Posts tagged science

He became something of a womaniser, dating undergraduates and hanging out with show girls and prostitutes in Las Vegas. In a celebrated book of anecdotes about his life – Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman – the scientist recounts how he applied an experimental approach to chatting up women. Having assumed, like most men, that you had to start by offering to buy them a drink, he explains how a conversation with a master of ceremonies at a nightclub in Albuquerque one summer prompted him to change tactics. And to his surprise, an aloof persona proved far more successful than behaving like a gentleman.

Christopher Riley in Richard Feynman: Life, the universe and everything, The Telegraph.

In these days of frivolous entertainments and frayed attention spans, the people who become famous are not necessarily the brightest stars. One of the biggest hits on YouTube, after all, is a video of a French bulldog who can’t roll over. But in amongst all the skateboarding cats and laughing babies, a new animated video, featuring the words of a dead theoretical physicist, has gone viral. In the film, created from an original documentary made for the BBC back in the early Eighties, the late Nobel Prize-winning professor, Richard Feynman, can be heard extolling the wonders of science contained within a simple flower.

There is “beauty”, he says, not only in the flower’s appearance but also in an appreciation of its inner workings, and how it has evolved the right colours to attract insects to pollinate it. Those observations, he continues, raise further questions about the insects themselves and their perception of the world. “The science,” he concludes, “only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of the flower.” This interview was first recorded by the BBC producer Christopher Sykes, back in 1981 for an episode of Horizon called “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”. When it was broadcast the following year the programme was a surprise hit, with the audience beguiled by the silver-haired professor chatting to them about his life and his philosophy of science.

Now, thanks to the web, Richard Feynman’s unique talents – not just as a brilliant physicist, but as an inspiring communicator – are being rediscovered by a whole new audience. As well as the flower video, which, to date, has been watched nearly a quarter of a million times, YouTube is full of other clips paying homage to Feynman’s ground-breaking theories, pithy quips and eventful personal life.

Keep Reading.

But, Key Takeaway: You get girls by being aloof.

Science: A+ Via Phil Plait at Slate Once you’ve stopped screaming in rage and/or pounding your head against the desk, let’s discuss this. To start with, this photo is real, and was part of a quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy, a private religious school. Since the school is private, and not public, this is not a violation of the First Amendment (unlike the flagrant stomping of the Constitution going on in Louisiana). In other words, this school can legally teach this. My complaint, therefore, is not a legal one. Image: A fourth grade “science” quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy in South Carolina, via Slate.

Science: A+

Via Phil Plait at Slate

Once you’ve stopped screaming in rage and/or pounding your head against the desk, let’s discuss this.

To start with, this photo is real, and was part of a quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy, a private religious school. Since the school is private, and not public, this is not a violation of the First Amendment (unlike the flagrant stomping of the Constitution going on in Louisiana). In other words, this school can legally teach this. My complaint, therefore, is not a legal one.

Image: A fourth grade “science” quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy in South Carolina, via Slate.

It is the responsibility of scientists and journalists to work together in stopping such empathy fatigue, because empathy is the primary human quality that fuels our instinct to protect human rights around the world.

Jamil Zaki, Empathy Fatigue and What the Press Can Do About It, The Huffington Post.

Background:

Circa 2009, I geeked out over Zaki’s article because, well, hearing a psychologist weigh in on the objectivity-is-perilous-in-journalism debate is refreshing. No one’s really arguing anymore over the fact that objectivity is a tricky, nuanced, sub-standard ethic for journalism, but a new, better ethic hasn’t quite emerged. A singular sterling standard probably won’t. 

Last fall, some of the best and brightest in media sat down to talk about it all and thanks to Poynter, this book emerged. Really smart people all over the world are creating and debating around accurate and value-creative reporting. You can explore our ethics tag for past coverage of some of those conversations.

The News:

Zaki, who is on the science side of things, very much heeded his own call to action and today I’m geeking out over his newest project, The People’s Science, a digital public space where scientists and the public can meet, share, and talk about science.

The site’s purpose is to encourage scientists to write posts about their research in easy-to-understand language and for the public to have conversations with those scientists directly.

