Category Archives: CounterCurrent

Consciousness is Slanted by the Limitations of Our Senses

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As wondrous as our physical and chemical senses are, they are severely constrained in a few fundamental ways. Our vision is limited to our retinal response to a narrow, 1-octave wide band of electromagnetic radiation. As it happens, this band of light can be absorbed non-destructively by or stimulate change in the outer, valence level of inorganic and organic molecules. Electrons can be promoted to higher energy levels and in doing so temporarily store potential energy which can then do work on features at the molecular level. In the retina, this stimulates a polarization wave that propagates along the nervous system.

Owing to the constraints of the optics of the band of light we can sense, we cannot see atoms or molecules with the naked eye. This is because the wavelengths in the narrow range of visible light are larger than objects at the atomic scale. Instead, we perceive matter as a continuous mass of material with no indication of atomic scale structures. No void can be seen between the nucleus and the electrons. For the overwhelming majority of human history, we had no notion of atoms and molecules.

Democritus (ca 460-370 BCE) famously asserted that there exist only atoms and vacuum, everything else is opinion. The link provides more detail. The point is that atoms and vacuum were proposed more than 2000 years ago in Greece. The words of Democritus have survived over time but I’ll hazard a guess that the words were not influential in the rise of modern atomic theory in the 19th and 20th centuries. A good question for another day.

In all chemistry, energy is added to the valence level of a molecule as electronic, rotational, vibrational or translational energy.

Thumbnail Sketch of the Interaction of Light and Matter

Radio waves are a band of long wavelength that can interact with electrically conductive materials. Electromagnetic waves having a wavelength greater than 1 meter are considered to be radio waves. As a radio wave encounters a conductor, the oscillating electric field of the wave causes charge to oscillate in the conductor and at a rate matching the radio wave. Radio waves, whether in electronic devices or in space, are formed by the acceleration of charged particles. Recall that when you cause a charged particle to change it’s direction of motion, e.g., by a magnetic field, it is undergoing an acceleration. It is useful to know that radio waves are non-ionizing.

Microwave energy causes dipolar molecules to rotate back and forth by torsion as the waves pass. This rotational energy can be transferred to translational and vibrational energy through collisions, raising the temperature. The molecule does not need fully separated charges like a zwitterion, but molecules may have less than full charge on one side and a less than a full opposite charge on the other side, like water. This is a dipole. Water has a strong dipole and is susceptible to absorbing energy from microwaves.

Water molecule with dipole indicated.

Infrared radiation causes individual chemical bonds and entire frameworks to vibrate in specific ways. The Wikipedia link for this topic is quite good. When a molecule absorbs heat energy, it is partitioned into a variety of vibrational modes which can bleed off into other energy modes, raising the temperature.

Ultraviolet light is energetic enough to break chemical bonds into a pair of “radicals”- single valence electron species. These radicals are exceedingly reactive over their very short lifetime and may or may not collapse back into the original bond. Instead they can diffuse away and react with features that are not normally reactive, leading to the alteration of other molecules. UV light is very disruptive to biomolecules.

X-rays are more energetic than ultraviolet light and can cause destructive ionization of molecules along their path. They can dislodge inner electrons leaving an inner shell vacancy. An outer shell electron can collapse into the inner vacancy and release energy that can eject a valence level electron, called an Auger electron. This alters the atom by ionization and giving a change in reactivity. X-rays are also produced by the deceleration of electrons against a solid like copper though lighter targets can also produce x-rays.

Gamma radiation originates from atomic nuclei and their energy transitions. They are the highest energy form of electromagnetic radiation and cover a broad range of energies at <0.01 nanometer wavelengths. Many radioactive elements emit only gamma rays as a result of their nuclei being in an unstable state. Some nuclei can emit an alpha or beta particle resulting in an unstable nucleus that will then emit a gamma to relax.

The wavelengths of radio waves are too long and too weak to interact with biomolecules. Some radio waves come from the synchrotron effect where charged particles like electrons will corkscrew around magnetic field lines of a planet and release energy in the form of radio waves. In the case of Jupiter and it’s moon Io, a stream moving charged particles are accelerated by a magnetic field, the particles will emit mainly in the 10 to 40 MHz (decametric) range of radio waves as they spiral around the magnetic field lines into Jupiter. Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io sends charged particles into the planet’s polar regions where the magnetic field lines bunch up. This leaves a visible trace of borealis-like gas that glows. That radiation is emitted in the shape of a conical surface. It is only detectable here when the cone sweeps past earth as Io obits Jupiter.

Image from NASA. “This is a representation of the Jupiter-Io system and interaction. The blue cloud is the Io plasma torus, which is a region of higher concentration of ions and electrons located at Io’s orbit. This conceptual image shows the radio emission pattern from Jupiter. The multi-colored lines represent the magnetic field lines that link Io’s orbit with Jupiter’s atmosphere. The radio waves emerge from the source which is located at the line of force in the magnetic field and propagate along the walls of a hollow cone (grey area). Juno receives the signal only when Jupiter’s rotation sweeps that cone over the spacecraft, in the same way a lighthouse beacon shines briefly upon a ship at sea. Juno’s orbit is represented by the white line crossing the cone.”
NASA/GSFC/Jay Friedlander
Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io funnels charged particles into the planet’s polar regions where the magnetic field is strongest. This leaves a visible trace of borealis-like trails that glow. Source: NASA.

An atomic nucleus can absorb or emit gamma rays. For instance the gamma emitter Antimony-124 emits a 1.7 MeV gamma that can be absorbed by a Beryllium-9 nucleus which photodisintegrates into a 24 kiloelectron volt neutron and two stable He-4 nuclei. This nuclear reaction can be used for surveying for beryllium ore deposits by detecting neutron backscatter.

