Mabfan's Musings

One of my favorite scientists is being featured again.

Planetary scientist Dr. Carolyn Porco is the leader of the Imaging Science Team on the Cassini mission and director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations. I first heard of her from her work on the Voyager missions and I had a chance to meet her in person a few years ago when she spoke at the Boston Museum of Science.

Today's New York Times features this article on her, An Odyssey From the Bronx to Saturn's Rings, in which it is revealed that she's now working on New Horizons and consulting for the next Star Trek film. Go read it.

I publicly offer my congratulations on her recent achievements, while at the same time note how glad I am that there continue to be such excellent role models for women (and men!) working in the field of planetary science.

My previous blog posts about Dr. Carolyn Porco (read the second one for the story of when we heard her speak):
Dr. Carolyn Porco at the Museum of Science (April 13, 2004)
Enceladus, Dr. Carolyn Porco, and the Power of the Internet (March 10, 2006)
The Necessity of Space Exploration (February 20, 2007)

Robot Penguins!

Because really, what is there to say after that?

Tonight, the space shuttle Discovery is lifting off for a two-week mission. As part of the mission, the astronauts will be delivering replacement parts to the International Space Station.

I'm feeling a little bit wistful about this mission for one rather odd reason. Friends of mine may recall that back in 2003 I applied for the Educator Astronaut program. (Looking back, I see that I didn't really blog about that much, but the four posts I did make are listed at the bottom for anyone who wants to read them.) I made the first cut, but then NASA decided that my medical profile did not meet their standards. (Given my nearsightedness, I can understand that.)

People may see where this is going. In 2004, NASA selected a class of Educator Astronauts, and I was not among them. Five years later, two of those astronauts, Joseph M. Acaba and Richard R. Arnold II, are getting ready to go into space on their first mission, STS-119.

Both of them are extremely qualified to be astronauts, of course. According to their entries on Wikipedia, Acaba studied geology in college and graduate school and served in the Marine reserves, and Arnold studied Environmental Science and worked as an Oceanographic Technician for the United States Naval Academy. Also, both had distinguished careers as teachers before they were selected to be astronauts. To be honest, I'm proud that my former profession is being represented tonight by astronauts such as these two men.

Still, I can't help but imagine that in some other universe, I'm getting ready to go into space myself.


My Educator Astronaut Posts from 2003:

• MTELs
  
• I Have My License
  
• Educator Astronaut Application Update
  
• Grounded, Alas
  

Sean P. Fodera, the New York Regional Coordinator of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as Planet, visited his son's classroom to discuss Pluto and blogs about it in My Presentation on Pluto's Planetary Status:

I briefly explained the history of how planets get discovered, and how improving technology has made it easier to find objects in space. They were amazed that anyone could have spotted Pluto from Earth with 1930s telescope technology, or that comparing fuzzy photos could work for detecting the far-off planet....

I discussed the controversy over Pluto's demotion, explaining how the new definition of planet is not accurate, and how less than 5% of the IAU actually voted on the matter. The students had trouble understanding the voting part of it, since they all seem to assume that if something is voted on, it must be fair. So, I presented an example. "Let's say that when your teacher and I went to this school, it was decided that every year the 6th grade class would get to go to the circus. Now, years later, someone decides to take a vote about whether to keep going on the circus trip. Instead of all 50 of you voting, only three of you vote. One votes 'yes', and two vote 'no'. 'No' wins, but it's not exactly a fair vote, is it? That's what happened to Pluto." Eyes lit up, and lot of heads started shaking.

Go read!

Last night, Nomi and I met Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, for the second time. As I noted earlier, Tyson was speaking at the Newton Free Library to promote his new book The Pluto Files, which is all about his role in the controversy that led to the demotion of Pluto. Since Nomi and I are, respectively, the vice-president and president of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet, also known as SP3, we felt compelled to attend.

Back, back! Neil deGrasse Tyson defends himself from the defenders of Pluto. Photo copyright ©2009 by SP3.

( Read more... )

I shook hands with Dr. Tyson after we were done, and I could tell that he'd been signing a lot of books. It kind of reminded me of my own publication party back in November.

