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You may be wondering why I have been so sentimental even though the year is not over yet. I am happy to inform you that it is not because I am retiring. On the contrary, I am packing up my virtual bags and moving this blog to a new site! Pardon the dust while we get settled into our new digs.
This is my last post at Scienceblogs.com.
In the future I will be blogging at Greg Laden’s blog, located at its original home at gregladen.com.
I have a feeling that Scienceblogs will not last long without me. What do you think?
But seriously, I’ll be talking about the story of the current status and development of this blog and scienceblogs.com with Mike Haubrich on our podcast Ikonokast. We recorded the conversation today, and will post it in a day or two.
Please go HERE to continue this conversation.
That is all. Thank you very much.
And the #1 blog entry published thus far in 2017 discussed whether there was an evolutionary advantage to being stupid:
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As I was looking through the scientific literature the other day, I came across an article published in 1973, “The Evolutionary Advantages of Being Stupid.” With a title like that, how could I not read it?
In this article Dr. Eugene D. Robin discussed how larger and more complex brains are associated with greater intelligence, which by evolutionary standards was thought to be related to “superiority.” He described how this line of thinking places man at the peak of evolution resulting in our tendency toward an anthropocentric view of the world. Anthropocentrism also leads to interpreting or seeing things in terms of our own experiences or value/belief systems.
Dr. Robin went on to argue that looking at survival of species in hindsight suggests that those which survive have done well whereas those that have died off must have been inferior. Rather, he argues it is important to think dynamically. Meaning that traits evolve continually as does the environment. So a trait that may benefit the species at one point in time might not help at all at if conditions change. He quotes Asimov who posed the question, “Which is the fitter, a man or an oyster?” If Earth were covered in water, clearly oysters would fair better than man.
With regards to intelligence, Dr. Robin also proposed thinking in terms of it being a dynamic trait that could help or handicap a species. Take for example diving mammals. Mammals that are good at diving, have evolved the ability to survive with low levels of oxygen. This ability may also protect them from health conditions associated with low oxygen such as blood loss, heart attacks, strokes, etc. In this example, smaller brains relative to body size are more advantageous as it allows the animal to dive longer (and perhaps have better health). In other words, by presumably sacrificing intelligence, the animals with smaller brains have increased survival. His own research looked at turtles that can dive for more than 1 week. To accomplish this, turtle brains create energy through pathways that do not rely on oxygen and, as a result, have reduced activity while diving. Thus, by anthropocentric standards turtles are relatively “stupid” even though they have survived over 200 million years.
Image of turtles from Lvova Anastasiya (Львова Анастасия, Lvova) (Own work (own foto)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Eugene D. Robin. The evolutionary advantages of being stupid. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 16(3): 369-380, 1973. doi: 10.1353/pbm.1973.0060
Dictionary.com
What better way to say farewell than with a slew of costume pictures from this year’s (coming) Halloween?
Happy Halloween 2017!
From Ethan Siegel and Starts With A Bang.
Keep looking to the Universe.
And we’ll have a lifetime of wonderful things to still explore.
Goodbye, Scienceblogs, it’s been an incredible almost-decade. Hope to see you all in all our other endeavors!
Who could forget the second most popular blog post so far this year. Seeing an octopus walk never gets old!
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I came across this amazing video on YouTube showing a species of octopus found in Northern Australia that is adapted to walk on land:
The #3 post so far this year explored how zebra finches reward themselves for singing well:
Dopamine is an important hormone released from neurons involved in reward pathways. Researchers at Cornell University wanted to know if dopamine signaling was involved in how birds learn songs. Their findings, recently published in Science, present evidence that neurons in the brain of zebra finches do in fact decrease dopamine signals when the birds hear an error in their song in comparison to when they sing ‘correctly’. The researchers also found that dopamine signaling was enhanced when the birds corrected a mistake made during a prior attempt.
Sources:
V. Gadagkar, P.A. Puzerey, R. Chen, E. Baird-Daniel, A.R. Farhang, J.H. Goldberg. Dopamine neurons encode performance error in singing birds. Science, 354:1278-82, 2016.
Video from YouTube
“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.” -Cassandra Clare
Well, the cat’s out of the bag. A little over a week ago, Scienceblogs announced to us writers that they no longer had the funds to keep the site operational, and so they would be shutting down. They asked us to keep quiet about this, people didn’t and now you know. As of the end of this month, there will be no new articles here on Scienceblogs, and hence, no more comments of the week or synopses, or a chance to interact here.
So what can you do? Well, the top thing I’d like you to do is support me on Patreon, where I can start posting all the same content I would normally post here, and you can:
It’s the best option I can offer, as I’m already on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and even Google+, and try to respond to as many comments in as many places as I can.
Book cover for my new book: Treknology. Image credit: Voyageur Press / Quarto Publishing Group.