In Zaki’s words (via NPR): 

In an ideal world, I think TPS could provide a platform for scientists to feature their work to a broad audience and describe why they find it exciting and relevant. For non-scientists, I hope that the site can provide an insider’s perspective on how scientists think, and a way to go beyond the “punchlines” of a given study and understand the process that went into it. I also think the public should be able to use this to vet other media sources, testing claims made by reporters against scientists’ own descriptions. Finally, I’d like the site to be a true forum: instead of each “pop” abstract serving as a static document, I’d like non-scientists and scientists alike to be able to ask questions and engage in discussion about the work posted here. At the highest level, my dream for this site would be to help scientists and non-scientists into more dialogue, which I believe can only be a good thing for our culture at large.

FJP: We agree, obviously, on very many levels. It humanizes the researchers behind academia’s impenetrable walls by thrusting them into the social sphere. It’s a gold mine for science reporters to have easy and direct access to emerging research and scientists. As someone who (in my non FJP life) works for an academic journal and deals quite regularly with the incomprehensible abstract and insanely long paper title, it’s wonderful.

Now go explore the site and ask questions.—Jihii

Exploring Space The BBC has created a monster infographic illustrating “every attempt to leave Earth’s orbit and reach a destination in extraterrestrial space – be it with probes, orbiters, rovers, or of course manned missions.” The graphic shows successful and failed missions, country of launch origin and type of mission (eg., fly-by, rover, actual landing). Related: How Big is Space? Image: Screenshot, detail from Spacial Awareness: Ultimate guide to exploring space, via the BBC. Select to embiggen.

Exploring Space

The BBC has created a monster infographic illustrating “every attempt to leave Earth’s orbit and reach a destination in extraterrestrial space – be it with probes, orbiters, rovers, or of course manned missions.”

The graphic shows successful and failed missions, country of launch origin and type of mission (eg., fly-by, rover, actual landing).

Related: How Big is Space?

Image: Screenshot, detail from Spacial Awareness: Ultimate guide to exploring space, via the BBC. Select to embiggen.

A Boy and His Atom

IBM researchers have created the world’s smallest movie, a 90-second stop motion animation made by moving a few dozen carbon atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope.

The video is viewable once you magnify it 100 million times, and would take 1,000 frames laid side by side to equal the width of a human hair.

Via the BBC:

The new movie, titled A Boy and His Atom, instead uses the STM, an IBM invention which garnered the scientists behind it the 1986 Nobel prize in physics.

The device works by passing an electrically charged, phenomenally sharp metal needle across the surface of a sample. As the tip nears features on the surface, the charge can “jump the gap” in a quantum physics effect called tunnelling.

The 242 frames of the 90-second movie are essentially maps of this “tunnelling current” with a given arrangement of atoms. It depicts a boy playing with a “ball” made of a single atom, dancing, and jumping on a trampoline…

…The effort, detailed in a number of YouTube videos, took four scientists two weeks of 18-hour days to pull off.

It underlines the growing ability of scientists to manipulate matter on the atomic level, which IBM scientists hope to use to create future data storage solutions.

IBM reports that while it currently takes about a million atoms to store a bit of data on computer devices, they have successfully reduced that number down to 12 with what they call atomic-scale magnetic memory. Meaning, the future of computing devices is about to get very, very small.

For example, “Being able to increase the data density of devices means more storage in a smaller space: specifically, storage that is 100 times denser than today’s hard disk drives, 150 times more dense than solid-state memory. An entire music and movie collection could fit on a charm-sized pendant around your neck.”