We said good-bye to Melissa, and Andrew drove Nomi and me home. All in all, a nice start to my birthday weekend.

As for Dr. Tyson and Pluto... well, the IAU has another General Assembly this summer, in Rio de Jainero, Brazil. I suspect Dr. Alan Stern will be there to push for a restoration of Pluto's status. We'll see what happens.

But We All Share a Love for Astronomy! Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Burstein, and Nomi S. Burstein may disagree on Pluto, but we all agree that Dr. Tyson is a gentleman. Photo copyright ©2009 by SP3.

Copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein.

The Illinois State Legislature is taking on the cause of Pluto, according to an article in the Daily Herald:

Like some sort of rulers of the universe, state lawmakers are considering restoring little Pluto's planetary status, casting aside the scientific community's 2006 decision downgrading the distant ice ball.

An Illinois Senate committee on Thursday unanimously supported planet Pluto and declaring March 13 "Pluto Day." The idea now moves to the full Senate for a vote.

See Pluto Politics Hits Springfield for the full story.

(Thanks to fellow traveler ffoeg for the tip.)

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the Challenger tragedy, the day when the space shuttle exploded and NASA lost seven astronauts: Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory B. Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. Their sacrifice is memorialized at Arlington National Cemetary.

For the people of my generation, the Challenger tragedy was our equivalent of the Kennedy assassination. Because a schoolteacher, McAuliffe, was on board, many schools had chosen to show the launch live to their students over television. The launch took place around 11:30 AM EST, and seventy-three seconds into the flight, the shuttle exploded. People were confused at first, but it soon became clear that NASA was experiencing what they euphemistically refer to as an LOCV: loss of crew and vehicle.

I didn't see the explosion live, but I still remember that day vividly. My own story is as follows. I was in 11th grade at the time at Hunter College High School. One of our school's Chemistry teachers, Francine Salzman, had applied for the Teacher-in-Space program but not been accepted. So we were all keenly aware of the meaning of the launch.

The school's lunch period took place from 11:10 AM to 12noon, if I remember correctly, and after eating lunch I went to hang out in the school library with friends. I was sitting in the front area of the library when my friend Christina Sormani walked in and asked if I had heard the news about the shuttle. I said no, and she told me that it had blown up during the launch. I protested that she was kidding, and she assured me that she wasn't.

I realized she was serious and I started to cry. I cried so much that Tina thought I personally knew one of the astronauts. I didn't, of course; at the time, like all of us, the only one I could actually name was McAuliffe. But I was crying for them nevertheless, and for the dashed hopes and dreams of an entire human race that yearns to go to the stars. I knew that this would cause a major setback in our space program; and I could only hope that it wouldn't crush it entirely.

That afternoon, when we got home, there was an ironic coda. My father had been applying to the Journalist-in-Space program, and on that very day we received the postcard from NASA indicating that all his applications materials were in. And years later, in 2003, McAuliffe and my father were my own inspirations as I applied unsuccessfully to be an Educator Astronaut.

On Tuesday, when people in my company gathered to listen to the inaugural address, one particular sentence caused a small number of us to applaud and cheer.

Actually, it was just a fraction of a sentence.

As soon as President Obama had said, "We will restore science to its rightful place," those of us in the science department cheered, much to the amusement of the folks in the other departments.

The sad truth is that science has been under attack in this country over the past few years. I don't really want to revisit all the attacks right now; for anyone interested, there are plenty of articles and books on the subject. I will remind people that in 2004, a group of scientists – including 20 Nobel laureates – issued a statement pointing out the distortion of scientific facts that had been presented to the American people by the government. These distortions had mostly been made with the sole goal of supporting government policies that would have made no sense in the light of scientific facts.

But that light is beginning to show through the cracks. In the article Scientists Welcome Obama's Words, the reporters note that the scientific community is hopeful for policies which acknowledge that science must come before policy.

And in other news, the Texas Board of Education has voted to remove discussion of evolution's '"strengths weaknesses" in their science standards. The phrase "strengths and weaknesses" is a code word among anti-evolutionists to try yet again to sneak religion into science class, and I'm delighted that Texas is finally doing the right thing....after twenty years.