The purpose of this cooks tour of the electromagnetic spectrum is to suggest that visible light band is uniquely suited to interact with matter just enough to induce valence-level chemical changes. The change can be charge separation or an alteration in the composition or shape of a molecule. The changes may be reversible or not.

Ok, done with that.

So, not all electromagnetic radiation plays nicely or at all with any given chemical substance. The narrow visible band of light is uniquely well suited to interact non-destructively, mostly, with living things. Chemistry is about the behavior of the outer, valence level of electrons around and between atoms and molecules.

The retinas in our eyes send signals to the brain continuously that result in a very curious thing- our perception of color registers instead of just a grey scale. Not just the colors of the rainbow, but also more nuanced perceptions like pastels, brown and in their many textures- all with binocular vision!

The constraints on human vision depend on the chemical composition and anatomical structures of the retina as well as the construction of the brain. As the description of the various bands of electromagnetic radiation suggest, there is much to the universe that our senses cannot detect. We do not directly view the radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray or gamma ray views of the universe.

Our daily understanding of the universe is mostly framed by what we can see with the unique biochemistry and anatomy of the retina. It’s not a bad thing with its limitations, but for an appreciation of the true scope of the universe we would have to find ways to view in the other electromagnetic radiation bands. And, we do. With radio telescopes and satellites that pickup x-ray and UV energy to give images. Now with JWST, we’re peering deeper into the universe as revealed by infrared energy. The longer wavelengths of infrared can pass through clouds of dust particles that previously blocked our view in the optical spectrum.

The structures of the atom and molecules are characterized by the very large fraction of “empty” space they contain2. Electrons seem to be point charges with no measurable size. Yet they have mass, spin and the same magnitude of charge but opposite that of the much heavier proton. And, the proton is not even a fundamental particle but a composite particle. It’s like a bag with three hard objects in it.

The universe is wildly different from what our senses present to us. All matter1 is made of mostly empty space. What we see as color doesn’t exist outside of our brains. Our sensation of smell is the same. Cold is not a thing. It is just the absence of heat energy. Finally, our consciousness exists only in our brains. It is a natural phenomenon that is highly confined, self-aware and may be imaged through its electrical activity or F-19 MRI with fluorinated tracers. This wondrous thing is happening on the pale blue dot floating in the vastness of empty space. So far, we can’t find anywhere else in the observable universe where this occurs.

It is good to remember that we search for extraterrestrial intelligence to a large extent with radio telescopes. On earth, the use of radio communication is a very recent thing, tracing back to the beginning of radio in 1886 in the laboratory of Professor Heinrich Rudolf Hertz at the University of Karlsruhe. Hertz would generate a spark and find that another spark would occur separately.

By 1894, Marconi was working on his scheme to produce wireless transmissions over long distances. The wider development of radio transmissions/receiving is well documented, and the reader can find a rabbit hole into its history here.

In order for the discovery of radio transmission to occur, several other things must have been developed first. The discovery of electricity had to precede the development of devices to generate stable sources of electricity on demand and with sufficient power. Then there is the matter of DC vs AC. Some minimal awareness of Coulombs, voltage, current, electromagnetism, conductors and insulators, and wire manufacturing is necessary to build induction coils for spark generation.

James Clerk Maxwell had developed a series of equations before the discovery of wireless transmission by Hertz. Hertz was very familiar with the work of Maxwell from his PhD studies and post doc under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz. Hertz was well prepared in regard to the theory of electromagnetism and was asking the right questions that guided his experimental work.

Radio transmission came to be after a period of study and experimentation by people like Marconi, Tesla and many others who had curiosity, resources and drive to advance the technology. As the field of electronics grew, so did the field of radio transmission. It’s not enough to build a transmitter- a receiver was required as well. Transmitter power and receiver sensitivity were the pragmatics of the day.

This was how we did it on earth. It was facilitated by the combined use of our brains, limbs, opposable thumbs and grasping hands. Also, an interest in novelty and ingenuity during this period of the industrial revolution was popular. While people who lived 10,000 years ago could certainly have pulled it off as well as we did, the knowledge base necessary for even dreaming up the concepts was not present and wouldn’t be for thousands of years. The material science, mathematics, understanding of physics, and maybe even cultures that prized curiosity and invention were not yet in place.

In order for extraterrestrials reaching out to send radio signals that Earthlings could detect, they would have to develop enough technology to broadcast (and receive) powerful radio transmissions. If you consider every single mechanical and electrical component necessary for this, each will have had to result from a long line of previous developmental work. Materials of construction like electrical conductors could only arise from the previous development of mining, smelting and refining as a prelude to conductor fabrication to produce a way of moving electrical current around.

Radio transmission requires electrical power generation and at least some distribution. None of this could have been in place without the necessary materials of construction, mechanical and electrical components already in place. Most of the materials would have to have been mined and smelted previously. Electrical power generators need to be energized by something else to provide electricity. On earth we use coal or natural gas to produce steam that drives generator turbines to make electricity. Also, there is nuclear and hydroelectric power. ETs would face a similar problem for the generation of electrical power.

If you follow the timeline leading to every single component of an operating radio transmitter, you’ll see that it requires the application of other technologies and materials. It seems as though a radio transmission from extraterrestrial home planets need something like an industrial base to get started.

What if there were intelligent extraterrestrials who were not anatomically suited to constructing radio transmitters for their own Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or just for local use? Perhaps they are +very intelligent but not far along enough yet to have developed radio. Or, what if they were just disinterested in radio? What if they used radio for a short window in time and have been using something else not detectable from earth, like what we do with optical cable? The point is that we would never hear them by radio, yet they would be there.

Surely there is a non-zero probability of this happening. This dearth of signal may be so prevalent that we will conclude that we are alone in our local region of space. Perhaps funding will be cut and we’ll quit looking. We can take that finding to fuel our sadness of being alone in the cosmos. Or we could use it to appreciate just how unique life is and take better care of ourselves.

