Category Archives: Science

What it all means

July 19, 2015 6:40 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The big science news of the week was the probe New Horizons passing by the dwarf planet Pluto.  About the most controversial aspect of this mission was whether Pluto should qualify as a planet or needs to be in another category.

Despite all the cheer-leading by NASA and the news media the mission itself doesn’t exactly capture the public imagination.  The probe flew by the Pluto.  It didn’t orbit it even once.  It certainly won’t land on the planet and scoop up Plutonian dirt.  Pluto itself hasn’t proven to be a big surprise either.  It’s still a giant rock covered by snow and ice in the middle of a dark nowhere. The pictures were nice but again nothing unexpected.

So how is this supposed to affect the average human back here on Earth and what if anything can we hope to gain out of it all?

Well, if you said not a hell of a lot then you’re right.  This mission won’t make the price of bread go down or solve the middle east crisis or even get your laundry cleaner.

But what it does do is close the book on the first part of our exploration of this solar system.  We have now done the preliminary exploration on all 8 (or 9) planets that we have.  A task that has taken nearly 60 years to accomplish has been done.  This voyage by itself took nearly a decade and depended largely on precise physics and navigational calculations.  We have now proven conclusively that those can work even in deep space and even by a robot working alone.

The mission itself was done on a shoestring budget.  I think I saw someone mention that a Hollywood blockbuster had a bigger budget than this mission.  The control personnel for the mission came from a University so the experience and know how to do this sort of research is diffusing outside the big government agencies.

No, this was not a big epic mission.  Nothing earth-shaking came out of it.  But it is a crucial step on a road that will one day make this a space faring species and lead us to the next great moment in human history.

Little tiny victories like this is what leads to great accomplishments down the road.

Posted in: life in general, science, technology

Turbulence

June 21, 2015 6:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The weather news reports for Texas have been unabashedly positive these last few months.  The local newspaper report that all our reservoirs, once empty and bleak holes in the ground, have now replenished and we can declare the drought over.

Of course it’s a totally different story out west.  California faces the prospect of another dust bowl summer and perhaps the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of farmland.  The rest of the nation faces higher food prices as a consequence.

Four years ago it was the exact opposite.  A neat little online tool can help you visualize it

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/MapsAndData/ComparisonSlider.aspx

While I’m glad that our condition has improved, I worry that the overall picture is slowly but surely deteriorating.  California will recover in time.  Of that I’m sure.  But these see-saw changes in the weather are leaving deep scars in nature’s ability to heal itself and to withstand the abuse that we throw at it.

Nature can put up with a lot and given time it can come back stronger than before but with the increased demands that we are putting on the planet I am not sure that the damage in some of the more marginal areas will heal this time.  As these marginal areas fail to heal and become wastelands other areas that were fruitful become marginal and we stress them even more as our material needs increase.

It’s a vicious downward spiral that has the potential of eventually becoming self-sustaining and unstoppable.  It to be arrested or even reversed and given time and conscious effort it can be.  But the time and the ability of our species to affect a positive change is rapidly dwindling.

These harsh flood and drought patterns in our weather cycle are just the beginning of what could be catastrophic times to come.  if we do nothing then this could become our normal way of life.

 

Posted in: science, speculation, weather

The mythos of science

March 29, 2015 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We were having a discussion on Facebook the other day.  The discussion centered on a news article about how complicated the new view that western medicine now had concerning cholesterol.

The new view is that the science is not just a little but very inconclusive about cholesterol’s role in heart disease.  I’ve discussed previously how science has changed its position on sodium in a previous post.  Now here is another science “fact” that is seemingly disappearing right before our eyes.

The science doesn’t annoy me all that much.  Science is a search for knowledge using experimentation and hypotheses.  Science can and often does change all the time as new facts are uncovered and old theories have to be brushed up or even overturned with new evidence.

What annoys me however is what non-scientists do with science.

We’ve taken to making public policy using science as a reason for making drastic changes in lifestyles, in the way our economy works, in the way that we perceive the world.  Changes that are not always so benign.  We make these changes based on ideas that we only half understand or that we totally don’t understand and we do so with the assurance that what we’re doing is correct.

I find that troubling to say the least.  Not just for the fact that sometimes these ideas are wrong but also that we tend to imbue these ideas with an almost godlike certitude.  Science says that this idea is correct, therefore we will pass this law based on that and any who doubt this law, doubt science and are therefore wrong.

Of course if later on the science turns out to be wrong there is no recantation, no mea culpa.  In fact sometimes government will tenaciously hang on to outdated ideas even though now the science says it’s wrong.

I wish we could let science take its time and do the science properly rather than prodding it for results and jumping on the least little rumor and declaring it fact.

So far the consequences haven’t been too bad but I fear someday we will make public policy on a wrong assumption and we will pay dearly for it.