Whenever I hear about suppression of science, or the attempts to sneak pseudoscience into science classes, I am always reminded of Richard Feynman's words as a member of the Challenger commission: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Unfortunately, people can be fooled, which is why we must always remain vigilant.

New Scientist magazine has posted the articles from their New Scientist Science Fiction Special: The Future of a Genre. All the articles will be appearing in their 15 November issue as well.

The articles include the responses from six writers to the question "Is science fiction dying?"; a series of book reviews, including a list of other great books to read that includes I Remember the Future; and the results of their poll of people's favorite science fiction movies and novels. The winners: Blade Runner and Dune.

Like many of you, I have a maelstrom of thoughts swirling through my mind about the results of the presidential election. I'm doing my best to figure out how to put it all into words.

In the meantime, I share with you this webpage from New Scientist: Obama on science, in his own words It's worth reading, especially for those of us who were distraught over how the current administration was treating science.

Folks who have read my blog over the past year may recall that I spent quite some time looking for information on how the candidates would approach the space program. Admittedly, Obama's words aren't as specific as I would like about a manned space program, but they are most hopeful and definitive:

"As president, I will establish a robust and balanced civilian space program. Under my administration, NASA not only will inspire the world with both human and robotic space exploration, but also will again lead in confronting the challenges we face here on Earth, including global climate change, energy independence, and aeronautics research. I believe that a revitalized NASA can help America maintain its innovation edge and contribute to American economic growth.

"I will re-establish the National Aeronautics and Space Council reporting to the president. It will work toward a 21st century vision of space that constantly pushes the envelope on new technologies as it pursues a balanced national portfolio that expands our reach into the heavens and improves life here on Earth."

As I said back on September 26, If you're anything like me, you probably wake up in the middle of the night worried that an Earth-killer asteroid will be discovered that very morning, and that there'll be nothing the human race can do about it since we haven't bothered to prepare.

Well...

An asteroid was spotted heading toward Earth on Sunday night, and it hit the atmosphere about twenty-five minutes ago.

So, if there was ever a time to contact your congressman about funding a Near Earth Object watch, it would be now.

(And oh yeah, I think the Dow Jones did something today as well.)

This is probably going to get around a lot in the usual circles...

New Scientist, which is one of my favorite (favourite?) magazines, is devoting their 15 November issue to the future of science fiction. To kick things off, they're asking folks to vote for your favorite science fiction book and film.

If you follow the link, you can vote by making a simple reply to each thread. To encourage people to vote, three randomly chosen voters will win the three best science fiction films and books as voted on by the posters.

So if you're into science fiction, here's a chance for your voice to be heard – and keep an eye out for that 15 November issue.

If you're anything like me, you probably wake up in the middle of the night worried that an Earth-killer asteroid will be discovered that very morning, and that there'll be nothing the human race can do about it since we haven't bothered to prepare.

Fortunately, there are others like me out there. According to today's New Scientist article UN urged to coordinate killer asteroid defences, the Association of Space Explorers is concerned too. After two long years, during which an asteroid might have hit Earth on any day, they've released a report noting that we have the technology to save the world, we just don't have the agency set up to do so.

Yet.

They're asking the United Nations to form a new NEO Threat Oversight group, where NEO stands for Near-Earth Object, to advise the Security Council on the threat. Should the group find an asteroid impact is imminent, presumably steps could be taken to try to deflect the asteroid and to evacuate cities, just in case.

Don't forget that this year, we noted the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event, which thankfully took place in isolated Siberia. Had the Event occurred over a populated city, hundreds of thousands of people (possibly even millions) might have died.

I urge all of you to contact your elected representatives and let them know how seriously you do take this threat. Sure, there are many other crises that are occupying the national and world psyche at the moment, but as Rabbi Hillel said, "If not now, when?"

(Thanks to marsgov for pointing this out. The original XKCD cartoon can be found at http://xkcd.com/473/.)

