Remember summer? It was like this but 3 months ago.

10/18/12Over the summer I read the first four books of the Dune series by Frank Herbert.  The first three were excellent and are good reading if you can overlook some old gay stereotypes.  To be fair the first book was released in 1965 so, although not exactly enlightened in my opinion, he followed the (at the time) current psychiatric views of homosexuality.  In short I do not think he was trying to be hurtful I think he was misled about a few things, which is not a good excuse it is just the bad reason.  In the Dune series the whole known universe, and there is a lot of it, is dependent on the output of one planet, Dune.  Dune produces melange, a cinnamon tasting, awareness increasing, addictive drug which also extends the users life and vitality.  It also allows those with special training and/or biology to access superhuman or magic powers such as prescience or the ability to fold space and thereby travel anywhere nearly instantly. As you can imagine, in a vast empire which spans galaxies, folding space is necessary just to keep the empire running when there is no other FTL travel.  There are other herbs and drugs which can be used for many of the superhuman feats, but not folding space, and once the spice, melange, has    been used other drugs no longer function but nobody seems to mind.  It is tasty, beats back old age, and makes you smarter, what's not to like?  The reason melange is found only on Dune is its unique geology.  It has no surface hydrosphere and anywhere water starts coming up it stops a short time later.  The spice is produced by sandworms, to whom water is toxic, and no efforts to transplant them have been successful. It probably did not help that the worms were up to hundreds of meters long.  The rest of the biosphere is mostly small animals that can survive on dew.  This leads us to the planets name, Dune, because sand is all you see for the most part, even in the atmosphere.  The native humans live in whatever solid rock they can find and call these refuges "sietches".  If you have read Chapter 11 in our class book the name can give a clue as to what they do there other than live another day(they are hoarding water). The characters in the book are constantly adapting to a hostile environment, Dune kills the unwary all day every day. It kills with geology.  Collapsing dunes, sandy wind so powerful it strips flesh and etches bone, dehydration, and giant killer worms all compete for the honor of your death. And that is not even considering the people who will kill you for the water in your body.  Reading the series gave me a new appreciation for how geology shapes humanity.  Even today many cities are located on or near a body of water and if they do not have sufficient water resources underground they pay to have it pumped in.  How many battles or even wars have been decided in part or whole by who holds the bridges or waterways? I certainly do not know that one. Why is Switzerland the only country that gets a pass on major wars that rage all around it?  Partly because it is surrounded by mountains and the only tunnels in are set with explosives, partly I suspect is economic but that is another class.  Dune, read it, forgive its faults, love it, think about it, and then ask for extra credit.

Recently in class Professor Schott mentioned one of my favorite science newsbits from the past several years. Two Russian-born scientists based in the UK, Geim and Novoselov, won the Nobel in 2010 for their work with graphene, which is graphite the "lead" in an ordinary pencil, except it is just one atom high. In other words it is a crystal lattice with length and width but almost no depth. The real world applications are still being worked out but it shows huge promise in the field of computer chip manufacture. It is one of the strongest and lightest materials currently known. My second favorite part of the story is how these scientists managed to get graphite down to one atom thick. They used regular sticky tape. By sticking it on some graphite and doubling it over roughly 10 or 20 times then dissolving the tape they manufactured what may well be a primary next generation material as well as another clue to the nature of quantum mechanics. My favorite aspect of the story is it shows one or two resourceful people and some tape can still make major contributions to the world knowledge base. Take that LHC. (Just kidding, I love the CERN.)