Speaks for its self

I didn't have the sound on cause PZ warned me to turn it down at work, and I'm at work, actually it was already muted... not that you care. Now watch some evolution.

If that seemed slow it was roughly 800 million years a minute.

UPDATE: that should be 800,000 years not 800 million, Thank you Riker for pointing that out. So yeah its about 3.5 million years of evolution not 3.5 billion years. Sorry for the brain fart.

Death From The Skies!

So I picked up my buddy (ok so I like his stuff, he probably hasn't ever read mine but thats ok) Phil's book this weekend for my cousin for christmas. I love giving books cause the recipient can't tell that I read it before giving it too them. Bwahaha!

Book Report Time

Death from the Skies!
by Phil Plait

So obviously I sat down read all but the last half a chapter in basically two sittings. I read a bit on Saturday and almost the whole rest of the book on Sunday. It was funny because I also bought a nice copy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and in reading Death from the Skies! I couldn't help but notice a little bit of Adams in there. At one point I think it was in the discussion of Gamma Ray Emissions it called them "the biggest bang since the big one" or something to that effect. Basically the book is exactly what I expected, full of interesting info presented in a way that makes you just want to keep reading. I think it's plenty easy enough to read for anyone with at least a very basic understanding of the universe. But then in the middle of reading this I realized a problem, possibly a big one, but its not with the book. The cousin I bought this for is about to finish his PhD in Physics, he might find the book way to simple for his tastes. Again this isn't an insult towards the book, I really liked it, but I have no idea exactly where my cousins interests lie with astronomy and so he may enjoy it or he might find it too sophomoric.

I suppose I should tell you what the book is about. It's basically a list of ways the universe can and in some cases will, destroy the world as we know it. Some are obvious like the meteor smashing into the earth, others are inevitable but not for a very long time like when the sun goes all red giant on us, or ultimately the slow agonizing death of the universe itself. Then there are others that are so crazy they need to be mentioned but are extremely unlikely to happen such as falling into a passing black hole, blasted by a nearby supernova or getting vaporized by Gamma Rays. The book talks about how these events would unfold, then how we can maybe prevent them and ultimately what the chances are that it will happen. All with the humor and accuracy that is the reason I like Phil's writing. Basically I found the book really entertaining if a little depressing. It's pretty hard to look at the current view of how the universe is going to end up and not feel pretty bad about it. I really hope its wrong, I hope there is a big squeeze and it all starts over again, or something. I just don't see how there can be a finite beginning to it all but no end, I just think that time is either infinite or its not, but it can't be infinite in only one direction. It does touch on the multi-verse idea but only passingly because that far out on the edge of knowledge were really just don't know enough yet. Oh my only other quibble with the book is it does get repetitive at times, especially if you read the whole thing at once, because a common way for the universe to kill us is by stripping the earth of a large portion of its Ozone layer. Gamma rays have essentially the same effect wither their coming from crazy magnetic disturbances from the sun, a GRE or a supernova. But this is mostly just a problem of theres only so many ways to say it and their all true in each of these cases even though the cases are very different. I'm a pretty brutal judge so when thats my only fault in the book itself its quite a compliment.

So yes I can enthusiastically endorse this book for anyone who thinks sci-fi disaster movies are lame and want to see what real disaster looks like. Of course most of these wouldn't make for a good movie because no amount of heroism is going to save you from a gamma ray or a black hole. Enough intelligence and forethought might save you from an asteroid or even from the sun going red giant but that doesn't make for a good disaster movie. Anyway its a good fun book and I think its entertaining enough for even someone knowledgeable in the field (I hope) but easy enough for a high school kid that doesn't hate science.

Nice job Phil!

UEO

Unexplained Exploding Object

Hubble just spotted something, and we don't have a friggin' clue what it is. This is why I like science, they admit they don't know what it is, so rather than make up a story and run with it, they come up with a bunch of stories (or hypothesis) and then here's the nifty part, they test 'em. Whoa. Might have to go ask Phil about this.

one more thought on religion

Thanks for all the comments Rob! I replied to most of them and the last one I did made me want to write it up as a post. I didn't reply to the New Yorker one but I will agree that I don't think satire is going away which is great. I also have rethought my stance on that particular case, you know what people who read the New Yorker are going to get it. At least for the most part. I still don't think it was particularly well done satire but again thats all I really think they are guilty of. And I think Poes law comes into play where no matter how outlandish there are those who will think its real and agree with it.