Also, for those of you who want to order an autographed copy of Treknology from me, I have the first copies of the book, mailers and other shipping materials are due to arrive on Tuesday, and then I can head to the post office for pricing on shipping. Expect US copies to run about $30, Canada copies to run about $40, and elsewhere in the world to be somewhere in the $50-$60 range. (Sorry, international folks!) Or, you know, just buy it now from Amazon and don’t wait! (But if you get it from a third-party seller, know that neither me nor my publisher makes any money.) If you want an unbiased opinion of the book, here is the official TrekCore review.
Either way, I’ll have the full and final update next week. So I’m sorry to lose this forum and this archive of articles going back nearly a decade, and especially this bizarre and unique community we’ve built here. But like everything in the Universe, the past is gone and we can only move forward into the future as best we can. So with that said, let’s take our last look back at what this past week has held…
And now, for perhaps the final time, let’s dive on into our Comments of the Week!
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Tomruen, viahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lunar_libration_with_phase_Oct_2007_450px.gif.
From Art Glick on how the near side of the Moon never sees Earth rise or set: “If you were an observer on the Moon, the Earth would hang there eternally in the same exact location, day after day, year after year, century after century. It would never move!”
Yup. I have no disagreement with this, the mild, tiny effects of lunar libration (shown above) aside. In fact, many years ago, I wrote a piece entitled It’s never night on the moon, where I talk about what you’ll see from the lunar surface at various locations and under various conditions. In the end, however, I do mention the one reprieve you’d get from seeing the Earth all lit up:
Image credit: JAXA / NHK, Kaguya / Selene, of a lunar eclipse as the Earth rises over the lunar limb.
During a total lunar eclipse! Pretty beautiful, no matter how you slice it.
Perceived knowledge vs. actual knowledge. Image credit: Justin Kruger and David Dunning, 1999.
From Alan G. on the fight club of reason: “The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger Club is that it’s members aren’t ware they are in the Dunning-Kruger Club.”
You know, this is not only true, but I love the (sarcastic) way that John Cleese, who happens to be friends with David Dunning, puts it.
And if you don’t know, could you admit to yourself that you don’t know, and that you need to take it to a professional? The lack of respect for those who are experts is a symptom of a larger problem, often on display here, that people think they know more than they do, and simultaneously think that bona fide experts know less than they do. So you pick the expert opinions you can find that agree with your opinions, and use that to justify your reasoning. That’s thinking like a lawyer, and that approach is fruitless in science.
The Universe is what it is. It’s up to us to figure it out. If you want to learn, you must be humble before the Universe. Many of you do this; the rest of you can start today if you choose. It’s up to you.
The gaussian curvature in three dimensions can produce interesting two-dimensional effects. If we want our 3D space curved in a particular way, we’d need to look at it from a 4th spatial dimension. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Sam Derbyshire.
From Frank on the curvature of the Universe: “What if Universe is surface of a 4d sphere where 3d surface (space) curved in the 4th dimension (time)?”
Well, there is curvature in the fourth dimension, but the laws of relativity tell you how the relationship between space and time occur. There’s no wiggle-room or free parameters in there. If you want the Universe to be the surface of a 4D sphere, you need an extra spatial dimension. There are many physics theories that consider exactly that scenario, and they are constrained but not ruled out.
A Universe that expands and cools today, like ours does, must have been hotter and denser in the past. Initially, the Big Bang was regarded as the singularity from which this ultimate, hot, dense state emerged. But we know better today. Image credit: NASA / GSFC.
From Steve Blackband on other Big Bangs: “I am struggling with how to think about ‘other big bangs’. There is nothing, not even space or time, then there is our big bang, the expanding universe and outside of that no space and time.”
You are thinking of the Big Bang as meaning “the birth of space and time.” This is no longer the definition of the Big Bang, and it was always an assumption that turned out not to be very good. Here is an article I wrote years ago (before you started reading me, I bet!) that might help clear things up.
Image credit: © 2015 Shaper Helix — II Demo, via http://www.alevelsolutions.com/pure-mathematics.
From Michael Mooney on a math lesson he’s about to get: “So when there is no end to how close the repeating .999 decimal gets to 1, the convention is to call it 1. But no matter how close it gets to 1, it’s still not there yet. Like .999 % of a pie still has an ever-diminishing missing slice gap.”
You know, I remember being unconvinced that 0.99999…. would equal 1, so I set out to test it out. Mathematics is a wonderfully self-consistent system, so you can do this experiment yourself. You don’t need advanced math. In fact, consider this your very, very first algebra lesson.
Imagine we have this repeating decimal, 0.99999…., and we’re going to call that x. Okay? So we can write:
x = 0.999999…. and so on. As many 9s as we can write, and then they go on forever.
Now, let me ask you this: what if you had ten xs all together? In other words, multiply both side of that equation, above, by 10. What do you get?
10x = 9.999999….. and again, so on. So we have two equations: x = 0.999999…. and 10x = 9.999999….
Let’s subtract the first equation from the second equation. Ready?
10x – x = 9.9999999…. – 0.99999999….
So we do the subtraction, and can you see what happens here? The left side just becomes 9x, but the right side becomes… just 9, all on its own!
If 9x = 9, then x = 1.