Posted in: myths, science

How late is it?

January 26, 2015 6:32 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last week a relic from a past age made its presence felt once again.  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) moved the doomsday clock forward to 3 minutes before midnight.  For those too young to remember the cold war, the BAS, first introduced the Doomsday Clock in 1947 as a way to inform the public of their belief of how close to a global disaster that we were at.

My watch, set nowhere near to Doomsday.

My watch, set nowhere near to Doomsday.

Over the decades the Doomsday Clock has moved forward or backwards depending on the combined opinions of the BAS governing board primarily with regards to the Cold war.  Recently however the BAS has expanded its scope to include such things as terrorism and global warming as possible factors that may lead to a global disaster.

I have to wonder however if the Doomsday Clock is still relevant or even all that accurate.  The governing board of the BAS has stated that the clock is not meant to track all the everyday ups and downs of the world situation but meant to track overall trends.  Not so much a clock but maybe a barometer or perhaps even a farmer’s almanac of doom.

The Clock has two problems.  Firstly, the global situation can change so quickly sometimes.  Sometimes these changes are substantial and the Clock misses these.  I know that they want to predict the overall threat of a global disaster occurring but minimizing or even disregarding these changes makes the clock less accurate.

Secondly the Clock has an image problem.  The general public has become somewhat immune to the Clock’s dire predictions over the years and announcements from the BAS are treated as pretty blasé and unimportant.

If the BAS intends the Clock to be more impactful, then they have to announce the meetings to change the time beforehand and make the deliberations public to let the general population know what they are thinking.

Short little notes like the ones that they currently release cause a flurry of news activity for a few days or weeks but overall they do nothing to affect change.

Really if they intend the Clock to mean anything then they need to change the way that they present the information to the public.

Posted in: current events, politics, science, thought

changing the world

April 1, 2014 6:52 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Literally.

Back in school, engineering students would sometimes gather late at night and discuss their pet projects.  Pipe dreams, flights of fancy, or just whimsical notions.  Aerospace engineers dream of new planes, mechanical engineers of new contraptions and civil engineers of reshaping the land.  Most of these projects never come to anything.  We outgrow these ideas and turn to more practical matters.

But sometimes, some engineers keep these dreams going and sometimes these dreams are picked up by artists and writers and get expanded upon.  The prime example of this was Atlantropa, a plan to stretch a hydroelectric dam across the straits of Gibraltar.  Blocking off the Atlantic would lower the Mediterranean sea.  Thousands of square miles of new land would be ‘created’ along the coastlines.  A massive lake would spring into existence in the middle of the Sahara desert by diverting a couple of rivers and a new prosperous land would appear in north Africa.  This plan persisted from the twenties till well into the fifties.  Even though today it is the considered opinion that this would have been a huge environmental disaster if it had been implemented, the idea of changing the world in such a literal and drastic way is popular among some writers and engineers.

I also considered several of these type of projects but my speculation turned more towards space and specifically to terraforming, the deliberate use of engineering and science to turn a planet into something resembling earth.  One night in a study carrel some friends and  I hatched a mad idea that I would later expand upon on my own.

Professional engineers and scientists have seriously pondered terraforming, making computations and proposing solutions.  Mars has been judged as having the best chance of being terraformed.  Mars has the most conditions that are judged as favorable for becoming a second home to humanity.  Venus is another contender but has more grave problems.

The problem with most terraforming scenarios is that they don’t work on human time scales.  The most ambitious of these plans nudges and lightly prods at Mars and produces marginal results in about 100,000 years.  Future humans could expect to walk on the surface of Mars without respirators and wearing full parkas in the freezing and dim perpetual twilight of a distant midday sun.   Most of their lives would be spent in underground tunnels and future Martian generations could never return to Earth due to the difference in gravity.

Could you imagine all of humanity fixed on a single goal for a hundred thousand years with such a dubious prize at the end?  Me neither.

A more radical, some might say dangerous or even mad approach is required.

Cataclysm Induced terraforming.  Using what would normally be considered mega scale disasters to induce carefully regulated changes and alter the environment to suit humanity’s needs.

First we define the problems.

Mars is:

  • cold
  • has virtually no atmosphere
  • has no magnetic field
  • has a limited amount of water

on the other hand Venus is:

  • hot
  • has a literally crushing and toxic atmosphere
  • has no magnetic field

In general terms these neighbors of ours fall into the edges of the “Goldilocks zone”  The distance away from the sun that can sustain life as we know it.  Most of their problems stem from their general position with relation to the Sun.

Mars, at the cold end of the zone, lost its internal heat and the geothermal power to help keep it warm.  Possibly this also ended its magnetic field.  Without this magnetic protection solar winds then ravaged the atmosphere and surface and have been slowly ripping bits of atmosphere away for millions of years.

