19 posts tagged “science”
Recent studies conducted in Canada suggest that people who received the a shot for the regular flu last year are twice as likely to contract H1N1 this year. Read the article here.
In The Once and Future King, T. H. White's version of Merlin the Sorcerer is a man who, in addition to enjoying the ability to manipulate reality with magic, experiences time backwards. He remembers the future, but not the past.
White probably didn't know it in 1939, but over the following decades and into the present, physicists would be asking why it is that people remember the past and not the future. Why do we experience time in one direction, but not the other? It's a nonsensical question to someone who hasn't studied a little bit of physics. For most people, time just is. The past is behind us and the future is unknown.
But to physicists, time is a spatial dimension, just like length, width, and height. Einstein was the first to realize that time was just another phyisical dimension, and his theories provided testable predictions which have been confirmed.
But if time is a spatial dimension, then why do we experience it differently than the three dimensions we normally think of as "space"? We occupy space in all three of the physical dimensions, length, width, and height, or X, Y, and Z if you prefer, simultaneously and constantly. It seems, however, that we exist in time at only one point, and the point is moving inexoribly and more-or-less steadily in one direction, from the past to the future.
The currently accepted theory among physicists to explain the arrow of time is two-fold. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was the first I had read an explanation of the concepts behind the theory, and it's mind-boggling at first. Broken down, it consists of two ideas.
First, the passage of time is an illusion. The past and future are and were in existence simultaneously. The fact that we can only remember one and not the other is an artifact of the second idea, which I'll get to shortly. However, despite the fact that we can only observe three dimensions moving along a single point on a fourth dimension, we actually occupy all four dimensions.
You can't really picture four-dimensional space; don't try it, you'll hurt yourself. Ouch, you just tried, didn't you? Anyway, if we could picture it, we would look like long, four-dimensional snakes or strings, with our three dimensional selves stretched out in a long and winding path through the dimension we normally think of as time.
The second idea behind the theory is that entropy causes us to experience time in one direction. Entropy is, most simply put, the tendency of systems to move from a high degree of organization to a low degree of organization. It is the tendency for energy to dissipate. There can be and are temporary reversals of entropy throughout nature, but eventually everything returns to it's most diffuse state.
Life is not a contradiction of entropy, but rather a result of it. All life on Earth (with the possible exception of some creatures that feed off of the heat of volcanic vents on the ocean floor) derive their energy ultimately from the sun, either directly like plants, or by eating plants, or by eating animals that eat plants, or by eating animals that eat animals that eat plants... you get the idea. The sun is an object of a high conentration of energy, and it is shedding it as fast as it can. Living creatures can use that energy to temporarily build themselves, to reverse entropy seemingly, but in the big picture entropy is still causing energy to become more diffuse.
Entropy is the result of any work done. The human body operates by taking in food, which has a certain concentration of energy, and converting it to waste, which has a lower concentration of energy, and if we use some of the energy in the meantime to work, play, repoduce, or blog, that's a bonus. We are basically serving the function of entropy.
Thinking is also a form of work, and so is the action of creating memories. To create memories, our brains must expend energy. Neurons must fire and neurotransmitters must be formulated and recycled. Oxygen is burned. All of this is a function of entropy.
This, making a really long story less long, is why we remember the past, not the future. Because entropy only moves one direction through time, our memories can only be retrieved in one direction. To remember the future would require entropy to reverse itself and for memories to be created through the concentration of energy rather than the other way around. This is the only difference between the past and the future, but it is a huge difference from the human perspective. It is what gives us the impression that there is such a thing as time, that the past is unchangable and the future can be guided, that causes precede effects, and that we are born, grow up, grow old, and die, rather than the other way around or in any random order you can think of.
The philosophical implications of this concept, if it is correct, are numrous. Maybe I'll get to them in a future post.
The June 2008 issue of Scientific American reporting on a study in Oncologist, said that blogging has both mental and physical benefits for patients. "Whatever the underlying causes may be, people coping with cancer diagnoses and other serious conditions are increasingly seeking - and finding - solace in the blogosphere."
Some of those causes have to do with individuals who are under stress having an increased desire to communicate due to stimulation of the limbic system when under stress. This may be a fancy way of saying that when you're stressed out, it helps to tell people about it.
This explains the millions of teen-angst blogs out there (even when they're written by adults). People who only use their blogs to complain about co-workers, their boss, their significant other, or to rant about politics may feel their stress level go down, even if it makes their readers' stress level go up.
While I usually write about things like this that I find interesting, I do sometimes write about things that make me angry or stressed out, and it does seem to help.
Sounds ominous, doesn't it? A number of months ago, scientists announced that they had developed a material that bends light around it, effectively making it invisible. Eventually, they hope to be able to use it on full-scale objects. Who wouldn't like an actual invisibility cloak?
Now, in a similar announcement, Scientific American announces that scientists have announced that they have created the darkest material so far known to man. It's a carpet made of nanofibers that literally trap photons, reflecting back only .1 percent of light. Comparatively, black paint reflects back 5 to 10% of the light that lands on it.
