Saturday:
Previously, I have mentioned how the universe is made of CHOCOLATE.
It surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together… no wait, that's the FORCE!
Anyway, scientists call this delicious substance DARK MATTER, because it appears – or rather DISappears – to be invisible. Yet it makes up FAR MORE of the Universe than bits we can see.
(In fact, 70% of the universe is dark ENERGY which is even MORE mysterious but if the sums add up right then a quarter of everything is dark matter; that's FIVE TIMES as much dark matter as light matter!)
So you can't see it but you CAN see the effect that it has. In fact, using the Hubble Space Telescope, you can photograph a bit of a GLOW around distant galaxies caused by the Dark Matter BENDING LIGHT around the edges!
Now, there's a BIT of a puzzle about what dark matter is really made of.
Some people think it might just be ORDINARY matter bundled up into super-heavy lumps that, for some reason we don't understand, don't heat up and radiate light.
('Cos that's what USUALLY happens when ordinary matter gets bundled up into super-heavy lumps… we call them STARS.)
These bundles of ordinary-but-lumpy stuff are referred to as Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects or MACHOs. Yes, scientists are like that; live with it.
Others think that there are a whole new farm of sub-atomic particles that carry MASS (so can affect gravity) but none of the other fundamental forces (so they DON'T interact with ordinary matter in any other way). These are called weakly interacting (because they don't really interact) massive (because they have mass, not because they are enormous) particles. Or WIMPs. Yes, I know; never mind.
Detecting the presence of actual invisible particles, though, would mean that there actually ARE invisible particles, and would settle that argument.
But how do you detect them if you can't see them.
Well, you CAN, if you are very, very careful, detect a teeny-tiny bit of a REBOUND in a bit of light matter, something that you CAN see, if a dark matter particle happens to collide with it!
And that is just what scientists at the bottom of a very deep mine in Americaland claim to have done.
Alternatively, it's students from the FUTURE messing about with the Large Hairdo Collider!
.
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Day 2821: Big Bang Damp Squib
Sunday:
Oh dear, they've gone and fritzed the Large Hat Collider!
You're not fooling ME! It is a COVER UP! K-9 is down there, saving the world from BLACK HOLES!
(No, it is NOT Captain Jack and Toychwud – they turned up on Big Bang Day all SAD because Tosh and Weevil-Boy Owen were DEADED, forgetting that Toychwud continuity is a year in the future so that hasn't happened yet! Clearly they are caught in the TIME WARP. AGAIN!)
Oh dear, they've gone and fritzed the Large Hat Collider!
You're not fooling ME! It is a COVER UP! K-9 is down there, saving the world from BLACK HOLES!
(No, it is NOT Captain Jack and Toychwud – they turned up on Big Bang Day all SAD because Tosh and Weevil-Boy Owen were DEADED, forgetting that Toychwud continuity is a year in the future so that hasn't happened yet! Clearly they are caught in the TIME WARP. AGAIN!)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Day 2696: Hybrids, Chimeras and Talibaptists… oh my!
Monday:
(In fairness, they're more like TaliPAPISTS in this country.)
Yes, obviously, it's the return of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and the attempt by an alliance of Social Conservatories and Roman Theocrats to HIJACK the issue as an excuse to start a CULTURE WAR against science.
The media are, typically, giggling about the fact that several of Mr Frown's own Cabinet DEFIED his personal plea and voted PRO-LIES.
But surely the far more worrying development is the Conservatories AS A BLOC throwing their weight behind a discrimination, superstition, anti-choice agenda straight out of the book of Victorian values.
On the CRUCIAL votes, the Conservatories were top keen to vote against the modern liberal country that Great Britain has become, and cocksure enough to do it blatantly.
On reducing the abortion limit to 22 weeks, the Conservatories voted 134 (plus 2 semi-detached Independent Conservatories) in favour to 27 against (Liberal Democrats were the most divided on this difficult issue though thankfully leaning the right way overall: 23 for and 32 against)
On the question of whether the law should insist that a daddy is necessary to have a child, the Conservatories support was 144 to 12 for legislating against any family that does not fit their ideological catalogue.
On trying to ban the use of hybrid embryos they WERE more divided, 80 in favour and 64 against, but the majority of the Conservatory Party were still on the opposite side to the PROGRESSIVE will of the House and (on this occasion) their own leader, Mr Balloon.
Losing the fight to embed the patriarchy in law wasMr Vague's Dad the former Conservatory leader, Mr Iain Drunken Swerve, or IVF as he is known.
He was at pains to emphasise that just because he thought that Lesbians (no, NOT from Lesbos, let's not go THERE again)… just because he thought Lesbians were thoroughly inadequate to be parents, he was NOT being HOMOPHOBIC – he wouldn't go so far as to say that some of his best friends are gay daddies, but some of his best friends are… senior Conservatories.
The whole business is about pinning people down and making them live the way that the Conservatories WANT them to live. But people do not need the Conservatories' permission to live their lives, and thankfully the House of Commons agrees.
So instead Mr Drunken Swerve's "need for a father" will be replaced by "supportive parenting", which seems MUCH more sensible and allows for recognition of all of the DIFFERENT kinds of families that people are able to come up with for themselves.
The argument over abortion, led by the Conservatory MP Ms Nodding Doris, was almost MORE sinister, not least because of the way it was suddenly attached to the Embryology Bill out of the blue.
I am not really QUALIFIED to spout about the abortion issue. But if there is one statistic that convinces ME, then it's THIS:
Britain: abortion legal: 20% of pregnancies end in termination.
Brazil: abortion illegal: 30% of pregnancies end in termination.
That certainly LOOKS like the way to save BABIES (and MUMMIES, who are JUST as important) is to give mummies CONTROL over their ownsquishy bits reproductive organs. That means being PRO-CHOICE. It means education. It means contraception. It means equal rights and equal pay and job protection and a whole lot of other things too. But all of those things add up to giving the power and the decision to the mummy.
However, the debate isn't as simple as the yes/no question over ALLOWING abortion at all. No matter that that's what the anti-abortion campaigners want, they've realised that – for now – they're not going to be able to wind THAT particular clock BACK to the Dark Ages. So instead they are adopting SALAMI TACTICS.
Daddy Richard says: they want to kill abortion by slicing it up piecemeal.
I say: Yeuch, icky metaphor daddy! [Daddy Alex AGREES!]
The scientific consensus is that we put the limit on abortion at 24 weeks because up to 24 weeks the chances of a baby surviving on its own are really quite low.
Obviously, this led to all the news shows going out and finding someone whose baby HAD survived being born at 23 weeks and then – rather disingenuously – NOT interviewing the NINE OTHER MUMMIES whose babies had all DIED.
Also, the chances of survival drop off AMAZINGLY quickly: from below one in ten at 23 weeks to below one in ten-thousand at 20 weeks (in fact in the most recent survey no babies at all survived being born so early).
But you can SORT OF see that people might think that given that there is SOME chance of survival at 23 weeks and a tiny chance at 22 weeks then MAYBE there is some justification in letting MPs decide to lower the limit, just on the precautionary principle, so we're covered as science gets BETTER at saving very early premature babies.
This is a TRAP.
Because the REAL danger here is that MPs choose to take the decision AWAY from Independent Scientific Advice. Essentially that would mean that you take the science OUT of the debate and then just debate on SENTIMENT.
And once you've got THERE, it's much, much harder to defend the right to an abortion with inconvenient things like COLD HARD FACTS, when the other side can say: "ooooh, just look at the li'll BABIES!!!"
(Actually, they say that a lot already – but at least you can counter it with: "yes, but the SCIENCE says…")
Fortunately, as you know, MPs decided to stick with the scientific advice.
But we still need to be aware that the HARD-LINE Conservatories have STILL scored a victory by getting their AGENDA to the centre of political debate. The Progressive Movement is STYMIED so long as the choices being presented are between the STATUS QUO (which Conservatories love) or going back to their Fantasy Fifties (which Conservatories love).
One thing is for certain: the ONLY way to make sure that you don't replace a barking mad power-crazed authoritarian Labour with barking mad power-crazed authoritarian Conservatories… is to make sure there are enough LIBERAL DEMOCRATs to keep thes HONEST!
This is GOOD: I think Mr Jesus could DO with a sister or brother to help him get out more.
(In fairness, they're more like TaliPAPISTS in this country.)
Yes, obviously, it's the return of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and the attempt by an alliance of Social Conservatories and Roman Theocrats to HIJACK the issue as an excuse to start a CULTURE WAR against science.
The media are, typically, giggling about the fact that several of Mr Frown's own Cabinet DEFIED his personal plea and voted PRO-LIES.
But surely the far more worrying development is the Conservatories AS A BLOC throwing their weight behind a discrimination, superstition, anti-choice agenda straight out of the book of Victorian values.
On the CRUCIAL votes, the Conservatories were top keen to vote against the modern liberal country that Great Britain has become, and cocksure enough to do it blatantly.
On reducing the abortion limit to 22 weeks, the Conservatories voted 134 (plus 2 semi-detached Independent Conservatories) in favour to 27 against (Liberal Democrats were the most divided on this difficult issue though thankfully leaning the right way overall: 23 for and 32 against)
On the question of whether the law should insist that a daddy is necessary to have a child, the Conservatories support was 144 to 12 for legislating against any family that does not fit their ideological catalogue.
On trying to ban the use of hybrid embryos they WERE more divided, 80 in favour and 64 against, but the majority of the Conservatory Party were still on the opposite side to the PROGRESSIVE will of the House and (on this occasion) their own leader, Mr Balloon.
Losing the fight to embed the patriarchy in law was
He was at pains to emphasise that just because he thought that Lesbians (no, NOT from Lesbos, let's not go THERE again)… just because he thought Lesbians were thoroughly inadequate to be parents, he was NOT being HOMOPHOBIC – he wouldn't go so far as to say that some of his best friends are gay daddies, but some of his best friends are… senior Conservatories.
The whole business is about pinning people down and making them live the way that the Conservatories WANT them to live. But people do not need the Conservatories' permission to live their lives, and thankfully the House of Commons agrees.
So instead Mr Drunken Swerve's "need for a father" will be replaced by "supportive parenting", which seems MUCH more sensible and allows for recognition of all of the DIFFERENT kinds of families that people are able to come up with for themselves.
The argument over abortion, led by the Conservatory MP Ms Nodding Doris, was almost MORE sinister, not least because of the way it was suddenly attached to the Embryology Bill out of the blue.
I am not really QUALIFIED to spout about the abortion issue. But if there is one statistic that convinces ME, then it's THIS:
Britain: abortion legal: 20% of pregnancies end in termination.
Brazil: abortion illegal: 30% of pregnancies end in termination.
That certainly LOOKS like the way to save BABIES (and MUMMIES, who are JUST as important) is to give mummies CONTROL over their own
However, the debate isn't as simple as the yes/no question over ALLOWING abortion at all. No matter that that's what the anti-abortion campaigners want, they've realised that – for now – they're not going to be able to wind THAT particular clock BACK to the Dark Ages. So instead they are adopting SALAMI TACTICS.
Daddy Richard says: they want to kill abortion by slicing it up piecemeal.
I say: Yeuch, icky metaphor daddy! [Daddy Alex AGREES!]
The scientific consensus is that we put the limit on abortion at 24 weeks because up to 24 weeks the chances of a baby surviving on its own are really quite low.
Obviously, this led to all the news shows going out and finding someone whose baby HAD survived being born at 23 weeks and then – rather disingenuously – NOT interviewing the NINE OTHER MUMMIES whose babies had all DIED.
