Mass into Energy

“If you can Heal, you may eventually be able to exchange mass and energy if you conserve hadrons,” Derik told Roi. (from Homecoming.)

Exchange mass and energy? And what are hadrons?

Einstein’s famous equation—E=mc²—says that a very small amount of mass can be turned into a very large amount of energy or vice versa. If you could turn a gram of mass (that’s about the mass of a small gourmet jellybean) into energy, you’d get roughly 25 million kilowatt-hours. In practice, you have to conserve hadrons—essentially the total number of neutrons and protons in the cores of atoms, which make up most of their weight.

Thus it is possible, with enough heat and pressure, to force four hydrogen atoms (each with one proton and one electron) together to form one helium atom (with two protons, two neutrons and two electrons.) The four hydrogen atoms turn out to have about 1% more mass than the helium atom, and this extra mass, the binding energy, reappears as gamma rays and particles. This is the energy of the hydrogen bomb, and also the energy that powers the sun and most of the stars. The process is called fusion (coming together), but as of yet we cannot control it. (I don’t think you can call a hydrogen bomb controlled.)

A second way in which mass can be transformed into energy involves very heavy elements, such as uranium. It turns out that all of the protons and neutrons packed together in these elements aren’t really happy. They may split apart on their own, or because they are hit by some other particle, but the net effect is that the mass of the parts they split into is less than that of the original atom, so the split produces energy. This is nuclear fission (splitting.) This is the energy of the original atomic bomb, but it is also the energy that drives plate tectonics and volcanoes, and is occasionally tapped for geothermal energy. This one we can control to some extent, and it is the energy source for nuclear power plants—but those large, unstable atoms are rare in nature.

The middle-weight elements—such as iron—are stable. There is no way to extract binding energy from iron—it is sometimes called the nuclear ash of stars. (Note that many of the elements of all masses have isotopes in which an imbalance between neutrons and protons leads to instability, but these are very rare in nature. They are very important in man-made nuclear waste, however.)

Most of the energy we use today comes from sunlight past or present—fusion energy. Solar energy intercepted by the earth today fuels not only what is called solar energy but also wind power, hydropower, and biofuels. These are all “renewable” sources—we can use them at the rate present-day sunlight generates them. But they are limited by the amount of sunlight available.

Fossil fuels are storage for the sunlight of the past—and we are using them up far faster than they can be replenished. Only a tiny fraction of the sunlight falling on the surface of the earth is actually captured as biomass, and only a tiny fraction of that biomass is buried and eventually becomes coal, oil or natural gas. But ultimately, it is all nuclear energy.

So yes, mass can be turned into energy, and in fact almost all of the energy we use actually comes from such conversion. But there are limits.

There Were Three Quarks

Ever wonder how Carbon-14 goes about decaying to allow C-14 Dating?? Well, hold on to your red hat with the white trim! The tune is “There were two ravens sat in a tree.”

There were three quarks in a neutron seen
Down a down, hey down, hey down
One red, one blue and one was green
With a down
The neutron in a nucleus sat
Of C-fourteen in Santa’s hat
With a down, derry derry derry, up, down.

One quark unto the others said,
Down a down, hey down, hey down
“I’m dressed for Christmas all in red,”
With a down
“You’re green, not red,” a second cried,
“I’m green, she’s blue,” a third replied.
With a down, derry derry derry, up, down.

The shouts and shoving grew so keen
Down a down, hey down, hey down
Among the red, the blue, and green,
With a down
One tripped on a virtual W
That wasn’t there, and off it flew,
With a down, derry derry derry, up, down.

The down who’d tripped fell up so hard
Down a down, hey down, hey down
He flipped his spin and gave a charge
With a down
To the non-existent W
And knocked it right out of the nucleus, too.
With an up, derry derry derry up down.

The W not far could go
Down a down, hey down, hey down
Split off an antineutrino
With a down
The charge with a new electron stayed
That from the W was made.
With an up, derry derry derry up down.