Now, I had the same question as you, once, but once I learned how to do this proof, there was no more questioning. I had proven it, just as countless others before me had, and countless others after me will. x, which we had defined as 0.99999…. is also provably equal to 1.
The USS Discovery, NCC-1031, is perhaps a very thinly-veiled reference to Star Trek’s ‘Section 31,’ and things could get a lot darker before anyone goes back to being an explorer. Image credit: Star Trek / CBS Press Kit.
From Sinisa Lazarek on Swear Trek: “– we get a first ever “FUCK” word in Star Trek… ever. And that by a Cadet in front of officers. Not only is phrase never spoken in ST universe… but we even get more fucks with 2 other people there. Like ST script was only missing that word, and now we’ll multiply.”
Yeah, Tilly swears. And then others do it, too. Honestly, I didn’t even notice until someone I was watching it with pointed it out. But Tilly is pretty much the audience surrogate: an awkward superfan of everything in the show who gets to be roommates with Michael Burnham. I seriously think Burnham could blow up the entire Earth and Tilly would still be her fan. I am doing my best with this show to “chew on the meat and throw away the bones,” otherwise I think, like many others, I’ll wind up disappointed.
The warrior that Burnham kills is given the traditional Klingon death ritual… and then predictably used as a political tool to start a war. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.
From Denier on the role of the Klingons in episode 5: “Klingons were back to being one dimensional villains who all spoke English and served their regular role to move the plot along. That, more than anything else, made this episode better.”
You know, I did notice this change, and I liked it very much. Hopefully, we’ll see less of the fundamentalist theocrat Klingons speaking Klingon and a lot more of… well, everything else.
Burnham, in the first two episodes alone, gets a fatal dose of radiation poisoning, activates a Klingon probe and kills its guardian, mutinies against and knocks out the Captain, and then kills the Klingon leader. Image credit: Jan Thijs, © 2017 CBS Interactive.
From Anonymous Coward on the end of Scienceblogs: “Ethan, I read both you and Orac here on ScienceBlogs and Orac has just mentioned that ScienceBlogs will soon be shutting down for good at the end of the month. There going to be another place where we can see your article summaries and make discussion like this, other than on Forbes itself?”
Unfortunately, unless you come and join my Patreon (asking at least $1 a month is a lot, I know), there’s nothing else quite like what we’ve been doing here. I used to run startswithabang.com and would consider it again, but I simply don’t have the time to run my own blog and deal with all the hacks and updates that routinely happen on top of all the things I’m creating at this time.
In the final moments of merging, two neutron stars don’t merely emit gravitational waves, but a catastrophic explosion that echoes across the electromagnetic spectrum. Image credit: University of Warwick / Mark Garlick.
From Michael Tiemann on neutron star collisions: “When two neutron stars have been circling each other for 11 billion years, what is the relative velocity of their “collision” when they do collide?”
About a third the speed of light. Pretty impressive, don’t you think?
Geordi’s VISOR from Star Trek: TNG. Image credit: Memory Alpha.
From Gail Farley on a new Treknology that’s been developed quite recently: “Thank you for educating people about technology on Coast to Coast last night and in your book. You stated last night that you were concerned about a technology that can implant memories, and effect the body, including the loss of sight. Please tell me what kind of technology that is, so that I can research it further.”
In 2012, a group at Monash University build a working device to transmit optical information directly to the wearer’s brain, through an implant in the visual cortex. If you want to get even deeper into the real-life science than my book does, you can read the 2016 article: Monash Vision Group’s Gennaris Cortical Implant for Vision Restoration.
We knew that when two neutron stars merge, as simulated here, they create gamma-ray burst jets, as well as other electromagnetic phenomena. But whether you produce a neutron star or a black hole, as well as how much of a UV/optical counterpart is produced, should be strongly mass-dependent. Image credit: NASA / Albert Einstein Institute / Zuse Institute Berlin / M. Koppitz and L. Rezzolla.
From Omega Centauri and Michael Kelsey on the newest LIGO/Virgo/EM discoveries:
“(1) What is the estimate of the NS masses?
(2) How did they come up with the age of the NS system?
(3) What is the estimated rate of mergers per cube a billion light years on a side?
(4) If both NS are near the minimum mass of a NS, can we get a NS rather than BH.
(5) Do we expect of significant gamma-ray burst from a BH NS merger?1) About a solar mass each.
2) Use PSR B1913+16.
3) Not as high as for BH mergers.
4) Yes.
5) Yes.”
You may also really, really appreciate the information I gleaned from the theoretical end from an interview a few days ago with Chris Fryer at Los Alamos. That article, in case you missed it, is here.
The quasar QSO J0842+1835, whose path was gravitationally altered by Jupiter in 2002, allowing an indirect confirmation that the speed of gravity equals the speed of light. Image credit: Fomalont et al. (2000), ApJS 131, 95-183, via http://www.jive.nl/svlbi/vlbapls/J0842+1835.htm.
From CFT on the speed of gravity: “IF gravity traveled at the speed of light, how do you explain the actual orbits of planets around the sun?”