Instead of buying into Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars and somehow terraforming it, why don’t we terraform Earth back into a place where the biosphere is more stable and pollution is pushed back to some lower level? A utopian vision for sure, but it also has a non-zero probability of happening.

1. Not including dark matter, if it really exists. I remain skeptical.

2. I’ve come around on this business of the atom being almost entirely empty space. This is a firmly established bit of folklore in chemistry. It makes sense only if we look at the electron as a solid or material object buzzing around the nucleus which it is not. The electron is a point charge manifestation of the electromagnetic force. It is a disturbance in the electric field. It doesn’t fly like a ball, it propagates in the manner of a wave. It has none of what humans think of as material substance, rather it is purely a quantum mechanical manifestation. It is shaped by 3-dimensional probability density standing waves surrounding the nucleus. This probability density is defined by a spherical harmonic wave series. We chemists know this harmonic series as s, p, d and f “orbitals”. Electron probability density extends from the nucleus to the frontier orbitals of the atom with s, p, d, and f orbitals occupying space according to its unique wave equation.

Hamas-Israel War Update

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The news media are devoting virtually all of their bandwidth to the savage Hamas-Israeli sh*t storm in Gaza and especially on the status of the Israeli hostages. After some digging, it is possible to learn that many Islamic militia groups in the region have been attempting to strike at Israel from far outside of the Israeli border. This is being coordinated by Iran.

Iran Update, November 26, 2023 | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org)

The thing that I’m learning is that the historical facts aren’t so hard to understand, it’s just a large hairball of intertwined details. The emotional depths, however, are deep and abiding. It long ago morphed into a battle between certain Islamic fundamentalists and the “invaders”. The momentum to begin the State of Israel began well before 1948. The formation and settlement of Israel, Zionism, was a planned movement to first colonize the area of present-day Israel and gradually push out the residing Palestinian Arabs. There are early references to the settlement of European Jews of the First Aliyah between 1881 and 1903 to Ottoman Syria. These people were traditional Jews not necessarily interested in Zionism. It’s important to note that Zionism and Judaism are not equivalent.

According to Wikipedia, the Zionist movement is thought to have originated with Theodor Hertzl in 1897. Even before, there were Jewish villages established in Palestine, ibid. He was an Austro-Hungarian journalist and Jew who promoted immigration to Palestine for the purpose of establishing a homeland. The link gives some good background.

The formal establishment of the Israeli state from the Israeli side is well documented and is left for the reader to access. Palestinians refer to this as the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

It seems well documented that the establishment of the state of Israel was a systematic movement to form a Jewish homeland- Zionism. This process inevitably involved the forced displacement of Palestinian Arabs from what was greater Palestine and into smaller reservations for the displaced- Gaza and the West Bank. The West Bank is being slowly but vigorously absorbed by Israeli settlers.

It will be impossible for the Palestinians to just roll over and forgive and forget. Much has to heal. Gaza has been called an apartheid concentration camp to contain and control the Palestinians and I cannot see why this is an exaggeration. The brutal Israeli reprisal on Hamas and civilian Gazans after the October 7th attack by Hamas will extend the conflict. This is driven by the Netanyahu political movement.

How can I, an American with no interest in any of the Abrahamic religions possibly know about this? Hey man, I’m tryin’. Obviously this thing has to settle down and casualties on both sides stop, just nobody knows how to make it happen. The incessant and violent meddling by Iran is inflammatory and has to be suppressed. Their interest is in sowing chaos is unrelenting and dangerous.

The state of Israel will not shut down for any reason and leave the Levant. They are there for good. To Islamic extremists, this means that all they can do is kill all of the Israelis and share the misery. It’s like two guys standing in gasoline and each threatening to light a match. This will take some realpolitik over decades on both sides to solve. Pure ideology will lead nowhere.

Unwavering American government allegiance to the state of Israel, in public at least, and the influence of AIPAC must be pushed aside to provide effective, balanced and trusted leadership in the region. Many US states have already passed laws banning the criticism of Israel or its businesses. This type of statutory tribalism is not helpful and must stop. Reflexive opposition to the Palestinians leads only to the next 100 year’s war.

Biased US leadership in the Middle East only fuels continuous conflict and strengthens the proxy war of Iran against the US. Our steadfast bias should be for a negotiated peace. There is substantial support for Israel by American Evangelical Protestant Christian nationalists whose religious beliefs require strong support for the state of Israel. It is a part of their Calvinistic dominionism theology and the return of the Messiah. This is the third leg of a serious religious conflict. Israelis understand this interference by the pesky Christian chicken coop across the Atlantic, but they need the eggs.

MAGA Movement as a Peasant Uprising

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Back in graduate school we had a postdoc in the group who was a chemistry professor on a 1-year sabbatical from the Beijing Normal School in China. He was a great guy, but like most professors, a bit rusty in the lab. One day a few of us were exchanging our respective backgrounds. When my turn came around I mentioned that as a child I grew up on an Iowa farm where we raised the usual spectrum of crops and livestock- Corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, sheep, a couple of horses and 5 kids. He looked at me for a moment and then said with a grin “Ah, peasant!”

I was startled for a moment because I had never considered this description before. I had always thought of peasant as mildly derisive, but as I thought about it, he was exactly right. Our income was low and we subsisted on what we could grow and sell. We always had home grown beef and pork in the meat locker in town and apples, walnuts and canned veggies in the cellar. Summer evenings we would go to the lake, eat fresh watermelon while swatting the mosquitos and do a bit of fishing for bullheads. It was ordinary rural life like millions of others had. I was a young peasant boy.