The neutron was a proton then,
Down a down, hey down, hey down
The carbon changed to nitrogen
With a down
The N from a carbon’s place went scat
Leaving a hole in Santa’s hat
With an up, derry derry derry up down.

As Santa flew high o’er the pole
Down a down, hey down, hey down
Ozone trickled through the hole
With a down
A new hypothesis on why
An ozone hole is in the sky.
With an up, derry derry derry up down.

Winter Solstice

Sunset Dec 21 at Fairbanks, latitude 64 degrees 50 minutes. Photo taken about 2:40 pm, looking a little west of south.

Happy Southday! (Or, if you don’t follow time as measured on the planet Central, Happy Winter Solstice.) The days in the northern hemisphere are getting longer again!

Solstice has nothing to do with distance from the sun. In fact, we are rapidly approaching our closest approach to the sun, around January 3. But because the earth’s axis is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun, there are times (the solstices) when one pole or the other comes as close as it ever gets to pointing directly at the sun, while the other is as close as it can get to pointing away. That happened on Dec 21 this year with the north pole pointing as far as it could get away from the sun.

On the winter solstice, the sun never rises north of the Arctic circle, while it never sets south of the Antarctic circle. Closer to the equator it rises and sets, but the northern hemisphere days are at their shortest for the year, and the sun at noon is at its lowest in the sky. The low sun and short days combine to minimize the solar heating of the ground and water. The opposite is true in the southern hemisphere, where it is the first day of summer, and both day length and solar elevation are at their greatest for the year.

Our Earth’s axis of rotation is 23.5 degrees from axis of rotation of its orbit around the sun. What would happen if that angle were 0?

I actually invented such a planet, called Eversummer, for my second science fiction novel, Tourist Trap. It wasn’t exactly paradise!

The planet’s name, Marna thought, must have been picked out by a publicity agent.  Everspring would have been more accurate, or Everfall, or perhaps Constancy.  Maybe even Boredom.

The planet, with its rotational axis almost perpendicular to its orbital plane, had no seasons.  The poles were bitterly cold, glaciated wastelands where the sun forever rolled around the horizon.  The equatorial belt was an unchanging steam bath, the permanent home of daily tropical thunderstorms, varied by hurricanes along its poleward borders.  The desert belts, inevitable result of the conflict between the planet’s rotation and its unequal heating by its sun, were broad and sharply defined, with no transition zones where the rains came seasonally.  The temperate zones, between desert and polar ice, were swept year round by equinoctial storms, varied only by occasional droughts.  No monsoons, no seasonal blanket of snow to protect the dormant land, no regular alternation of wet and dry seasons.

Would you like to live on such a planet?

Oh Permafrost (1994, to the tune of “Oh Tannenbaum”)

The Geophysical Institute and Akasofu building (on the right) which inspired this carol, and the cross country ski hut built to appease the skiers in the center.

Oh permafrost, O permafrost,
We thought we’d build right o’er you.
Oh, permafrost, Oh, permafrost,
We find we can’t ignore you.
We’ve moved the building, changed the path,
Exposed ourselves to skiers’ wrath
Oh permafrost, Oh, permafrost,
We fervently deplore you.

The original plans for the Akasofu Building had to be altered when the ground at the originally planned site proved to have too much permafrost. As a result, the revised building site forced movement of the ski trails that crisscross the campus.

 

Conservation Laws of Energy and Teleportation

There are a number of conservation laws in physics, and these are well-enough established to be pretty basic. Conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum and mass are critical to the way the universe operates. But what do these laws mean?

Let’s start with the conservation of energy, ignoring for the moment the fact that under certain limited conditions it is possible to transform a very small amount of mass into a very large amount of energy, and vice versa. That’s nuclear energy, and we’ll get to it in another post.

Coal, which carries in chemical form energy converted from sunlight in the distant past, is being converted in this plant to both electricity to help run the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and heat to keep the buildings warm. The highly visible plume, by the way, is almost entirely condensed water—an unfortunate byproduct of burning any hydrogen-containing fuel at temperatures not much above 40 below. It levels out at a relatively low elevation because of the intense inversion common in Fairbanks in winter.

