Archive for category Nature

How You Make A Universe!

Posted by on Friday, 18 November, 2011

AND THERE WAS LIGHT

From Nothing

Dr. Christopher Wilson (Chalmers Institute Of Technology) created light. 

He did some complicated things that that sucked up photons out of absolutely nothing (what physicists call the  “quantum vacuum”).

Yes. I know God did this a long time ago. But he didn’t have to do it on a budget.

The thing to keep in mind here is that light is a form of energy and energy is a form of mass (Einstein) . So what Dr Wilson did is he created something from nothing.

Can you do that?

It’s slightly more than a cute trick, actually. It suggests that that Big Bang (which started the universe) actually makes some logical sense. After all, if there wasn’t anything before the universe, how could it ever get started? What would it have been made of?

In other words, is it really possible to make something from nothing?

Apparently.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10 . A wonderful piece of science.

 

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BLOGGER FIXES CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE & RELIGION

Posted by on Saturday, 10 September, 2011

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Dear MisterScienceAintSoBad, My sister’s mad at me because she says I pick pick pick. Can’t help it though. She’s like my grandmother. God this and God that.Don’t I have a right to challenge her dopey ideas?- A-Boy.

A-Boy: (I’m hoping the A stands for atheist and not a certain orifice.) Religious people aren’t idiots. They just believe in God

It’s not a sin.

It doesn’t mean they DENY reality. They just have an extra one that you don’t see. The majority of educated believers aren’t trying to prove Darwin wrong. Mostly, they know about fossils and other stuff that show how life evolved. Maybe they even know how the earth was formed out of cosmic dust over millions of years.

What about God? What about Genesis?

That too.

Believe it or not, it is perfectly possible for an educated person to “get” the Big Bang – even string theory – and still open a bible once-in-a-while. The interior of the human brain isn’t made for consistency.

Prayer and plain geometry. They can get along. Ask Isaac Newton. Hey. Ask his spirit.

Most people believe in God or something like. Even in Europe. Why is that hard? People believe.  Maybe they can’t explain why but it has a great explanatory force for them. Besides. It’s a layer of comfort. I were you, I wouldn’t mess with it.

This makes me ScienceIsSoBad? I don’t think so. I’m just saying that it’s possible to be too literal minded. The human brain CAN have two different ideas at the same time. Most minds do. This is what we are and I’m sorry it’s messy.

This isn’t an apologia. There ARE plenty of zealots who say that the bible’s got all the wisdom we need and science just gets in the way. But don’t tell me you don’t know some uber-rationalists who wanna smack bibles out of the hands of the misguided. You think THAT’S a tolerant attitude?

Science-minded folks need to have some respect for the evolutionary process that they defend. We evolved with a strong need to make sense of the world on a personal level. For modern humans, that seems to coexist in a delicate but, often sweet, tension with rational scientific thought. MisterScienceAintSoBad says you shouldn’t pick, pick, pick.

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Category: Nature, Pseudoscience, Religion   , ,
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STUMPED BY STRINGS

Posted by on Wednesday, 1 June, 2011

ME APOLOGIZING.

I try to keep my writing reasonably lively so as to keep my readers awake. This time, however, you’re kinda on your own to keep your head off the pillow. Sorry. My blog, my (sometimes deadly dull) topics.

A LETTER

Dr. Brian Greene:

The Elegant Universe is my favorite book. It describes string theory. My copy’s old and I don’t “get” it all. But each time I read it, I learn something.

Readers of my blog should be as lucky.

Here’s what bothers me, Brian Greene. You say strings are one dimensional . Most of them are so tiny (.000000000000000000000000000000000001 meters) that they’re as small as anything can get – the “Planck length”. Nothing physical gets to be smaller than the Planck length.  Not everyone’s on board with the idea that space is “granular” (things have a minimum size) but it’s gaining acceptance.