Also, the chances of survival drop off AMAZINGLY quickly: from below one in ten at 23 weeks to below one in ten-thousand at 20 weeks (in fact in the most recent survey no babies at all survived being born so early).
But you can SORT OF see that people might think that given that there is SOME chance of survival at 23 weeks and a tiny chance at 22 weeks then MAYBE there is some justification in letting MPs decide to lower the limit, just on the precautionary principle, so we're covered as science gets BETTER at saving very early premature babies.
This is a TRAP.
Because the REAL danger here is that MPs choose to take the decision AWAY from Independent Scientific Advice. Essentially that would mean that you take the science OUT of the debate and then just debate on SENTIMENT.
And once you've got THERE, it's much, much harder to defend the right to an abortion with inconvenient things like COLD HARD FACTS, when the other side can say: "ooooh, just look at the li'll BABIES!!!"
(Actually, they say that a lot already – but at least you can counter it with: "yes, but the SCIENCE says…")
Fortunately, as you know, MPs decided to stick with the scientific advice.
But we still need to be aware that the HARD-LINE Conservatories have STILL scored a victory by getting their AGENDA to the centre of political debate. The Progressive Movement is STYMIED so long as the choices being presented are between the STATUS QUO (which Conservatories love) or going back to their Fantasy Fifties (which Conservatories love).
One thing is for certain: the ONLY way to make sure that you don't replace a barking mad power-crazed authoritarian Labour with barking mad power-crazed authoritarian Conservatories… is to make sure there are enough LIBERAL DEMOCRATs to keep the
PS:
One OTHER effect of this bill is that "Saviour Siblings" will be allowed.This is GOOD: I think Mr Jesus could DO with a sister or brother to help him get out more.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Day 2692: Relic Box of Einstein's Hairdo
Thursday:
Four things that Professor E is famous for:
Number 1: E = mc2
Number 2: Sock phobia
Number 3: Turned down the presidency of Israel
Number 4: "Mr God does not play dice"
Except it turns out that that last quote ought to be: "Mr God does not play dice… because he's IMAGINARY!"
Mr Albert often referred to Mr God POETICALLY, something that's been used as a sign of BELIEF. But, in this forgotten letter, he lays it out a bit more BLUNTLY:
But that hasn't stopped his words being USED (or AB-used) by the more ZEALOTIC religious types as evidence of a big famous scientist who believed in Mr God. As though that would actually make a difference to the Mr God real/not real question anyway.
Well, I think they probably WON'T want to do that any more!
Four things that Professor E is famous for:
Number 1: E = mc2
Number 2: Sock phobia
Number 3: Turned down the presidency of Israel
Number 4: "Mr God does not play dice"
Except it turns out that that last quote ought to be: "Mr God does not play dice… because he's IMAGINARY!"
Mr Albert often referred to Mr God POETICALLY, something that's been used as a sign of BELIEF. But, in this forgotten letter, he lays it out a bit more BLUNTLY:
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."The question of Mr Albert's belief, unbelief, respect for the traditions and history of his people, or general sense of wonder at the fact that the world can even be understood at all shouldn't amount to any part of a hill of beans, certainly not compared with his HUGE contribution to our understanding of the positively BRAIN-WARPING ways in which our universe works at a very large scale.
But that hasn't stopped his words being USED (or AB-used) by the more ZEALOTIC religious types as evidence of a big famous scientist who believed in Mr God. As though that would actually make a difference to the Mr God real/not real question anyway.
Well, I think they probably WON'T want to do that any more!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Day 2689: Immortality – It's A Bad Thing… isn't it?
Monday:
As the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill begins to make its way through the House of Commons, my fluffy thoughts turn inevitably to Space: 1999…
No, seriously.
Although the second monster (or man-in-same-rubber-suit-painted-a-different-colour) crazed season got too silly for words, the FIRST season – well known as a cure for insomnia though it many be – has two BIG sci-fi themes: (A) aliens, with ways to strange for us to understand; and (B) immortality, it's a BAD thing.
What's THAT got to do with HuFEB, I hear you ask. And well you might!
But let's just try thinking things through.
Opposition to the Bill really comes from two distinct, but conjoined, sources. First there are the people who want to protect the interests of the unborn embryo (and linked to them are the pro-lifers who are hoping to reduce the limit on the number of weeks at which abortions can legally be performed). Second, there are those who are opposed to the mixing of human and fluffy animal cells on the grounds of" Ewwwwww!"
In fact, the POINT of "hybridising" cells like this is to take the INSIDES of human cell and the OUTSIDES of a fluffy animal cell and make an ARTIFICIAL STEM CELL – thus saving the need to harvest stem cells from, well, unborn embryos… so if they actually applied any logic at all, the two groups of rebels would actually be on opposite sides.
What are stem cells for? Well, they are cells that haven't decided what bit of the body they are going to be YET. So the idea is that you can use them to rebuild almost any broken bits, including bits like nerves and brains that we haven't had any idea how to fix before now.
Now, at the moment, people get old and drop dead because their bodies are constantly wearing out. In fact it's a fair miracle of engineering that they keep going AT ALL. You are under constant attack from the environment, even from things that you think of as GOOD for you – sunlight and oxygen are actually concentrated beams of radiation and a powerful chemical agent respectively (the effect of oxygen on cars is to make them rust, so just think what it's doing to your insides!).
This did not used to matter because most people PEGGED OUT as a result of disease and malnutrition in their early forties. But nowadays we have a whole load of medicines and antibiotics to defeat most disease and (in Great Britain) more food than is good for us. So lots of people are living a LOT longer and we have discovered a whole NEW range of exciting diseases that you get when you get old.
And a lot of them are rather horrid, including especially the ones that melt your brains and turn you into vegetables.
But if stem cell technology lives up to all its promises, then these could be a thing of the past too. Because as bits of your body wear out, you just go down to stem-u-like and grow a new one.
Heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, skin… as they wear out, just pop in a new one. And if your brain goes melty, then with luck and hard work we can fix that too.
Sounds brilliant doesn't it.
You should all be able to live to a ripe old age without any of the suffering and indignities that we fear today.
The question is… how old IS a ripe old age going to be if you can keep replacing parts?
We've already seen the consequences of ONE substantial increase in life expectancy: a now-ageing tide of BABY BOOMERS who have benefited from free education, received generous final salary pension schemes and soaked up all the property in the country leaving young people stranded without a foot on the housing ladder and facing the prospect of fewer and fewer people IN work having to support the retired while trying to pay off their student loans and fund their own pension plans too.
Just imagine how much WORSE it could get if instead of living to ninety or a hundred, the baby boomers live on to TWO hundred. Or FIVE hundred. Or forever!
And if that's not horrifying enough, then remember that you'll have a generation of immortal Generation X-ers living right up there with them and moaning about how they never got to see any of the benefits their parents had, while they struggle to meet the repayments on their PERPETUAL mortgages.
But then globally resources are already running short. The good news is that the rate of population growth seems to decline once a new stable plateau is reached, so with a bit of luck you humans' population will get to about twenty billions and then stop. The bad news is that the planet can only just about support so many, and certainly can't COMFORTABLY support so many, especially with the West taking so much more than its share.
Basically, you monkeys aren't just occupying too much of the SURFACE of the planet, you're looking at taking up too much of its timespan as well.
It doesn't have to be like that.
After all, who wants to live forever? Well, pretty much EVERYONE, I would have thought, especially if you can keep your HEALTH.
But you ARE going to need to start thinking and planning for how to make the world actually WORK when it's full of people who are old.
(And I say this to a planet where people stick the world's deadliest poisons in their faces in the DELUDED belief that killing their expression stone dead makes them look young again!)
Working longer is ALREADY on the cards, but you are going to have to find an equitable settlement between the generations, and find a way to live more within the means of the planet. Or, more accurately, your FAIR SHARE of the planet. Or you are going to have to find another one. (Yes, you knew "Let's Build Rocket Ships" was coming somewhere!)
(Mind you, actually the biggest advantage of a longer lifespan is that it starts to make INTERPLANETARY exploration look more possible.)
But you also need to learn to stay flexible, open-minded and interested in CHANGE as you grow, to avoid falling into a rut and falling out of your time.
The CURSE of long life is that there are no forevers – everything you know will END; but the BLESSING is that there is ALWAYS something NEW.
There is so much to learn and see and do in the world that who WOULDN'T want more life to try and do it all in!
So that is the ULTIMATE key to living longer… go out there and LIVE it!
As the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill begins to make its way through the House of Commons, my fluffy thoughts turn inevitably to Space: 1999…
No, seriously.
Although the second monster (or man-in-same-rubber-suit-painted-a-different-colour) crazed season got too silly for words, the FIRST season – well known as a cure for insomnia though it many be – has two BIG sci-fi themes: (A) aliens, with ways to strange for us to understand; and (B) immortality, it's a BAD thing.
What's THAT got to do with HuFEB, I hear you ask. And well you might!
But let's just try thinking things through.
Opposition to the Bill really comes from two distinct, but conjoined, sources. First there are the people who want to protect the interests of the unborn embryo (and linked to them are the pro-lifers who are hoping to reduce the limit on the number of weeks at which abortions can legally be performed). Second, there are those who are opposed to the mixing of human and fluffy animal cells on the grounds of" Ewwwwww!"
In fact, the POINT of "hybridising" cells like this is to take the INSIDES of human cell and the OUTSIDES of a fluffy animal cell and make an ARTIFICIAL STEM CELL – thus saving the need to harvest stem cells from, well, unborn embryos… so if they actually applied any logic at all, the two groups of rebels would actually be on opposite sides.
What are stem cells for? Well, they are cells that haven't decided what bit of the body they are going to be YET. So the idea is that you can use them to rebuild almost any broken bits, including bits like nerves and brains that we haven't had any idea how to fix before now.
Now, at the moment, people get old and drop dead because their bodies are constantly wearing out. In fact it's a fair miracle of engineering that they keep going AT ALL. You are under constant attack from the environment, even from things that you think of as GOOD for you – sunlight and oxygen are actually concentrated beams of radiation and a powerful chemical agent respectively (the effect of oxygen on cars is to make them rust, so just think what it's doing to your insides!).
This did not used to matter because most people PEGGED OUT as a result of disease and malnutrition in their early forties. But nowadays we have a whole load of medicines and antibiotics to defeat most disease and (in Great Britain) more food than is good for us. So lots of people are living a LOT longer and we have discovered a whole NEW range of exciting diseases that you get when you get old.
And a lot of them are rather horrid, including especially the ones that melt your brains and turn you into vegetables.
But if stem cell technology lives up to all its promises, then these could be a thing of the past too. Because as bits of your body wear out, you just go down to stem-u-like and grow a new one.
Heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, skin… as they wear out, just pop in a new one. And if your brain goes melty, then with luck and hard work we can fix that too.
Sounds brilliant doesn't it.
You should all be able to live to a ripe old age without any of the suffering and indignities that we fear today.
The question is… how old IS a ripe old age going to be if you can keep replacing parts?
We've already seen the consequences of ONE substantial increase in life expectancy: a now-ageing tide of BABY BOOMERS who have benefited from free education, received generous final salary pension schemes and soaked up all the property in the country leaving young people stranded without a foot on the housing ladder and facing the prospect of fewer and fewer people IN work having to support the retired while trying to pay off their student loans and fund their own pension plans too.
Just imagine how much WORSE it could get if instead of living to ninety or a hundred, the baby boomers live on to TWO hundred. Or FIVE hundred. Or forever!
And if that's not horrifying enough, then remember that you'll have a generation of immortal Generation X-ers living right up there with them and moaning about how they never got to see any of the benefits their parents had, while they struggle to meet the repayments on their PERPETUAL mortgages.