Conservation of energy states that while energy can be changed from one form into another, the sum of all forms of energy is unchanged—energy can neither be created not destroyed.

Wait a minute, you may be saying. What about burning wood in my fireplace? Isn’t that producing energy?

It’s producing heat energy, yes—but the heat energy produced is balanced by the fact that the unburned wood has more chemical energy than the ash left behind in the fireplace. A very exact measurement, including the heat and light of the fire, the motion of air that it produces, and the increase in thermal energy of the fireplace itself, the smoke, and our hands held out to the fire, would show that the energy produced by the fire would be exactly the same as the chemical energy lost by the wood as it turned to ash.

Chemical energy, light and heat are by no means the only forms of energy. Two very important ones are gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy—the energy of any moving mass. If we think of a ball released on top of a hill, part of the gravitational potential energy of the ball will be transformed into the kinetic energy of its motion as it rolls faster and faster down the hill. Part, because part will be transformed into friction, both of the air and against the ground, which will ultimately reappear as heat.

Another form of energy with which we are very familiar is electrical potential energy. Electrical energy is convenient because it can readily be distributed by wires, but there is some heating of those wires and radiation of electromagnetic energy in the process, and thus a loss of electrical energy as heat. But the source of most of the electrical energy we use today is either chemical energy (fossil fuel or biofuels) or gravitational potential energy (hydropower.) Direct solar energy (energy of sunlight, or more correctly electromagnetic radiation) wind power (kinetic energy of the air) tidal energy (left over from the gravitational potential energy which created our solar system) and geothermal energy (generated by nuclear reactions in the Earth’s core) produce only a relatively small fraction of the electricity generated.

The point is, energy is not generated out of nothing. It is transformed from some other form of energy. Both biofuels and fossil fuels get their chemical energy from solar energy—the only difference is whether the solar energy is what is falling on the earth today or is stored solar energy from the distant past. Hydropower and wind energy are also driven by the sun.

In my science fiction book, abilities such as teleportation are subject to all of the conservation laws. When Derik asks Roi what he has to do for a balanced teleport to a higher elevation, Roi replies, “Move mass down to balance my mass moving up, same as levitation. The distance down times the mass I move down has to be the same as my mass times the distance I move up.” In this case, simple conservation of gravitational potential energy. But that’s not all he has to remember!

Two Rare Dilutions and a Summary of Dilution Genes in Horses

This post has been updated and reissued with new photographs here.

Two dilution genes are so rare that their effect on all base colors is not even well understood.

Mushroom has been found in only a few breeds: Shetland Pony, Haflinger and possibly the American Quarter horse. At first glance, it looks like silver dapple acting on a black background. The body color is a flat beige or sepia, and the mane and tail are lighter than the body. But mushroom horses, unlike silver dapple, are very rarely dappled. Further, their eyelashes normally remain dark.

DNA tests show conclusively that these horses do not carry silver. Even more surprising, gene tests indicate the underlying color is not black, but chestnut.

Mushroom has been shown to be due to a recessive gene, tentatively identified as the mushroom allele at the mushroom locus. The effect on base colors other than chestnut is at the present time unknown.

It is difficult to know how common the mushroom allele is, partly because most mushroom horses are misidentified as silver dapples.

The other rare dilution as been found in two closely related Arabian horses. Their pedigrees suggest a recessive gene, and their appearance suggest that the effect of the double recessive is similar to that of a single champagne gene, though there is less effect on red pigment or skin color.  Eye color is lighter than normal. However, this is based on only two horses.

A single horse can have any two alleles at each locus. Thus a horse can easily be a palomino and a dun (linebacked palomino) or a a dun and a silver dapple on a black background (silver grullo.) Telling which genes are actually present based on the appearance of the horse, however, can be a major problem without DNA testing. In many cases, a horse with multiple dilution genes will just look cream, or even white.

We can summarize the loci and the alleles we have discussed previously, with links to photos, as follows:

Agouti locus: This has been shown to be the agouti signalling protein (ASIP) locus. The exact number of alleles is uncertain, but probably include wild-type bay (some red on lower legs), bay, seal brown (black with some red shading) and non-agouti (black.) More red is dominant to more black in this series. Most blacks, and particularly most intense blacks, are due to non-agouti.

