Saturday, September 30, 2006
Texas Tea in the Gulf of Mexico

Gas prices have dropped to almost reasonable levels. It's $1.99 a gallon for regular where I am, that's almost a full dollar a gallon drop from earlier in the summer.

The prices started to drop just after they discovered that giant oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico. They say it has the potential to produce half the current U.S. consumption of oil every year, which I will believe when I see. Keep in mind, not one drop of refined gasoline has yet been produced from this reservoir, and won't be for another five or six years. Nevertheless, prices went down dramatically. Makes you wonder why they got so high in the first place. If the amount of available oil has stayed the same, how come the prices were so high before CNN said those three magic words: "They found oil"?

Speculation mostly. Cost will depend upon the stock market, and when word is announced that they expect production of oil to increase, speculation will drive down the price before that oil ever hits the market.

I'm sure the fact that the mid-term elections are coming up plays a part as well. "Gas is $1.99 a gallon! Why those Republicans are a delightful bunch of fellows!"

I have mixed feelings about this discovery. On the one hand, this will reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil, and might evenquiet some of the groups intent upon drilling for oil in Alaska. On the other hand, it's not doing anything to switch the world off of oil in the first place.

These high oil prices produced a boom in hybrid vehicle sales and gave a push to produce vehicles powered by alternate fuels. Just a short while ago BMW announced it planned to produce a line of hydrogen powered cars. The hydrogen vehicle market is a real up-and-coming industry. Without so much as a single H-powered car on the road, Iceland has already starting developingthe infrastructure to produce liquid hydrogen on an industrial scale. They probably won't see a profit for decades, but they're laying the groundwork. It will take a good deal of time for this to spread to the U.S., of course, and it's an awful long drive to Iceland to fill up your Beemer, but it's the light at the end of a long dark tunnel of oil addiction, a particularly dire issue for the U.S. Oil causes all kinds of problems all over the world, from terrorism to pollution to political corruption and environmental disasters, and the U.S. uses more oil than any other country in the world. If any nation needs to clean up its act on oil, it's America.

Hopefully, the Gulf of Mexico reserve will just provide a little relief from the high price of gas until cheaper, alternative fuel vehicles become available. Thank goodness, I was starting to get afraid I might actually have to walk somewhere. Or, God forbid,buy a Segway.

Posted by Robert Williams 2006-09-30 00:07:56

Monday, September 11, 2006
Nominated for a Spectrum Award

Today I received the very happy news that I have been nominated for a Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Check it out here.

The Spectrum Awards recognize positive portrayals of gay and lesbian characters in science fiction. My novel, The Storms of Eternity, has been nominated for Best Novel of 2006, alongside works by authors like Tanya Huff, Gregory Maguire, David Gemmell, and Octavia Butler.It is very excitingfor me to be included with such distinguished company.

This is my first nomination for an award. (Hopefully not the last!) It was a long journeyto bringthis novel into the light of day, publishing it through a POD publisher and doing all the promotion myself. But it was worth it, because I really believe in this book and what it stands for. Winners are announced in October. Wish me luck!

Posted by Robert Williams 2006-09-11 22:07:46

Friday, August 25, 2006
Xena Conquers the Lord of the Underworld

Dan Bieger beat me to the punch. :)

Pluto is no longer designated a planet. The IAU has determined that something can only be called a planet if it is capable of clearing "the neighbourhood" around its orbit and is not a satellite. Here's the IAU's resolution:

"RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A planet¹ is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape², (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects³ orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies"."

So we now have eight planets, anda smattering of known dwarf planets. The former asteroid Ceres, which hangs out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is now a dwarf planet. So is Pluto, as it has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Pluto's highly elliptical orbit takes it past the orbit of Neptune, so periodically Neptune becomes further from the Sun than Pluto. Ergo, not a planet.

This part seems a little fuzzy to me. Why doesn't the "not clearing out the neighborhood of its orbit" apply to Neptune, even though it's a gas giant? And what exactly is the size ofa planet'sneighborhood? This may require some clarification.

The IAU can't be judged too harshly for reclassifying Pluto. It was the newly-discovered dwarf planet nicknamed Xena that opened up this can of worms.Poor old Hades never had a chance.

If there are many more objects out there like Xena and Pluto, and astronomers theorize there could be hundreds, they can't all be classified as planets. So as much as I hate to admit it, this decision probably makes a certain amount of sense.

It's surprising how emotional people can get over objects millions of miles away. But when you're taught something your whole life, change is difficult. Look at how the Church reacted to Galileo.

Let's just hope they take this whole Pluto thing in stride, and don't start barbecuing astronomers again.

Posted by Robert Williams 2006-08-25 02:15:51

Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Problem with Pluto

The International Astronomical Unionstartsits General Assemblyin Prague today, August 14. The IAU is a group given the responsibility with naming and classifying astronomical objects.