But then globally resources are already running short. The good news is that the rate of population growth seems to decline once a new stable plateau is reached, so with a bit of luck you humans' population will get to about twenty billions and then stop. The bad news is that the planet can only just about support so many, and certainly can't COMFORTABLY support so many, especially with the West taking so much more than its share.
Basically, you monkeys aren't just occupying too much of the SURFACE of the planet, you're looking at taking up too much of its timespan as well.
It doesn't have to be like that.
After all, who wants to live forever? Well, pretty much EVERYONE, I would have thought, especially if you can keep your HEALTH.
But you ARE going to need to start thinking and planning for how to make the world actually WORK when it's full of people who are old.
(And I say this to a planet where people stick the world's deadliest poisons in their faces in the DELUDED belief that killing their expression stone dead makes them look young again!)
Working longer is ALREADY on the cards, but you are going to have to find an equitable settlement between the generations, and find a way to live more within the means of the planet. Or, more accurately, your FAIR SHARE of the planet. Or you are going to have to find another one. (Yes, you knew "Let's Build Rocket Ships" was coming somewhere!)
(Mind you, actually the biggest advantage of a longer lifespan is that it starts to make INTERPLANETARY exploration look more possible.)
But you also need to learn to stay flexible, open-minded and interested in CHANGE as you grow, to avoid falling into a rut and falling out of your time.
The CURSE of long life is that there are no forevers – everything you know will END; but the BLESSING is that there is ALWAYS something NEW.
There is so much to learn and see and do in the world that who WOULDN'T want more life to try and do it all in!
So that is the ULTIMATE key to living longer… go out there and LIVE it!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Day 2664: Flowers on the Moon
Thursday:
No, I have NOT blasted Daddy Richard into orbit!
This is SCIENCE and news that the European Space Agency has discovered a way to let marigolds grow on moonrock.
I'm sure you must realise that this is quite IMPORTANT if we are ever going to build a successful MOONBASE.
In the CARBON CYCLE, plants absorb CO2 and water and sunlight to make carbohydrates and oxygen; elephants and people and animals then eat carbohydrates and breathe oxygen to get energy and make CO2 and water as by-products. If you want to keep breathing you have to keep these in BALANCE.
Unfortunately, the Moon does not have any atmosphere at all. So we will still have to import lots of air and water in order for plants to grow, unless we are able to FIND some up there: deposits of WATER (or at least ICE) on the moon are much sought after as they would provide not just drinks but Oxygen for breathing and Hydrogen for rocket fuel.
But that wouldn't be enough on its own.
There is also a NITROGEN cycle, because all living things build their bodies out of PROTEINS which are big carbon-based molecules that are like carbohydrates BUT have extra NITROGEN as well as Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. Fortunately there is LOTS of Nitrogen about because the Earth's atmosphere is mostly (more than 70%, in fact) made of it! Unfortunately, plants CANNOT turn nitrogen GAS (N2) into protein directly; they need help to turn the Nitrogen into a NITRATE that they can absorb and use, help that comes either from special bacteria or occasionally from a blast of LIGHTNING! Nowadays they ALSO get help from FERTILISER.
So, you will need to ship a load of fertiliser to the Moon too. (Don't think I don't know what you're thinking!)
All of which makes it VERY SILLY for the Head of the ESA to dismiss lunar colonisation as "Science Fiction"; things are RARELY this difficult in FICTION!
Meanwhile, a Dr Watson of East Anglia has estimated that the chances of meeting another intelligent life form are "extremely low".
Clearly, he needs to try moving away from the University of East Anglia.
No, sorry, apologies to the good people of UEA, the thing is that this is a very SILLY estimate, because we have almost no EVIDENCE on which to base it.
For a start, it seems that Dr Watson has said that the chances of intelligent life emerging on a planet like Earth inside of four billion years are 1/10 (for the chance of simple single-celled animals evolving) times 1/10 (for the chance of complex cells evolving) times 1/10 (for the chance of complex, multi-celled animals evolving) times 1/10 (for the chance of an intelligent species with language evolving) which makes 1/10,000 or 0.01%.
Well, this is the sort of "plucking numbers from the air" that CREATIONISTS do when they want to "prove" life evolving by chance is "impossible". WE simply DO NOT KNOW what are the chances of self-replicating chemicals occurring (like DNA did on Earth). It may be VERY COMMON, it may even be CHEMICALLY INEVITABLE given the right mix of elements; or it could be remotely IMPOSSIBLY unlikely without some fluke event like a comet strike or passing Spaghetti Monster with a whim. Without assessing more than one Earth-like planet we aren't going to be able to find out, either.
Similarly, we are only BEGINNING to understand what drives evolutionary processes. Intelligence and language may be rare or common in terms of things that crop up, we can't be sure – although the distinct possibility that dolphins, whales, elephants and humans have all developed communicating intelligences ought to be taken into some consideration.
And even if these ever-so-arbitrary looking numbers are SPOT ON, we do not know even vaguely how may Earth type planets that there ARE even in our own galaxy.
But we do have some evidence that our planetary system isn't UNIQUE. So, since we're not living entirely by chance on an unnatural fluke, it's not unreasonable to assume that other systems of planets like ours have developed.
With at least two-hundred billion stars in the Milky Way (never mind any of the trillions of other galaxies) even if the chances of another star having a Solar-System-like system of planets are ALSO 1/10,000, there could STILL be over a THOUSAND worlds with intelligent life on them, probably avoiding us because of CRICKET!
Anyway, this ENTIRELY overlooks the possibility that it only takes ONE intelligent species to go INTERSTELLAR and the galaxy will be FULL of inhabited planets. Which brings us back to colonisation, and apparently it's quite urgent as there are only a billion years until the shops close. And melt.
No, I have NOT blasted Daddy Richard into orbit!
This is SCIENCE and news that the European Space Agency has discovered a way to let marigolds grow on moonrock.
I'm sure you must realise that this is quite IMPORTANT if we are ever going to build a successful MOONBASE.
In the CARBON CYCLE, plants absorb CO2 and water and sunlight to make carbohydrates and oxygen; elephants and people and animals then eat carbohydrates and breathe oxygen to get energy and make CO2 and water as by-products. If you want to keep breathing you have to keep these in BALANCE.
Unfortunately, the Moon does not have any atmosphere at all. So we will still have to import lots of air and water in order for plants to grow, unless we are able to FIND some up there: deposits of WATER (or at least ICE) on the moon are much sought after as they would provide not just drinks but Oxygen for breathing and Hydrogen for rocket fuel.
But that wouldn't be enough on its own.
There is also a NITROGEN cycle, because all living things build their bodies out of PROTEINS which are big carbon-based molecules that are like carbohydrates BUT have extra NITROGEN as well as Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. Fortunately there is LOTS of Nitrogen about because the Earth's atmosphere is mostly (more than 70%, in fact) made of it! Unfortunately, plants CANNOT turn nitrogen GAS (N2) into protein directly; they need help to turn the Nitrogen into a NITRATE that they can absorb and use, help that comes either from special bacteria or occasionally from a blast of LIGHTNING! Nowadays they ALSO get help from FERTILISER.
So, you will need to ship a load of fertiliser to the Moon too. (Don't think I don't know what you're thinking!)
All of which makes it VERY SILLY for the Head of the ESA to dismiss lunar colonisation as "Science Fiction"; things are RARELY this difficult in FICTION!
Meanwhile, a Dr Watson of East Anglia has estimated that the chances of meeting another intelligent life form are "extremely low".
Clearly, he needs to try moving away from the University of East Anglia.
No, sorry, apologies to the good people of UEA, the thing is that this is a very SILLY estimate, because we have almost no EVIDENCE on which to base it.
For a start, it seems that Dr Watson has said that the chances of intelligent life emerging on a planet like Earth inside of four billion years are 1/10 (for the chance of simple single-celled animals evolving) times 1/10 (for the chance of complex cells evolving) times 1/10 (for the chance of complex, multi-celled animals evolving) times 1/10 (for the chance of an intelligent species with language evolving) which makes 1/10,000 or 0.01%.
Well, this is the sort of "plucking numbers from the air" that CREATIONISTS do when they want to "prove" life evolving by chance is "impossible". WE simply DO NOT KNOW what are the chances of self-replicating chemicals occurring (like DNA did on Earth). It may be VERY COMMON, it may even be CHEMICALLY INEVITABLE given the right mix of elements; or it could be remotely IMPOSSIBLY unlikely without some fluke event like a comet strike or passing Spaghetti Monster with a whim. Without assessing more than one Earth-like planet we aren't going to be able to find out, either.
Similarly, we are only BEGINNING to understand what drives evolutionary processes. Intelligence and language may be rare or common in terms of things that crop up, we can't be sure – although the distinct possibility that dolphins, whales, elephants and humans have all developed communicating intelligences ought to be taken into some consideration.
And even if these ever-so-arbitrary looking numbers are SPOT ON, we do not know even vaguely how may Earth type planets that there ARE even in our own galaxy.
But we do have some evidence that our planetary system isn't UNIQUE. So, since we're not living entirely by chance on an unnatural fluke, it's not unreasonable to assume that other systems of planets like ours have developed.
With at least two-hundred billion stars in the Milky Way (never mind any of the trillions of other galaxies) even if the chances of another star having a Solar-System-like system of planets are ALSO 1/10,000, there could STILL be over a THOUSAND worlds with intelligent life on them, probably avoiding us because of CRICKET!
Anyway, this ENTIRELY overlooks the possibility that it only takes ONE intelligent species to go INTERSTELLAR and the galaxy will be FULL of inhabited planets. Which brings us back to colonisation, and apparently it's quite urgent as there are only a billion years until the shops close. And melt.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Day 2637: Mr God's Busy-Bods and Monsters
Good Friday
The GOOD thing about bank holidays is that you get a LIE IN; the BAD thing is when you wake up in time to hear the Cardinal Arch-bigot of Westminster blowing off his Fart for Today.
So we woke up to hear Cardinal Carpark Mary-O'Conman opining that whenever he met people who thought religion was a bit RUBBISH these days he was always struck by how FIXED in their opinion they were, compared to the people of FAITH he met who were willing to confess their DOUBTS to him. Not that he admitted to having any doubts himself!
He then went on to say that Mr Jesus had had doubts too ("Mr God, Mr God why've you forsaken me!"), so that was ok, but that before he died he committed himself fully to faith ("Daddy, into your hands I deliver my spirit!")
Sooooo, total faith is BAD when it is for non-believers but GOOD when it is for believers?
Mr God is supposed to come in three persons, but it seems that the Cardinal will have to make do with just the TWO FACES.
Anyway, this all reminds me of the fact that Mr O'Conman's church is currently running another campaign to tell MPs what to think.
It started with Cardinal O'Conman's Scottish counterpart, Cardinal Keith O'Binman, saying that this Easter his sermon would be about peace, love, forgiveness and the need to take up pitchforks and blazing torches against the Freaky Frankensteins of the current Embryology Bill in Parliament.
He'll be saying: "With so many people worried about banks failing, the cost of food or petrol, or about climate change and global warming, I think that the REAL threat is doctors trying to cure diseases!"
"Don't they know Mr God put those diseases there to punish evil-doers!" he'll probably not be adding. It's an explanation that's a little out of VOGUE these days, now that we know that disease is caused by GERMS and not SINS, though obviously that's what's at the back of all this: how dare SCIENCE try and put right some of Mr God's greatest mistakes?
In particular, the Cardinal's beef is with allowing research scientists to experiment with mixing human DNA with DNA from other animals in order to find new treatments for illness.