Extension locus: This has been shown to be the melanocortin one receptor (MS1R) locus. There are three alleles. The most dominant first, they are dominant black, wild-type, and recessive red (chestnut). This locus determines whether black pigment can be produced. Two copies of the recessive red allele or one of the dominant black allele completely hide whatever is present at the agouti locus. Dominant black is relatively rare and still subject to some controversy.

Cream locus: This has been shown to be the membrane-associated transport protein (MATP) locus. The alleles are (in order of dominance) cream, wild-type, and pearl. Red pigment is affected far more than black, especially if the horse has one wild-type gene. Palomino, buckskin and smoky black are the result of a single cream allele with the other being wild-type. Two cream alleles give cremillo, perlino, or smoky cream, which cannot always be told apart. The pearl allele is a relatively recent discovery, but it appears to be at the cream locus.

Dun locus: As of 2009 the locus had not been found, so no DNA test was available. The alleles are dun (wild-type) which is dominant to non-dun. Both red and black pigment are affected, and in addition dun produces a dorsal stripe and other variable striping effects. There’ll be a dun, specifically a grulla, in my upcoming novel, Tourist Trap.

Champagne locus: This has been reported to be a mutation in Exon 2 of SLC36A1, and a gene test is available. The alleles are Champagne (dominant) and wild-type, and it does not matter whether one or two doses of Champagne are present. The effect is to dilute both red and black, but a single dose of champagne causes more dilution of black on the body than does a single dose of cream. Eye and skin color are also affected.

Silver Dapple locus: This has been shown to be the pre-melanosomal protein 17 (PMEL17) locus. The alleles are silver (dominant) and wild-type. This gene dilutes black to a variable extent, but has little or no effect on red, and appears to dilute the coarsest hairs most strongly. Like champagne, it is a simple dominant.

I may take Christmas off, but I’ll be back with the genes that produce interspersed white hairs: grey, roan, frosty, white ticking and roaned.

Road Update

Remember the ice storm almost a month ago? It’s still on the roads. This is Badger Road, a fairly well-traveled road, and only the blackest areas are (almost) bare pavement. The rest is ice.

At least I have time to write in the winter!

Geophysical Christmas Carols

Snow Carol (to the tune of “Winter Wonderland”)

In the air, vapor’s swirling,
On the pond, folks are curling,
The vapor makes drops, the drops freeze and pop,
And six-sided snowflakes fall down.

On the lake, skates are gliding,
Overhead, clouds are hiding,
Ice in the sky is growing, oh, my,
And six-sided snowflakes fall down

Snowflakes could be square or five pointed,
Or octagons, or spherical, you know,
But water with water is jointed
So that only six arms can grow.

On the slopes, skiers swish on,
Snowflakes hide stars to wish on,
They fall through the air, and catch in your hair,
The six-sided snowflakes fall down.

The science? Snowflakes do indeed have hexagonal near-symmetry, and this goes back to the crystal structure of ice. The condensation of water vapor into droplets and their subsequent freezing and splintering to seed more droplets into freezing is also part of cloud physics.

The Book Video is Here!

The video trailer for Homecoming is now up! It has its own page, but I’m putting it in the regular page stream, too.

Geophysical (Alaskan) Christmas Carols

Climate Change (2000, to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)

Dashing through the snow,
On snow machine or skis,
Grass is poking through,
Send a blizzard, please!
It’s balmy in the North
While snowstorms rage Outside,
Please, Santa, all we want this year
Is snowfall, far and wide.

Climate change, climate change,
Wind and ice and snow,
Not much here in Fairbanks town
Wherever did they go?
Climate change, climate change,
Wind and ice and snow,
Should retreat to polar caps,
But tell them Down Below!

Note that “Outside” and “down Below” in Alaska are shorthand for the contiguous 48 states. I thought this carol was appropriate today, the weather in the 48 states being what it is.