Earthwalker

So, guess what piece of truly scientifically-important news was neatly hidden in the pages of the Financial Times on Tuesday 22^nd? If your guess is “Scientific project that will redefine physics” then you’re right (also, you really pay attention to the news!)

“Smack” on page 4, overshadowed by a piece on Doha talks on tariff cuts, one about the famine in Africa and another one about the damage costs of the Burma cyclone, lies a small article about “The world’s biggest scientific experiment”. After the above-mentioned three adjacent topics, I can understand why readers would be glad to read some “good news”.

It seems that the institutions involved are CERN, the Geneva-based European particle-accelerator and LHC, a “global facility built with substantial involvement by the US, Russia and Asian countries, as well as CERN’s core European membership”. The experiment per se apparently is trying to re-create the primordial Big-Bang, by sending the first beam of protons along a 27 km circular tunnel almost at the speed of light. Seven or eight weeks later, CERN will be racing two beams round the tunnel in opposite directions and will smash them together. The result of these super-energetic collisions will hopefully generate new species of particles, reminiscent of the ones present right after the Big Bang.

Ok, so that’s interesting, but what exact purpose does it serve? Well, as I’ve come to learn, physicists like to measure…. just about anything! The smaller, the more elusive, the better! Of course, these measurements usually have very practical applications. For example biophysics is basically regular physics only instead of using a polymer for measurements they use a biological molecule, a protein. In the above-mentioned experiment, physicists are trying to detect certain species of particles that will prove or disprove the theory of supersymmetry, which is supposed to lead to a much more accurate model of the forces involved in an atomic nucleus.

Ever wondered what keeps an atomic nucleus together? I mean, a nucleus is made up of protons (positively charged) and neutrons (no charge). So, according to the rules of electromagnetism, the protons should repel each other, the same way electrons do in their orbitals. But everyone knows that doesn’t happen. Hence physicists have (a long time ago) come up with the theory of strong nuclear forces, which are stronger than electromagnetic forces and only act on very short distances (femtometers, 10^-15 m). Now that theory proved right and very beneficial, leading to, among other things, nuclear energy plants. This particular experiment is looking for a different type of symmetries, which would enable a more accurate model of energy distribution in the atomic nucleus. What I’m leaving out here is that, according to mathematicians and physicists, force and matter are intrinsically related to symmetries, so a new type of supersymmetry could lead to a new type of force….and perhaps a new source of energy.

So, as usual, while the world is too busy fighting over available goods and forms of energy, physicists are already trying to find the next solutions, hopefully just in time to avert the NEXT big crisis.

Plants belong on your plate and not in your gas tank! That’s what my parents told me and that’s the truth! …Strangely enough, after investing billions of dollars/euros into research and development of bio-fuels, economists have basically reached the same conclusion….

In all honesty though, there are some pretty good reasons as to why people imagined corn would be more useful in your gas tank than in your Nachos: it can be used more efficiently than fossil fuels to fuel engines, and it is environmentally friendly. ..A bit counter-intuitive, but, ok, science works like that sometimes, doesn’t it?…Let’s have a closer look at those arguments though.

Bio-fuels are more efficient. By turning crops such as corn, sugarcane and palm oil into bio-fuels (ethanol, biodiesel) it is thought that the carbon trapped in the plants during their growth will offset the CO₂ emitted when the resulting fuel is burned. But that balance depends largely on what the land was initially used for. So, if land that is normally a rain forest ecosystem, for example, is turned into maize or soy crops, then the amount of carbon emitted in the process will, by far, exceed the amount saved by producing bio-fuel. It’s not really the production of bio-fuels that is carbon-expensive, but rather the misuse of land. Soy and corn also produce important other modifications of the land, which lead to a buildup of other greenhouse gases. “Corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20 percent savings [in greenhouse gas emissions], nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years” (ecologist Joseph Fargione of The Nature Conservancy)…

Bio-fuels are environmentally friendly….well, just because they’re made of plants doesn’t mean they’re “Green”, does it? Land-clearing does, among other things, mean destruction of valuable ecosystems, which is hardly environmentally friendly…(maybe for the soy, maize, palm trees).

Also, arguably, turning food into fuel also has the unintended consequence of driving up food prices, reducing the access of the poorest populations to grains and meat. Basically, we take food off people’s plates and put them in our cars (I don’t actually have a car, but u catch my drift).

On the upside, though, if we used land that is not suitable for food production to produce bio-fuels, which can also be made from waste: corn stalks, leftover wood from timber production or even city garbage, well that IS beneficial.

Soy-derived biodiesel has a Net Emission Benefit of 93 %, and even corn has an NEB of 25%, which is really good news….I think this chart is pretty clarifying:

Figure 1. Modified from Tilman et. al., Environmental, economic and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels, PNAS July 2006

I guess the overall idea is
Make Food, not Gas