"Monstrous" is what he'll call it, and the monster he is thinking of is the CHIMERA. A mix of snake, goat and cat-monster is a Greek recipe for EITHER a really scary fire-breathing monster… or a really dodgy stew.
This is a bit of a tricky issue, and you can see why MPs would want to think HARD about which way they should vote. Taking nice, fluffy animal DNA and mixing it up with horrible humans… well, it could easily give you the creeps. So you would need to understand the process involved, and how carefully it will be done and what sort of supervision will be in place. All the sorts of careful consideration that an MP SHOULD be doing… but not the sort of thing that people are going to think about in such depth and detail when an Arch-bigot stands up and says: "ooooh, they be makin' MONSTERS!!!!"
IF he's thought about this carefully and in detail (which is possible) and IF he's talking privately to the MPs in question, as a concerned citizen (which he could do) THEN that's fine, and they can add his opinion to the other opinions that they hear in order to weigh their decision. But this is just RABBLE-ROUSING, and whipping up the public with scare stories suggests that he doesn’t think he CAN win the argument properly.
On the OTHER side of the debate, Mr Frown wants his MPs whipped… which isn't unusual, er, but aside from that he thinks that they ought to be told to vote for the government's bill. But a number of the Labour MPs are thinking of rebelling on the issue if they are not given a free vote.
Ms Geraldine Smith is one of them and fully backs the Cardinal Arch-Bigot. We listened to the end of the World at One (No, not the End of the World… at One) and she was on, saying that she wouldn't abstain: she never liked to abstain because it was as sign of weakness, she said. It is GOOD to know she is making up her mind on the basis of careful moral consideration and not just to get good PR, do you not think? But wait! A quick check of TheyWorkForYou.com reveals that Ms Smith may not LIKE to abstain but nevertheless has done so in 48% of votes, rather more than average among MPs – Hmmm, I think that means it's her ARGUMENT that's rather weak.
Now the Arch-bigot of Cardiff has joined in, coming on the radio to – in a very public way – tell everyone that he's only talking to MPs in private. Not that he would think of telling them which way they should vote – that would be WRONG – but that he would be telling them that they most certainly would burn in hell for all eternity if they voted for the bill. But it was their choice.
MPs should ALWAYS vote with their conscience: they should properly understand what they are voting for of course, and have given consideration to both sides of the debate, but if they think something is WRONG then it is WRONG for them to vote for it. In fact, people would have more respect for their politicians if they voted like that more often.
But the Cardinal ISN'T asking MPs to vote with their consciences; he's TELLING them to vote with HIS. And then he's threatening them – with fire and brimstone in the hereafter or (if that doesn't work) with an angry mob in the present – to do what he wants.
News flash: Great Britain NOT a theocracy. Butt out bish!
The GOOD thing about bank holidays is that you get a LIE IN; the BAD thing is when you wake up in time to hear the Cardinal Arch-bigot of Westminster blowing off his Fart for Today.
So we woke up to hear Cardinal Carpark Mary-O'Conman opining that whenever he met people who thought religion was a bit RUBBISH these days he was always struck by how FIXED in their opinion they were, compared to the people of FAITH he met who were willing to confess their DOUBTS to him. Not that he admitted to having any doubts himself!
He then went on to say that Mr Jesus had had doubts too ("Mr God, Mr God why've you forsaken me!"), so that was ok, but that before he died he committed himself fully to faith ("Daddy, into your hands I deliver my spirit!")
Sooooo, total faith is BAD when it is for non-believers but GOOD when it is for believers?
Mr God is supposed to come in three persons, but it seems that the Cardinal will have to make do with just the TWO FACES.
Anyway, this all reminds me of the fact that Mr O'Conman's church is currently running another campaign to tell MPs what to think.
It started with Cardinal O'Conman's Scottish counterpart, Cardinal Keith O'Binman, saying that this Easter his sermon would be about peace, love, forgiveness and the need to take up pitchforks and blazing torches against the Freaky Frankensteins of the current Embryology Bill in Parliament.
He'll be saying: "With so many people worried about banks failing, the cost of food or petrol, or about climate change and global warming, I think that the REAL threat is doctors trying to cure diseases!"
"Don't they know Mr God put those diseases there to punish evil-doers!" he'll probably not be adding. It's an explanation that's a little out of VOGUE these days, now that we know that disease is caused by GERMS and not SINS, though obviously that's what's at the back of all this: how dare SCIENCE try and put right some of Mr God's greatest mistakes?
In particular, the Cardinal's beef is with allowing research scientists to experiment with mixing human DNA with DNA from other animals in order to find new treatments for illness.
"Monstrous" is what he'll call it, and the monster he is thinking of is the CHIMERA. A mix of snake, goat and cat-monster is a Greek recipe for EITHER a really scary fire-breathing monster… or a really dodgy stew.
This is a bit of a tricky issue, and you can see why MPs would want to think HARD about which way they should vote. Taking nice, fluffy animal DNA and mixing it up with horrible humans… well, it could easily give you the creeps. So you would need to understand the process involved, and how carefully it will be done and what sort of supervision will be in place. All the sorts of careful consideration that an MP SHOULD be doing… but not the sort of thing that people are going to think about in such depth and detail when an Arch-bigot stands up and says: "ooooh, they be makin' MONSTERS!!!!"
IF he's thought about this carefully and in detail (which is possible) and IF he's talking privately to the MPs in question, as a concerned citizen (which he could do) THEN that's fine, and they can add his opinion to the other opinions that they hear in order to weigh their decision. But this is just RABBLE-ROUSING, and whipping up the public with scare stories suggests that he doesn’t think he CAN win the argument properly.
On the OTHER side of the debate, Mr Frown wants his MPs whipped… which isn't unusual, er, but aside from that he thinks that they ought to be told to vote for the government's bill. But a number of the Labour MPs are thinking of rebelling on the issue if they are not given a free vote.
Ms Geraldine Smith is one of them and fully backs the Cardinal Arch-Bigot. We listened to the end of the World at One (No, not the End of the World… at One) and she was on, saying that she wouldn't abstain: she never liked to abstain because it was as sign of weakness, she said. It is GOOD to know she is making up her mind on the basis of careful moral consideration and not just to get good PR, do you not think? But wait! A quick check of TheyWorkForYou.com reveals that Ms Smith may not LIKE to abstain but nevertheless has done so in 48% of votes, rather more than average among MPs – Hmmm, I think that means it's her ARGUMENT that's rather weak.
Now the Arch-bigot of Cardiff has joined in, coming on the radio to – in a very public way – tell everyone that he's only talking to MPs in private. Not that he would think of telling them which way they should vote – that would be WRONG – but that he would be telling them that they most certainly would burn in hell for all eternity if they voted for the bill. But it was their choice.
MPs should ALWAYS vote with their conscience: they should properly understand what they are voting for of course, and have given consideration to both sides of the debate, but if they think something is WRONG then it is WRONG for them to vote for it. In fact, people would have more respect for their politicians if they voted like that more often.
But the Cardinal ISN'T asking MPs to vote with their consciences; he's TELLING them to vote with HIS. And then he's threatening them – with fire and brimstone in the hereafter or (if that doesn't work) with an angry mob in the present – to do what he wants.
News flash: Great Britain NOT a theocracy. Butt out bish!
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Day 2609: Stupid By Design
Friday:
No, no, no! It is no good giving an INCH to the Unintelligent Design crowd: give them an EYE of a NEEDLE and they will try to force a DIPLODOCUS through it. AND claim that Noah had them on the Ark! Along with all the cat-monsters and donkeys and upwards of five million species of beetles. In pairs.
I am referring to this article by an American scientist suggesting that science should try to RECLAIM the word "design", and say that yes evolution DOES "design" things.
This really IS NOT helpful. Evolution does not DO design. It just DOESN'T.
Design means sitting down at the start and working out where you want to end up. Evolution only works on what it has, chipping bits off, adding on strange new convolvulations, scouring away the redundant bits, always trying to make the square peg a better fit for the starfish* shaped hole.
(*other evolutionary niches are available.)
The argument that telling people "sorry there's no designer" makes them feel bad is a fast trip up the wrong creek. Science isn't about telling people a CUDDLY STORY – and it's not going to beat religion on THAT score; if they need it, they're always going to have a CUDDLIER sky fairy to fall back on who'll wuv you forever and ever (if you're a gud lickle babykins) at a point where science is going to have to say, "sorry, cold hard fact".
I do understand that there is a DIFFERENCE between America and Europe, as illustrated by this new GLOBE, designed in accordance with the new Theory of "Intelligent Geography". (It's like Intelligent Design: you ignore the bits you can't ANSWER.)
I do realise that it is DIFFICULT for scientists in America, because the number of people over there who believe in nonsense over the evidence is quite a lot larger than here in Europe, where fortunately we are able to SCOFF OPENLY at anyone who thinks that evolution isn't true or that humans and dinosaurs lived side by side like the keys on a piano. Those ivory ones would be the Tyrannosaurus's TEETH, by the way.
But this is the wrong way to go. You can't compromise the science, and say "oh, okay, we'll say that it IS a bit like that made-up story that you've made up." Because it's not.
Evolution is NOT a process of "mistakes". It's an ongoing series of triumphs over adversity, and every species alive today is a gold medal winner. We're NOT just the recipient of a spoonful of divine generosity. We have worked our way up.
(I will IGNORE the fact that Daddy is watching "HOWARDS' WAY" as this might disprove my argument!)
Frankly, evolution is the American Dream, red in tooth and claw, and it boggles my fluffy mind that the US can worship one and deny the other. Often in the same SERMON!
No, no, no! It is no good giving an INCH to the Unintelligent Design crowd: give them an EYE of a NEEDLE and they will try to force a DIPLODOCUS through it. AND claim that Noah had them on the Ark! Along with all the cat-monsters and donkeys and upwards of five million species of beetles. In pairs.
I am referring to this article by an American scientist suggesting that science should try to RECLAIM the word "design", and say that yes evolution DOES "design" things.
This really IS NOT helpful. Evolution does not DO design. It just DOESN'T.
Design means sitting down at the start and working out where you want to end up. Evolution only works on what it has, chipping bits off, adding on strange new convolvulations, scouring away the redundant bits, always trying to make the square peg a better fit for the starfish* shaped hole.
(*other evolutionary niches are available.)
The argument that telling people "sorry there's no designer" makes them feel bad is a fast trip up the wrong creek. Science isn't about telling people a CUDDLY STORY – and it's not going to beat religion on THAT score; if they need it, they're always going to have a CUDDLIER sky fairy to fall back on who'll wuv you forever and ever (if you're a gud lickle babykins) at a point where science is going to have to say, "sorry, cold hard fact".
I do understand that there is a DIFFERENCE between America and Europe, as illustrated by this new GLOBE, designed in accordance with the new Theory of "Intelligent Geography". (It's like Intelligent Design: you ignore the bits you can't ANSWER.)
I do realise that it is DIFFICULT for scientists in America, because the number of people over there who believe in nonsense over the evidence is quite a lot larger than here in Europe, where fortunately we are able to SCOFF OPENLY at anyone who thinks that evolution isn't true or that humans and dinosaurs lived side by side like the keys on a piano. Those ivory ones would be the Tyrannosaurus's TEETH, by the way.
But this is the wrong way to go. You can't compromise the science, and say "oh, okay, we'll say that it IS a bit like that made-up story that you've made up." Because it's not.
Evolution is NOT a process of "mistakes". It's an ongoing series of triumphs over adversity, and every species alive today is a gold medal winner. We're NOT just the recipient of a spoonful of divine generosity. We have worked our way up.
(I will IGNORE the fact that Daddy is watching "HOWARDS' WAY" as this might disprove my argument!)