Anyway, I’m kinda stumped. I’m a three dimensional guy in a multidimensional world. Strings don’t have width. Or depth. They have a volume of zero, right?  Nothing to grab on to. More like thought experiments. Vibrate them in the right modes, and they “real up”, each becoming a particle or a force. One of these strings accounts for each particle in the universe.

But how does a one dimensional string trick itself out with additional dimensions? Is  it the “moving around” thing?  And aren’t strings long in one dimension and skinny in the others? Isn’t that the idea behind calling them strings? Except they don’t HAVE other dimensions. And if they DID have such things, they wouldn’t be any smaller than the Planck length, right? So a “string” would be a cube?

My poor head!

Another thing. Strings, you say, are being pulled apart by a tension force of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  tons. As a former structural engineer,  I worry about them breaking.

So, dividing 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of force by the non existent cross section of a string, I arrive at something more-or-less like an infinite tensile stress.

This is bad.

In The Elegant Universe, you emphasize the superior nature of string theory over the prevailing “Standard Model” of physics which,  you say, suffers from too many infinities (like when the denominator of a fraction is zero?) I realize that strings, which are saved from being infinitely small by the Planck length, are also saved from “midriff bulge” (thickness across the middle) by their one dimensional nature. Maybe this vaccinates them against having to worry about internal stresses. But there’s still a big-force, small-object thing going on here that’s a little confusing, okay?

Elegant Universe

I do think I’ve answered one of my own questions which is how this tension force manages to maintain itself. After all, why doesn’t the string just  shrink till it doesn’t HAVE to shrink anymore, relieving its own internal tension?  It’s not like it’s tied to anything.  However, the string seems to be “Plancked out”. It can’t get smaller than that stupid Planck limit.

What a world!

Strings are distinguished from one another (I gather) by their modes of vibration and the way they wrap (open or closed). Except that 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons isn’t a small  force. It’s what  a rock  with mass equivalent to  hundreds of billions of stars  would weigh here on earth. Those pictures in your book of strings wrapped around things? Or vibrating, away in different “modes”? How do they stay so curvy with that kind of tension trying to snap them straight?

All I’ve got. And thanks for your patience,

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad

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Credit, once again, to xkcd, it’s fine and funny drawings (top).
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Category: Books Reviews, Nature   , , ,
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SHOULDN’T YOU HAVE A LIGHTNING ROD?

Posted by on Tuesday, 24 May, 2011

YIKES!

A QUESTION:
Dear Mister SASB: My brother (who is a complete idiot, by the way) says lightning rods don’t work. Do you agree? Cause our house doesn’t have one and I’m thinking maybe it should. – Annie Blister

Annie: I’m sure you won’t feel that way about your brother when you get a little older. (Both of my sisters happen to think I’M a dope but, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll probably think they’re being too kind.)

THE OLD DAYS

In Colonial America, lightning rods made people nervous. It was considered an affront to the Lord. Lightning was God’s wrath.

During thunderstorms, churches (which had very tall steeples)  liked to send guys that wouldn’t be missed too much up there to ring the bell. It reminded the storm that this was a holy place. But the bell ringers had a much better record of going UP the stairs than coming back DOWN. While they were up there wackin’ away at the bell, lightning would often strike the bell tower, transforming it into steaming charcoal and molten bell. In fact, lightning seemed to FAVOR houses of worship – a clue, actually, that a different process might be at work than celestial vengeance.

The inventor of lightning rods, a guy named Ben Franklin, said lightning’s not a God thing; it is, he said, a natural phenomenon that  burns down  buildings and scares the goats. Even the old ones.  Certain citizens accused Franklin of irreverence. Blasphemy, actually. Back then, you didn’t want to be a blasphemer.

No you did not.

But Franklin was cool.  A coil of wire and and an iron stick are going to stop The Almighty? He (God) can’t  come up with a work-around? Who’s the blasphemer here?, asked Franklin. You callin’ God incompetent? (I think he also said that most lightning bolts strike trees which are, by and large, innocent of all wrong doing.)