Not that you’ll learn anything from this, but the actual answer is that, in the context of General Relativity, if gravity moved at any other speed, we wouldn’t get the orbits that we see! I wrote an article on the indirect evidence (independent of any gravitational wave detections) that the speed of gravity is equal to the speed of light some time ago, and all that analysis is still valid today.
Since, CFT, you’re such a fan of getting info from “real” experts, you know, experts not named Ethan, maybe you’ll listen to the research of the awesome GR expert Steve Carlip, who wrote up this account of the actual evidence you claim is missing?
The soft capture mechanism installed on Hubble (illustration) uses a Low Impact Docking System (LIDS) interface and associated relative navigation targets for future rendezvous, capture, and docking operations. The system’s LIDS interface is designed to be compatible with the rendezvous and docking systems to be used on the next-generation space transportation vehicle. Image credit: NASA.
From Elle H.C. on kickstarting the saving of Hubble: “Get a Kickstarter-thingy and you might get enough funding by the end of the month.”
Well, let’s do the math on that. The most Kickstartered-thing ever, as far as I know, is Pebble Time, which is a smartwatch company that had a couple of successful Kickstarters. They raised just slightly north of $20 million. Only three things (two of which are Pebble) have crested the $10 million mark, and there are only about a dozen more that are over $5 million.
On the other hand, to boost Hubble would require approximately $500 million, if I’m ballpark-estimating appropriately. You are way better off going to an Elon Musk or a Richard Branson or Roscosmos if NASA won’t do it. That sort of money just doesn’t seem feasible.
This diagram shows the novel 5-mirror optical system of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Before reaching the science instruments the light is first reflected from the telescope’s giant concave 39-metre segmented primary mirror (M1), it then bounces off two further 4-metre-class mirrors, one convex (M2) and one concave (M3). The final two mirrors (M4 and M5) form a built-in adaptive optics system to allow extremely sharp images to be formed at the final focal plane. Image credit: ESO.
From lyle on the oversimplified joke-science that is IFLS: “Further if this article is correct : http://www.iflscience.com/space/telescopes-ground-may-be-cheaper-hubble-shows-why-they-are-not-enough/
“When E-ELT observations start in 2024, the state-of-the-art correction for atmospheric distortion will allow it to provide images 16 times sharper than those taken by Hubble.”
This is the big problem you get when you get your science from not only non-scientists, but non-journalists. They are, over at IFLS, basically news readers and re-writers, and they rarely know (or care) enough to put it in context. I’ve written, recently, about the ELT at length, and it’s true that it will have 16 times the resolution of Hubble at certain wavelengths and for certain classes of observations in the cases where atmospheric distortion can be 100% removed, which is never.
The scientific fact is there are a whole slew of observations, including UV observations and IR observations, that Hubble can make that no ground-based observatory can. Hubble’s lack of atmospheric distortion is incredible, and something no ground-based observatory, even with the best AO there is, can match.
In summary, F IFLS, and please don’t ever expect anything beyond superficial, partially correct information from them.
The possibility of having artificial gravity is tantalizing, but it is predicated on the existence of negative gravitational mass. Antimatter may be that mass, but we don’t yet know, experimentally. Image credit: Rolf Landua / CERN.
From Omega Centauri on the problem of artificial gravity: “Even if anti-matter produces anti-grav, you would need a heck of a lot of it to get 1G. How much mass is needed to create 1G (depends on density, at the average density of about 5 the mass of the earth is needed. Denser matter, and you could get by with less. But, its a huge amount no matter how you do it, and presumably it is also inertial mass, which kind of makes spacecraft difficult to accelerate.”
All true. But I will say that I am much more excited about a problem that it is physically possible to solve than one that isn’t, and antigravitating antimatter would enable that transformation when it comes to artificial gravity. Now, who has the stable white dwarf matter to build your spaceship out of… and the anti-white-dwarf antimatter, too?
Captain Gabriel Lorca aboard the bridge of the Discovery, during a simulated combat mission with the Klingons. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.
From Douglas Robertson on artificial gravity vs. life support: “What I find funny about fictional artificial gravity is when they are experiencing an emergency. All life support is shut down, but they still have gravity.”
Must be a passive system, then. See, not so hard to explain!
Neutron stars, when they merge, can exhibit gravitational wave and electromagnetic signals simultaneously, unlike black holes. But the details of the merger are quite puzzling, as the theoretical models don’t quite match what we’ve observed. Image credit: Dana Berry / Skyworks Digital, Inc.
And finally, from Adam on the origin of gamma rays from the NS-NS merger: “Could the omnidirectional gamma ray bursts be coming from the ejecta themselves? It seems like the process of going from a lump of neutronium to all those heavy elements is a lot like the fission reaction of an atomic bomb – just one the with the mass of 30 to 40 Jupiters.”
I doubt it. The ejecta occur on the timescale of hundreds of milliseconds, but the gamma ray burst occurred 1.7 seconds after the gravitational wave signal arrived, so I don’t think that’s a dealbreaker but I also don’t think that lines up. Moreover, the ejecta come mostly from wind interactions in a disk surrounding the neutron stars, so I also don’t think that’s as likely a source as the ultra-high energies released in the star-star collision. I think it’s likely where the surfaces collide that produces such a high-energy, transient burst, but as with all things science, it’s going to take some additional evidence to know for certain!
