NYTimes SciTimes: Orbits galore at Saturn; an Earth Day list fo ‘Turqs’; physics Q&A with Sean C ; Is it time for AIDS’s stigma to go off the books?…
Freelancer Guy Gugliotta got the big story in this week’s Science Times, an ode to the Cassini spacecraft and its team of scientists and engineers. It limns the enterprise in a heroic and almost martial manner – especially in his vivid description how in 2017, and 13 years after its arrival at Saturn, the complex mission to Saturn is to end. The probe, low on fuel, “will die a warrior’s death, diving inside the rings for 22 spectacular orbits on the fringes of Saturn’s atmosphere before plunging into the planet.” That’s bracing, if greatly anthropomorphic on the emotion and courage side – machine’s don’t care, and it’s easy for controllers in their swivel chairs to steer it to such spectacular oblivion. But it works for me.
The basic story is a tribute to the initial phase of the mission and its extensions, a masterpiece of celestial navigation and orbital billiards. Included is a sensational set of diagrams of the entire past and future trajectory, a nested set of zooming loops that look a bit like an acrobat twirling scores of hula hoops around her waist at once. (Full Diagram hi def).
Also fronting the section is John Tierney‘s For Earth Day, 7 New Rules to Live By. It reflects the fact that Mr. Tierney is well-read and well-informed. And very opinionated. He’s contrarion, probably looks with contempt on anything frankly “liberal,” but on the whole it’s useful. He’s not a contrarion on climate science. But what jars here is a few gratuitious slaps at what, one imagines, he regards as the lefty and dumb tree-hugging sentimentality of many environmentalists of EarthDays past. Those are my words, not his, but why attribute the absence of worry over global warming by organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970 to a conviction that civilization would not last long enough for it to matter? He then lists a bunch of things he figures the enviros of 1970 believed, such as that cancer epidemics, starvation, and nuclear reactor meltdowns were about to knock the industrial world for a loop. Really? Some did believe a lot of that, sure. But the whole lot, all of it all at once? Don’t think so. On balance his list, with perhaps the exception of #5 on green energy, are acceptable for conversation in polite ( including in liberal) company.
Other headlines to note:
- Abigail Zuger, MD: Essay” With AIDS, Time to Get Beyond Blame ; Knowingly exposing people to HIV without telling them still gets exceptionally harsh treatment in many jurisdictions. It’s time, she writes, for an end to such AIDS exceptionalism – while at the same time to not pretend HIV is now a problem only in poor countries. Somewhat surprising is her depiction of modern HIV drugs, when used properly, as “almost infallible” at preventing a death from AIDS. Yet, as she writes, 16,000 Americans die of it every year.
- Gina Kolata: Cancer Fight: Unclear Tests for New Drug ; This one is on A1, not the section. It’s neither a prescriptive, new hope story on what will fix you, or a no hope story on all the things that won’t. It is. after its vignette lede, a more nuanced account of the growing power of some drugs to zero in on the specific variants of cancer that one might have, and the fuzziness of tests and of insurance guidelines and such in making sure the right people get such targeted medication. Bottom line: “no easy answers.”
- Claudia Dreifus: Q&A, A Conversation with Sean Carroll (the physicist) ; Nice mix of observation by the Caltech professor on the nature of time and other heady topics, and the personal (such as how he met that science writer to whom he’s now married) ; I don’t know whether she’s done a Q&Q with Sean Carroll (the biologist). If not, she might as well go for the full set.
As usual, much much more. NYT Science ;
- Charlie Petit