Frankly, evolution is the American Dream, red in tooth and claw, and it boggles my fluffy mind that the US can worship one and deny the other. Often in the same SERMON!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Day 2511: World's Biggest Liar Appears on the The Today Programme
Friday:
A survey for the National Consumer Council reveals that most restaurants "push costly bottled water just to make a quick profit."
Isn't that DREADFUL.
Meanwhile, homeopathy is in the news again.
They claiming that, just because there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that their potions have any beneficial effect, scientists are organising a CONSPIRACY to stop homeopaths from defrauding the NHS of dirty great wodges of cash on the entirely SPURIOUS grounds that spending the money on some medicine that actually does some good might be better value for money.
At the risk of confusing you, the BOTTLED WATER INDUSTRY spokesperson claimed:
"Homeopathy never harmed anybody."
This is, I am VERY SORRY to say, completely untrue.
A homeopathic doctor, Dr Marisa Viegas, has been struck off by the General Medical Council for advising a lady patient (no longer her own patient, either) who was suffering from serious heart disease that she should stop taking all medicines and then recommending a course of homeopathic treatments for her liver instead.
Tragically, APPALLINGLY, the lady patient had a massive coronary and DIED.
Another case has seen a Dutch doctor struck off and two others suspended following the equally tragic death of another lady patient, this time from cancer.
Perhaps WORST, is the SICK decision to choose WORLD AIDS DAY to hold a conference on the homeopathic treatment of AIDS… which ought to be BRIEF because there IS NO SUCH TREATMENT!
There are, however, genuine drug-based treatments. Those WILL help to prolong people's lives. Not to mention a very, very effective way of not even getting AIDS in the first place called the CONDOM. Taking money – of which there is VERY LITTLE in Africa – away from prevention and treatment programmes in order to spend it on BOTTLED WATER is tantamount to MASS MURDER!
The homeopaths put the blame on Dr Ben Goldacre, most excellent writer of the Grauniad's BAD SCIENCE column, who has written this piece for the Lancet, the medical journal that two years ago published a HUGE and AUTHORITATIVE study showing that homeopathy had no more benefit than a placebo.
In fact, Dr Ben – as he explains in more detail here – is AMBIVALENT about homeopathy and thinks that, if they could bring themselves to be TRULY complementary then there may be some benefit to be had in cases where scientific medicine has – so far – no answers.
Anyway, the "World's Biggest Liar" competition is held annually in November at the Bridge Inn in Cumbria.
This year's winner is a Mr J Graham (no relation) for a story about submarines and digital television and his prize is a thousand year's supply of bottled water. Although I could be lying.
A survey for the National Consumer Council reveals that most restaurants "push costly bottled water just to make a quick profit."
Isn't that DREADFUL.
Meanwhile, homeopathy is in the news again.
They claiming that, just because there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that their potions have any beneficial effect, scientists are organising a CONSPIRACY to stop homeopaths from defrauding the NHS of dirty great wodges of cash on the entirely SPURIOUS grounds that spending the money on some medicine that actually does some good might be better value for money.
At the risk of confusing you, the BOTTLED WATER INDUSTRY spokesperson claimed:
"Homeopathy never harmed anybody."
This is, I am VERY SORRY to say, completely untrue.
A homeopathic doctor, Dr Marisa Viegas, has been struck off by the General Medical Council for advising a lady patient (no longer her own patient, either) who was suffering from serious heart disease that she should stop taking all medicines and then recommending a course of homeopathic treatments for her liver instead.
Tragically, APPALLINGLY, the lady patient had a massive coronary and DIED.
Another case has seen a Dutch doctor struck off and two others suspended following the equally tragic death of another lady patient, this time from cancer.
Perhaps WORST, is the SICK decision to choose WORLD AIDS DAY to hold a conference on the homeopathic treatment of AIDS… which ought to be BRIEF because there IS NO SUCH TREATMENT!
There are, however, genuine drug-based treatments. Those WILL help to prolong people's lives. Not to mention a very, very effective way of not even getting AIDS in the first place called the CONDOM. Taking money – of which there is VERY LITTLE in Africa – away from prevention and treatment programmes in order to spend it on BOTTLED WATER is tantamount to MASS MURDER!
The homeopaths put the blame on Dr Ben Goldacre, most excellent writer of the Grauniad's BAD SCIENCE column, who has written this piece for the Lancet, the medical journal that two years ago published a HUGE and AUTHORITATIVE study showing that homeopathy had no more benefit than a placebo.
In fact, Dr Ben – as he explains in more detail here – is AMBIVALENT about homeopathy and thinks that, if they could bring themselves to be TRULY complementary then there may be some benefit to be had in cases where scientific medicine has – so far – no answers.
Anyway, the "World's Biggest Liar" competition is held annually in November at the Bridge Inn in Cumbria.
This year's winner is a Mr J Graham (no relation) for a story about submarines and digital television and his prize is a thousand year's supply of bottled water. Although I could be lying.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Day 2447: The Di-lithium Crystals Will Nae Tak' It, Cap'n!
Friday:
It must be an ANTI-MATTER sort of a year – we have only just finished watching Dr Who's adventures with Omega, who is trying to escape from his Anti-matter universe over the "Arc of Infinity", and next month we find Dr Tom meeting Professor Sorenson, who is trying to steal anti-matter sweeties from the "Planet of Evil".
But in the REAL world, anti-matter does not exist… OR DOES IT?!?!?!
Apparently we can MAKE anti-matter using STICKY-BACKED PLASTIC and a PARTICLE COLLIDER.
By firing a beam of positrons (the name for anti-matter electrons) at a screen (recommended is a sheet of crystalline quartz) you can get some of the positrons to combine with ordinary matter electrons to form an EXOTIC ATOM called POSITRONIUM. This is said to be a BIT like Hydrogen except a lot LIGHTER because it uses a positron instead of a proton (which is almost two thousand times heavier).
When Hydrogen is a free gas, you may know that it is made up of pairs of Hydrogen atoms travelling around together: H2. For years and years, since 1964 in fact, scientists have predicted that you could make a similar material called DI-positronium, which has NOTHING to do with LADY DI, because that just means there are TWO positronium atoms in it.
You MAY need a grown-up to help you.
On the other fluffy foot, any grown up who CAN help you is likely to be a MAD SCIENTIST and if you see one carrying a bucket of Di-positronium around, I suggest you run the other way. And/or bundle them up in the sticky-backed plastic.
They say that by mixing matter with anti-matter (VERY CAREFULLY) they can make a special sort of stuff called a Bose-Einstein Condensate. (As opposed to a Bose-Einstein CONCENTRATE with is what Hiro from Heroes does to bend space and time.)
This is just one step short of allowing the matter and anti-matter to MUTUALLY ANNIHILATE in a flash of energy. Very useful, especially if you want to make powerful gamma-ray lasers.
Did I mention MAD SCIENTISTS already?
Meanwhile, there are calls for a REAL LIFE British Rocket Group – the Space Exploration Working Group, or SEWG – to launch British Astronauts into space.
And about time too! It is SHAMEFUL that our country has been AVOIDING any space project that involves sending people off the Earth! Here we are, supposedly PROUD of our grand tradition of inventers and explorers and DISCOVERERS… and we are sitting on our fluffy feet and letting all the other people do all the work. We don't even pay our own share of the European Space programme – we only pay TWO-hundred million euros a year while the Germans invest FIVE-hundred-and-fifty million and the French spend almost EIGHT-hundred million! The FRENCH!
Do you want to get into outer space only to find that the French have already booked all the restaurants? Or that there are German TOWELS already all over all the CRATERS on the MOON!
It is time we got stuck in!
As you ca tell, I am VERY KEEN on this idea, and try to draw it to Daddy's attention.
"Nice ACRONYM," he says, "we're sending SEWaGe into space!"
It must be an ANTI-MATTER sort of a year – we have only just finished watching Dr Who's adventures with Omega, who is trying to escape from his Anti-matter universe over the "Arc of Infinity", and next month we find Dr Tom meeting Professor Sorenson, who is trying to steal anti-matter sweeties from the "Planet of Evil".
But in the REAL world, anti-matter does not exist… OR DOES IT?!?!?!
Apparently we can MAKE anti-matter using STICKY-BACKED PLASTIC and a PARTICLE COLLIDER.
By firing a beam of positrons (the name for anti-matter electrons) at a screen (recommended is a sheet of crystalline quartz) you can get some of the positrons to combine with ordinary matter electrons to form an EXOTIC ATOM called POSITRONIUM. This is said to be a BIT like Hydrogen except a lot LIGHTER because it uses a positron instead of a proton (which is almost two thousand times heavier).
When Hydrogen is a free gas, you may know that it is made up of pairs of Hydrogen atoms travelling around together: H2. For years and years, since 1964 in fact, scientists have predicted that you could make a similar material called DI-positronium, which has NOTHING to do with LADY DI, because that just means there are TWO positronium atoms in it.
You MAY need a grown-up to help you.
On the other fluffy foot, any grown up who CAN help you is likely to be a MAD SCIENTIST and if you see one carrying a bucket of Di-positronium around, I suggest you run the other way. And/or bundle them up in the sticky-backed plastic.
They say that by mixing matter with anti-matter (VERY CAREFULLY) they can make a special sort of stuff called a Bose-Einstein Condensate. (As opposed to a Bose-Einstein CONCENTRATE with is what Hiro from Heroes does to bend space and time.)
This is just one step short of allowing the matter and anti-matter to MUTUALLY ANNIHILATE in a flash of energy. Very useful, especially if you want to make powerful gamma-ray lasers.
Did I mention MAD SCIENTISTS already?
Meanwhile, there are calls for a REAL LIFE British Rocket Group – the Space Exploration Working Group, or SEWG – to launch British Astronauts into space.
And about time too! It is SHAMEFUL that our country has been AVOIDING any space project that involves sending people off the Earth! Here we are, supposedly PROUD of our grand tradition of inventers and explorers and DISCOVERERS… and we are sitting on our fluffy feet and letting all the other people do all the work. We don't even pay our own share of the European Space programme – we only pay TWO-hundred million euros a year while the Germans invest FIVE-hundred-and-fifty million and the French spend almost EIGHT-hundred million! The FRENCH!
Do you want to get into outer space only to find that the French have already booked all the restaurants? Or that there are German TOWELS already all over all the CRATERS on the MOON!
It is time we got stuck in!
As you ca tell, I am VERY KEEN on this idea, and try to draw it to Daddy's attention.
"Nice ACRONYM," he says, "we're sending SEWaGe into space!"
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Day 2412: Sister Species
Thursday:
New fossil evidence has been dug up that suggests a change to our understanding of the human evolutionary family tree.
Until recently we thought that you monkey-people were descended from one species called Homo Erectus (or Upright People) who were in turn descended from another species called Homo Habilis (or People who shop at Habitat, er…)
But now archaeologists have found some new bones that suggest that both these species existed at the same time, and so one was NOT descended from the other. Instead they may have been distant cousins, like you humans were to the Neanderthals.
This is a little bit of a setback and shows that we have not quite got the whole picture yet.
On the other fluffy foot, this is a GOOD EXAMPLE of just how science is SUPPOSED to WORK. When you find new evidence that contradicts your theory, you start again and find a new theory.
New fossil evidence has been dug up that suggests a change to our understanding of the human evolutionary family tree.
Until recently we thought that you monkey-people were descended from one species called Homo Erectus (or Upright People) who were in turn descended from another species called Homo Habilis (or People who shop at Habitat, er…)
But now archaeologists have found some new bones that suggest that both these species existed at the same time, and so one was NOT descended from the other. Instead they may have been distant cousins, like you humans were to the Neanderthals.