Thanks for a great everything, everyone, and we’ll have one final just-for-you article next weekend. See you then!
Here is the 4th most popular post so far this year:
Picture of a komodo dragon by CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Researchers studying komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) at George Mason University discovered 48 previously unknown peptides in their blood that might have antimicrobial properties. Their findings were published in the Journal of Proteome Research. For the largest lizard, these peptides may help prevent the animals from getting infections from their own saliva, which is host to at least 57 species of bacteria. With this number of bacteria, it is easy to understand why they evolved so many defense mechanisms to prevent infections from their own saliva as well as bite injuries during fights with other dragons.
The researchers isolated and synthesized 8 of the peptides and tested their ability to fight infections. Seven of the peptides were found to have antimicrobial activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa as well as Staphylococcus aureus whereas the 8th peptide showed antimicrobial activity only towards P. aeruginosa. Thus, for humans these proteins may pave the way for the development of new treatments for antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains.
Source:
BM Bishop, ML Juba, PS Russo, M Devine, SM Barksdale, S Scott, R Settlage, P Michalak, K Gupta, K Vliet, JM Schnur, ML van Hoek. Discovery of Novel Antimicrobial Peptides from Varanus komodoensis (Komodo Dragon) by Large-Scale Analyses and De-Novo-Assisted Sequencing Using Electron-Transfer Dissociation Mass Spectrometry. Journal of Proteome Research. In Press. doi: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.6b00857
It is hard to believe that I have been sharing my passion for comparative physiology and its application to human and animal health with you for over 7 years now! In reminiscing over the last 7 years, I thought it would be fun to look back at the most popular posts. So, here goes…
The most popular blog post since 2010 featured the adorable Venezuelan poodle moth…
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Posted August 29, 2012:
I was browsing through The Scientist and came across this image of a Venezuelan poodle moth that I could not resist sharing:
Image by: Arthur Anker on flickr. What is interesting about this particular moth is that scientists are trying to figure out what type of moth it is (its phylogeny).
The flickr website by Dr. Arthur Anker, a Zoologist, contains photos of numerous other beautiful butterflies and moths.
My other favorites on his website:
Lymantria alexandrae (Lymantriidae), just look at those antennae:
Chicken worm (caterpillar of Megalopyge sp, Megalopygidae) by Arthur Anker, via Flickr
“We do not realize what we have on Earth until we leave it.” -Jim Lovell
Well, the Scienceblogs comments are still on the fritz, requiring me to manually un-spam them one-at-a-time, but Starts With A Bang! is still going strong with some fabulous stories based on the best knowledge we have! This next week is poised to be a doozy of a fantastic one, as Treknology is out at last (Amazon is having a sale on it today, and my copies arrive on Wednesday), so next weekend I’ll have special instructions for you on how to order autographed copies from me. Also, check out Starts With A Bang on Forbes at 10:01 AM Eastern Time on Monday for the scoop on what promises to be the astronomical story of the year, I promise! Now, let’s take a look back at our stories from the past week:
For those of you who like radio, get up very, very early tomorrow (Monday) morning, and tune into Coast-to-Coast AM at 3 AM EDT / 12 AM PDT, where I’ll be their special guest to talk about science, astrophysics, and of course about the science of Star Trek! With all that on our plate, what more could you ask for? How about our comments of the week!
Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne are your 2017 Nobel Laureates in physics. Image credit: © Nobel Media AB 2017.
From Sinisa Lazarek on the spirit of the Nobel Prize: “I’m actually extremely happy that the Nobel prizes in science are still being given to actual people who are doing something worthwhile and still keeps the spirit of Nobel.”
I think they made a slam-dunk good decision this year as far as the physics prize goes. The whole idea of the Nobel Prize is for the person, people, or discovery that did the most to advance a particular discipline of science/humanities for the good of all people on Earth. It’s very, very hard to argue that the advances made in physics from being able to detect gravitational waves won’t be the greatest advance in astronomy since, perhaps, the launch of Hubble, the first use of multiwavelength astronomy, or even the invention of the telescope. This is truly a game-changer.
And if you’re still a doubter, I very much encourage you to pay extremely close attention to Monday’s news. Seriously.
Graham’s hierarchy of how to argue. (Pyramid format.) Image credit: Paul Graham.
From Michael Mooney on what I find offensive: “Well at least I know now that you rank criticism of your science, as I do, as more offensive than Elle H.C.’s straight out nasty personal insults.”
So we are all free to decide what we find more offensive. On the one hand, we have name-calling. You know, the kind of stuff we were all subject to when we were prepubescent kids and teenagers; the lowest ranks on the pyramid. Sure, it’s the lowest form of argument and the least able to refute an actual argument.