Well, so what? As I watch Trump’s festering MAGA movement infect its way across the US and begin to spread and flex its muscles, I’ve been looking for the right words to describe it. For me, finding the right words for something has always been at the entrance to the path of understanding. Last night I finally found the right description- Peasant Uprising.

The electronic media tends to focus on MAGA people wearing their uber-patriotic apparel. My inner snark keeps whispering that they may not be on the higher end of the bell curve as far as smarts go. Many are attracted to QAnon and its bulging pantry of wacky conspiracy theories. It is easy to be lazy and make sweeping generalizations about idiocy, ignorance or stupidity. To be sure, there are highly educated people who are also aligned with Trump’s MAGA handwaving. Some may actually believe the conspiracy theories but others are just surfing the populist wave.

Throughout European history there are instances of peasant folk, serfs and artisans rallying together to put an end to the rigid control of landlords and upper echelons of society that keep them in poverty. Violence would often erupt and the rebellion would be put down or some compromise would arise. It didn’t always end well for the peasant class.

1573 Peasant Revolt reenactment in Croatia. A contemporary revolt in the US wouldn’t be as squalid and it will be televised unlike those of centuries past. Hacking and stabbing wounds will be replaced with gunshot wounds. January 6 was a prelude.

I’m not suggesting that what has evolved in the US since WWII is the same. But what has happened in the US is that the opportunity to accumulate wealth today remains out of reach for a large fraction of citizens. Tens of millions of citizens are living paycheck to paycheck with debt piled high, assuming they could get the credit to get that way. Inflation has pushed up prices across the board irrespective of whether or not business expenses actually rose in proportion to the inflation rate. An inflationary period is a great opportunity to raise prices because customers will go along with it. Prices are always what the customer is willing to pay.

What I am suggesting is that there is a large fraction of the population in the US who have been passed by as ever advancing technology is improving our way of life. This has created previously unheard-of job opportunities but only for those with the right education. Organizations have required 4-year degrees or 2-5 years of experience in the field. A degree may or may not have educated the applicant in the particular field, but it does provide a credible credential that an applicant can start a challenging task and complete it over set timespan. I would say that this credential is nearly as important as the knowledge gained in college in judging the fortitude and character of an applicant. Obviously there are exceptions.

Many people find themselves stranded in modernity without sufficiently strong credentials to advance with the times. Anyone over 25 might face the prospect of enrolling in college to get the right credentials for a new profession or just to advance. This is difficult for most people to pull off. Children and debt can totally shut down this option for them. My guess is that a great many of Trump’s MAGA followers fit this description. Thus the comparison with a peasant uprising.

The MAGA movement may remain mostly bloodless or not. They represent a large group of angry and dissatisfied people who have an extremely varied level of understanding of civics. Many hold unfounded beliefs that are nothing more than boat anchors holding them back.

Libertarian utopianism suggests that everyone has the option of starting their own business. Some can do this, but most will find themselves under-capitalized and with no properly zoned facility in which to work. Yes, some people do get by making burritos and cupcakes in their kitchens or doing handyman work. But the market is limited for these services. The reality of rent/mortgages and health insurance make the cash flow requirements difficult to meet.

As a former peasant boy, this is what I’m observing.

Breaking the Spell of Apocalyptic Politics

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Former president #45 has proclaimed on his Truth Social post of 11/18/23 that 2024 will be” the final battle.” Below is a quote from him while in Iowa-

“2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL! ia.donaldjtrump.com/,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday.

Many questions come to mind. Who is this political class that hates America? He continues to infer that liberals hate America, but where are these people? The people who hate the US are mostly elsewhere in the world.

What about his claim that he will cast out the Communists, Marxists and Fascists. Communism is practiced by China in some despotic form, but most of the world is free from the threat of communism. Marxism? Oh please. C’mon Donald, name 5 American Marxists. Marxism is long dead. The Soviets abandoned it and communism when the USSR collapsed in the early 1990’s. And fascism? Does he understand what fascism is? It doesn’t sound like it. Fascism is ultranationalism and who arms themselves to the teeth and parades around draped in the stars & stripes or the Confederate battle flag? It ain’t liberals.

The “Fake News Media”? #45 should be nicer to these people. They’ve given him half a billion dollars in free publicity since 2016. It’s helped the Democrats somewhat, but the media has been quite uncritical in their decisions on televising his rolling freakshow. His bombastic bellowing and verbal assaults make him a sure bet for good viewer numbers. He is a completely noxious human being but that makes him worth televising for ratings. The continuous reporting of his words and actions simply validates to his followers that he’s the right man to make Washington, DC, work right.

Many American conservatives are under the spell of #45 and are probably irretrievable. These people will have to live out their natural lives and go to the grave as Trump supporters. If you listen to them they are cock sure that Trump speaks the truth. But the fact is that the Republican party gets the most donations and most support from the people who have the money. And, right now that money is funneling into groups that support Trump because he has the numbers.

What doesn’t help America is that most of the fundamentalist, protestant Christian nationalists in the US can support Trump for religious reasons. They believe that somehow, despite his worldly troubles, he is the one who will spur on the prophesied return of Christ- the Second Coming. They believe that “the apocalypse” will happen in Israel and soon. Christian nationalists are eager to support Israel for reasons like this. Their end-of-the-world theology involves support for Israel.

The problem with Christian nationalism is that it stems from an apocalyptic religion. Why should anyone entrust them to govern America when they believe that the end is near? I’ve been watching this develop since the late 1970’s and especially into the 1980’s during the Reagan years and the rise of the Moral Majority. It was a chimera of orthodox Republicanism and protestant conservative evangelical organizations. The Southern Baptist Convention, in particular. This is a political force having its way in America presently. They are eating the elephant one bite at a time.