I guess the little talk on religion I wanted to have in this post comes down to why I talk about religion so much. I honestly find it fascinating. At least partially from a historical context, religion for better or worse has played a major impact on world history and therefore understanding the various religions is a critical aspect of understanding history. But honestly thats only a minor part of it. For the most part I find the actual beliefs of the organized religions laughably absurd. Weird violent deadly masochistic egotistical fairly tales that people base their lives around, or at least claim to. To me that is a phenomenon worth looking into, and so I do. I think I worded this much nicer in the comments, but I'm in kind of a bad mood right now. The question still remains of why do people believe what they do? That question is the real reason that I like to study religion and question individuals beliefs. I really truly want to understand how people can be so convinced about something that seems so ridiculous to me. I need to go back to school and I suspect that I will end up taking some classes on world religions, I suspect that I will enjoy them, but I have a feeling the discussions could get interesting. It seems like the people I know who talk about religion the most are atheists, and I'm guessing that this is why. Living in the US I'm surrounded by variously believably pious people. I see an almost constant stream of stupidity coming from the loudest of the religious folks, who I realize are not the norm and I should not blame all religious folks for the actions of those at the extremes. At the same time if the moderate voices didn't enable the extremists then they would be marginalized and would not be a threat to society. In case I slipped that in too quietly I do see that religion and the anti-science folks are a direct threat to civilization. A war with Iran could easily lead to a modern religious war, a prospect I do not look forward to. I also think that by ignoring and fighting against science we are going to run into very serious problems that require scientific as well as political solutions, and when the populace has almost no understanding of science then they will not elect people with scientific understanding and we are left with people having to make world altering political decisions based on science that they do not understand. Climate Change and the energy situation being the current manifestations of that problem.

I could probably keep rambling but you get the point.

Peace!

Our crazy world

If you like just weird crazy shit, then fuck sci-fi check out science. Theres all sorts of genuinely weird shit going on all around you all the time, even something as seemingly simple as a magnet, or specifically a magnetic field is actually quite odd, and surprisingly beautiful....

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

The Good, The Bad, and The Stupid

So as you probably know theres about a 50/50 chance that for the first time in recorded history the arctic may be without ice this summer. Alarm bells should be going off. The biggest concern is the fact that this is happening far faster than predicted. Scientists are fairly conservative when they make announcements to the public, they don't want to seem like fools if they give dire warnings only to have them be wrong. So this give conservative estimates, and throw in that it might be worse. If I remember right they predicted this could happen by 2050 in Al's movie, and here it is two years latter happening. What scares me the most is the comments afterwards, those who say that this is just a normal part of the cycle and that nothing we do has any affect on it, and hey there might be oil under that ice! The stupid refers to those who get confused when their drink doesn't over flow when the ice melts. If the ice melts then all the coastal cities should be underwater, and they are so this is a lie.... No offense to anyone with legitimate mental handicaps but are these folks retarded? Listen up, its pretty simple, ice floating on water doesn't affect the sea level when it melts. The Arctic OCEAN is water so when that ice melts the sea level stays the same. Ice on land that melts obviously affects the sea level. Places like Antarctica and Greenland are the most critical land based ice. So no one who pays attention should have any confusion about how the ice can melt and the cities don't drown. Ok I'm outta time, I'll talk more shit later.

Books and Bad Astronomers

I opened the flood gates on this one. I guess thats what I get for asking a group of friendly scientists (and other science enthusiasts) to recommend a good book. I'm rereading The Daemon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Sagan talks about the joy it brings to a person to suddenly understand what had always been a mystery, once meaningless terms taking grasp. It is a profound feeling. I can't say I felt that way reading the last book, more "ok... I think I got it... maybe sorta." But I recall it distinctly when I first read about self replicators in the primordial ooze, those that replicated the best won the day due to simple numerical advantage because they replicated the best. Suddenly it clicked, the rest fell into place instantly in my mind, it was always the one thing I didn't understand about evolution. I know there are various theories on abiogenesis and this might not be right, but it at least gave me an option of how it could have happened, at that was profound.

