I write in a variety of genres, and one thing that I've never turned my attention to was the stage. I've long contemplated writing a science based play, perhaps focusing on the formation of modern physics in the early 20th century. The kernel of the idea coalesced when I saw the Michael Frayn play Copenhagen in Detroit several years ago.

Well, it seems that M*A*S*H's Hawkeye (Alan Alda) has beaten me to it, with his new play Dear Albert, based largely upon Einstein's personal letters, exploring both the man and the science.

The play will feature Anthony LaPaglia (of television's Without a Trace) and will be directed by Tony-award winner Daniel Sullivan. The play will be performed one night only, June 1, at Columbia University's Miller Theatre.

The performance is part of the World Science Festival events in New York City, running from May 28 through June 1, and represents just one of many reasons why I'm upset I can't make it to this fascinating event.

It promises to be a great week and anyone who attends should definitely post some information to our forums! If nothing else, feel free to e-mail me and perhaps consider providing us with some photos from the World Science Festival.

Related Articles:

• World Science Festival
• PlayBill - LaPaglia to Star in Alda's Dear Albert June 1; Sullivan Directs
• Back Stage - LaPaglia to Star in Alda's Einstein Play
• BroadwayWorld.com - Sullivan To Direct New Alan Alda Play Starring LaPaglia
• Albert Einstein - Biographical Profile
• Books about Albert Einstein and Relativity

• May 15, 1618 - Johannes Kepler confirms his third law of planetary motion. Kepler had initially made the discovery a week earlier, but the initial calculations had caused him to briefly believe that he was mistaken.
• May 15, 1859 - French physicist Pierre Curie is born. Together with his wife Marie and associate Henri Becquerel, Curie won the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics for his early work in analyzing radiation.
• May 17, 1916 - Russian physicist Boris Borisovich Galitzine dies. Galitzine invented the electromagnetic seismograph in 1906.
• May 16, 1950 - German physicist Johannes Georg Bednorz is born. He received the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in high-temperature superconductivity, which included work in the electrical properties of ceramics.
• May 15, 1951 - American theoretical physicist Frank Anthony Wilczek is born. Wilczek received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for work in the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the strong nuclear interaction.
• May 18, 2007 - French physicist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes dies. De Gennes received the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physics "for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers" (from the official Nobel Prize announcement).

An interesting article in New Scientist (Astronomers begin search for 'vanishing' stars) discusses a theory among some astronomers and astrophysicists that some stars, instead of dying in massive supernovae or gamma ray explosions, instead just sort of blink out of existence. Some evidence (see also the April 2008 New Scientist article, Heavy stars may go out with a whimper, not a bang) suggests that certain types of stars may not have an explosive end. The current research proposed will help determine whether this is the explanation for the anomalous data.

A curious question which science has never adequately answered is how migratory birds are able to navigate their annual passages. In fact, research in this unlikely area abound and two potential advances in our understanding have recently been published.

One theory, suggested over 40 years ago, that the birds are able to navigate because of molecules which respond to the Earth's magnetic field, though until recently there has been no evidence of such molecules. Research out of the University of Oldenburg in Germany showed that light-sensitive proteins called cryptochromes exist in the retinal neurons of migratory garden warblers. New research indicates that cryptochrome-like molecules are in fact sensitive to magnetic fields, prompting researchers to suggest this as a candidate for the navigation source.

The flaw in these models are that they require the spins of the ions in the retina to align much more quickly than physicists expect to be possible - in other words, the Earth's magnetic field is too weak to have a significant impact that would be noticed by the birds.

However, another new finding, out of the University of Crete, builds on their research that the quantum Zeno effect can be used to enhance a system's sensitivity to magnetic fields. Even a very weak field, in this case, would be able to align the spins of the ions in the bird's retina quickly enough to accomplish the proposed task.

The case is far from conclusive, and the debate rages on ... meanwhile, of course, birds continue to migrate unhindered by humanity's lack of understanding.

Related Articles:

• Nature - Chemical compass model of avian magnetoreception
• Quantitative Biology - Quantum Zeno Effect Underpinning the Radical-Ion-Pair Mechanism of Avian Magnetoreception
• New Scientist - Do birds see with quantum eyes?
• New Scientist - Birds can 'see' the Earth's magnetic field

See Also:

• Movie & Television Physics Books
• Realistic Physics Movies
• Book Review - The Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku
• Book Review - Don't Try this At Home!: The Physics of Hollywood Movies by Adam Weiner
• Popular Science - PopSci's guide to Summer Sci-Tech Movies
• About Science Fiction

• Apr. 30, 1006 - The brightest supernova in recorded history, Supernova SN 1006, first appears in the constellation Lupus.
• May 3, 1892 - English physicist George Paget Thomson is born. The son of Nobel Prize winning physicist J.J. Thomson (discoverer of the electron particle), George Paget Thomson proved that electrons could undergo diffraction, a major contribution to the theory of wave particle duality, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1937.
• May 3, 1902 - French physicist Alfred Kastler is born. Kastler won the 1966 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms," work which helped lead to the development of the laser and maser.
• May 3, 1921 - American physicist Arthur Leonard Schawlow is born. Schawlow won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on laser spectroscopy.
• May 1, 1930 - The (then) planet Pluto was officially named. In 2006 it was reclassified as a dwarf planet.
• May 3, 1933 - American physicist Steven Weinberg is born. Weinberg was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in combining electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force, three of the fundamental forces of physics, into a single framework called the Standard Model of quantum physics.
• Apr. 30, 1993 - The World Wide Web is invented at the European particle accelerator CERN.
• Apr. 28, 2001 - Space becomes a tourist trap as millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the first "space tourist" by buying passage on a Russian space launch, though he did perform several experiments and prefers the term "independent researcher."

When a quasar is oriented so that it points directly at the Earth, it is called a blazar. A team at Boston University has focused on the study of these blazars and announced some intriguing findings last week.

The question the team tried to address was why these entities form as a jet, as opposed to say just exploding or radiating in all directions. The solution, it turns out, is similar to the exhaust from jet engines. Instead of being focused by the mechanical structure of the jet engine, the blazar output is focused into jets by the spiraling magnetic field generated from the black hole. It is this process that causes the matter to be cast away from the black hole, as opposed to being sucked in by the intense gravitation.

Related Articles:

• Boston University Institute for Astrophysical Research - Blazar Research at Boston University
• Nature - Blazars: model behaviour
• Science - Follow That Cosmic Jet
• Scientific American - Black Hole Plasma Jet Spotted Tracing Corkscrew Path

Related Articles:

• ScienceDaily.com - Exotic Quantum State of Matter Discovered
• Princeton University - Princeton scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter
• Nature - A topological Dirac insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase (abstract available for free, full text for a fee or with subscription)
• Quantum Encryption Through Space
• Quantum Logic Gates Discovered