But then there’s what you do. You waltz into a science blog, written by a bona fide scientist, one who is legitimately and independently regarded as one of the best in the world at science communication when it comes to physics, astrophysics, cosmology, and astronomy. And you babble on nonsensically about how it’s all wrong, how we’re all believing in this house-of-cards hoax, and that we don’t know what science is. How we’ve got everything from relativity to quantum physics to astrophysics wrong, and how you know better. With no substance to anything you say, just confident, uneducated, loud ignorance. And when your folly is explained to you, it never occurs to you that the time for you to talk is over, and the time to listen is at hand.
Yes, I get it, physics doesn’t jibe with your way of making sense with the world. Therefore, you think physics is wrong. But it’s not wrong. You are. And although I quite gracefully allow you to shout into the void, you continue to say nothing that contributes productively in any manner, here or anywhere, as far as I can tell. So keep shouting into the void. But every time you threaten to leave, all I do is hope. Because the ship has sailed on me believing you’ll ever be humble enough to question your own ideas and actually learn something.
But every day is a new chance to get it right. Maybe today will be your lucky day. It’s up to you. Good luck. We’re headed into the science thicket now; maybe you’ll enjoy the journey.
Candidate planets from Kepler as of early 2011. Image credit: NASA / Kepler Science Team.
From Another Commenter on the number of planets Kepler missed: “It was a very good start.”
And this is a point that cannot be overstated. Take a look at the image above. Prior to Kepler, those purple points you see the ones up by the “Jupiter” line, were the only types of points we had, for the most part. Thanks to Kepler, we’ve discovered:
The majority of planets appear to be peaked at sizes just a bit larger than Earth (but smaller than Neptune), but that’s also where Kepler was most sensitive. We basically know more about the inner solar systems of all star-types in the Universe than ever before, and Kepler was that tremendous first step in that regard. There is more to find, like medium-sized planets around large stars, the middle-to-outer solar systems, and the smallest, Mercury-sized planets and smaller around everyone. But that takes nothing away from the spectacular science that Kepler actually undertook!
Captain Gabriel Lorca aboard the bridge of the Discovery, during a simulated combat mission with the Klingons. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.
From eric on the reviews of the new Star Trek: ““Black Alert” sounds like something the Wayans Brothers would put on a Star Trek send up.”
I would watch the hell out of that.
In an action-packed first two episodes, Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and Commander Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) have the fight of their lives in the debut of Star Trek: Discovery. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.
From Steve Blackband on his level of Star Trek fandom: “I am the physicist/astronomy nutcase that pushed Neil Armstrong out of the way to get to Nichelle Nichols after all. Very embarrassing.”
This is a story I would actually love to hear. The self-flagellation you must feel you deserve ought to be tremendous… and yet you’re secure enough to own up to it. That’s incredible to come to terms with that. Good on you!
A scanning electron microscope image of a Milnesium tardigradum (Tardigrade, or ‘water bear’) in its active state. Tardigrades have been exposed to the vacuum of space for prolonged periods of time, and have returned to normal biological operation after being returned to liquid water environments. Image credit: Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012).
From Adam on why the spore technology never shows up in Star Trek: “The more I think about the spore drive and the lack of spore drive in any other Star Trek show, the more it feels like a huge plot hole for the series. I’m guessing that the tech is going to be lost at some point, because it’s never seen again, and since all the info for it is self contained on the star ship Discovery. However, we’ve seen countless other civilizations over the various shows, and none of them have this tech either.”
So I’ve got two theories on that: the Orson Scott Card theory and the Wesley Crusher theory. The OSC theory is based on the descolada/recolada storyline from his Ender’s Quartet series. That these spores exist throughout the galaxy, but they are biologically dangerous and need to be modified. We use genetic modification to silence the dangerous part of their genetic makeup, but it renders the “spore drive” unusable.
The Wesley Crusher theory is that the “spore drive” is what the Traveler uses to go throughout space and even time, and when Wesley goes to apprentice for him, that’s what he learns to connect with as well. But it’s a lost art (and science) that only a select few can still connect with.
More likely, it’s just a giant plot hole that they’re digging, and they’re going to need a deus ex machina to get out of it.
Executive producers and actors from’Star Trek: Discovery’ speak onstage during the CBS portion of the 2017 Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour. Image credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images.
From Denier on the end of Commander Landry: “In all seriousness, there was a moment in ST:D when the chief of security was working with Michael to drop the force field to the tardigrade pen, and I thought for half a second: “No big deal. The Chief of Security is far and away the strongest person on board”.”
And after half a second, you realized that you misspelled “dumbest,” which is a pretty high bar considering the level of crazy aboard that ship in general. Clearly nobody cared; she didn’t even get a funeral. You always hate to see a character that you’re told is smart, capable, competent, and so on, act in a way that’s antithetical to that. I personally cringe even more when it’s an underrepresented character, as I feel that’s just supporting the stereotype that, in this case, “women are no good at X.” It’s like the old xkcd comic:
‘How it works’ by Randall Munroe at xkcd.
And that’s just too bad. It wouldn’t have been hard to substitute some dumb, disposable redshirt, and keep one of the three major women characters alive, considering another one (Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou) was killed just two episodes ago. So we’ve got Lilly and Burnham, and they’re roommates, and that’s it for major women aboard the show now.