This is a little bit of a setback and shows that we have not quite got the whole picture yet.
On the other fluffy foot, this is a GOOD EXAMPLE of just how science is SUPPOSED to WORK. When you find new evidence that contradicts your theory, you start again and find a new theory.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Day 2393: Science Test
Saturday:
Daddy and I took the Internet "could you pass 8th grade science test" test.
We got B+ (by getting 23 correct answers out of 26 questions).
This is pretty good for a seven-year-old stuffed elephant, and pretty poor for a Cambridge graduate. Isn't it Daddy!
Daddy got questions 2, 4, and 9 wrong. (And I got ALL of the other questions RIGHT!)
Q2 "This type of rock is buried deep within the earth's crust"
Daddy answered "Igneous", but the actual answer was "Metamorphic"
Igneous rock is made when molten lava cools, either on the surface after erupting from a volcano or deep underground. 95% of the Earth's crust is made up of igneous rocks, but generally covered with a thin layer of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.
Sedimentary rocks are formed from layers of sand or mud or dust laid down over hundreds and thousands of years and squashed together
Metamorphic rocks are rocks that used to be igneous or sedimentary but have been transformed by huge heat and pressure at great depths in the Earth's crusts. Shifts in the Earth's crust and erosion then lead to metamorphic rocks turning up on the surface.
So TECHNICALLY Daddy is right, since both igneous and metamorphic fit the description in the question; the question should have been less ambiguous by saying that this rock is ONLY MADE deep within the Earth's crust.
Q4 "Which form of solar radiation causes sunburn?"
Daddy answered "Infrared" but the answer was "Ultraviolet"
This is called being too clever for your own good – Daddy knew that (a) infrared radiation carries heat and (b) ultraviolet causes skin cancer and thought is was a double-bluff. More fool daddy!
Q9 "What is the name given to water loss to the atmosphere by green plants?"
Daddy answered "Evaporation" but the answer is "Transpiration".
Well, transpiration, according to the wikipedia is "…the EVAPORATION of excess water from aerial parts and of plants…" which leaves Daddy feeling slightly better since at least the process is a specific example of the one that he identified.
Actually, Daddy thought that "transpiration" referred to the entire process where water that was absorbed in the plants roots is drawn up the stem to the leaves. (Evaporation of the water at the top causes a reduced pressure at the top end of the plants internal tubes and sucks the water up. Just like a straw.) Which is why he picked "evaporation" for the actual water evaporating part of the process.
I think that Daddy deservers an A-
That is he gets two extra marks for the AMBIGUOUS questions 2 and 9 but LOSES a mark for being a SMARTY-PANTS about it!
Daddy and I took the Internet "could you pass 8th grade science test" test.
We got B+ (by getting 23 correct answers out of 26 questions).
This is pretty good for a seven-year-old stuffed elephant, and pretty poor for a Cambridge graduate. Isn't it Daddy!
Daddy got questions 2, 4, and 9 wrong. (And I got ALL of the other questions RIGHT!)
Q2 "This type of rock is buried deep within the earth's crust"
Daddy answered "Igneous", but the actual answer was "Metamorphic"
Igneous rock is made when molten lava cools, either on the surface after erupting from a volcano or deep underground. 95% of the Earth's crust is made up of igneous rocks, but generally covered with a thin layer of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.
Sedimentary rocks are formed from layers of sand or mud or dust laid down over hundreds and thousands of years and squashed together
Metamorphic rocks are rocks that used to be igneous or sedimentary but have been transformed by huge heat and pressure at great depths in the Earth's crusts. Shifts in the Earth's crust and erosion then lead to metamorphic rocks turning up on the surface.
So TECHNICALLY Daddy is right, since both igneous and metamorphic fit the description in the question; the question should have been less ambiguous by saying that this rock is ONLY MADE deep within the Earth's crust.
Q4 "Which form of solar radiation causes sunburn?"
Daddy answered "Infrared" but the answer was "Ultraviolet"
This is called being too clever for your own good – Daddy knew that (a) infrared radiation carries heat and (b) ultraviolet causes skin cancer and thought is was a double-bluff. More fool daddy!
Q9 "What is the name given to water loss to the atmosphere by green plants?"
Daddy answered "Evaporation" but the answer is "Transpiration".
Well, transpiration, according to the wikipedia is "…the EVAPORATION of excess water from aerial parts and of plants…" which leaves Daddy feeling slightly better since at least the process is a specific example of the one that he identified.
Actually, Daddy thought that "transpiration" referred to the entire process where water that was absorbed in the plants roots is drawn up the stem to the leaves. (Evaporation of the water at the top causes a reduced pressure at the top end of the plants internal tubes and sucks the water up. Just like a straw.) Which is why he picked "evaporation" for the actual water evaporating part of the process.
I think that Daddy deservers an A-
That is he gets two extra marks for the AMBIGUOUS questions 2 and 9 but LOSES a mark for being a SMARTY-PANTS about it!
PS
My diaries DO seem to have been all SCRAMBLED recently but we are back up to date again now!PPS
In reply to Mr Niles' comment... Daddy is OKAY at maths.| You Passed 8th Grade Math |
 Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct! |
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Day 2390: MILLENNIUM'S MANIFESTO: Let's Build Rocket Ships
Wednesday:
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has warned that Great Britain needs a clear space strategy or we will risk FALLING BEHIND other countries!
Fortunately, I happen to have one about my fluffy person!
It's every child's dream: ride on the footplate of a steam train, drive a fire engine, or be an astronaut.
We shouldn't ever lose those dreams.
The aims of a British Space programme – which OBVIOUSLY should be called the British Rocket Group, and shame on you if you don't know why – should be
The Space Shuttle is still based on 1970s technology, and the Orion replacement is, if anything, a step backwards to Apollo and away from reusability. We need a vehicle for the twenty-first century that is based on twenty-first century technology.
The project should also co-ordinate with NASA and the European, Japanese, Russian and Chinese space programmes to further the exploration of the Solar System by robotic spacecraft and to improve our ability to observe extra-Solar stars and planets.
In the medium term, we should plan for the construction of not one but several International Lunar bases (either together with the Americans or in parallel – multiple bases reduces the chance of a single catastrophic accident wiping out the entire project).
And, within say a twenty-year horizon, we should draw up plans for manned missions to colonise Mars.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has warned that Great Britain needs a clear space strategy or we will risk FALLING BEHIND other countries!
Fortunately, I happen to have one about my fluffy person!
It's every child's dream: ride on the footplate of a steam train, drive a fire engine, or be an astronaut.
We shouldn't ever lose those dreams.
The aims of a British Space programme – which OBVIOUSLY should be called the British Rocket Group, and shame on you if you don't know why – should be
- Release our natural creativity and aspirations. Get people excited about the future.
- Encourage schools to participate in science, engineering and mathematics in the way that the Olympics is supposed to encourage them to participate in sport.
- Benefit from the opportunities on offer, such as selling launch slots to companies and governments that want commercial (not military) satellites putting in space; the opportunities for medical research; the possibility of mining; and the other spin-off benefits of improving our technology.
- Maximise the opportunities for gaining new knowledge, and impress upon people that knowledge and discovery are good in and of themselves.
- Improve ourselves by, over time, shifting more and more of the resources of those companies currently devoted to making weapons into making civilian spacecraft. We shouldn't be selling so many guns to the world already, but we need to have an alternative for all those jobs.
The Space Shuttle is still based on 1970s technology, and the Orion replacement is, if anything, a step backwards to Apollo and away from reusability. We need a vehicle for the twenty-first century that is based on twenty-first century technology.
The project should also co-ordinate with NASA and the European, Japanese, Russian and Chinese space programmes to further the exploration of the Solar System by robotic spacecraft and to improve our ability to observe extra-Solar stars and planets.
In the medium term, we should plan for the construction of not one but several International Lunar bases (either together with the Americans or in parallel – multiple bases reduces the chance of a single catastrophic accident wiping out the entire project).
And, within say a twenty-year horizon, we should draw up plans for manned missions to colonise Mars.
PS:
Daddy Alex informs me that Wednesday the 18th of July is the 54th anniversary of the founding of the British Experimental Rocket Group!Saturday, July 14, 2007
Day 2383: Sun NOT linked to Global Warming!
Wednesday:
Well that was the BBC’s rather CONFUSED headline.
I am fairly sure that the Sun DOES have something to do with warming the planet which is why we are not a FROZEN ROCK like the planet/not-a-planet Pluto.
What they ACTUALLY meant was “Climate Change Deniers Proved Wrong (AGAIN!)”
Well that was the BBC’s rather CONFUSED headline.
I am fairly sure that the Sun DOES have something to do with warming the planet which is why we are not a FROZEN ROCK like the planet/not-a-planet Pluto.
What they ACTUALLY meant was “Climate Change Deniers Proved Wrong (AGAIN!)”
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Day 2350: Have you found god? (Particle, NOT delusion!)
Friday:
Excitement in the world of PHYSICS this week where it is rumoured that FERMILAB in America may have found the Higgs Boson.
What you may very well ask is the Higgs Boson, and why are we looking for it, and who lost it in the first place?
Well, the FUNDAMENTAL FORCES that hold the Universe together – namely gravity, glue, Blu-tack™ and magnets – are supposed to work by itty-bitty particles exchanging other itty-bitty particles called BOSONS. For example, the STRONG Nuclear force works by swapping GLUONS; and the WEAK Nuclear Force is controlled by the “W” BOSON. (Not to be confused with the Weak Force in Iraq that is controlled by the “Dubbya” BOZO!)
That all makes sense, EXCEPT that the theory says that these particles should not have any MASS. This is fine for the photon (works for electromagnetism) but the other bosons are a bit massive. That does not mean that they are HUGE but that they have some MASS. In fact I suspect that they have done like Daddy Richard and put on a bit of weight[*].
[*] okay, I KNOW that in proper physics weight is not ACTUALLY the same as mass.
So, that seems to be a bit of a problem. But look! Here comes Mr Professor Higgs and says “Do not worry!” He suggests that actually, the bosons that make the force work ARE massless like they should be, but there are some STEALTH BOSONS – called Higgs Bosons, obviously – that kind of tag along.
(Interesting fact about Bosons – unlike fermions and, despite what they seem to think, passengers on the London Tube – you can have two bosons in the same place at the same time!
Scientists have been looking for the Higgs Bosons for a long time. Personally, if I was Professor Higgs, I would look where I last put them down, but apparently these engineers have built an enormous particle collider instead.
If they can find it, it will prove that all of physics works. Which is nice. In fact, some people have nicknamed the Higgs Boson the “God Particle”, because it is so important. And NOT because people believe in it even though there is no evidence for its existence.
Which reminds me – this was reported in the Metro just a few pages after this interview with my CHUM Mr Professor Richard!
Anyway, all of this is working towards telling you how EXCITING physics is, how we can discover a theory which lets us work out the formulae so we can calculate predictions and devise experiments that prove whether we have got it right or wrong.
I am telling you this because I have read a VERY SAD letter from a physics teacher called Mr Wellington Grey who is LOSING HEART because of the new national curriculum.
Mr Wellington says that the new curriculum is LESS about knowing the theories and working things out, and MORE about talking about global warming and discussing why science might be wrong. If this is true then it is VERY BAD NEWS.
In science and ESPECIALLY in physics, then you CAN come to a conclusion about whether something is right or wrong, and it should NOT depend on how good you are at convincing people but on the QUALITY of your evidence.
