions are really running the table this week.

"My body, my choice"

Mississippi conservative women have figured out how to abort without a trip to the Confessional: don't get vaccinated, and party on. I have to give them credit for their ingenuity although, the MS Free Press has caught them out at it.

I'd not recommend this method myself, but then; I've never been a woman, nor a conservative.

What I am, is a Christian and a pro-lifer. So if you claim a "religious exemption" from an effective vaccine, you have revealed yourself as a heretic.

Never trust a Brit

Where I'm at, which is about the Versailles negotiations, the Brits have been hedging their bets in Arabia. Before the War they were trying to keep the Ottomans afloat against Russia and the German-Austrian axis both. When the Sauds ousted the Rashids from Riyad, this weakened the Ottomans along the Persian Gulf. The Brits were, at first, like... well so what. But they needed to fill that vacuum in case the Russians got there - and the Russians were allied with the French.

The Russians made themselves irrelevant by losing to the Japanese, and then the French got caught with their hands in the Omani slave-trade, like damned fools. So from 1905ish on, the Brits had a clear-ish field in the Gulf, give or take the odd Dane or Dutchman.

Then oil was discovered. Uh oh.

In between fighting each other, the Sauds' man-who-would-be-king found his way to conquering the Hasa. That's familiar to old-Arabian scriptologists for "Hasaitic"; it's the Arabian coast south of Kuwait. The Brits were already negotiating a series of treaties with Gulf emirates like the aforementioned Kuwait and also Muscat (now Oman), and I believe they even had a post in Bahrayn. The Turks' writ didn't extend too far past Baghdad anymore. So, now the Brits had another non-Turkish emirate to handle.

But the Brits didn't want to upset those Turks - who now were starting to get into rail, for instance connecting Damascus with al-Madina.

Events (dear boy) intervened, when the Turks united with the Germans and Austrians along that other rail, the more-famous Orient Express. The Brits got the Sauds on their side, as far as I can tell, mainly to ensure the Arabs didn't interfere with the British takeover of Basra.

Over 1916, when the Sauds had united ... the Sauds, the Brits figured they were in position to make a play for Baghdad. I didn't know about this little adventure but, I learn, they failed hard. As in, Gallipoli-hard. It was a fiasco.

That's about where, I think, the Brits start looking west, at the Hashimis now ruling al-Madina. Seems that the Sharif let slip to a few interested ears that he'd not complain if a few bribes came his way.

Britain, by now desperate, gave the Sharif just about everything he wanted, more-or-less ignoring the Sauds from then on. But then, Britain was promising stuff to the Jews too. Hell, they were even drawing lines on the map with the French.

How any Arab could take any of the British promises seriously is beyond me. The Sharif seems mainly to have been using the British funding to build up his own Near Eastern pan-Arab empire. Good luck with that.

Saudi legacy

I am still working - slowly - through that library of books I inherited from my grandfather. Last year it was Bertita Harding. Having finished Jerusalem I am now onto David Holden's House of Saud. As finished by Richard Johns because, er, some Arab or other had Holden murdered before he could finish it.

Talk about based.

Anyway so far this book is excellent - written as if by a poet, and pulling no punches on its targets, of which there are many. TE Lawrence was a self-promoter whose chief contribution to the so-called "Arab Revolt" was to funnel bribes to the Sharif of Mecca. Islam was Arab tribal culture put to Scripture and venerated by fundamentalists to put Mark Tapscott to shame; Arab tribal culture is dysfunctional. The Sauds can barely put their own family in order let alone face off against the other families, starting with the Rashids and moving on to the Hashimis.

Some myths are exploded. The Ibn-Sauds are not the parvenus Westerners assume; they did have a centuries-old ... existence, in Nejd and Oman. (Compare, the Bin Ladens.) It is just that the Saud(ide)s were not better than the other families, in particular the Hashimis.

REVIEW 10/4: I am still not done but I can give you a report.

Biofilm

ASU got an important status-update on measuring how bacteria do in human-facing environments in zero-gravity, Low Earth Orbit.

The deal here is that bacteria are Stowaways, so make the cold equations even colder. They cannot be trusted not to react with the metals and plastics on board - nor indeed on the people. G-d help pregnant women on board. (PS. Cochran sure nailed that one.)

They need to break up biofilms and to neutralise anything surviving the water-filters. I don't know if they've accounted for, say, using copper instead of stainless-steel where the bugs congregate, but knowing where they congregate is the first battle.

Also where is lunar gravity, the bacteria might not be as much of a problem for us canned monkeys, but they'll remain a problem for equipment. Also someday we want hydroponics, which are a whole other can of organics we'll need to learn to ship better.

Earliest Bronze Age Anatolia

Two reports from what is now the Turkiya, over the earliest Bronze Age: seal impressions, Arslantepe 5000 BC, and life expectancy, Küllüoba 3000 BC.

Arslantepe is not considered "urban", but Küllüoba is. In between I understand the Balkans were getting to urbanity. Küllüoba is in what's now Eskişehir which is pretty northwest, so where they'll be speaking Palaic. Or maybe Hattic.

The Balkans had got whacked by plague and Aryans. Küllüoba, also, suffered from diseases. Infant mortality was high and life-expectancy around the high 30s (although I am unsure how they calculated that).

Both sites across two millennia had those seals, therefore ideograms. I do not know if these were the same seals.

BACKDATE 9/10