Like many of us, I wanted to catch as much of the Democratic National Convention on television as I could. Unfortunately, it's been a busy week; gnomi's left ankle has been in pain, making it hard for her to get around; and we've had a few visitors pop in during the evenings. (Not to mention that a friend of ours gave birth yesterday afternoon to an eleven pound three ounce baby boy, and Nomi's helping coordinate meals for their family.) So although the TiVo has been dutifully recording C-SPAN's coverage, I haven't really paid much attention. (Besides which, Monday night there was a new episode of The Middleman on. How can I possibly watch the convention if it's going up against The Middleman? But I digress.)

I also sometimes wonder how much I really need to watch the conventions on television. Although I do consider myself politically aware and engaged, and I understand the civic importance of the conventions, the simple fact is that my own vote is not going to change unless my candidate does something terribly egregious between now and election day. I'm not a swing voter, and even though in the past I've split my votes across various party lines, in this particular election I feel very strongly about how I need to vote.

(If you don't know by now my political leanings, it's probably not that hard to guess.)

Despite those thoughts above, I still wanted to watch the speeches. But for the most part, I missed them. I did get to see Bill Clinton and Joe Biden speak on Wednesday night, but our watching of those speeches was interrupted by various things. (I'm very glad for the TiVo pause button.) However, there was one speech that I did not want to miss, and that one, of course, was last night's speech from Barack Obama.

I'm a very big student of history, and I like to keep track of anniversary dates in my personal calendar. For quite a few years now, I've had a note in my calendar that August 28 was the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. So the fact that Obama's speech was happening on the 45th anniversary of King's speech was something I've kept in mind ever since they announced the dates of the convention.

Others have spoken about Obama's exact words, and what it means for the Democratic party. For me, the important aspect of Obama's acceptance of his nomination is the sheer historic value. We've come so far. Last night, as I watched his speech, it was a moment to bask in history. The fact that an African-American man is running as a major party candidate for president of these United States, and that for the most part his race is a non-issue...it's amazing. I'm told that it felt like a major step to Catholics when John F. Kennedy won in 1960, and I know how proud much of the Jewish community felt when Joe Lieberman won the majority vote in this country as the vice-presidential candidate eight years ago. (Let's ignore for the moment what Lieberman has done since then.) Barack Obama's candidacy is another huge step forward, something that should make all Americans proud.

Okay, now onto the space program.

Folks may recall that back in January, after my candidate had left the race (and let's not say more about him either), I found it very difficult to choose between Obama and Clinton. I decided to base my vote on their plans for the space program, and at the end of the month, I asked people for information on their respective space exploration platforms. Sadly, at the time there wasn't much either of them was saying on this issue.

But now that we're heading toward the general election, we have more comprehensive statements from both of the major party candidates. A friend of mine (hi, M.!) pointed me to Presidential Candidates Outline Space Policy at the Planetary Society website. Both candidates provided text on their space policy, and the Planetary Society is offering them sans comment. I encourage people to go read them, and as for myself, I will add only two notes displaying my personal bias. First of all, Barack Obama's statement includes a section titled "Embracing Human Space Exploration," in which he endorses the idea of a return to the moon by 2020, whereas McCain's seems less specific.

Secondly, Obama's statement on space policy is longer.

Go read them if you have time, and feel free to come back here and tell me what you think.

And if you haven't been watching it yet, check out The Middleman on the ABC Family Channel. They need all the viewers they can get.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a fascinating article, "A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash" by Amy Harmon, about David Campbell, a Florida science teacher. Campbell, who teaches Biology 1 in a Florida high school, is dealing with the difficulties of teaching evolution in a district where many of the students come from creationist families.

As many of you know, I'm both a scientific rationalist and a person of faith, and I've been fascinated (and, I should add, horrified) by the attempts to block evolution from public schools that we've seen in the United States over the past few years. I blogged about the final ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case a few years ago, and I've recently been reading every book I can find about the case and the debate.

I used to be a science teacher, and now I edit science textbooks. What makes Campbell's problem interesting to me is that I, thankfully, never had to deal with the issues he deals with. It's true that my teaching career was limited to private schools and religious schools, but no matter where I taught, I had complete freedom to teach science the way I wanted to teach science.

Campbell is not as lucky. Oh, he does get to teach evolution exactly as he wants, and he even helped author the Florida science standards on evolution. But one of his colleagues explicitly states that she thinks God steps in to create life forms that appear wholly different from each other – and she essentially teaches that to her students, although she doesn't mention God. Campbell also deals with students who want to reject evolution in favor of creationism, which leads to a fascinating discussion in which Campbell points out why and how the question "Is there a God?" is not a scientific one.