For myself, the fundamental theorem of Americanism is democracy, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Conservatives are beginning to discount the practice of democracy because they find it does not seem to provide a path to their utopian vision for America. Democracy is messy and allows for a broad spectrum of ideas and practices. A theocratic and libertarian world is a place where the control of civilization and power belongs to the wealthy and righteous. It is theocratic and controlled by a few. This is a regression to the closing decades of the American 19th century when industrial barons held sway.

In conclusion, this Republican Christian nationalism must be defeated or encouraged to die on the vine. Christianity or any other religion are not about democracy. The Republican party is showing little interest in democracy. They have learned that they cannot have their way just through elections. They are at work chipping away at our democratic institutions. Democracy must be preserved. The airwaves, churches and congress are full of doomsayers claiming that America is in a crisis and that only conservative Christian values can make it better. The spell of apocalyptic politics must be broken.

The Mother of Invention

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There is an old saying that goes “necessity is the mother of invention.” Its meaning is obvious. It says that when you run into a problem, you can invent your way around it. Or at least try to. The other solution to a problem is simply to live with it.

I recall that during the Apollo project in the late 1960’s, many conservatives would complain about the cost of going to the moon. Social progressives likewise made a complaint that was directed at shifting those NASA funds to social programs here on earth. Technology progressives would retort that it is worth it because of all of the spin-offs that were appearing out of the effort. The reply to this was that if you wanted some shiny new widget, just invent it. You don’t have to go to the moon.

Presently I can look back at the two major research domains, academic and industrial, and make comparisons. In academia, a professor’s work product is split between research, teaching and service to the school. Research is commonly measured by the number of papers published, especially in the prestigious journals. In some institutions, patenting is also taken into account. As for teaching, there are student evaluations and performance reviews by the department chair or the dean. This includes past performance in committees. A motivation in the first few years is to get tenure. Academic research includes putting research results in the public literature for all to use.

In business there is “technology push” or “market pull.” Technology push means that you want a market to grow around your product or service. It will require some customers to be early adopters of first-generation product. Not everyone is eager to do this. Market pull, by contrast, means entering an existing market with your particular version of a product. Price and service are especially important in known-product sales.

So, what about the mother of invention? Generally, in chemistry an invention comes from some kind of investigative activity, curiosity or need. Sometimes you may want to invent around an active patent rather than go into a licensing agreement.

The US patent office allows only one invention per application. If you choose, you can lop off your other invention and file it separately as a divisional patent. You would do this because the patent examiner will have raised an objection to your original filing. Doing a divisional filing allows you to use content from the first, or parent, patent application and you get the filing date of the parent as well. Early filing dates are very important.

Sometimes patents are written very narrowly and leave “white space” or potential claims around them. This is not always desirable so the matter can be solved by the use of “picket fence patents.” You patent your core art as broadly as the patent office will allow, then you file for patents that cover related art that a competitor could conceivably patent that would allow them to compete against you. By raising the cost of entry into your market or narrowing the scope of new art, you can dissuade competitors from entry or at least make them pay a heavy price for it. Who knows, maybe they’ll decide to buy a license from you or even an entire patent. An argument against picket fence patenting is that patents can be very expensive.

Academic research has a high reliance on external funding. This requires that the funding organization recognizes the novelty and p[otential intellectual value of the research proposal. Industrial research has a high reliance on market potential of an invention. What is the breakeven time and sales potential of the invention? Will demand last long enough for the invention to provide a healthy return on investment?

Academics can and do patent their work on occasion, especially if the university pays for it. The thing I object to is that a great deal of research is paid for by the taxpayers. We pay for the research and then it gets patented and its use is restricted for 20 years. Maybe taxpayers (businesses) can enter into a licensing agreement, but maybe someone else has bought exclusive rights. Licenses can be somewhere between reasonable to absurdly restrictive, depending on the terms of the agreement. Many will want to add an extra fee based on the sales income of the product. This means that there will be an annual audit with pencil neck auditors poking around your business. It’s like having a ferret in your shorts. Avoid if at all possible.

But, many companies leverage their output through licensing agreements of technology they have no interest in developing.

Industrial research is quite different in terms of administration of the endeavor. Industrial chemists are supervised by an R&D director and use in-house technology and science and/or what they learned in college, but here the results are aimed at producing something for sale or improving the profit margin of a process. There is no desire to share information. Industrial research produces in-house expertise as well as, hopefully, patentable inventions. Industrial invention can be driven by competition in existing markets or by expansion into something entirely new. Often it is to provide continuous margin growth if market expansion is slow.

The argument can be made to keep everything as a trade secret. Publishing your art in the patent literature can help competitors have their own brainstorms about the subject, or some may even be tempted to infringe on your art that is carefully laid out in front of their eyes. Competitors may be cued into a new product’s capabilities and gives insight into new products.

Both academic and industrial chemists invent. The difference is that in industry some inventions or art are held in trade secrecy, even if they never get commercialized. Academic researchers can and do keep secrets when they are aiming for a patent, at least until the patent is granted. Compartmentalization in a research group is critical, since disputes about inventorship can kill a patent. Once issued, academics will publish as many papers about the patented art as possible. Commonly, patents are assigned to whoever pays for it- usually an organization. An academic patent is assigned to the inventor’s institution while in industry the company is the assignee. In both cases the inventor is usually awarded only a token of appreciation and the “satisfaction” of having a patent.

So, what about “necessity is the mother of invention”? There are some inventive projects that are too large or risky for a business or even a consortium of businesses to handle. I’m thinking of the Apollo Moon Landing program. The project required the resources of a government. A great deal of invention by many players allowed the moon landing to happen. The necessity for all of this invention was that the US government set a goal and farmed out thousands of contracts with vendors to make it happen. Much wealth was spread around into the coffers of industry, but with contracts having stringent specifications for man-rated spaceflight and tight timelines to be met.