And here I thought the blackest thing known to man was our cat, Paganini.
Case #1: In 1616, Galileo Galilei was ordered by the Catholic Church to no longer defend the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around. This is because, regardless of what we can see with our own eyes or through telescopes, the Bible clearly states that the Earth doesn't move. A new Pope came to office in 1623, and although the Pope is supposed to be infallible, apparently this isn't always the case. The new Pope, Urban VIII (no relation to Rural XXII), allowed Galileo to publish the theory, so long as he also published arguments against it in the same document. If this sounds familiar, it's because of the arguments in favor of including "intelligent design" theories in textbooks that mention biological evolution.
Urban VIII didn't like the result, though, in which Galileo published his own argument for heliocentrism in his own words, and wrote the opposition in such a way that it made the Pope's argument against heliocentrism look foolish. As the consequence, Galileo stood trial for heresy in 1633, and was found guilty. He was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.
Cardinal Ratzinger (now the Pope), in 1990, in a speech at Sapienza University in Rome, quoted a philosopher as stating that the decision against Galileo was based on political considerations, and that it was the right thing to do at the time. Ratzinger then said, "It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views." [my emphasis]. You see, in the Catholic Church, admitting you're wrong after 357 years is considered "impulsive."
And yet, only two years later the the Church exonnerated Galileo of his heresy conviction, when in 1992 Pope John Paul II admitted that the Earth does, in fact, revolve around the sun.
Time to admit their mistake for case #1: 359 years.
Case #2: Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859. While still called blasphemy by many today, the Church did finally come around. It was, again, Pope John Paul the II, in 1996, who admitted that evolution was "more than a hypothesis" and that the theory "proves its validity by the measure to which it can be verified."
Time to admit their mistake for case #2: 137 years.
Case #3: In 1966, musician, poet, and philosopher John Lennon said of his group, The Beatles, "We're more popular than Jesus now." This statement turned out to be very, very controversial, resulting in boycotts and bonfires made from Beatles records. But, last week the official Vatican newspaper declared that the statement made by Lennon in 1966 was just the "boasting of an English working-class lad struggling to cope with unexpected success."
Time to admit their mistake for case #3: 42 years.
The Trend: So, graphed over time, the Church's learning curve looks like this:
This is indeed a trend worth celebrating! In fact, if the Church were to make a mistake today that caused hatred and dissent and caused human civilization to slow its progress to the detriment of millions, it would likely correct its error in, let's say, 10 years, instead of hundreds like it did for poor Galileo.
Bravo, Church! Bravo!
"...knowing that two variables are correlated does not tell whether one causes the other. It is documented, for instance, that there is a correlation between the number of roads built in Europe and the number of children born in the United States. Does that mean that if fewer children are desired in the United States there should be a cessation of road building in Europe? Or, does it mean that if there aren't enough roads in Europe, U.S. citizens should be encouraged to have more babies? Of course not. (At least, I hope not.)"
Trochim, W. M. K. (2001). The research methods knowledge base (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson.
This is old news now, but the journal Science recently published the results of a study of a compound that mimicks the effects of proteins that are produced during exercise, strengthening muscles, expanding the capacity of the circulatory system, and generally making you stronger and increasing your endurance. The study was done one mice, and mice that received the drug, with no additional exercise, gained a 70% increase in endurance over mice that did not receive the drug.
Of course, it will be a long time before this drug is available to humans, but the implications for disease are astounding. There are many diseases that cause the muscles to atrophy, or make exercise so painful that people can't exercise, which weakens their bodies even further. This drug could counteract that.
But let's be real. Concerning this drug, most of us aren't thinking only of the sick people it could help, but of the healthy people too. Of ourselves. The simple fact of the matter is that exercise is a hell of a lot more fun if you're already in good physical shape. Exercising when you're in poor shape is boring, depressing, and tedious.
The study doesn't say if the drug had any effect on fat storage, but since muscle uses more calories than other tissues, it stands to reason that if all else is equal, people taking this drug should be able to lose weight more easily than others, too.
I realize that a lot of this will depend on what side effects they find in the drug, but if they were minimal, would you take it?
If people don't have to go to the gym anymore, will they stay open anyway as a place for people to flirt?
And as a non sequitur, we're back home from T or C.
This is in the lobby of the NOAA. It uses ultrasonic vibrations to generate steam from water without heating it, then pumps it up into this large bowl which you can blow down into or run your hands through. It doesn't really serve any scientific purpose, really, but it's fun to play with.
The highlight of the tour for most of us was Science on a Globe. This a six-foot diameter sphere suspended from the ceiling, then four projectors use it as a spherical movie screen to project a globe onto it. This allows presenters to show any array of global information on the sphere, animated. The effect looks exactly what you would expect a hologram of the Earth to look like.
Topo maps.
The night side of the topo map shows the lights that are visible form human activity. Our presenter told us how to recognize the differen types of lights. White are electric lights - cities. Purple lights in the ocean (particularly near Japan) are fishing boats using lights to attract squid to the surface so they can turn them into calamari. Red lights are fires, usually big slash-and-burn operations. Blue lights are oil rig flares.