How polluted is the ocean near Daiichi Japan? — rogerwhart Timely of you to ask. From today’s New York Times. Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain. Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported: Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s discovery of leaks in water storage pits at the wrecked Fukushima atomic station raises the risk the utility will be forced to dump radioactive water in the Pacific Ocean… …While the company has since built a makeshift sealed cooling system, underground water is breaching basement walls at a rate of about 400 tons a day and becoming contaminated, according to Tepco’s estimate. The company has two options, reports Bloomberg. One is to build above ground storage facilities but with 400 tons of contaminated water pouring in a day, it can only build so much. The second option, which Bloomberg says the company is hesitant to do but isn’t ruling out, is to dump the water into the ocean. Back in November, Nature had this to say: The Fukushima disaster caused by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen. A new model presented by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts estimates that 16.2 petabecquerels (1015 becquerels) of radioactive caesium leaked from the plant — roughly the same amount that went into the atmosphere. Most of that radioactivity dispersed across the Pacific Ocean, where it became diluted to extremely low levels. But in the region of the ocean near the plant, levels of caesium-137 have remained fixed at around 1,000 becquerels, a relatively high level compared to the natural background. Similarly, levels of radioactive caesium in bottom-dwelling fish remain pretty much unchanged more than 18 months after the accident… …a fresh analysis by oceanographer Jota Kanda at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology suggests that not one source, but three, are responsible. First, radioactivity from the land is being washed by rainfall into rivers, which carry it to the sea. Second, the plant itself is leaking around 0.3 terabecquerels (1012 becquerels) per month, he estimates. But Kanda thinks that the third source, marine sediment, is the main cause of the contamination. Around 95 terabecquerels of radioactive caesium has found its way to the sandy ocean floor near the plant. Becquerels? That would be a unit of radioactivity. To get at the science of all this, we suggest you ask this guy. — Michael Have a question? Ask away. Image: Satellite view of Daiichi, Japan (indicated by the red pin), via Google Maps.

How polluted is the ocean near Daiichi Japan? — rogerwhart

Timely of you to ask.

From today’s New York Times.

Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.

Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s discovery of leaks in water storage pits at the wrecked Fukushima atomic station raises the risk the utility will be forced to dump radioactive water in the Pacific Ocean…

…While the company has since built a makeshift sealed cooling system, underground water is breaching basement walls at a rate of about 400 tons a day and becoming contaminated, according to Tepco’s estimate.

The company has two options, reports Bloomberg. One is to build above ground storage facilities but with 400 tons of contaminated water pouring in a day, it can only build so much. The second option, which Bloomberg says the company is hesitant to do but isn’t ruling out, is to dump the water into the ocean.

Back in November, Nature had this to say:

The Fukushima disaster caused by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen. A new model presented by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts estimates that 16.2 petabecquerels (1015 becquerels) of radioactive caesium leaked from the plant — roughly the same amount that went into the atmosphere.

Most of that radioactivity dispersed across the Pacific Ocean, where it became diluted to extremely low levels. But in the region of the ocean near the plant, levels of caesium-137 have remained fixed at around 1,000 becquerels, a relatively high level compared to the natural background. Similarly, levels of radioactive caesium in bottom-dwelling fish remain pretty much unchanged more than 18 months after the accident…

…a fresh analysis by oceanographer Jota Kanda at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology suggests that not one source, but three, are responsible. First, radioactivity from the land is being washed by rainfall into rivers, which carry it to the sea. Second, the plant itself is leaking around 0.3 terabecquerels (1012 becquerels) per month, he estimates.

But Kanda thinks that the third source, marine sediment, is the main cause of the contamination. Around 95 terabecquerels of radioactive caesium has found its way to the sandy ocean floor near the plant.

Becquerels? That would be a unit of radioactivity. To get at the science of all this, we suggest you ask this guy. — Michael

Have a question? Ask away.

Image: Satellite view of Daiichi, Japan (indicated by the red pin), via Google Maps.

If Jupiter Was as Close to Us as the Moon Via 22 Words, How the sky would look if the planets were as close as the moon. FJP: Someone needs to do a follow-up along the lines of, Chaos: What Would Happen if the Planets Were as Close as the Moon?

If Jupiter Was as Close to Us as the Moon

Via 22 Words, How the sky would look if the planets were as close as the moon.

FJP: Someone needs to do a follow-up along the lines of, Chaos: What Would Happen if the Planets Were as Close as the Moon?

Your 4-Billion-Pixel Mars Rover Panorama 

Created by Andrew Bodrov from 295 photos taken by the Curiosity Rover at the Gale Crater on Mars.

Best way to explore the 90,000 by 45,000 pixel panorama is by selecting fullscreen once you hit play.