As I read the article, I thought more about what I had learned reading about the Dover case. In particular, I found myself annoyed again at the way the creationists in Dover – the ones who wear their religion on their sleeve – broke the commandment against bearing false witness against their neighbors when giving testimony in their deposition and the courts. Campbell is a churchgoer, and yet he, like many other religious folk, has no problem reconciling evolution and faith in God, and it annoys me when creationists refuse to accept the idea that someone could both accept the fact of evolution and be a religious person.

In the end, though, I am heartened by one thing. One of the books I read on the Dover case noted that in the wake of the Kitzmiller case, the high school's science department had revised their biology curriculum. The way they saw it, Dover, PA, became the safest community in the entire country in which to teach evolution, and so they made evolution the cornerstone and major thread of their biology class. Now students start with evolution, and throughout the school year, everything they study in biology hearkens back to evolution. I'm glad to see that Florida basically decided to do the same thing, and I'm hoping that as the school year begins, more and more school science departments will be courageous when it comes to teaching evolution.

One of the panels I did at Readercon was on the Fermi Paradox. Roughly speaking, the Fermi Paradox is the question of where are the aliens? Enrico Fermi postulated that the age and size of the universe implied that extraterrestrial life ought to be common, which led him to wonder why there was no credible evidence of their having visited Earth. (Wikipedia has a fairly good write-up at Wikipedia: The Fermi Paradox.

One could argue that the paradox isn't really a paradox, of course, and there are a variety of solutions to the paradox. But the panel was about why there isn't more science fiction written about the paradox.

It turns out that a reporter for io9, Nivair H. Gabriel, was in the audience, and Gabriel reported on the panel today at IO9: Fermi Paradox: Why Aren't Aliens Talking to Us?. Had I known someone was taking notes and planning to list our recommendations for Fermi Paradox fiction, I would have made a point of mentioning my own Fermi Paradox story, "Decisions" (Analog, January/February 2004, Hugo Nominee 2005), which will soon be reprinted in I Remember the Future.

As it is, though, if you go to the io9 report, you'll find a list of worthwhile fiction to read, including one on the Internet for free – Terry Bisson's "hilarious and chilling" short-short, "They're Made Out of Meat." And I'm amused to see that io9 gave me the last word:

I'm sure you have even more recommendations for Fermi paradox stories, and I urge you to share them with io9 in the comments — but do it quickly. As panelist Michael A. Burstein pointed out, "Wouldn't it be funny if we got a signal from aliens tomorrow and this whole conversation was moot?"

(This seems to be my week for recommending books for science fiction writers.)

Last night, Nomi and I went to the Museum of Science to hear a talk by Dr. Michio Kaku.

Dr. Michio Kaku, Michael A. Burstein Copyright © 2008 by Nomi S. Burstein. All rights reserved.

Kaku is a theoretical physicist who has written a few very popular books on physics and what he thinks the future will bring. His current book is Physics of the Impossible, in which he discusses a variety of technologies that most of us think of us as science fiction, but which Kaku speculates will happen for real, some of them very soon.

In the book, he lays out three different classes of impossibility, as follows:

Class I Impossibilities, such as teleportation, telepathy, and invisibility, are consistent with the laws of physics as we know them and might become real within the current century.

Class II Impossibilities, such as time travel and travel faster than the speed of light, lie at the edge of known physics.

Class III Impossibilities, such as perpetual motion machines and precognition, defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

His talk skimmed some of the topics in his book, including invisibility and teleportation. He also discussed robots and artificial intelligence, and my favorite topic, time travel. He showed a few clips from a BBC series he's hosting, Visions of the Future, which is supposed to be broadcast in the United States sometime in 2009, but I'd love to track down a copy earlier if I can.