That’s one of the values of having a government like we had in the 1960’s. They created the necessity and private industry made it happen. Despite the cultural upset of the 1960’s and the Viet Nam war, the Apollo Project worked. No astronauts died in space. This necessity/invention pressure does work.

Global Oil Refining Capacity Growth to Taper Off Soon

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According to the International Energy Agency, IEA, the current wave of oil refining capacity growth is likely to be the last of it. IEA is forecasting that beyond 2030 global refining capacity growth will begin to recede. The latest World Outlook Report forecasts that global capacity will see 105.2 million b/d and by 2050 growth be tapering off to 105.8 million b/d. This is from 102.7 million b/d in 2022.

Remember, this is receding growth overall, not receding consumption overall. IEA expects North America to see reducing refinery capacity on the order of 1.4 % between 2022 and 2030. To meet emission reduction goals, North American capacity will have to reduce by 7.5 % from 2022 to 2030. By contrast, under current policies India is expected to see an increase in refining capacity from 7.2 to 7.5 milling b/d by 2050.

The Age of Petroleum is approaching a production plateau as the oxidation of hydrocarbons gives way to harnessing the reduction potential of metallic lithium. Oh, what a time we’ll have! Think of all of the new failure modes we’ll discover.

On top of all of the current challenges to fire departments, there is a new one. Source: Battery Fires.

Weed Decarboxylator from Amazon

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So, I get an email from Amazon promoting its “Decarboxylator” product. The Amazon page shows a picture describing the device and shows a picture of someone loading it with spinach leaves. The title of the page says “Decarboxylator Machine to Make Butter, Oil, and More“. A link to ecru, the seller, extols the virtue of herb consumption for greater wellness. The device obviously is just a heated container with digital thermometer and temperature setpoint adjustment.

Source: Amazon.com. One version of the home decarboxylator.

Why bring this up? This was sent to me as an Amazon customer, but I also happen to be an organic chemist who knows about decarboxylation generally. Or, just maybe they know that already?? What on Earth is retail decarboxylation about I wondered. Well, a simple Google search immediately turns up the answer. Processing weed for use in edibles. The silly allusions to vegetable processing is just a ruse.

The decarboxylation of THCA-A to give THC. Graphics: Silly old me.

Apparently, there are two isomers of tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, THCA. They are THCA-A and THCA-B. THCA-A is present is large quantities in unprocessed marijuana. THCA-A is the direct precursor of THC in the plant. When you smoke weed or bake it into brownies the burning or baking process decarboxylates THCA-A giving the psychoactive product, THC. However, when you extract weed with a solvent without heating, the decarboxylation is very slow and affords reduced potency. Weed for edibles must be heat treated to induce decarboxylation for maximum potency. The Wikipedia page on tetrahydrocannabinolic acid is very informative. The THCA-A precursor has its own pharmacological effects which is interesting in itself, but that is for another day.

This handy-dandy whizbang device does the deed for home producers of edibles. Ain’t it grand?

Most popular post

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It’s very interesting. The post with the most hits on this blog is for one I wrote May 15, 2008, titled Neutron Lethargy: This Weeks Obscure Dimensionless Quantity. It receives hits nearly every day. Is it revealing atomic secrets? No, it does not. Here is part of it-

“Neutron lethargy, or logarithmic energy decrement, u, is a dimensionless logarithm of the ratio of the energy of source neutrons to the energy of neutrons after a collision:  u = ln(Eo/E), or, u2-u1 = ln(E1/E2).  So, if you plot a curve of E vs u (E = Eo*exp(-u)), you see an exponential decay of energy per unit collision showing that the greatest delta E’s of energy result from the early collisions.

Basically, it shows that in order to obtain thermal neutrons from fission decay neutrons, you have to contain them so that they can rattle around and dump energy before they fly out of the area of interest. As to the number of collisions that are needed? Well, that is a different issue.

Source- Glasstone & Edlund, The Elements of Nuclear Reactor Theory, Van Nostrand, 1952, p 146.”

Now mind you, this does not necessarily mean it was a glistening contribution to the nuclear zeitgeist of 2008. It’s more like the title attracted clicks. Excellence and clicks don’t overlap much. It shows that my intuition on what a popular post looks like is completely off.

What Does “Greatness” Really Mean?

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I am going to bring up some observations that may be uncomfortable to many of my fellow citizens of the US. It has to do with the idea of “Greatness” that is frequently bandied about.

Definition: Bandied about

Phrasal verb; to mention something often, without considering it carefully. Source: Cambridge Dictionary.

Commonly, the word “greatness” is carefully chosen to swell the patriotic pride of American citizens. Swinging around the idea of greatness in public is often used as a rhetorical device to align people to a particular point of view. We are raised to see ourselves as the good guys. The use of “greatness” is a favorite buzzword of far-right conservatives to rub people’s noses into.

The conglomeration of US ultranationalist groups- a different name for homegrown fascism- along with Christian dominion ideology has produced a vocal a far-right political group who, on one hand demand libertarian-type free market dominance in lieu of government, while on the other sees protestant Christian reconstructionism providing guidance for a leading role in national and world affairs. The motivation is two-fold: first is to bring humanity under close Biblical law and the second is to prepare for the prophesied apocalypse and second coming of Christ. Many believed that Trump was to have a role in this. Imagine, the guy who invented DNA and set the galaxies spinning picking a bloviating wealthy-narcissistic-real estate developer-shyster-philanderer from Manhattan. Seriously? Something is wrong with this picture. For a preview of Biblical law, have a look at the bronze-age Book of Deuteronomy. Interesting as ancient history but, as a foundation for modern legal procedure, we can do a lot better going forward.

At the present time it is in vogue for the far right to parade around signaling their disapproval of US support of Ukraine in their battle against Russian invaders. Their grasp of history and judgement is sadly lacking.

