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Mind-bending science for this science layman

“It’s like science class every day.”

That’s what I often say when asked about my work as one of the University of �ֻ�ֱ�� Fairbanks Geophysical Institute’s science communicators, each with a different role in sharing our scientists' work with you.

In my daily “science class,” I am always the student hoping for a passing grade from the scientist whose work I’m writing about.

It can be pretty tough getting that grade.

Some of the most difficult science subjects for me to share involve things most of us can’t see, hear or touch. 

I’m not a nuclear physicist, so writing about the latest nuclear fusion research into plasma containment in a magnetic confinement tokamak presented a sizable challenge.

Professor David Newman, who works in that realm, was wonderfully patient through a couple of interviews.

“We need to be able to control the turbulent transport,” he said, explaining it in a physics speed lesson that involved some chalkboarding. “It's really important, because we want to be able to control the temperature and density gradients.”

Well, I learned that’s how you avoid magnetohydrodynamic instabilities. Did you know that?

Let’s now travel to the past, or maybe the future or a parallel time, as another of our patient scientists explains to me his new theory of 3D time. Or maybe I already told you about this.

Meet associate research professor Gunther Kletetschka.

“In regular physics today, scientists talk about spacetime as a single fabric with four dimensions: three for space — up and down, left and right, forward and backward — and one for time,” he said. “I propose that time has three dimensions, not just one.

“These three time dimensions are the primary fabric of everything, like the canvas of a painting,” he added. “Space still exists with its three dimensions, but it's more like the paint on the canvas rather than the canvas itself.”

That one was a tremendous mind-bender. The publicity we provided did get him lots of attention, so I count that as a big success. I don’t know what attention he received in other time dimensions, of course, since I’m here with the rest of you.

Now let’s leave theoretical space and time and head out to actual space — but not too far out. 

Research assistant professor Doğacan Öztürk explained a project to study how low- and high-energy electrons affect Earth’s ionosphere. She studies Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere.

“Low-energy particles come in and dissipate their energy,” she said, bringing out a box of colored markers and a piece of paper. “That perturbs the system, creating what we call a traveling disturbance. They make gravity waves and acoustic waves.”

And if the question ever comes up in Trivial Pursuit, I will also be able to answer that traveling disturbances come in two varieties: traveling atmospheric disturbances and traveling ionospheric disturbances.

If you call me, though, I don’t think I could offer much more.

Geophysical Institute space physics professor Peter Delamere talked with me about the findings from his experiment to learn more about how an aurora begins. His rocket experiment launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

“It showed that the barium plasma cloud coupled with, and transferred energy and momentum to, the ambient plasma for a brief moment,” he said. 

“Understanding causality in the system is extremely difficult,” he said, “because we don’t know exactly what’s happening in space that’s giving rise to the light that we observe in the aurora.”

It all keeps me happily busy and challenged.

Science is found in so many places. It comes from physical adventures such as trail walks, river floats, mountain climbs, volcano flights and permafrost coring sites.

It also comes from quiet adventures within the mind and from the dance of mathematics.

I’m no nuclear physicist or expert in spacetime geometry. I don’t know too much about Earth’s magnetosphere. And the aurora will probably always be part mystery.

It really is science class every day.

Since the late 1970s, the �ֻ�ֱ��' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Rod Boyce works in the Geophysical Institute public information office.