Via: Mars Gigapixel Panorama - Curiosity rover: Martian solar days 136-149 in The World.

H/T: Wired.

This is a Brain This describes the brain and what’s happening. 

This is a Brain

This describes the brain and what’s happening. 

Happy Pi Day To our favorite Irrational Number, our favorite Transcendental Number and to Chao Lu who set a world record by reciting Pi to 67,890 places. Evidently, when he hit the 67,891st digit, he said it was 5 when it’s actually 0.

Happy Pi Day

To our favorite Irrational Number, our favorite Transcendental Number and to Chao Lu who set a world record by reciting Pi to 67,890 places. Evidently, when he hit the 67,891st digit, he said it was 5 when it’s actually 0.

Explainer: How We Wipe our Butts Never underestimate my puerile instincts — or a love of a good explainer — this time triggered by Scientific American: “Toilet Hygiene in the Classical Era,” by French anthropologist and forensic medicine researcher Philippe Charlier and his colleagues… examines tidying techniques used way back — and the resultant medical issues… …The toilet hygiene piece reminds us that practices considered routine in one place or time may be unknown elsewhere or elsetime. The first known reference to toilet paper in the West does not appear until the 16th century, when satirist François Rabelais mentions that it doesn’t work particularly well at its assigned task. Of course, the ready availability of paper of any kind is a relatively recent development. And so, the study’s authors say, “anal cleaning can be carried out in various ways according to local customs and climate, including with water (using a bidet, for example), leaves, grass, stones, corn cobs, animal furs, sticks, snow, seashells, and, lastly, hands.” Sure, aesthetic sensibility insists on hands being the choice of last resort, but reason marks seashells as the choice to pull up the rear. “Squeezably soft” is the last thing to come to mind about, say, razor clams. Charlier et al. cite no less an authority than philosopher Seneca to inform us that “during the Greco-Roman period, a sponge fixed to a stick (tersorium) was used to clean the buttocks after defecation; the sponge was then replaced in a bucket filled with salt water or vinegar water.” Talk about your low-flow toilets. The authors go on to note the use of rounded “fragments of ceramic known as ‘pessoi’ (meaning pebbles), a term also used to denote an ancient board game.”… …Putting shards of a hard substance, however polished, in one’s delicate places has some obvious medical risks. “The abrasive characteristics of ceramic,” the authors write, “suggest that long term use of pessoi could have resulted in local irritation, skin or mucosal damage, or complications of external haemorrhoids.” Explainers, scientific knowledge and general anthropology: always a good thing. — Michael Scientific American, Toilet Issue: Anthropologists Uncover All the Ways We’ve Wiped reviews the British Medical Journal, Toilet hygiene in the classical era (you’ll need a university subscription to get in). Image: Roman Butt Wiping Tools, via Flush.

Explainer: How We Wipe our Butts

Never underestimate my puerile instincts — or a love of a good explainer — this time triggered by Scientific American:

“Toilet Hygiene in the Classical Era,” by French anthropologist and forensic medicine researcher Philippe Charlier and his colleagues… examines tidying techniques used way back — and the resultant medical issues…

…The toilet hygiene piece reminds us that practices considered routine in one place or time may be unknown elsewhere or elsetime. The first known reference to toilet paper in the West does not appear until the 16th century, when satirist François Rabelais mentions that it doesn’t work particularly well at its assigned task. Of course, the ready availability of paper of any kind is a relatively recent development. And so, the study’s authors say, “anal cleaning can be carried out in various ways according to local customs and climate, including with water (using a bidet, for example), leaves, grass, stones, corn cobs, animal furs, sticks, snow, seashells, and, lastly, hands.” Sure, aesthetic sensibility insists on hands being the choice of last resort, but reason marks seashells as the choice to pull up the rear. “Squeezably soft” is the last thing to come to mind about, say, razor clams.

Charlier et al. cite no less an authority than philosopher Seneca to inform us that “during the Greco-Roman period, a sponge fixed to a stick (tersorium) was used to clean the buttocks after defecation; the sponge was then replaced in a bucket filled with salt water or vinegar water.” Talk about your low-flow toilets. The authors go on to note the use of rounded “fragments of ceramic known as ‘pessoi’ (meaning pebbles), a term also used to denote an ancient board game.”…

…Putting shards of a hard substance, however polished, in one’s delicate places has some obvious medical risks. “The abrasive characteristics of ceramic,” the authors write, “suggest that long term use of pessoi could have resulted in local irritation, skin or mucosal damage, or complications of external haemorrhoids.”