Kaku is clearly a fan of science fiction; his lecture slides were sprinkled with pictures from Star Trek, 2001, Terminator, and other media SF, and the cover of his latest book clearly shows a TARDIS as the time machine plunging through the wormhole. At one point, in an attempt to explain the paradoxes inherent in time travel, Kaku described a scenario that I quickly realized was the plot of Robert A. Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies–" (F&SF, March 1959). I wish he had identified it as such, though, as that might have inspired people in the audience to track it down.

When discussing the rise of the Internet and the shrinking of the computer chip, Kaku showed an artist's representation of a pair of contact lenses with chips that would give you immediate access to the Internet directly in your field of vision. The lenses would also help you identify people's faces, and I started to think about a former student of mine who has prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. With contact lenses such as these, no one would ever have to know.

One thing Kaku mentioned does have me a little worried. Over the past few decades, astronomers have observed many gamma ray bursts (GRBs), short-lived bursts of high-energy photons, the most energetic events occurring today. GRBs are often caused by two energetic stars orbiting each other, occasionally emitting a burst of these photons across the sky. (For more information on gamma ray bursts, check out NASA's website on Gamma-Ray Bursts.)

Why did Kaku bring these up? Well, apparently, one of the potential gamma-ray bursters out there, WR 104, is only 8000 light-years away and, um, pointed right toward us. Should it send a burst of gamma rays in our direction, it could conceivably fry the planet we live on. Since I'm the type of guy who already worries about collisions from near-Earth asteroids and the eventual heat death of the universe, now I have something else to worry about. Thanks a lot, Dr. Kaku. :-)

Like "The Coming Convergence" by Stanley Schmidt, which I recommended earlier this week, "Physics of the Impossible" is a great read for both science fiction writers and people interested in what the future will bring.

This past week, I got hold of a copy of Stan Schmidt's new book, "The Coming Convergence," and I'm delighted to recommend it to others.

Just to remind those of you who might not remember, Stan is the editor of Analog magazine and therefore the editor who has published most of my stories. He's also writing an introduction to my book, "I Remember the Future." As editor of Analog, Stan has had a chance to see a lot of other writers imagine the future, but he's also a writer who has done his own share of imagining where current trends might lead. And he's done this before, in both his fiction and nonfiction.

In this case, the convergence he refers to in the title of the book is the convergence of technologies. Stan points out that a lot of technologies that originally seemed unrelated ended up working together to create something new. A few examples include the Internet and 3-D medical imaging. Stan looks at the way technologies converged in the past to speculate on how they will converge in the future; throughout the book, he explores subjects like biotechnology and nanotechnology, and he posits a variety of "metaconvergences" that will lead to dramatic changes.

If you're a science fiction writer like me, I suspect you'll come up with a lot of neat ideas for stories from reading the book. And even if you're not a writer, I think you'll find the book thought-provoking. We're going to be living in the future Stan describes, and reading his book is a good way to prepare yourself for it.

I discovered the sad news today that physicist John Archibald Wheeler had died on Sunday morning at the age of 96.

For those of you who have never heard of him, Wheeler will probably be most remembered by the general public as the one who invented the term "black hole" for a dead star so dense that not even light could escape its gravitational pull. Oppenheimer and Snyder had suggested this possibility out of Einstein's general relativity, and it was at a conference in 1967 that Wheeler came up with the term.

The concept of a star so massive that not even light could escape had been discussed long before the equations of general relativity suggested the possibility, but no one had come up with a good term for the idea. Probably the most well-know phrase before "black hole" was "frozen star," which doesn't quite create the same image in the mind as "black hole" does.

Black holes have become a longtime staple of science fiction; I even used one for my first cover story, "Escape Horizon" (Analog, March 2000).

As someone who studied general relativity as a graduate student, I used Wheeler's classic co-authored textbook on the subject: Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. It's one of the clearest explanations of general relativity for the physicist that I have ever seen. I also learned some of special relativity out of the classic Spacetime Physics book that Wheeler co-authored with Edwin Taylor; and although I did get to meet Taylor once (when I almost served as his Teaching Assistant), I never did get to meet Wheeler. I wish I had; I understand he was a great teacher. Wheeler was probably the most influential physicist of the 20th century who never won a Nobel Prize, and he deserved one a thousand times over.

If you want to learn more about him, here's a link to his New York Times obituary: John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term 'Black Hole' Is Dead at 96.