You have probably noticed though that newspapers and television ALL TOO OFTEN like to present a CLASH of OPINIONS, a controversy or a SCARE STORY! E.g MMR vaccine – NO EVIDENCE that it causes autism, lots of evidence that it prevents plagues of measles, but is THAT the story that papers carry? E.g. electromagnetism from wi-fi – NO EVIDENCE that it fries your brain, but is THAT the story that Panorama-rama-lama-lama-ding-dong runs with?
And now the government seems to be trying to sneak this sort of “science is who can shout loudest” into the schoolroom. We should NOT be surprised; it is very NuLabour: never mind the evidence, just talk a good story. But why would our GOD FEARING soon-to-be-ex Prime Monster want to undermine scientific thinking in schools?
Apropos of nothing, all this reminds me of the GRANDDADDY of all these wedges: Intelligent Design, the way that Creationist loonies try to get their version of god into the classroom by pretending that “god did it” is a scientific theory in the same way that “evolution” is a scientific theory. After all, they say, if they are both “theories” then the class should “discuss” them and learn to doubt the science.
Which means it probably WAS a good thing that Mr Professor Richard was in the Metro!
Excitement in the world of PHYSICS this week where it is rumoured that FERMILAB in America may have found the Higgs Boson.
What you may very well ask is the Higgs Boson, and why are we looking for it, and who lost it in the first place?
Well, the FUNDAMENTAL FORCES that hold the Universe together – namely gravity, glue, Blu-tack™ and magnets – are supposed to work by itty-bitty particles exchanging other itty-bitty particles called BOSONS. For example, the STRONG Nuclear force works by swapping GLUONS; and the WEAK Nuclear Force is controlled by the “W” BOSON. (Not to be confused with the Weak Force in Iraq that is controlled by the “Dubbya” BOZO!)
That all makes sense, EXCEPT that the theory says that these particles should not have any MASS. This is fine for the photon (works for electromagnetism) but the other bosons are a bit massive. That does not mean that they are HUGE but that they have some MASS. In fact I suspect that they have done like Daddy Richard and put on a bit of weight[*].
[*] okay, I KNOW that in proper physics weight is not ACTUALLY the same as mass.
So, that seems to be a bit of a problem. But look! Here comes Mr Professor Higgs and says “Do not worry!” He suggests that actually, the bosons that make the force work ARE massless like they should be, but there are some STEALTH BOSONS – called Higgs Bosons, obviously – that kind of tag along.
(Interesting fact about Bosons – unlike fermions and, despite what they seem to think, passengers on the London Tube – you can have two bosons in the same place at the same time!
Scientists have been looking for the Higgs Bosons for a long time. Personally, if I was Professor Higgs, I would look where I last put them down, but apparently these engineers have built an enormous particle collider instead.
If they can find it, it will prove that all of physics works. Which is nice. In fact, some people have nicknamed the Higgs Boson the “God Particle”, because it is so important. And NOT because people believe in it even though there is no evidence for its existence.
Which reminds me – this was reported in the Metro just a few pages after this interview with my CHUM Mr Professor Richard!
Anyway, all of this is working towards telling you how EXCITING physics is, how we can discover a theory which lets us work out the formulae so we can calculate predictions and devise experiments that prove whether we have got it right or wrong.
I am telling you this because I have read a VERY SAD letter from a physics teacher called Mr Wellington Grey who is LOSING HEART because of the new national curriculum.
Mr Wellington says that the new curriculum is LESS about knowing the theories and working things out, and MORE about talking about global warming and discussing why science might be wrong. If this is true then it is VERY BAD NEWS.
In science and ESPECIALLY in physics, then you CAN come to a conclusion about whether something is right or wrong, and it should NOT depend on how good you are at convincing people but on the QUALITY of your evidence.
You have probably noticed though that newspapers and television ALL TOO OFTEN like to present a CLASH of OPINIONS, a controversy or a SCARE STORY! E.g MMR vaccine – NO EVIDENCE that it causes autism, lots of evidence that it prevents plagues of measles, but is THAT the story that papers carry? E.g. electromagnetism from wi-fi – NO EVIDENCE that it fries your brain, but is THAT the story that Panorama-rama-lama-lama-ding-dong runs with?
And now the government seems to be trying to sneak this sort of “science is who can shout loudest” into the schoolroom. We should NOT be surprised; it is very NuLabour: never mind the evidence, just talk a good story. But why would our GOD FEARING soon-to-be-ex Prime Monster want to undermine scientific thinking in schools?
Apropos of nothing, all this reminds me of the GRANDDADDY of all these wedges: Intelligent Design, the way that Creationist loonies try to get their version of god into the classroom by pretending that “god did it” is a scientific theory in the same way that “evolution” is a scientific theory. After all, they say, if they are both “theories” then the class should “discuss” them and learn to doubt the science.
Which means it probably WAS a good thing that Mr Professor Richard was in the Metro!
Friday, April 27, 2007
Day 2308: New Earth discovered; Beware of the Cat Monsters!
Friday:
Space… the way the news treats it these days, you would think it was less like the FINAL FRONTIER and more like the CORNER SHOP.
But, as Mr DOUGLAS ADAMS once said, you might THINK it's a long way down the road to the corner shop, but that's just PEANUTS to space.
Take this new planet that scientists have discovered. Already the newspapers are all calling it "New Earth".
People are talking about it being ONLY twenty light years away. ONLY! That means that even at the speed of LIGHT it would take twenty years to get there! They don't even know Doctor Who GOT CANCELLED yet, let alone know that it is back on! They haven't even seen Mr Sylv!
Not that we CAN travel at the speed of light!
But even supposing we invented some REALLY swishy rocket drive, probably something with ANTI-MATTER, it would be really, really difficult to get anywhere. Accelerate at one gravity (or ten metres per second per second, daddy tells me) for a whole MONTH and you'll still not get as fast as a tenth of the speed of light – at that speed, it would still take you 231 years to get to "New Earth"!
Keep going for 4 months and you might get up to about a third of the speed of light. So the new world is still sixty years away. Not to mention the fact that you've already burnt up at least 6% of your ship's mass – and remember, you've still got to slow down and stop at the other end. And you might want to come back!
But as you keep on accelerating, the effects of RELATIVITY will make it harder and harder to get any more speed out of your spaceship. The laws of physics just end up squishying your nose back into your face as all your relative distances seem to get shorter. On the plus side, this means that FOR YOU the trip seems to fly by… but to people back on Earth you seem to be moving slower so from our perspective you will ALWAYS take more than 20 years to get there.
All of which means that even if we go visiting, we're not getting any postcards back any time soon!
But that's not to say that we cannot concentrate a lot of effort on seeing if there is anything to see.
We could build robot space probes, like the ones that we already send to the planets. Perhaps they could be powered with an ion drive that can accelerate slowly but over very long periods. Even so, we are probably talking CENTURIES to get any kind of signal back. And that's assuming we CAN build a machine that will LAST for that long, especially in the UNPREDICTABLE environment of space where anything from a micro-meteorite to the Great Green Arkleseizure could smash it.
That's quite an investment. Who knows if anyone would even still be here to get the information when the probe robot starts sending it? Still, Darth Vader tried sending probe droids all over the galaxy and it worked for him!
But even from Earth we can use our POWERFULGESTAPO BINOCULARS TELESCOPES to probe the mysteries of space.
As though it wasn't AMAZINGLY clever enough already, figuring out a way to work out where the planets in outer space ARE just from seeing how their tiny gravity tugs on the stars, now scientists are working on plans to detect whether there might be any LIFE on those planets. By measuring the PLANET-SHINE (which is like MOON SHINE, only I mean the light reflecting from the moon, NOT the BOOZE!) they can try to detect any of the chemical indicators that are caused by living processes – stuff like water, oxygen and methane. All the signs of farting space cows… er…
Even so, the BBC are already speculating what life on the new planet would look like.
(I suspect that this might just be another excuse to use a DALEK photo!)
To be honest, it is very difficult to guess. Obviously there will be ELEPHANTS, but what else is harder to know. This is because we only have one solar system to go on so far, namely our own!
So we have no idea whether life in the universe is very common, very rare, or unique to planet Earth.
The last option would SEEM quite unlikely because Earth's solar system does not seem especially special. Or rather our SUN doesn't seem special, as we can compare it to lots of other stars and go, yup normal. Though it might be that systems with small rocky planets ARE rare. Even though we have now detected many planets around other stars, they are by and large HUGE. That is because it is much harder to detect small Earth-sized ones. And that is what makes this new discovery so SPECIAL – it is the first time we have spotted a planet of the right sort of size in the right sort of place, not too close to its sun and not too far away (what scientists insist on calling the GOLDILOCKS ZONE).
Even if we DO find evidence of life up there – and I do not think it is possible to understate how BIG a discovery that would be! – even if we do find some, it may only be very primitive, like bacteria or amoebas and stuff, just like the life on Earth was very simple single-celled creatures for like three-and-a-half out of the four billion years that life has existed. Or it may be millions of years MORE ADVANCED than we are – remember, life on Earth got a nasty kick in the dinosaurs when that asteroid hit us sixty-five million years ago! The chances of life on another planet being even a bit like us… well, let's just say that there are plenty of OTHER options.
But the fact that we seem to have found a planet so like Earth only – look at me, there I go doing it – only twenty light years away, could be a GOOD SIGN though. A sign that in fact it is not a RARE FLUKE that rocky planets form in the right place, but that maybe LOTS of stars have Earth like planets.
In which case the chances of finding life in the planet-shine seem a lot brighter!
I started with Mr Douglas Adams but I will finish with another SCIENCE FICTION WRITER, Mr Professor Davros Hawking, who is planning on going into space personally.
He thinks that we need to be ready to move to other planets.
The truth may not be orange, but the future is out there! Watch the skies!
Space… the way the news treats it these days, you would think it was less like the FINAL FRONTIER and more like the CORNER SHOP.
But, as Mr DOUGLAS ADAMS once said, you might THINK it's a long way down the road to the corner shop, but that's just PEANUTS to space.
Take this new planet that scientists have discovered. Already the newspapers are all calling it "New Earth".
People are talking about it being ONLY twenty light years away. ONLY! That means that even at the speed of LIGHT it would take twenty years to get there! They don't even know Doctor Who GOT CANCELLED yet, let alone know that it is back on! They haven't even seen Mr Sylv!
Not that we CAN travel at the speed of light!
But even supposing we invented some REALLY swishy rocket drive, probably something with ANTI-MATTER, it would be really, really difficult to get anywhere. Accelerate at one gravity (or ten metres per second per second, daddy tells me) for a whole MONTH and you'll still not get as fast as a tenth of the speed of light – at that speed, it would still take you 231 years to get to "New Earth"!
Keep going for 4 months and you might get up to about a third of the speed of light. So the new world is still sixty years away. Not to mention the fact that you've already burnt up at least 6% of your ship's mass – and remember, you've still got to slow down and stop at the other end. And you might want to come back!
But as you keep on accelerating, the effects of RELATIVITY will make it harder and harder to get any more speed out of your spaceship. The laws of physics just end up squishying your nose back into your face as all your relative distances seem to get shorter. On the plus side, this means that FOR YOU the trip seems to fly by… but to people back on Earth you seem to be moving slower so from our perspective you will ALWAYS take more than 20 years to get there.
All of which means that even if we go visiting, we're not getting any postcards back any time soon!
But that's not to say that we cannot concentrate a lot of effort on seeing if there is anything to see.
We could build robot space probes, like the ones that we already send to the planets. Perhaps they could be powered with an ion drive that can accelerate slowly but over very long periods. Even so, we are probably talking CENTURIES to get any kind of signal back. And that's assuming we CAN build a machine that will LAST for that long, especially in the UNPREDICTABLE environment of space where anything from a micro-meteorite to the Great Green Arkleseizure could smash it.
