Charles Cagle wrote:


Now that's the problem in a nutshell. The P-P process has never been
observed, no once. Not in any experiment in the history of science.
So you presume something that has nothing to do with reality. I think
it was Hans Bethe who invented the process (or at least built a horse
to ride on from its assumptions) and no one has taken him or anyone
else to task on it. When one cannot differentiate the work product of
a so-called scientist from that of a pathological liar then the proper
conclusion is that there is no difference and that science which makes
use of such work products has itself become pathological.


PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 608 October 8, 2002 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James
Riordon

THE 2002 NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICS recognizes work that led to the
establishment of two new branches of astrophysics, those involving x rays
and neutrinos. The award will be presented to Raymond Davis (University of
Pennsylvania and Brookhaven Natl. Lab), Masatoshi Koshiba (University of
Tokyo), and Riccardo Giacconi (Associated Universities Inc.). In the 1960s
Davis was the first to detect neutrinos coming from the sun. The number of
nu's recorded fell short of predictions made by John Bahcall (Institute for
Advanced Study) and thus was born the "solar neutrino problem." Later
detector experiments, such as SAGE and Gallex, also failed to observe the
expected number of neutrinos from the sun. The best explanation for the
shortfall was that electron neutrinos made in the solar core, as products of
nuclear fusion reactions, might be transforming while in flight toward Earth
into other types of neutrino such as muon neutrinos, which could not be
recorded in terrestrial detectors.
This hypothesis was put to the test in the Kamiokande detector, which had
earlier sought to find evidence for proton decay. Koshiba and his
collaborators enlarged the detector (Super-Kamiokande) and finally affirmed
(by observing asymmetries in cosmic-ray-engendered nu's coming through the
Earth to the detector or directly into the detector from Earth's atmosphere)
that nu's were indeed transforming, or "oscillating." Still more proof for
the oscillation principle arrived this past spring when the Sudbury Neutrino
Observatory (SNO), capable of directly detecting all three types of
neutrino, reported that all solar nu's (albeit not the same mix as was
produced in the sun) were accounted for.
Neutrinos are important in astrophysics since they might have played a
considerable role in shaping or herding early galaxies; they are the form of
energy coming directly from the solar core (photons scatter around inside
the sun for up to a million years before escaping); and they account of the
largest share of energy released during supernovas; indeed, after the 1987A
supernova, a dozen or so nu's from the event were observed in terrestrial
detectors.
As for x-ray astrophysics, Giacconi was the first to employ an x-ray
telescope in space (1962) and observe specific x-ray sources outside our
solar system. There followed decades of new orbiting x-ray telescopes
(e.g., ASCA, RXTE, ROSAT, Einstein, Yokhoh, Chandra) and notable x-ray
discoveries, such as the detection of an x-ray background, resolving that
background mostly into point sources, and the detection of x rays from a
variety of sources, such as comets, black holes, quasars, and neutron
stars.
(Background articles in Physics Today, August 98, Kamiokande oscillation
results; July 02, SNO results; May 00, x-ray background; Nov 00, Chandra
results. Some useful websites:SNO website: www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/;
US-Kamiokande: www.phys.washington.edu/~superk/; Beamline, Winter ?99:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/be...ii.pdf;Swedish Academy:
http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureate...yreading.html; historic APS
journal articles, www.aps.org/media/; Chandra X-Ray Telescope:
www.chandra.harvard.edu . Some past Update items include: solar neutrino
problem: http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/19.../pnu003-1.htm; x rays from a
supernova: http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/19.../pnu250-2.htm; x-ray
background: http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/19.../pnu175-2.htm; background
pt. sources: http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/20.../pnu467-1.htm; Chandra:
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/19.../pnu441-1.htm; quark stars:
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/20...it/585-1.html; nu oscillation:
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/19.../pnu375-1.htm; nu mass limits:
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/20...it/600-2.html; recent SNO:
www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/586-1.html)

3-DIMENSIONAL INK. Most people are familiar with three-dimension drawings,
which are of course rendered on two dimensional surfaces in a way that gives
the illusion of depth. Jennifer Lewis ,
217-244-4973) and colleagues at the University of Illinois, however, are
developing techniques to draw truly 3-D structures. The researchers are
perfecting "inks" that carry tiny particles made of metals, ceramics,
plastics, or a variety of other materials instead of pigments. The inks are
deposited with a machine similar to an ink jet printer. But unlike most
inks, the fluid that the printer deposits is a gel that can be built up,
layer by layer, into three-dimensional structures. The gel must be thick
enough to support itself as it spans empty space. (Imagine, for instance,
squeezing out a stream of toothpaste across your fingers. The line of
toothpaste can, at least for a little while, support itself across a small
gap between two fingers.) It also must be designed to retain its shape
without significant shrinking or sagging as it hardens. The manufacturing
technique may soon lead to novel structures woven of inky threads only tens
of microns in diameter (see image at www.aip.org/mgr/png). Lewis will
present recent studies of 3-D inks
(http://www.rheology.org/sor02a/abstract.asp?PaperID=243) on October 14
at the 74th annual Society of Rheology Meeting
(http://www.rheology.org/sor/annual_meeting/2002Oct/), in Minneapolis.

QUAOAR is the name for a planet-like inhabitant of the Kuiper Belt debris
zone lying beyond Neptune. Spotted first as a mere dot of light, it has now
been imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a plum for students of the
solar system: with a diameter of 1300 km and a distance of 4 billion miles
from Earth, Quaoar is the largest solar-system object to be measured since
Pluto was discovered in the 1930s and the farthest-out to be resolved by a
telescope. The finding was announced yesterday by Caltech scientists at the
meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical
Society in Alabama.

SLAC IS 40 YEARS OLD. On October 2 the anniversary of SLAC's founding was
observed at a large gathering (http://www-conf.slac.stanford.edu/40years/ )
The Stanford Linear Acceleration Center has been the scene of many notable
strides in physics, including the deep inelastic scattering of electrons
from a hydrogen target (helping to establish the existence of quarks inside
protons and neutrons), the discovery of the Psi meson (helping to establish
the existence of charm quarks; similar research was performed simultaneously
at Brookhaven), the discovery of the tau lepton, studies of the Z boson
(suggesting a limit on the number of quarks and leptons), and most recently
studies of B meson decay (exhibiting a violation of CP conservation).

***********
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