  • Some Republicans have stated that the funds and war materiel sent to Ukraine could be better used at home.
  • Who believes that the Republican leadership would actually direct these savings to issues at home? Directing these funds internally for aid would be dismissed as “socialism” and ignored. Some insist that money that can be spent on Ukraine’s defense can also be cut altogether.

The US has seen much cultural achievement since our inception but sadly we have not been a universal force for good. Like everyone else, we have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes we’ve been on the wrong side of history. Our treatment of native Americans from the very beginning was simply criminal. As if that wasn’t enough, an estimated 620,000 people died in a bloody civil war to shut down slavery, then we failed miserably at promised reconstruction. Women have long been denied equality and have received it only grudgingly. African Americans had long labored under the Jim Crow laws until only recently. Our government has meddled in the affairs of many nations in the Americas and elsewhere, with some of it blowing up in our faces (e.g., Cuba and Iran). We invaded Iraq in Gulf War II resulting in the violent death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens based on deception from the Bush administration.

On the other side, we’ve pushed medical advances like drug development and vaccination, brought food to the starving and saved millions of lives around the world. America has been generous with its growing base of scientific knowledge by publishing results obtainable from open sources. The American University-Industrial-Governmental research complex has produced wonders especially from WWII to this very day in everything from aerospace, electronics, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. The explosive growth of knowledge and technology in the 20th century is unparalleled in human history and the US has had a big part in that.

However, as comfortable as it may be, the theory of American exceptionalism has a few holes in it. Our practical capitalistic economics has some blind spots. Innovation usually moves forward only if a development has the possibility of creating profit and only if a small group of money people can be convinced of it. So, you say, this is just good sense. Why is that a blind spot?

Basic research is a hard sell to businesses. Stockholders must be convinced of a rapid payoff from the investment in discovery. It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. This proverb traces back to Plato. If a business is plugging along making a satisfactory profit at maximum output, what is the motivation to rock the boat for a possible improvement? The answer is the prospect of even more profit via some improvement. But, what if that improvement would require something entirely new outside the capability of current technology and in-house resources? There is necessity but invention is out of reach.

While American industry has produced a tremendous range of innovations with in-house resources, it has done so greatly aided by the contributions of our university and government institutions. Universities provide industry with an educated R&D workforce, largely as a result of the application of government funding. Indeed, my graduate and postdoctoral work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. I have been applying my business, chemistry and synthetic skills to the operation of private business for decades. And so does everyone else in industrial chemical R&D.

Here is the thing. The government funds the research universities which produces R&D results and an educated workforce. Most of the published academic R&D is of a fundamental nature and in the public domain. Chemical companies make good use of this information as a basis for their own R&D for product development. Sometimes the process Development part is begun quicker because the Research groundwork is mostly done by academia. With this, business gets invention quicker and cheaper with less risk because someone else initiated the necessity (the investigator/professor) and government funding paid for it. This represents industry getting a refund on some of their taxes.

In the military aerospace business, the US military provides the necessity by offering contracts for equipment under stringent specifications. Meeting the specs usually requires that materials and processes be developed to meet them. This is an example of the government providing necessity so industry will provide the invention.

  • A favorite notion in the US that persists is the “Greatness” of what has been a long period of leading financial and military power since WWII. Obviously, we in the US have a potent military and economy. The federal government plays a big role in these areas by supporting industrial and military readiness.
  • The US was not the first to put a satellite or man in orbit or land a craft on the moon. It was Russia. The US entered into the “space race” to primarily to match the threat of USSR’s space program. The USSR and communism were perceived as an existential threat to the US. Advances in rocketry could carry people, satellites or nuclear payloads. Did we win the race to the moon just because the USSR failed midway?
  • The US reacted vigorously to Albert Einstein’s warning of the possibility of a Nazi nuclear weapon. The Nazi secret program was under the guidance of Professor Werner Heisenberg. Rattled, the US put together a massive effort to beat the Nazis to the nuclear punch. Later, it was found that they were unable to produce a working nuclear reactor or weapon.
  • After the fall of Nazi Germany, the US scooped up a few of their best scientific minds, certainly more than the Russians did. The US benefitted greatly in rocketry and aerospace as well as engineering and physics.
  • The 1930’s was a decade of much advancement in the area of turbojet engines everywhere in the world but the US. We were late comers into turbojet engines. But post WWII we seized on the idea and did well.

US politics has been soured by a few extraordinarily awful people. I’m thinking of #45 in particular but many like-minded citizens have glommed on to his flying circus of bad ideas. Many people conflated business success with aptitude for governance. What they failed to consider was that a business is a type of dictatorship. It is not a democracy. It is run strictly from the top down. There is no bill of rights in business or first amendment. Trying to directly apply business experience to being chief executive of a democratic nuclear state is a fool’s errand. But, people still hold out hope for him.

  • Trump sailed into office in 2016 partly on his credentials as a “successful” businessman and television personality. For many voters, he was “famous for being famous.” Voters made the extrapolation that if he is a billionaire property developer in New York City then he was “obviously” qualified to be a president.

What nobody considered was that #45 was the CEO and major shareholder of his many private businesses. Not having experience leading a publicly owned corporation, he enjoyed zero transparency in his business activities. As CEO of his private companies, he never had fiduciary responsibilities to public stockholders. A private company is a dictatorship where he thrived.

The allies won the Second World War for many reasons. What made the US stand out in that effort was the fact that North America was geographically isolated and was harder to bomb or invade at that time. The wealth of natural resources and industrial capacity in the US certainly enabled our ability to carry the war to the enemies. The notion of some kind of intrinsic moral superiority held by some is just a fantasy. The US had talented leadership and a workforce willing and able to stand up and be counted. This was not a uniquely American quality. Most nations can and will do this if resources and their leadership will allow it. Being rich in lumber, petroleum, steel and uranium gave the US a distinct advantage.