This rebuttal was so effective that it took the thunder out of the opposition and, in no time,  lightning rods became almost as common as door knobs. It wasn’t sacrilegious anymore to use one to protect a powder magazine from being blown up in a storm.

This had a good effect, as you can easily imagine. Even churches got lightning rods. And, as a result, they  burned down less frequently. If the lightning rod business hadn’t been so successful, who’s to say what the state of religion would be in modern America?

SO WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO LIGHTNING RODS?

AND WHY DON’T YOU HAVE ONE?

Now lets climb back into the modern era.

In 1993, the National Fire Protection Association said the science behind lightning protection sucks. (Not their precise words). May as well rescind the national standard for lightning rods that’s been around for almost a century, they said. The standard is called NFPA 780, in case you want to look it up.

Uh oh, lightning rods!

But, according to Cecil Adams (The Straight Dope), after a thorough review of what’s out there plus a heap of common sense, it was decided that the science, though sucky and pretty much out-of-date, is, nonetheless,  compelling. It would be madness to go back to the pre-lightning rod, buildings-burning-down, days merely because lightning protection has been a settled issue for so long that more recent up-to-scientific-standards studies haven’t been done.

So the NFPA 780 standard still stands. And lightning rods work.

REALLY?

Then, how come you can drive for miles, here in New England and see nary a home with a tell tale rod sticking up to the sky ? I’m sure some are disguised as weather vanes and such, but, overall, this region seems to have entered the “right to strike” era.  We do love a roaring fire up here, but do we love fire THAT much?

Maybe this is just a lack of public awareness. I don’t think there’s  been much discussion about lightning rods. Or, could it be that the concern about protecting high technology devices from lightning initiated VOLTAGE SURGES, has diverted attention away from the basics? Maybe the idea’s too “pre-colonial”, too quaint, to be taken seriously by a guy packing an IPhone.

Another thought? Insurance discounts. Used to be, you could get a little knock off on your premium if you stuck a lightning rod up . These days, however, the companies appear to have abandoned that practice. In a region that doesn’t get THAT much thunder and lightning, maybe the occasional smoking ruin is just  a cost of doing business?

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad, as is so OFTEN the case, doesn’t really have an explanation. Do you?



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IS SEX LOSING ITS SEX APPEAL?

Posted by on Saturday, 2 April, 2011

Image credits: Comics at xkcd.

ASEXUALS

Just about everything that makes us human comes in small, medium, large, and extra large doses so it shouldn’t surprise you if I tell you we’re not all the same in the sex drive department.

Some people are a little over and some are under, there too.

Lots of people don’t have sex, of course.

Few of the readers of this blog do.

But are there people with no sex DRIVE? None at all? I am NOT asking (not interested, actually) in whether you are straight or gay or transwhatever. I’m asking whether ANYTHING  gets you interested, sexually speaking.

Ever.

I did some research.

No not THAT kind of research. I looked for studies. Data, and such. And, well doggone! It’s true. Lots of people don’t GIVE A RAT’S BUTT ABOUT SEX AND  NEVER WILL!

Funny huh?

Anthony Bogaert (Brock University) started describing the phenomenon a few years ago.  Asexuals  constitute about 1% of the population. About 3,000,000 people in the United states. Naturally, they have an organization,the Asexual Visibility And Education Network, which is trying to increase awareness.

No reality show so far.

Media hyped groups do come in and out of fashion with regularity, of course. I guess we’re about finished Don’tAskDon’tTelling gay people, so we may have spare time for something new.  Would YOU be comfortable serving with them in the marines? Would asexuals  GET the  lusty humor? Would it be possible to behave honorably under fire without a sex drive?

Although asexuals aren’t attracted to either sex, many get married and dutifully try to satisfy their partners. No more complaints than you might expect, all things considered.

(Is this important science? You decide. I just keep the stories coming. )

More detail from Dan Childs (ABC News).

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