By coincidence, this week’s issue of PNAS has a paper entitled:

“Laser refrigeration of hydrothermal nanocrystals in physiological media”

It should appear here some time:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1510418112

MK

For those who are curious, I just heard from Tom and the source of the article was a lecture series that he attended at the NPL.

Tom is hugely ashamed of the ‘magnetic field’ error slipping through the net, and it is frustrating that instead of spotting and correcting the error, the sub-editors put it in the headline! I completely agree, David, that the processes in place to check articles before going to press are woefully inadequate. This is by no means a unique case but rather a symptom of declining subbing standards in British newspapers, which is a genuine and persistent problem. Subbing on all newspapers is pretty poor these days. MailOnline never check articles before putting them up, they just wait for you to correct them – in a sense, almost crowdsourcing the sub-editing process and moving it downstream so that millions of people read unedited nonsense before it is corrected.

H

P.S. Thank you to both Ian Sillett and Catherine Lawrence for pointing out to me that laser cooling does work – which I find both slightly surprising and very impressive.  Though, given both the text and the diagram, that then suggests a dual use of lasers in this application for both supercooling and measurement of acceleration which might have been made a little clearer – if it confused me, it may well confuse others.

P.P.S. I do also have a lot of sympathy with the personal reasons cited - but very little with processes that lead to a major national newspaper failing to check an article adequately before it hits the presses.

David Nutting

It's worth noting a correction in this article.

The article conflates magnetic and gravitational fields. I contacted Tom about this and he immediately acknowledged the error (citing a 4 week old child as a possible reason!). The online edition was changed and a correction is printed in today's print edition.

For 'magnetic' or 'electromagnetic', read 'gravitational' throughout.

Aaron Boardley
Press & Communications Officer

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-----Original Message-----
From: Dayantis, Harry [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 17 November 2015 09:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] I'd be interested to know what people think of this article

I think it's a fun story, and the article makes it clear that the technique is a good while away from actual implementation. It's quirky and a bit tongue-in-cheek, I don't see any harm.

Best,
Harry

Harry Dayantis
Media Relations Manager
Medical Sciences, Brain Sciences, Population Health Sciences UCL Media Relations, Communications & Marketing Office, 4th Floor Bidborough House, 38-50 Bidborough Street London WC1H 9BT
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Nutting
Sent: 16 November 2015 20:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PSCI-COM] I'd be interested to know what people think of this article

I've quoted below the text of a short article - published in today's national press - which might therefore be read by a fairly large number of the general public. I'd be interested to know what those in the SciComm community think of it.

David Nutting

**************************************************************

How the Earth's magnetic field could put an end to roadworks

Tom Whipple
Science Editor

There are two reliable ways to map the position of pipes and electricity cables before major construction work starts.

The first — favoured by councils throughout Britain — is to take a pneumatic drill to the road or pavement and have a look below.

The second is to suspend a supercooled atom above the ground, drop it in a vacuum, monitor its progress with a laser and measure the minuscule fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by underground pipes.

British scientists are hoping to convince councils of the advantages of the atomic technique over the dig-it-up-and-have-a-look method by developing a portable "gravimeter", so sensitive that it can measure changes in gravity to nine decimal places.

"Less than 50 per cent of urban infrastructure is noted down on maps," Kai Bongs, from Birmingham University, said. "That's why people dig when they put down new constructions — they don't want to drill into a gas line."

He said the savings by using a gravimeter and not having to dig could amount to billions of pounds a year.

The key is to measure gravity accurately enough. For a force that determines the motion of the heavens, gravity is extremely weak. Although everything with mass exerts gravity, objects generally have to be the size of a planet before you notice it. But by harnessing sophisticated quantum mechanical techniques, Professor Bongs, working with the National Physical Laboratory in southwest London, believes that they are close to developing their gravimeter into something portable that can spot tiny changes in density to "see" below the ground — all by observing the behaviour of individual atoms.

Normally atoms whizz around at hundreds of miles an hour, Professor Bongs said, but by using laser cooling physicists are able to control them. "We can get hold of them in space, isolate them in a vacuum and use them," he said. Gravity can then be measured by seeing its effect on a single atom, and if the ground is slightly less dense, items such as a pipe will show up.

The problem with a device that sensitive is that it is difficult to ensure that what you are measuring is gravity. When the scientists tested the device, near Stonehenge, they found mysterious regular oscillations. Eventually they realised it was waves hitting the beach 30 miles away.

The solution is to have two different "clouds" of atoms a distance apart, using the paired readings to cancel out non-gravitational effects. Then, by moving the device over the ground you can map what is underneath it in ways that are not possible with radar or electromagnetic devices.

"With radar it depends very much on ground conditions. If it is wet you can't penetrate very far. For things that are not conducting, like plastic pipes, you also don't get a large electromagnetic signal," he said. Even in good conditions, neither technique can look very deep.

This means, he hopes, that by making a cheap portable device there could be applications even more important than stopping your road getting dug up — from finding pockets of oil left in wells to monitoring magma flows to predict the scale of volcanic eruptions.

The Times
16th November 2015
Page 27

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