One of the bigger issues this yearinvolves the newly discovered tenth planet. For those of you who haven't heard of this, see my earlier blog post on it below. Its official name is 2003HB313, but the astronomers studying it have taken to calling it Xena. It also has a moon, which they are calling Gabrielle. I swear to you this is true.

(As a huge fan of Xena: Warrior Princess, I must tell you I amall butsquealing with pleasure over this name. The IAU will almost certainly rename it, but I plan to enjoyit while it lasts.)

The tenth planet has recently stirred up debate about the definition of a planet. My old college textbook defines it as "any of the nine (so far known) large bodies that revolve around the Sun," which isn't much of a definition.

The word "planet" comes from the Greek word for wanderer, and traditionally referred to any visible heavenly object that moved with respect to the stars. By this definition, the Moon and the Sun were also considered planets. Copernicus put an end to that quite nicely.

Since 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, we've all been taught that there are nine planets in the Solar System, but no one really defines what a planet is.

You can't simply say, "A planet is an object which revolves around the Sun," since there aremillions of asteroids and comets out there floating around Sun someplace or another.

Let's say you're smart and you say "A planet is an object which revolves around a central star and is large enough to be compressed by its own gravity into a spheroid shape." Pretty good, but there areseveral asteroids and cometary nuclei in the Solar Systemsbig enough to do that. And what about all of the Solar System's satellites? Several moons, like Jupiter's moon Ganymede and Saturn's moon Titan, are larger than Pluto, but aren't considered planets.

Okay, so let's say "A planet is an object that revolves around a central star, and not another non-stellar object, which is big enough to be compressed by gravity into a spheroid shape and has a certain minimum diameter." Sounds good, but what minimum diameter? The tenth planet Xena is actually bigger than Pluto, so it's entirely possible that Xena could be classified as a planet and Pluto could lose its planetary status, if the IAU decides to set a minimum diameter. I don't think this would go over very well, because Pluto has a certain sentimental value now. People want it to be called a planet.

So, in bowing to public opinion, we could set Pluto's diameter as the minimum for planetary status, 1422 miles. The thing is, Xena has a diameter of 1490 miles, and astronomers are beginning to suspect there might be still more objects out there around the same size. As more are discovered, where do youstop?

You can throw a lot more requirements out there too, like if the object is big enough to have an atmosphere, distance from the Sun, whether or not it lies in the plane of the ecliptic, and so on. They'll hash it all out in Prague.

I suppose if it were all up to me, I'd just say "The Solar System consists of four gas giants and assorted debris" and call it a day.

Posted by Robert Williams 2006-08-15 02:31:24

Sunday, August 13, 2006
The New Theory of Gravity

I just finished reading an article in the last Discover magazine, the one with the big picture of Einstein on the cover with the caption "The Einstein Dilemma: Was He Wrong About Gravity?"

The article is actually about MOND, or Modified Newtonian Dynamics. This is a theory created by a man named Mordehai Milgrom who doesn't believe in dark matter.

The theory of dark matter was created to explain some problems with the observed rotationof stars in galaxies. Newton's laws of motion say that stars further from the center of the galaxy should move much slower than stars closer to the center. Problem is, stars past a certain distance from the center are observed to move at pretty much the same speed, which makes no sense at all. So they came up with the idea of dark matter to explain it. This theory postulates thatall galaxies are covered with a shell of matter that you can't see or detect in any way, but is nonetheless exerting a gravitational pull on the outer stars in galaxies, making them all move at about the same speed.

Seems to me Iheard something a few years back stating that dark matter might actually be neutrinos. The particle, previously thought to be massless, was shown to have a very tiny mass, and a shell of them accumulating around galaxies could account for dark matter. Neutrinos, like dark matter,don't interact much with regular matter and are very hard to detect. In freshman astronomy courses they like to say it would take a light-year of lead to stop a neutrino.(A claimwhich sounds a little suspect to me.) But if they have mass then they must exert a gravitational pull if a lot of them were gathered together, so if there is a cloud of them around the galaxy then they might explain the motion of the stars. Apparently this explanation has fallen out of favor.

As an alternative to the dark matter theory, Milgrom has proposed that our basic ideas about gravity are wrong, and that Newtonian dynamics need to be tweaked to explain galactic rotation curves. He believes MOND is a more accurate explanation of gravity than Newton's or Einstein's, which is a pretty big thing to say, considering.

This said, then why didn't Discover give Milgrom the cover of the magazine? Einstein is a great man, and I suppose their reasoning is that it would sell more copies if they made it look like there was this big flaw found in general relativity. (I personally don't see this; tweaking Newton's theory, upon which Einstein's are based, hardly constitutes a flaw in general relativity.) Still, Milgrom did the work of developing MOND, so give the guy his due, huh?

Besides, if he's right, he'll soon be on track to a Nobel prize, and you might want to say you had him onthe cover of your magazine first.

Posted by Robert Williams 2006-08-13 22:45:25