That's quite an investment. Who knows if anyone would even still be here to get the information when the probe robot starts sending it? Still, Darth Vader tried sending probe droids all over the galaxy and it worked for him!
But even from Earth we can use our POWERFUL
As though it wasn't AMAZINGLY clever enough already, figuring out a way to work out where the planets in outer space ARE just from seeing how their tiny gravity tugs on the stars, now scientists are working on plans to detect whether there might be any LIFE on those planets. By measuring the PLANET-SHINE (which is like MOON SHINE, only I mean the light reflecting from the moon, NOT the BOOZE!) they can try to detect any of the chemical indicators that are caused by living processes – stuff like water, oxygen and methane. All the signs of farting space cows… er…
Even so, the BBC are already speculating what life on the new planet would look like.
(I suspect that this might just be another excuse to use a DALEK photo!)
To be honest, it is very difficult to guess. Obviously there will be ELEPHANTS, but what else is harder to know. This is because we only have one solar system to go on so far, namely our own!
So we have no idea whether life in the universe is very common, very rare, or unique to planet Earth.
The last option would SEEM quite unlikely because Earth's solar system does not seem especially special. Or rather our SUN doesn't seem special, as we can compare it to lots of other stars and go, yup normal. Though it might be that systems with small rocky planets ARE rare. Even though we have now detected many planets around other stars, they are by and large HUGE. That is because it is much harder to detect small Earth-sized ones. And that is what makes this new discovery so SPECIAL – it is the first time we have spotted a planet of the right sort of size in the right sort of place, not too close to its sun and not too far away (what scientists insist on calling the GOLDILOCKS ZONE).
Even if we DO find evidence of life up there – and I do not think it is possible to understate how BIG a discovery that would be! – even if we do find some, it may only be very primitive, like bacteria or amoebas and stuff, just like the life on Earth was very simple single-celled creatures for like three-and-a-half out of the four billion years that life has existed. Or it may be millions of years MORE ADVANCED than we are – remember, life on Earth got a nasty kick in the dinosaurs when that asteroid hit us sixty-five million years ago! The chances of life on another planet being even a bit like us… well, let's just say that there are plenty of OTHER options.
But the fact that we seem to have found a planet so like Earth only – look at me, there I go doing it – only twenty light years away, could be a GOOD SIGN though. A sign that in fact it is not a RARE FLUKE that rocky planets form in the right place, but that maybe LOTS of stars have Earth like planets.
In which case the chances of finding life in the planet-shine seem a lot brighter!
I started with Mr Douglas Adams but I will finish with another SCIENCE FICTION WRITER, Mr Professor Davros Hawking, who is planning on going into space personally.
He thinks that we need to be ready to move to other planets.
The truth may not be orange, but the future is out there! Watch the skies!
PS
Does ANYONE know: what planet is Mr Boy George Oboe on?Sunday, March 11, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Day 2255: Lunar Eclipse NOT proof of divine intervention
Monday:
We stayed up late to watch the moon eclipse. We enjoyed it lots.
But then along comes Mr Clifford Clongley on the The Today Programme's Fart for the Day and says:
"Oooh, pretty – there must be a god!"
Worse than that, he talked about INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
"I don't mean whether it is good science – which I don't believe it is – but whether it is true – which I do believe."
Well, WAKE UP Mr Clongley: Intelligent Design CLAIMS to be a SCIENCE. If you DON'T believe it's good science then you DON'T believe it's true!
(Or possibly you don't know what you are talking about.)
If you're just an old fashioned CREATIONIST, then you believe that all of the different animals and plants and fungi were all individually created by god by hand:
Poof: humans. Poof: elephants. Poof: brontosaurus, no, scratch that one it's not going to fit on this ark plan I've got…
But then along comes PESKY science and says: well, actually there's another explanation which accounts for the reason why some animals are so like one another (like why create lions AND tigers when they are essentially the same evil cat monster?) or why some creatures do the same sort of thing but are totally different (like why create bats when you've already got birds?).
That explanation is called EVOLUTION.
It says (in really basic terms) that all creatures in a family are slightly different, and if some of them have a difference that gives them a better chance of having babies then over time the whole family will come to be more like that. Because different advantages apply in different places (say in one place there's lots of insects and in another there's lots of fruit) this causes what was one family to change into two different families.
This is why some creatures are similar (it's not been long since their families were one family) and why some different creatures end up doing the same thing (they've both been selected from having the right advantages to do that thing).
Evolution is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY. This means that it is a set of rules that are based on observed evidence and makes testable predictions that have been confirmed experimentally.
Creationism is not a scientific theory because you can't test it.
(Actually, Creationism's basic tenet that all life was created in the first six days of the world IS testable in the sense that the appearance of any new species ought to be impossible… except there are SO MANY species that it's difficult to PROVE that.)
Anyway, more importantly (if you are a CRAZED THEOCRAT) Evolution gets taught in SCHOOLS in the science class and Creationism doesn't.
This is true even in America thanks to their Constitution wisely having a SEPARATION of CHURCH AND STATE written into it. (And alarmingly it is not always true HERE where there's nothing to stop Lord Blairimort's bonkers, nutty friend Mr Vardey teaching creationism alongside the national curriculum in his city McAcademies!)
This, however, is a bit of a THREAT to the Creationist way of thinking. What, they correctly realise, will happen if our kids start thinking for themselves. Why ANYTHING could happen!
So they campaign very hard to get evolution banned from being taught or to get biblical creationism taught alongside it or to insist on stupid stickers on textbooks saying "This is only a theory".
(As I have said before, you may try putting the Theory of Gravitation to similar test by jumping out of a window and shouting "this is only a theory… arrrgh splatt!")
And then they hit on a BRILLIANT NEW WHEEZE: Let us create a "Science" that gets creationism into the classroom by the back door. This they called "Intelligent Design".
The wheeze (it's not a theory) goes like this: if you find a watch in the desert it is such a complicated thing that your assumption is that it must have been made by someone and left there; it is certainly more likely than it having appeared spontaneously out of the movement of the sand and wind.
Similarly (THEY SAY) there are some parts of living things that are "too complicated" to have come about by random rearrangement of genes and proteins. So, in the same way, they would have you assume that living things (or at least the "too complicated" bits) must have been made by someone.
Of course, it's NONSENSE. If you find a watch in the desert you assume it's designed BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT A WATCH IS AND YOU KNOW THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED!
(And by "KNOW" I mean "have established as a fact based on observation and capable of being proved by reference to evidence" and NOT "a feeling you've got based on a story in an old book"!).
Almost every one of the things that the supporters of I.D. have come up with as "too complicated" or "irreducibly complex" as they call it, have in fact been explained by evolutionary science. Their big favourite used to be the eye and that was explained AGES AGO.
And it's STILL not a proper scientific theory because it STILL doesn't come up with testable predictions. It just gives them something new to whine on about.
So, anyway, for Mr Clongly's benefit: Intelligent Design's BASIC CLAIM is "this is a science" (hence: you must teach this in school).
So if you don't thinks it's a science YOU DON'T THINK IT'S TRUE.
QED
(That's science talk for: Quick Elephant Demolition!)
And meanwhile, we have been very much enjoying Mr Stodge keeping us up to date with the latest mental loop-the-loops in I.D world!
We stayed up late to watch the moon eclipse. We enjoyed it lots.
But then along comes Mr Clifford Clongley on the The Today Programme's Fart for the Day and says:
"Oooh, pretty – there must be a god!"
Worse than that, he talked about INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
"I don't mean whether it is good science – which I don't believe it is – but whether it is true – which I do believe."
Well, WAKE UP Mr Clongley: Intelligent Design CLAIMS to be a SCIENCE. If you DON'T believe it's good science then you DON'T believe it's true!
(Or possibly you don't know what you are talking about.)
If you're just an old fashioned CREATIONIST, then you believe that all of the different animals and plants and fungi were all individually created by god by hand:
Poof: humans. Poof: elephants. Poof: brontosaurus, no, scratch that one it's not going to fit on this ark plan I've got…
But then along comes PESKY science and says: well, actually there's another explanation which accounts for the reason why some animals are so like one another (like why create lions AND tigers when they are essentially the same evil cat monster?) or why some creatures do the same sort of thing but are totally different (like why create bats when you've already got birds?).
That explanation is called EVOLUTION.
It says (in really basic terms) that all creatures in a family are slightly different, and if some of them have a difference that gives them a better chance of having babies then over time the whole family will come to be more like that. Because different advantages apply in different places (say in one place there's lots of insects and in another there's lots of fruit) this causes what was one family to change into two different families.
This is why some creatures are similar (it's not been long since their families were one family) and why some different creatures end up doing the same thing (they've both been selected from having the right advantages to do that thing).
Evolution is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY. This means that it is a set of rules that are based on observed evidence and makes testable predictions that have been confirmed experimentally.
Creationism is not a scientific theory because you can't test it.
(Actually, Creationism's basic tenet that all life was created in the first six days of the world IS testable in the sense that the appearance of any new species ought to be impossible… except there are SO MANY species that it's difficult to PROVE that.)
Anyway, more importantly (if you are a CRAZED THEOCRAT) Evolution gets taught in SCHOOLS in the science class and Creationism doesn't.
This is true even in America thanks to their Constitution wisely having a SEPARATION of CHURCH AND STATE written into it. (And alarmingly it is not always true HERE where there's nothing to stop Lord Blairimort's bonkers, nutty friend Mr Vardey teaching creationism alongside the national curriculum in his city McAcademies!)
This, however, is a bit of a THREAT to the Creationist way of thinking. What, they correctly realise, will happen if our kids start thinking for themselves. Why ANYTHING could happen!
So they campaign very hard to get evolution banned from being taught or to get biblical creationism taught alongside it or to insist on stupid stickers on textbooks saying "This is only a theory".
(As I have said before, you may try putting the Theory of Gravitation to similar test by jumping out of a window and shouting "this is only a theory… arrrgh splatt!")
And then they hit on a BRILLIANT NEW WHEEZE: Let us create a "Science" that gets creationism into the classroom by the back door. This they called "Intelligent Design".
The wheeze (it's not a theory) goes like this: if you find a watch in the desert it is such a complicated thing that your assumption is that it must have been made by someone and left there; it is certainly more likely than it having appeared spontaneously out of the movement of the sand and wind.
Similarly (THEY SAY) there are some parts of living things that are "too complicated" to have come about by random rearrangement of genes and proteins. So, in the same way, they would have you assume that living things (or at least the "too complicated" bits) must have been made by someone.
Of course, it's NONSENSE. If you find a watch in the desert you assume it's designed BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT A WATCH IS AND YOU KNOW THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED!
(And by "KNOW" I mean "have established as a fact based on observation and capable of being proved by reference to evidence" and NOT "a feeling you've got based on a story in an old book"!).
Almost every one of the things that the supporters of I.D. have come up with as "too complicated" or "irreducibly complex" as they call it, have in fact been explained by evolutionary science. Their big favourite used to be the eye and that was explained AGES AGO.
And it's STILL not a proper scientific theory because it STILL doesn't come up with testable predictions. It just gives them something new to whine on about.
So, anyway, for Mr Clongly's benefit: Intelligent Design's BASIC CLAIM is "this is a science" (hence: you must teach this in school).
So if you don't thinks it's a science YOU DON'T THINK IT'S TRUE.
QED
(That's science talk for: Quick Elephant Demolition!)
And meanwhile, we have been very much enjoying Mr Stodge keeping us up to date with the latest mental loop-the-loops in I.D world!
Monday, February 26, 2007
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