The worst part? I didn’t even notice that, until a woman I was watching with pointed it out to me.
The warp drive system on the Star Trek starships was what made travel from star to star possible. Image credit: Alistair McMillan / c.c.-by-2.0.
From Dunc on whether Star Trek is scientific nonsense or not: “So, exactly like every other Star Trek then? ST has never really been hard sci-fi – it’s always been filled with sciency-sounding bafflegab and magical technology that has exactly whatever capabilities and limits the writers require at that moment in time (and change wildly from episode to episode).
I mean, I love Star Trek, and I’ve been (re)watching its different incarnations on a more-or-less continuous loop for almost my entire life, but let’s not pretend that this is a radical departure.”
There’s something different about Discovery, though. I’m still struggling to put my finger on it, but the best I’ve got goes something like this:
With Discovery, though, they’re trying to use actual, recent science news as the basis or justification for ideas that only follow if you misinterpret that science. I may not be explaining myself well, but that’s a big difference: from the edge of science with wiggle-room that then imagines new applications, to recent-but-well-understood science that gets twisted to mean something it never meant, and then taken to an extreme that pushes it into the realm of, “hey this is ruled out already given what we know but we’re plowing ahead anyway.” It may be only me who’s having trouble suspending my disbelief for it, but that’s what I’m seeing.
The predictions of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (curves) for the abundances of the light elements, based on the baryon-to-photon ratio (x-axis). The grey bar is that ratio, as observed by WMAP, and the horizontal lines are the observed element abundances. This picture pretty strongly constrains the normal matter density of the Universe in a way that most people here don’t appreciate.
From Sean T on the missing normal matter in the Universe: “The “missing matter” discussed in this post is normal matter. We know from real, actual observations of how things gravitate that we were not seeing all of the normal matter that exists. This WHIM is at least some of that missing normal matter.”
We know how much normal matter is in the Universe, folks. There really isn’t an argument on it: it’s ~5% of the critical density. It can’t be 10%, or 20% or 30%. It definitely can’t be 100%. And if you really want to know, it can’t even be 6%. Why not? The above measurements, from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. If you want to make the light elements in the Universe, the elements we start off with after the Big Bang but before the first stars, you need to run the equations, and they’re dependent on the baryon-to-photon ratio. We count the CMB photons and know how many there are, so that means the only free parameter is the baryon density (i.e., normal matter density) of the Universe.
We observe the Helium-4, Helium-3, Deuterium, and Lithium-7 abundances in the Universe, and they are consistent with a baryon-to-photon ratio that gives the same Universe that WMAP and Planck gave: one with 5% of the Universe’s critical density being baryons. The new “missing matter” found is a part of that 5%. That’s what this discovery is; that’s what it says; that’s what it shows. That’s the story here. Anything else you’ve read into it to the contrary is wrong.
The Standard Model particles and their supersymmetric counterparts. This attempt to solve the hierarchy problem for particle masses predicts a whole new spectrum of particles, none of which have been detected. Image credit: Claire David.
From Frank on the state of the world of physics: “The world of physics may seem bleak now to some but I think we maybe really close to TOE.”
I think the opposite on both counts: I think the world of physics is incredibly bright, and there are so many interesting avenues to investigate. But I think there are many building their way to the dream of a theory-of-everything, and that path is proving quite fruitless. But we all have our own opinions, and you are entitled to yours!
On the other hand, we have three interesting comments about how to be wrong.
When the last puzzle piece doesn’t even fit into the puzzle, you know something is wrong.
From Michael Mooney: ““How To Be Wrong” is very simple. Don’t assume you “know it all” already. Imagine being an unbiased scientist.”
As a scientist, I very clearly and openly don’t assume I know it all, and am very open to challenging every assumption, result, and conclusion out there. But only when the evidence warrants it. In other words, I am biased in the direction that the evidence points.
On the other hand, I can encourage you to look inward and ask yourself those same questions. Has it ever occurred to you that you, as a non-physicist, non-scientist, and non-expert in this arena, don’t know very much about it? That you don’t have anything of value to offer to this discussion? That you should be in the position of closing your mouth and opening your mind, and listening to what those who’ve spent a lifetime studying this have to say about it? And that your vision of an “unbiased scientist” may be an utter abuse of science in and of itself?
From eric: “I’m in the process of teaching my kid lots of games. Like many small children, he doesn’t like to lose. But the more games he plays, the thicker the skin he gets. And the more he does it, the more he thinks about the overall activity rather than the outcome of any specific game. “Daddy won, I’m upset” becomes “Daddy won 6 of the last 10 and I won 4…pretty good” hopefully will become in the future “I have no idea who’s won more games this week. Play on!”
I think that’s a lot like science. People who do a little of it, or who have one single idea they focus on, tend to worry about whether it’s going to ‘win.’ Professional scientists, OTOH, tend more towards the attitude of “hey, 2 of my 50 papers have stood the test of time. Cool!” Or even “what, that paper of mine is still kicking around? I lost track. Who knew?” The activity becomes the focus, rather than the success or failure of any individual effort’s outcome.”