The flip side of this is the joy many scientists feel when they get to share their knowledge with others. Sagan called his life a love affair with science, and who doesn't want to shout it from the hills when they are madly in love? When a person says they don't get why something is the way it is, they're standing in the dark not even sure which direction to turn, you can toss them a flashlight and point them in the right direction. Their eyes light up and say "Wow, I've wondered about that for years and now it seems so simply, why couldn't anyone explain it like that before?" Admittedly we were talking about easier subject matter like what causes terrorism.

Also answers like this impress me, I don't know if the math is right but someone put some thought into this reply (not that they were replying to me...)

So here is the list I've been told to check out.

Non Fiction:
Fear of Physics
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Quantum Computer Science by David Mermin
Schrödinger's Kittens
The Code Book by Simon Singh

Fiction:
Odyssey by Jack McDevitt
Einstein’s Bridge, by John Cramer

I'm not sure I need to say it but thanks again to everybody over at Bad Astronomy, especially The Chemist, Humanist Dad, and Jake Doyle for stopping by, and for Phil.

Water Powered Car

Ok I've seen spam e-mails about this and they're easy enough to delete but when Reuters does a piece about a Japanese company claiming they can drive a car for an hour at 50mph on a liter of WATER it makes me confused. Yeah my first reaction isn't OMG! all our problems are solved! It's much more WTF than OMG. All it says is that,

"Once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, the a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power, TV Tokyo said."

You can break water down into Hydrogen and Oxygen and make power from those, unfortunately I recall quite vividly from my chemistry classes in high school that it takes considerably more energy to break the water down than you can get from the separated elements. Did they invent a catalyst that breaks down water? is it a total sham? I really don't know, but I won't say I'm not curious.

People I'm in Awe of

Anyone who can talk about, "pretty basic quantum mechanics." Damn you Phil, er actually guy who wrote to Phil.

Actually I shouldn't insult myself that much, there is a fair amount of the basics of Quantum Mechanics that I understood just fine. I just don't have even close to enough skill in math to be able to fuck with the numbers they're talking about.

Changed my views on God

Yeah I said it. I just finished "In Search of Schrödinger's Cat" and it has completely transformed my views on god.

Sorta.

I still don't think he exists, I need some evidence of the guy for that. But my opinion of the guy has changed if he/she/it does turn out to exist. I grew up christian so that has fundamentally tainted my views on a higher power, I went to a pretty damn liberal church but I still came to the conclusion that god is a prick. He's made up by people but they made him in the image of a brutal dictator. Just like Saddam Hussein he starts off a real ass hole but by the second half of the book he softens up a bit, still willing to send you to be tortured for eternity but at least he stopped with the earthly genocides.

But now that I have a very vague understanding of quantum mechanics I am fully convinced that if there is a god, he is fucking hilarious. God is of course not really a testable hypothesis, I guess we just have to wait till we die to find out and I'm not in any rush for that. But if he is real then I think I fully understand quantum physics - god is fucking with us. He's gotten bored messing with his followers, theres no challenge, no fun at all. So he found himself a new plaything, physicists. I'm not saying that he sits around messing with the spin of every electron and photon in the universe that would be immensely dull even for an omnipotent critter. No I'm saying that he just messes with the science experiments. He's chilling with Gabrielle (he was an angel right?) Mark Twain, Albert Einstein and a few other layabouts, saying, "Yo check this out, now ya see a wave function, now ya don't! Bwahaha!!!.... oh oh that shit gets me every time."
"Twain, I gotta thank you for this one, I haven't had this much fun since the flood"
"No prob god. Hey, does this make us even for the shit I talked about you? To be fair I really only talked shit about your followers."
"Umm.... sure"
"Wanna mess with a Bell test?"
"Nah, today were going after those french know-it-alls over at CERN, I got your Higgs Boson right here!"
"You guys are jerks"
"Still haven't learned how to have fun Al?"
"Arschgesicht"

Yup, so now when I die, if I see I light before me I'm running up to them gates, "Yo Pete! Let me in, come on... "

Damn you Bohr!