Venus, at the hot end of the zone, saw its liquid water evaporate into the atmosphere and mix with airborne sulfur to create dense and impenetrable clouds of sulfuric acid in its upper atmosphere.

At first blush it would seem that the solution would be to swap these planet’s positions.  But that would not work.  Mars would become a blasted hot rock like Mercury and Venus would slowly grow cold and resemble some of the Jovian moons.

Rather both planets need to come closer to Earth’s orbit.  Mars a little closer in than Earth is and Venus a little farther out than its current position.  In essence we would become the fourth planet out from the Sun.

Planetary orbits are fairly easy to calculate.  Mostly they involve the planet’s mass, speed, and the Sun’s pull upon these bodies.  Altering these orbits would involve the use of some errant mass (such as a large asteroid or comet) or a massive thermonuclear device applied in the correct location and time.

Altering the path of a large comet to strike Mars would also have the benefit of introducing water and organic materials into the planet.  Altering a comet’s path isn’t as hard as it sounds.  Satellites have already orbited asteroids and comets and have even landed on an asteroid.  Guiding a satellite with a small nuclear charge to the proximity of a comet and then detonating it would serve to alter its path.

Venus has some bigger problems.  The atmosphere has to be thinned out.  Moving the planet back from its current position will help solve some of that.  With less energy entering the system some of the particles in the atmosphere will begin to settle over time.

We could speed the process up by constructing giant tanker ships to siphon the upper atmosphere sulfuric acid clouds and then transport them to Mars.  Once there the tankers would be deliberately crashed onto Mars.  The resultant combination of the iron oxide on the planet surface with the sulfuric acid would yield Iron Sulfate salt and water and of course the crash would inject massive amounts of energy into the atmosphere helping to warm the planet and release sub-surface water and carbon dioxide locked in the planet’s soil.

As conditions improve on both planets we could introduce living agents to speed up the terraforming process.  Extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive in extreme environments.  They have been found living underground at great depth and pressure, in acidic pools near volcanic vents, in Antarctica enduring extreme cold, at high elevations in the atmosphere and even in nuclear reactors.

Mars would benefit from blue-green algae (actually a bacteria) that thrives in cold areas and only needs water and carbon dioxide to grow.  This would begin changing the atmosphere to Oxygen.  Oxygen itself is a very transformative element (see the great oxygenation event in Earth’s history).

Venus would benefit from bacteria that dine on sulfur compounds and re-release them as solid waste.  This would help thin the atmosphere more and set the stage for future waves of microorganisms to step in.

The most serious problem that these planets share is the lack of a magnetic field.  Cosmic radiation is a deadly killer and our magnetic field has shielded us from this.

One suggestion for Venus is that if the planet’s slow rotation could be sped up then a magnetic field could be induced.  This would be done by guiding large asteroids into close orbit.  The “drag” from these would pull on the planet and make the rotation speed up.

For Mars the solution would be more direct.   Mars lost its magnetic field when its internal heat diminished and all geothermal power failed.  This would have to be restarted by direct intervention.  Deep drilling projects are already feasible and advanced planning could come up with a design for a deep drilling self piloted vehicle that would make its way to the planet’s core to deposit and explode a large nuclear charge deep inside the planet to re-liquify the core.  This would also provide the planet with radioactive materials for its core to continue the geothermal process.  This would have the side benefit of emptying out all our nuclear arsenals and help dispose of nuclear waste materials on Earth.

Now does this sound like the craziest thing you’ve ever heard?  Well consider the Dyson sphere.  A plan by a British physicist to create an impossibly gigantic metal sphere around the Sun and basically live on the inside of the sphere.  Or plans to “ignite” Jupiter and create a second Sun in our solar system with the purpose of turning all of Jupiter’s moons into livable planets.

If we sit down and consider the fact that the current planet we live on has increasingly limited resources and that our population just keeps growing and expects a higher living standard then the need to have a second or even a third home becomes if not apparent at least something worth considering.

We need to do something if not here on Earth then some place else.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: future, ideas, science, thought

the black cauldron of science

March 26, 2014 6:56 AM , 2 Comments ,

“Can you find my lost shoes?”

“Do you have 24 hour a day video monitoring over my cheating boyfriend’s house?”

“Is there treasure buried under my farm?”

I get these questions all the time.  People seem to be under the impression that there are squadrons of satellites overhead and that they watch each and every one of us with minute detail every minute of every day.  What’s more these satellites can see everything.

I blame Hollywood for part of it.

We’re not quite there yet.  But this post really isn’t about the dangers of the surveillance state.  I will save that for another day.  It has more to do with the public’s relationship with science and the perception that science is the modern-day equivalent of magic.

It really isn’t a modern phenomena either.  Particularly in our country’s history we’ve fallen under the sway of science’s siren call.  Look at the 19th century traveling medicine show, or all the quack applications of electricity or radiation (electropathy, the X-ray shoe sizer, magnetic therapy).