Explainers, scientific knowledge and general anthropology: always a good thing. — Michael

Scientific American, Toilet Issue: Anthropologists Uncover All the Ways We’ve Wiped reviews the British Medical Journal, Toilet hygiene in the classical era (you’ll need a university subscription to get in).

Image: Roman Butt Wiping Tools, via Flush.

The Future’s Getting Freaky Via The BBC: It’s been 30 years since the first message was sent over initial nodes of the Arpanet, the Pentagon-sponsored precursor to the internet. But this month, researchers announced something that could be equally historic: the passing of messages between two rat brains, the first step toward what they call the “brain net”. Connecting the brains of two rats through implanted electrodes, scientists at Duke University demonstrated that in response to a visual cue, the trained response of one rat, called an encoder, could be mimicked without a visual cue in a second rat, called the decoder. In other words, the brain of one rat had communicated to the other. “These experiments demonstrated the ability to establish a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between rat brains, and that the decoder brain is working as a pattern-recognition device,” said Miguel Nicolelis, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine. “So basically, we are creating an organic computer that solves a puzzle.” Whether or not the Duke University experiments turn out to be historic (some skepticism has already been raised), the work reflects a growing Pentagon interest in neuroscience for applications that range from such far-off ideas as teleoperation of military devices (think mind-controlled drones), to more near-term and less controversial technology, like prosthetics controlled by the human brain. In fact, like the Arpanet, the experiment on the rat “brain net” was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). BBC, Ten extraordinary Pentagon mind experiments. For the rats, see, One rat brain ‘talks’ to another using electronic link. Image: Turning insects into drones with implanted systems, by Darpa, via The BBC.

The Future’s Getting Freaky

Via The BBC:

It’s been 30 years since the first message was sent over initial nodes of the Arpanet, the Pentagon-sponsored precursor to the internet. But this month, researchers announced something that could be equally historic: the passing of messages between two rat brains, the first step toward what they call the “brain net”.

Connecting the brains of two rats through implanted electrodes, scientists at Duke University demonstrated that in response to a visual cue, the trained response of one rat, called an encoder, could be mimicked without a visual cue in a second rat, called the decoder. In other words, the brain of one rat had communicated to the other.

“These experiments demonstrated the ability to establish a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between rat brains, and that the decoder brain is working as a pattern-recognition device,” said Miguel Nicolelis, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine. “So basically, we are creating an organic computer that solves a puzzle.”

Whether or not the Duke University experiments turn out to be historic (some skepticism has already been raised), the work reflects a growing Pentagon interest in neuroscience for applications that range from such far-off ideas as teleoperation of military devices (think mind-controlled drones), to more near-term and less controversial technology, like prosthetics controlled by the human brain. In fact, like the Arpanet, the experiment on the rat “brain net” was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

BBC, Ten extraordinary Pentagon mind experiments.

For the rats, see, One rat brain ‘talks’ to another using electronic link.

Image: Turning insects into drones with implanted systems, by Darpa, via The BBC.

Clouds Via ReadWrite: An asperatus cloud in New Zealand. Proposed in 2009, this cloud classification, if successfully added, will be the first formation since cirrus intortus in 1951 to join the International Cloud Atlas.

Clouds

Via ReadWrite: An asperatus cloud in New Zealand. Proposed in 2009, this cloud classification, if successfully added, will be the first formation since cirrus intortus in 1951 to join the International Cloud Atlas.