Ok his work was actually really important but it still means I have an almost entirely incorrect theory still in my head because thats what they teach children despite the fact that is wrong. Why do we do that? Oh right cause the Bohr model is fairly easy to understand while the truth... no so much.See that picture makes sense, unfortunately it's not what an atom looks like.

So I just started reading the book "The Search for Schrödinger's Cat" and so far its essentially a history lesson, but its building up to how the ideas evolved into the present (ok 1984) theories. I've known a tiny bit about quantum mechanics, just enough to know that I have no idea whats really going on, so when I was walking through the used book store and spotted this I figured it was worth a shot. BTW I've said it before but man I love used book stores, you can't go in saying I want to buy X which is half the fun, you wander until something sounds good and you head home only a few bucks lighter.

So yeah I'm learning a little quantum physics, just for fun, and I know I'm just at the start because so far it still makes sense.

Renewable Oil???

This is why science is important.Yeah you can blame science for our current problems with the environment and what not and it's true, technology has created problems and without science you won't have technology. But the only way out is with a change in technology, so that means more science. This time it just might mean biology. We've already figured out that we can create huge amounts of biodiesel by way of algae. Now some clever fellas have figured out how to make another microbe that eats agricultural waste and shits out petroleum. Makes the old phrase "Slick as shit" suddenly make sense.

I don't know if this is a solution or maybe just a really good band aid or maybe it won't be effective on a large scale, but it's promising. Oh and being a bit of an environmentalist its cool that they point out that the microbe is carbon negative, the amount of CO2 used by the microbe to produce the oil is more than the CO2 created by burning the oil. So thats a good thing.

Holy Crazy Wingnut Batman

Poor wingnuts, they were just a nut that thought they would help people out by having two big flat surfaces so they could be tightened (or loosened) by hand, save people from needing a wrench, and now the crazies have gone and tarnished their good names. Poor poor wingnuts.

If you want to read one hell of a good (by which I mean terrible) rant by a crazy christian then I highly recommend you take a ride on the intertubes over to P to the aryngula and have a read.

An Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend

So what could bring together conservative christians from the US and islamic fundamentalists in Turkey? Hatred of evolution of course! Oh the irony. We hate islamo-fascists, almost as much as we hate the truth.

Science blogroll

A few more science sites for the blog roll and a funny little article

First 50 weird science tidbits.

Now The Angry Astronomer
And Respectful Insolence.
and because I still haven't added it, Bad Astronomy

Pissing Off Friends

Ok so my roommate is going to massage school, one of the highest rated in the country I'm told, and he loves it. I think he likes the idea of helping people, he also likes the idea of touching mostly naked women all day. He's become good friends with the only other person from school who lives in our town, and therefore I've become friends with her too. And she's the shit, just a really chill really nice caring person. The tricky part is that she's very into like astrology, tarot cards, and shit like that. We've talked about religion and stuff a few times and I try really hard not to be condescending towards people beliefs but with pseudoscience its really hard. I try to frame everything from the perspective of simple curiousity which is partially because this allows me to question a persons beliefs without insulting them because I'm just trying to learn, and its easy because I'm just a curious person. But I can't fake the fact that underneath it all I think that stuff is crap, and she knows it. There is often a talk of energy but its never defined. If I continue with this its going to ramble, oh but look at the name of this site, try to bear with me. This bodily energy is often intermixed with universal energies coming from beyond. Now I should also say that I'm far from a scientist surely not an expert but I know a little bit about science. So when she says something like everything is made of energy, I say, "yeah sorta." I'm thinking of E = MC squared so mass can be converted into energy which is sorta like being made of energy. And it seems like we keep breaking particles down into smaller and smaller bits so I'm not confident to say what matter is really made of. Or another way to say that for the sake of conversation, "yeah." But I take serious issue when these ideas with no evidence at all are being TAUGHT to students. I'm still of the ilk that as long as you're not hurting people believe what you want, but I'm not sure how to define hurt. Does believing homeopathy hurt anyone? Not directly no, a bottle of water or a placebo isn't going to hurt anyone, but what if the person avoids treatment that works because they believe in something that doesn't? I honestly can't decide. There is a libertarian side that says, "fuck 'em if they're too stupid to find out if they're being duped." But my liberal side reminds me why my libertarian side always loses. If we had a society that was adept at disseminating truthful information then fine, fend for yourself. But there is SOOO much bad info out there that maybe we do need to protect the gullible. I need to back up for a sec. I guess I never looked into homeopathy before, holy skull-fuck batman do people really believe this stuff works????? I wonder how many people who buy into it even realize how the numbering system works? In most modern situations saying something is 30x would imply 30 times more than original, but oh no not in homeopathy, in homeopathy less is more 30x means that the original 10:1 solution has been cut thirty more times! 10:1 equals 1x, 100:1 = 2x, 30x = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1. Then it really gets silly 200C, ha! I'm not going to explain it here, just read this, but lets just say once your ratios are getting so big they compare them with the number of atoms in the known universe, you're probably in trouble. Anyway I was so blown away by what I just learned about homeopathy that I've lost the will to talk about anything else. I need to go warn people. Oh and none of this changes my opinon about my friend, shes still a great person, plus I don't know her stance on homeopathy. I just don't know how Im going to be able to not insult the shit out of this stuff. I suppose could just keep my mouth shut...