In the middle ages we had the promise of alchemy and magic to capture the public’s imagination and promise solutions to even our most conventional problems.

Seems that little has changed.  The general public is little interested in the inner workings of science or magic.  Just as long as it works, they’re satisfied.

If you look at the above examples you see problems and concerns that really don’t need science to address.  The public could easily solve or sidestep these problems themselves but instead they choose to try to find the easy and convenient way out.

I suppose what really irks me about this attitude is that there is a total lack of understanding about the mechanics of science.  Not only that but there is a total lack of desire to understand the mechanics.  This is more than just willfully ignorant, it’s dangerous.

This sets the public up for all manner of abuse, fraud, and manipulation.

In my line I run into this problem quite a bit.  “Companies” based out of basements or boiler rooms and promising to locate oil, gold, and other valuable resources underground for clients and then collecting hefty fees and disappearing.

Not only damaging to the client who just wasted money but also damaging to companies that do honest work.

I tell people to take the time to double-check these promises and try to teach and inform them about what we can and cannot do with our technology.  I can’t outright call these other companies frauds and con-men but I do tell these potential clients to ask for references, to read up on the subject, and to just use common sense.

I don’t expect every person to become a scientist or read science journals but I would hope that they would use a little more common sense and look for the practical solution rather than the easy way out.

Posted in: culture, myths, science, thought

The numbers of life

February 22, 2014 6:59 AM , 2 Comments ,

Have you ever read a book or a poem or listened to a song or looked at a painting and thought to yourself how perfect it is?  Have you ever looked at a landscape and pondered that it somehow resonates with you somewhere deep inside just because it is the way it is?

I don’t mean that these things are just pleasant to contemplate but that the way that these things are put together (whatever it is) are for lack of another word, perfect?

Well things like the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio do exist in nature and it seems many natural phenomena and living things use these ratios.  Life seems to be able to express itself using math in various wonderful ways.

But I want to focus more on human arts.  The way that you are sometimes reading a book and you read a passage and you stare at a sentence and marvel at the way it is put together.  Every word carefully chosen, the structure just right.  When you finish reading it the result is poetic or even melodic to your mind.  Any change, any word substitution would ruin it and the result would seem off-balance.

I remember a sci-fi show years ago where an alien civilization came into contact with humans and were amazed at our music as they had no such concept of their own.  They were a culture totally devoted to math.  They valued the music not for the song contents but for the mathematical expression of the musical notes.  To them this was a new way to appreciate numbers.

I sometimes wonder that if we were to express novels, or poems in some mathematical fashion that well written works would come out as well written and beautifully complex mathematical equations that balanced out.

Perhaps then maybe we too can be expressed as mathematical equations.  Maybe if we were able to express our lives in terms of numbers and equations we could clearly see what was unbalanced or wrong and take steps to correct it.  Would it be that easy?  Would we even be happy if we knew how to do this?  Or would we continue to live life as we have previously done so because to us the equation seems perfect no matter what the numbers say.

Posted in: art, prose, science, thought

Energy

June 3, 2013 1:30 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The other day I was at the Natural History museum with my friend Rebecca.  We were in the hall of energy looking at all the exhibits.  We came upon an exhibit designed to show the amount of power that gasoline contains.  The idea is that you turn a handle as quickly as possible and the experiment will tell you how much energy you expended in drops of gasoline.  She got 2 drops of gasoline.

No, it doesn’t mean that she was weak, that was actually quite good.  It does show however the amount of energy stored in gasoline, and that’s the problem.  Gasoline has one of the highest energy densities around (about 36 Megajoules per Liter(MJ/L)).  This is the amount of energy stored per volume of space.

That amount of energy has revolutionized the way we live in the US.  It means that any time that you want you can pack up and move across a continent in a couple of days.  A journey that once took up to 6 months.  So amazing that it’s now just taken for granted.  A truly unappreciated wonder of the age.

Not easy to replace.  If you look at the available alternatives you get depressed.  Batteries?  4.32 MJ/L.  Propane?  26 MJ/L.  Nuclear power?  1.55 billion MJ/L.  But who wants to pack a nuclear reactor in your car?

We have had a temporary reprieve in gas prices due to hydraulic fracturing (fraccing) but that is not a permanent solution to dwindling hydrocarbon reserves.  In a few decades we will again see spikes in energy prices.

Ideally we would see some sort of wireless transmission of energy to receivers of vehicles that could continuously charge batteries and keep them running.  Barring that you would probably want some sort of hyper efficient solar power cells or extremely efficient battery that could take massive charges in limited spaces.

Future’s almost here folks.  If we don’t prepare for it you might want to take up walking as a sport now before it becomes a necessity.

Posted in: science