The US is an amazing country among other amazing countries, but there is much yet to do. My goal is to help sustain basic liberal democratic ideals and one of the pillars is simple kindness. Let’s back off on the self-congratulation and cultish adulation of a despicable billionaire and focus on the basics of operating a democratic republic under the rule of law and with equal protection for all of its citizens.

How much CO2 reduction do we actually need?

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I am asking this question because the transition away from fossil fuels will have a serious knock-on effect on a very large sector of the global economy. Of the total liquid hydrocarbon production, 14 % goes to the petrochemical markets. Of natural gas production, 8 % goes to petrochemicals.

There is a serious complication connected with the idea of shutting down the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. The elimination of oil and gas combustion activity means that crude oil production drops precipitously and therefore so would refining. Oil refineries are designed to maximize the volume of their most profitable products while minimizing their cost to manufacture. I refer to gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. Petrochemicals come from oil and gas. Their economics ride on the coattails of fuel production to some extent in terms of scale. Refineries are physically large operations so as to operate with the maximum economy of scale. Maximum economy of manufacturing scale drives consumer prices downward.

Refineries produce much more than fuels. They produce asphalt, lubricating oil, polymer raw materials, petrochemicals for pharmaceuticals and other raw materials for thousands of products we take for granted. There are countless uses for petrochemicals beyond throw-away plastic bottles and bags. Just look around where you are sitting this very moment. Unless you are in Tierra del Fuego or Antarctica, you can’t help but see examples of hydrocarbon applications.

“Our economies are heavily dependent on petrochemicals, but the sector receives far less attention than it deserves. Petrochemicals are one of the key blind spots in the global energy debate, especially given the influence they will exert on future energy trends.” Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director, IEA

The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA
Flow of oil and gas streams to chemical product production. Source: The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA.

Could refineries adapt to the loss of a large fraction of their fuels production and still produce petrochemicals? Engineering-wise, I’d say yes. But as far as economics go, that is a harder question to answer. Company officers have a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. This is a baked-in feature of corporate business. The promise of ever-increasing margins and volumes is part of that. Switching gears towards sustaining the petrochemical sector in the face of declining fuel sales is natural in one sense, but if it involves declining EBITDA over time, it could be disastrous for the stock market. Petrochemical prices might have to climb drastically to sustain earnings. Players in the global oil & gas market are extremely twitchy. The mere suggestion of a potential problem is enough to send prices soaring or diving. Luckily, a wind-down of fuel production will take some time during which the players might be able to compensate.

Look around you. How many consumer goods come in plastic containers or plastic film-coated paper? All of our electronic devices are built into casings of some sort, most of which have plastic or fiberglass (resin impregnated glass fiber) components. The list is endless. For many or most of these things to stay on the market, a substitute material will be needed to replace the hydrocarbon-based materials. Wooden casings for computer monitors and iPhones? What about paint? Paint is loaded with hydrocarbon components.

A vast number of products we take for granted use hydrocarbon materials in some way. Perhaps renewable plastics will scale to meet certain demands. Recycling applies only to those plastics that can be melted- the thermoplastics. Thermoset plastics like melamine cannot be melted and so cannot be recycled. Recycling only works if consumers close the recycling loop. Plastics must be carefully sorted in the recycle process. When a mixture of plastics is melted, the blend can separate like oil and water producing inferior product. National Geographic has a good web page describing recycling.

Some plastics such as clear, colorless polyethylene films are usually pure polymer. Most synthetic polymers are colorless. In general, any synthetic polymer that is colored has pigments in it. Black plastic is loaded with soot for instance. Many polymer films for packaging are multilayered with different types of polymer layered together.

Waste thermoplastic with food residues is very problematic, especially those with oil residues. Waste plastic for recycle must be clean. Multilayer plastic films are not suitable for recycling either.

Source: Technical Bulletin, Saint Gobain. Multilayer film structure with 3 different films and two tie layers between them. The Nylon layer provides toughness and tear resistance. The polyethylenevinyl alcohol (ethylene-vinyl chloride copolymer) layer (EVOH) blocks the transmission of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) layer provides broad chemical compatibility along with biocompatibility for safe handling of biopharmaceuticals. Not all polymers are compatible with melt bonding. The tie-layer is a melt-bondable adhesive polymer film that hold the layers of polymer into a single film. The tie layer polymer is often a polyethylene film that has a surface layer of organic acid or anhydride groups that can bind to other polymers by melt bonding.

Other additives such as plasticizers are present in flexible plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or other compositions where suppleness is important. Pure PVC is rigid. Additives are an industry unto its own. The varieties and grades in the plastics business is mind boggling. The variety of plastic compositions is too diverse to allow recycling of all plastics.

The point of this plastics background is to suggest that there are so many types and blends of plastic on the market- which is made even more complex by labels and additives -that the scope of polymer recycling must be narrowed to a few of the larger volume plastics. This is what is done today. LDPE, PP and PETE are the major polymers that are recycled in the US. Apparently, Japan is good at recycling. We in the US do poorly.

Polymer manufacturing is likely to continue indefinitely. There is simply too much money at stake for the big oil & gas and petrochemical players to deconstruct themselves to a large extent. They will, however, follow the consumer, but how far?

So, the question is this- for the sake of keeping a viable petrochemical stream in place while hydrocarbon fuel consumption declines, how much hydrocarbon fuel can we burn per year without exceeding the capacity of the earth to absorb the CO2 produced? We want to lower the slope of the atmospheric CO2 curve enough to achieve a reasonable steady state. The global economy depends very much on the production and use of petrochemicals. People will generally avoid economic suicide.

Where is the balance point for a sustainable production of necessary petrochemicals and the decommissioning of hydrocarbon fuel production? I certainly don’t know.