I'm screwed.

Crazy Ass World

Ok the last post was why I respect scientists, in short because they'll congratulate someone who proves them wrong. Now I want to say why I love science. Science just shows us the universe as it really is, its not saying thats the way things should be it just says thats the way things are, at least from the evidence so far. Kinda Machiavellian but what can ya do? But the truly amazing part is the stuff thats going on out there.

First I'll start small, very small, just a single cell. I can't help but think of some of our doomsday scenarios of nuclear holocaust and I've had some tell me nothing will survive and I've always said yes something will, maybe not people but life will go on. Deinococcus radiodurans will survive. 10 Gy will kill a human 5000 Gy won't kill Deino shit an instantanous blast of 15,000 Gy will only kill some. Rugged bastard.

Now to astronomy where shit really gets crazy. Anytime pulsars come out you know good times will be had. I'm not even going to explain this one, just go read about it. Still don't believe me? the post is called Vampire Star.

Respect for Science

This little post says a lot about why I have respect for science and not for religion. With the ever present exception of Buddhism, religions don't like change. Someone decided long ago what the truth was and thats all that matters, nothing that happens today can change what was decided to be true. Science on the other hand is always changing and expanding. People who are used to dogmatic world views see this change as proof that science is a fraud because what science considers to be true can change. Isn't it better to search for the truth, to test what you know and throw out that which is proven wrong, than to blindly accept? Oh sure its much easier to just accept, to read a single book and say, well that all I'll ever need to know. I guess I'd just rather be sure. I bring this up after reading a post at Bad Astronomy, which said that scientist found a new way to measure the thickness of our galaxy. When they did they found it to be twice the thickness they previously thought. (I'm over simplifying because its the general precepts that I care about) Those who like to bash science will say this proves that scientists don't know what they think they know. Scientists don't notice because they're excited about being wrong, that means that theories will need to change, debate will be sparked among the new hypothesis and eventually we will know more about the ways of the universe than we do know. Sure they may have to throw away previously held ideas but its another step in the infinite journey of knowledge.

Evolution

Top 15 Misconceptions about Evolution. First off a quick thank you to PZ, thanks! A good list, I just wanted to save the link in case I ever need it to explain evolution to anyone. It's worth a read if you do happen to have questions regarding evolution. It's got clear concise answers, they're even short. Enjoy.

What the Bleep

A friend recommended this movie to me, as we've had a few talks about science and religion. I was curious to see it but I'm glad I didn't read the reviews beforehand. The quick version is, its not very good, in fact its quite bad from the standpoint of explaining quantum physics which is what the goal seems to be at the start. But then it moves to bio-chemistry which isn't terribly mysterious. Then it gets into some stupid shit like how thoughts affect the pattern of a snowflake. Quite possibly the best moment is at the very end of the movie when it explains the credentials of the people interviewed, if you want to know why its great you'll just have to go here. Its a way better review including the problems with the limited science thats included and an amazing screen shot, without which you wouldn't believe this persons credentials....