Entries in research (4)

Monday
Feb292016

Life, the Universe, and Everything

I had the honour of working on this cover image for Queen's Alumni Magazine. Dr. Arthur McDonald was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for his research and discoveries in physics. This assignment combined my love of science with a challenging cover assignment, to explain the unseen, the subatomic, the Neutrino Breakthrough.

I am not a particle theorist, but I know this. Dr. McDonald and his team of researchers built an observatory 2 km deep in a mine shaft in Sudbury. What they discovered enhanced our understanding of physics and what we are made of, energy and the universe around us. The name of the observatory was SNOLAB, filled with heavy water and removed from man-made electric energy fields and interference.

Every second millions of neutrinos pass through us, unhindered and non-reactive, generated from deep within the sun. So then, how can they be observed and quantified?

Here's a very brief synopsis.

1.      Neutrinos are sub-atomic particles coming from the sun.
2.      There are three “flavours” of neutrinos: electrons, muon, and tau.
3.       Neutrinos switch flavours during their oscillation.
4.      Their oscillations prove that neutrinos have mass.

The SNOLAB observatory was able to record the oscillation of neutrinos. During oscillation, energy is released in the form of a photon. Observing this phenomenon established the mass of neutrinos, and enhanced our understanding of the universe in terms of it's overall mass, which affects how we understand where we came from and where we are heading.

The final illustration depicts a logorhythmic chain of images, from the sun to the earth to the SNOLAB sphere to the inner workings of an atom. A window into what we are made of.

Thanks to Andrea Gunn, Dr. Arthur McDonald, and the people at Queen's. Keep up the good work!

 

 

Tuesday
May132014

A Fork in the Road

New directions, new assignments. Here's a healthy portion of recent assignment work. Calorie-free!

 

Here's the latest illustration for a monthly column for the New York Times called Raw Data. It's written by George Johnson and raises questions about statistical analysis and scientific data. Interesting topics and a potent mix of science, data and our common misconceptions. The latest is on challenges to all of the warnings we have been given to eating red meat. Long-term studies refute the findings of earlier results.

An Apple a Day, and Other Myths - the gap grows between food folklore and science on cancer. Art director Peter Morance is always great to work with.

 

Just finished this spot for Daniel Smith at the Wall Street Journal, about the FCC auctioning off low-frequency bandwidth to a pool of four wireless carriers.

A portrait of Enrico Fermi and the development of nuclear science. For a book review in the Christian Science Monitor.

 

Tuesday
Feb182014

Science Times

I got a little lost creating all the 'ray guns' in this illustration. Weird science!

Another illustration for a column by science writer George Johnson for the New York Times. Scientific discoveries are harder and more and more difficult to achieve, frontiers keep getting moved further away. Read all about it here.

 

Thursday
Jan232014

Science of the Times

We live in an age of uncertainty. I illustrated this article for the New York Times Science section this past week for a new column by George Johnson called Raw Data.

New Truths That Only One Can See

From the article:

Since 1955, The Journal of Irreproducible Results has offered “spoofs, parodies, whimsies, burlesques, lampoons and satires” about life in the laboratory. Among its greatest hits: “Acoustic Oscillations in Jell-O, With and Without Fruit, Subjected to Varying Levels of Stress” and “Utilizing Infinite Loops to Compute an Approximate Value of Infinity.” The good-natured jibes are a backhanded celebration of science. What really goes on in the lab is, by implication, of a loftier, more serious nature.

It has been jarring to learn in recent years that a reproducible result may actually be the rarest of birds. Replication, the ability of another lab to reproduce a finding, is the gold standard of science, reassurance that you have discovered something true. But that is getting harder all the time. With the most accessible truths already discovered, what remains are often subtle effects, some so delicate that they can be conjured up only under ideal circumstances, using highly specialized techniques.

It's no laughing matter, and it has implications for research and development in the future. It's a great read, take the time to read the rest of the article.

Over the past few years it feels that the foundations of so many different things have been rattled. It's been a rough period, personally, and I know it has for a lot of folks everywhere. Now that the new year is here, and spring is coming soon, I feel a bit of optimism. I can say this with certainty: I am very happy to have worked on this. Thanks to Peter Morance at the Times for this one!