I like this interpretation. It’s not so much “how to be wrong” as it is “how to lose,” where being wrong is a specific form/special case of losing. Don’t be sad for the times you lose; all of us must come to terms with it, as you cannot win all the time. This is a valuable lesson, and should make you appreciate the times you were right (or won) all the more.
From GregH: “1. Thanks Ethan, for STEALING MY IDEA and writing it up better than I could.
2. Interesting that none of the comments here address being wrong. (Including this one.) Sure, it’s epistemology, but….?
3. Paging Dr. Dunning & possibly Dr. Kruger. Dr. Dunning, white courtesy telephone please.”
Hey, if I could invade people’s heads and steal their ideas, I would be a lot more successful than I am. 
An illustration of multiple, independent Universes, causally disconnected from one another in an ever-expanding cosmic ocean, is one depiction of the Multiverse idea. Image credit: Ozytive / Public Domain.
From Anonymous Coward, summarizing what is and isn’t scientific about the multiverse: “It’s not a scientific theory because it can’t be tested as the other known laws of physics seem to preclude any possibility of testing it. But it does fall out as an intriguing consequence of the other bits of theory that do have observational consequences that can and have been successfully tested.”
Boom. You nailed it. I’m glad to see that I have successfully communicated the science of this to at least one person out there.
And I know it’s more than one, because some people seem to actually understand what I’m getting at, and what the purpose (and value) of what I do is. They’re just mostly silent here.
The expanding Universe, full of galaxies and the complex structure we observe today, arose from a smaller, hotter, denser, more uniform state. Alternatives to the Big Bang, like the Steady-State theory, fell out of favor due to the overwhelming observational evidence, but the Steady-State adherents never changed their mind, not until the day they died. Image credit: C. Faucher-Giguère, A. Lidz, and L. Hernquist, Science 319, 5859 (47).
Which is why I appreciate Sean T‘s comment: “…this blog is NOT a scientific journal. It is an attempt to communicate the current scientific consensus, along with other speculative ideas that may prove fruitful, to an audience that is composed of non-experts in the relevant scientific fields. The audience includes fellow physicists, other scientists who are not physicists (I fall into this category), and non-scientists. This type of communication can be very difficult due to the variety of the audience, and I personally think it’s well done, which is why I continue to read Ethan’s blog.
However, much like all science, the topics covered here ALL come with the same caveats — that this is our current best understanding of things and that this understanding might well change as new observations come to light.”
Everything is subject to revision. I have no doubt that if we continue to do science at the rate that we’ve done it over the past few hundred years, then by time the year 3,000 rolls around, we’ll look at much of our modern understanding of things the way we look at Copernicus’ or even Ptolemy’s “Universe” today: as quaint, as the beginnings of science, but full of bad ideas and assumptions that we didn’t even recognize. But we may look at it only as we look at Newton’s: as incredibly good, and fundamentally flawed and limited in a few ways, but super successful for its time and what it did nonetheless.
We are always learning and growing.
The first view with human eyes of the Earth rising over the limb of the Moon. Note how bright the Earth appears in comparison to the Moon. Image credit: NASA / Apollo 8.
And finally, from bone-picker Art Glick on the Apollo 8 ‘Earthrise’ photo: “I have a bone to pick with the person that named Bill Anders Apollo 8 photo “Earthrise”. They clearly did not understand the mechanics of the Earth-Moon system.
The Earth does not “rise” on the Moon. I wonder how many people realize that if you lived on the Moon the Earth would hang in the same spot in the sky eternally. It would go through phases like the Moon does, but it would never change its position.
The only reason that Anders saw the Earth “rise” is because his craft was orbiting the Moon at the time.
To refer to the Earth “rising” from the Moon is just wrong.”
I presume you have the same bone to pick with the person who called it “sunrise” or “moonrise” since the Earth was rotating, not that any of these celestial objects were rising? I assume as well that you object to ISS astronauts claiming to see 16 “sunsets” in a day, since they’re only seeing the same effect over and over again as they go around the Earth?
I can’t tell you who first called it “Earthrise” (I don’t know), but I can give you Bill Anders’ recount of the photo itself. After they came around the Moon for their third orbit, they saw Earth appear over the limb of the Moon.
“I don’t know who said it, maybe all of us said, ‘Oh my God. Look at that! And up came the Earth. We had had no discussion on the ground, no briefing, no instructions on what to do. I jokingly said, ‘well it’s not on the flight plan,’ and the other two guys were yelling at me to give them cameras. I had the only color camera with a long lens. So I floated a black and white over to Borman. I can’t remember what Lovell got. There were all yelling for cameras, and we started snapping away.”
It’s incredible to imagine what that sight must be like. For those three men in 1968, there is no better word than “Earthrise” to describe what they saw. Let them have it; they experienced it and we didn’t. Maybe, someday, it won’t be such an uncommon experience, after all.
Go get your copy of Treknology now, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow for more incredible science and stories here on Starts With A Bang!
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