A view of the globe seeing the tops of the clouds color-coded to show the infrared spectrum. Also, the globe-like head of the kid in front of me apparently trying to simulate an eclipse as seen from beyond the dark side of the moon.
An animation showing the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic.
The next animation I have is a really cool one showing global warming from the 1870's (as based on ice core samples) and projected into the year 2200 (based on computer models), but the clip is bigger than the Vox limit of 50 megs. When I get back home I'll see if I can work it into a smaller file. All of the other videos I took were also over 50 megs. Hmmph!
After Science on a Sphere, the tour took us into a conference room where one of their employees demonstrated on a big screen the NOAA's experimental island in Second Life. It looked neat, but unfortunately my bandwidth at home just can't handle Second Life.
After leaving the NOAA, we went to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It was a much shorter tour and there wasn't nearly as much to see, but their building was neat, and they had a very basic science museum just inside the door.
The building was designed by architect I. M. Pei after visiting Mesa Verde National Park.
A view of the Flatirons Mountains from right outside the NCAR facilities.
Some door archways on the exterior of the NCAR facility. For comparison, here is a shot I took at Chaco Canyon National Historic Park:
Another view of the Flatirons.
Back inside the NCAR facility, a mural showing the different altitudes where various atmospheric phenomena exist. From this mural, I learned about a type of cloud that I hadn't heard of before: noctilucent clouds. They are much higher in the atmosphere that other cloud formations, and as such they can sometimes reflect light from the sun back down toward the night side of the planet, making them appear to glow. I wonder how many UFO sightings such clouds have caused. They're also interesting because scientists don't yet understand how clouds can form at such high altitudes or why we're seeing them in lower latitudes in the last couple of decades than we used to.
An early air sampler rocket, meant to take samples of air at high altitudes. This one was used at the White Sands Missile Range.
Finally, since we're going white water rafting Sunday and we forgot to pack hats to protect us from the sun, I bought a couple of floppy fishing hats at the NCAR gift store for Strix and me.
Yes, my face really is that round. Sad, huh?
It's time for lunch. More later!
This morning, I got up bright and early, ate some Cheerios, and headed out to a bus waiting to take me and a bunch of other geeks on a tour of some of the scientific facilities in Boulder, Colorado.
Our first stop was the Boulder branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
First, let me say, Boulder is gorgeous. I will definitely have to go back when I'm not stuck with a tour group to explore it more thoroughly, but I think I may want to live there.
But back to the NOAA. We first stopped at the security station outside. A security officer came onto the bus and said that we were all going to have to get off and go through a metal detector, so anything we didn't want to take through the metal detector we should leave on the bus. Being the good Americans we are, we didn't question this, but did as we were told. We were all given temporary name badges, and went through the metal detector, then got back on the bus which took us on to the main building.
Now... since we could leave whatever we wanted on the bus and were given an opportunity to retrieve it before going into the main building, can someone please explain to me what the hell the purpose of the metal detector was? These people need training on how to design a security checkpoint system, because this ain't it.
Anyway, here's my temporary name badge.
Yep. I should have expired... nine minutes ago now. Maybe they were on Greenwich Mean Time.
A half-size prototype of a weather satellite, suspended from the ceiling just inside the door.
Some neat artwork in the lobby.
Pics from the solar observation lab...
Some neat artwork on the wall outside the solar lab.
The blue and white cylindars are sample bottles full of... well... air. The NOAA receives 40,000 samples per year from volunteers and organizations around the world, and analyzes them for levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.
This is the lab where actual weather forcasts are accurately made... or not.
Just two of the several rows of parallel supercomputers used to model climate change and weather patterns.
Computer simulation only goes so far. This rather cluttered lab is where actual chemical reactions are tested at various pressures. When we entered the lab, our tour guide said, several times, "DO NOT STARE INTO THE FLASHING GREEN LASER!" The first question to be asked by one of my fellow tourists was, while they were looking avidly around the lab, "Where's the laser?"
Got all that?
The air tanks all along the wall are the various types of gasses used in the experiments. The woman who designed the lab (I can't remember her name right now) won a Nobel prize for discovering the chemical process in which CFCs break down the Ozone.
Okay, I've got a lot more, but it's really late. More tomorrow.
A story in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry reports that some people with poor self-images actually have a brain disorder that causes them to focus on unattractive aspects of their own appearance. It's called body dysmorphic disorder, and those who have it utilize the left side of their brain more than normal people when looking at pictures of faces, indicating that they're focusing more on details than on the overall image.
This raises interesting issues concerning vision. The fact is, most of what we consider "seeing" doesn't take place in the eye; it takes place in the brain, where signals from the eyes are processed and put together into what we hope is a coherent picture of the world. Our brain has been designed by evolution to process these images in ways that will usually be right, but may sometimes be wrong, and optical illusions are are the result of our brain making "shortcuts" or "assumptions" when processing images. The bottom line is that we can't always trust that what we see is what the world is really like.
For those who think that seeing is believing, perhaps now is a good opportunity to step back and re-evaluate that position.