Analysis and Explainers: Star Wars Edition Wired has a delightful twofer that any journalist interested in analysis and explainers should read. The first comes from Spencer Ackerman and explores how the Galactic Empire is such a miserable fighting force. Taking the Battle of Hoth as his case study, Ackerman writes: From a military perspective, Hoth should have been a total debacle for the Rebel Alliance. Overconfident that they can evade Imperial surveillance, they hole up on unforgiving frigid terrain at the far end of the cosmos. Huddled into the lone Echo Base are all their major players: politically crucial Princess Leia; ace pilot Han Solo; and their game-changer, Luke Skywalker, who isn’t even a Jedi yet. The defenses the Alliance constructed on Hoth could not be more favorable to Vader if the villain constructed them himself. The single Rebel base (!) is defended by a few artillery pieces on its north slope, protecting its main power generator. An ion cannon is its main anti-aircraft/spacecraft defense. Its outermost perimeter defense is an energy shield that can deflect Imperial laser bombardment. But the shield has two huge flaws: It can’t stop an Imperial landing force from entering the atmosphere, and it can only open in a discrete place for a limited time so the Rebels’ Ion Cannon can protect an evacuation. In essence, the Rebels built a shield that can’t keep an invader out and complicates their own escape. When Vader enters the Hoth System with the Imperial Fleet, he’s holding a winning hand. What follows next is a reminder of two military truths that apply in our own time and in our own galaxy: Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency. Ackerman goes on to explore Darth Vader’s “incoherent strategy in outer space,” the Empire’s mismanaged ground assault and its inability to form an actual blockade against rebel forces trying to escape. Rhett Allain follows up in the Wired Science blog with an explainer of how much Darth Vader must weigh. It’s not as easy as it appears and requires a fair bit of math and physics by exploring a scene in Return of the Jedi where Vader does a one-handed grab of a rebel and lifts him off his feet. As Allain points out, despite having bionic arms and legs, we must explore the physics of mass and stability in order to understand how Vader achieved this feet of strength. Follow Allain’s mathematical formulas to account for mass, gravity, force and torque, and it turns out that Vader weighs in at a minimum of about 520 pounds (236 kg). Image: Video still, The Empire Strikes Back, Battle of Hoth. Select to embiggen.

Analysis and Explainers: Star Wars Edition

Wired has a delightful twofer that any journalist interested in analysis and explainers should read.

The first comes from Spencer Ackerman and explores how the Galactic Empire is such a miserable fighting force. Taking the Battle of Hoth as his case study, Ackerman writes:

From a military perspective, Hoth should have been a total debacle for the Rebel Alliance. Overconfident that they can evade Imperial surveillance, they hole up on unforgiving frigid terrain at the far end of the cosmos. Huddled into the lone Echo Base are all their major players: politically crucial Princess Leia; ace pilot Han Solo; and their game-changer, Luke Skywalker, who isn’t even a Jedi yet.

The defenses the Alliance constructed on Hoth could not be more favorable to Vader if the villain constructed them himself. The single Rebel base (!) is defended by a few artillery pieces on its north slope, protecting its main power generator. An ion cannon is its main anti-aircraft/spacecraft defense. Its outermost perimeter defense is an energy shield that can deflect Imperial laser bombardment. But the shield has two huge flaws: It can’t stop an Imperial landing force from entering the atmosphere, and it can only open in a discrete place for a limited time so the Rebels’ Ion Cannon can protect an evacuation. In essence, the Rebels built a shield that can’t keep an invader out and complicates their own escape.

When Vader enters the Hoth System with the Imperial Fleet, he’s holding a winning hand. What follows next is a reminder of two military truths that apply in our own time and in our own galaxy: Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency.

Ackerman goes on to explore Darth Vader’s “incoherent strategy in outer space,” the Empire’s mismanaged ground assault and its inability to form an actual blockade against rebel forces trying to escape.

Rhett Allain follows up in the Wired Science blog with an explainer of how much Darth Vader must weigh.

It’s not as easy as it appears and requires a fair bit of math and physics by exploring a scene in Return of the Jedi where Vader does a one-handed grab of a rebel and lifts him off his feet. As Allain points out, despite having bionic arms and legs, we must explore the physics of mass and stability in order to understand how Vader achieved this feet of strength.

Follow Allain’s mathematical formulas to account for mass, gravity, force and torque, and it turns out that Vader weighs in at a minimum of about 520 pounds (236 kg).

Image: Video still, The Empire Strikes Back, Battle of Hoth. Select to embiggen.