Science!
-
“If to judge by our own behavior, it seems to me that the likeliest explanation is that civilizations develop the technologies that destroy them. There’s a length of time during which a culture is still careful – for example, not to get into a nuclear war. But consider that if the Nazis had developed nuclear weapons, human history might have led to mass destruction. And there are, of course, asteroids and there’s global warming and plenty of other dangers. The technological window of opportunity might be very small. Sails like these are launched, but they no longer have anyone to broadcast back to.” ‘We are primitive’ In other words, to Enrico Fermi’s paradox – “Where is everybody? – you reply: “Dead.” “Definitely. Most of them. Our approach should be an archaeological one. In the same way we dig in the ground to find cultures that no longer exist, we must dig in space in order to discover civilizations that existed outside the planet Earth.” Isn’t it easier, and therefore more scientific, to assume that we are alone until it’s proved otherwise? “No. Anyone who claims that we are unique and special is guilty of arrogance. My premise is cosmic modesty. Today, thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, we know that there are more planets like Earth than there are grains of sand on all the shores of all the seas. Imagine a king who manages to seize control of a piece of another country in a horrific battle, and who then thinks of himself as a great, omnipotent ruler. And then imagine that he succeeds in seizing control of all the land, or of the entire world: It would be like an ant that has wrapped its feelers around one grain of sand on a vast seashore. It’s meaningless. I assume that we are not the only ants on the shore, that we are not alone.” That’s speculation. You don’t know that for certain. “The search for extraterrestrial life is not speculation. It’s a lot less speculative than the assumption that there is dark matter – invisible matter that constitutes 85 percent of the material in the universe. The dark matter hypothesis is part of the mainstream of astrophysics – and it is speculation. Life [elsewhere] in the universe is not speculation, for two reasons: (a) We exist on Earth; and (b) There are a great many more places that have physical conditions similar to Earth. Science contains many examples of hypotheses that haven’t yet been borne out by observations, because science progresses on a basis of anomalies, on a basis of phenomena that aren’t amenable to conventional explanations.” But there’s a vast difference between the search for dark matter and the search for extraterrestrial life. You wouldn’t have been interviewed on “Good Morning America” about an article dealing with dark matter. “Because there’s extensive science-fiction literature about contact with advanced civilizations, and not about dark matter. So what? Most scientists talk about a search for primitive life, but there’s a taboo on the search for intelligent life. Maybe I don’t understand that. After all, the only place where primitive life exists, namely Earth, also has intelligent life – if we’re actually intelligent. Our science is not healthy. I asked a scientist who’s researching objects in the Kuiper belt, a senior astronomer who discovered a large number of the objects there, if he had discovered changes in their brightness originating in artificial light. He replied, ‘Why search? There’s nothing to search for, it’s clear that their brightness will change like light that’s reflected back naturally from the sun.’ “If you’re not ready to find exceptional things, you won’t discover them. Of course, every argument needs to be based on evidence, but if the evidence points to an anomaly, we need to talk about an anomaly. Who cares if this anomaly appeared or did not appear in science-fiction books? I don’t even like science fiction.” Come on, now. You don’t like science fiction? “No. When I read a book that contradicts the laws of nature, it bothers me. I like literature and I like science, but the combination bothers me.” A raw, telescopic image of Oumuamua. The first visitor in history from outside our solar system? ESO / O.Hainaut So as a boy you didn’t read “Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke? Because it really recalls the encounter with Oumuamua. “No. What occupied me were the basic problems of life.” The origin of life? Its distribution in the universe? “Life itself, our life as human beings. I read books of philosophy, mainly existentialism. I was born in a moshav, and every afternoon I collected eggs and on weekends I would drive the tractor into the hills, to read there. I loved nature. I liked being alone. I don’t have a footprint on the social networks. I think of ideas when I’m alone in the shower. And I never thought about being famous. I wrote a scientific article that was published in a scientific journal. I didn’t even issue a press release. Two bloggers found the article in an archive, and it went viral.” And how did you feel about being a viral scientist? The report about your piece was obviously the most popular space article in the past year. “I took advantage of the media exposure to explain the uncertainty of the scientific process. The populist movements in the United States and Europe rest in part on the fact that the public has lost faith in the scientific process. That’s why people deny global warming, for example. One of my interviewers in Germany said, ‘There are scientists who maintain that it’s a mistake to go public when you’re not yet certain.’ Those scientists think that if we reveal situations of uncertainty, we won’t be believed when we talk about climate change. But the lack of credibility is due precisely to the fact that we show the public only the final product. If a group of scientists closet themselves in a room, and then emerge to deliver a lecture on the result as though to students, people won’t believe them – because they won’t have seen the doubts, they won’t have seen that there weren’t enough data in the earlier stages. “The right way is to persuade the public that the scientific process is a normal human activity, that it’s no different from what a police detective does or a plumber who comes to fix a drainpipe. Scientists are considered an elite, because they themselves create that ivory tower artificially. They say, ‘The public doesn’t understand, so there’s no need to share with them. We’ll decide among ourselves what’s right, and then we’ll tell the politicians what needs to be done.’ But then the populist politician says, ‘Only the elite say that, they are hiding other things from us.’ Because there’s a leap to the stage of conclusions and policy. The differences of opinion in the scientific community are what lend humanity to the scientific process, and humanity lends credibility.” If we do actually discover that we’re not alone in the universe, what effect would that discovery have on our life, do you think? “A huge effect. They will probably be more advanced than we are, given that our technology developed only recently. We will be able to learn a great deal from them, about technologies that were developed across millions and billions of years. And it could be that this is the reason we haven’t yet identified extraterrestrial intelligent life: because we are still primitive life that doesn’t know how to read the signs. As soon as we leave the solar system, I believe we will see a great deal of traffic out there. Possibly we’ll get a message that says, ‘Welcome to the interstellar club.’ Or we’ll discover multiple dead civilizations – that is, we’ll find their remains.” And that will be the good news? Because, if there are a lot of civilizations more developed than ours that were liquidated or that liquidated themselves, that’s not a good sign for the future. “It will be an excellent sign. It will give us second thoughts about what we are doing here and now, so that we will not share the same fate. We need to comport ourselves much more decently and less militantly with one another, to cooperate, to prevent climate change and to settle in space. That should lead to a good place. The basic question is whether people are good, at the foundation.” And what’s the answer, in your view? “I believe they are. As soon as it becomes clear that there really have been many civilizations that have become extinct, I believe that people will learn the right lesson. And if we discover remnants of advanced technologies, they will prove to us that we are only at the start of the road; and that if we don’t continue down that road, we will miss a great deal of what there is to see and experience in the universe. Imagine if cavemen had been shown the smartphone you’re using to record me. What would they have thought about this special rock? Now imagine that Oumuamua is the iPhone, and we are the cavemen. Imagine scientists who are considered the visionaries of reason among the cavemen looking at the device and saying, ‘No, it’s just a rock. A special rock, but a rock. Where do you come off claiming it’s not a rock?’” -
@Stockcar86 that's awesome. Makes sense that if we were to get evidence of life outside our solar system, it would most likely be in the form of a probe the same way we send probes out to investigate shit.
-
How chemistry, specifically the creation of helium hydride, allowed the universe as we know it to exist.
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/dec/21-when-the-cosmos-started-to-cook
-
-
-
Good article on 1080 use
1080 debate: time to face reality
The University of Auckland's Dr Cate Macinnis-Ng makes a case for why we can't leave our vulnerable native species to fend for themselves.
-
A, longish read but a cool demonstration of “the full process of evolution by natural selection," connecting all the dots from genes to physical traits to environments.
The Wild Experiment That Showed Evolution in Real Time
By placing wild mice in large outdoor enclosures, an ambitious team of scientists has illustrated the full process of natural selection in a single study.
-
@Stockcar86 said in Science!:
Great thread on megafauna extinctions
Tl;dr it wasn't the climate that killed them it was us
On my reading list is American Serengeti, the animals that went extinct in America are interesting. It’s thought the short faced bear was so terrifying it might have held back humans from crossing over the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska
-
Rare black panther confirmed in Kenya
The extremely rare female cat has melanism, a condition in which the body produces an excess of pigment.
-
-
@Stockcar86 said in Science!:
Science-adjacent
These people are real - it is not satire
From hyperbaric oxygen chambers to HumanChargers: welcome to the wellness revolution
ALEX BEER38. Photographer and model at Select Model Management5.55-6.45am I wake up and immediately rehydrate. Your body is the most absorbent after you sleep, so the first thing you put in it is the most important. I have a glass of Rebel Kitchen raw coconut water (you should be drinking slightly p
Some excerpts from the article
...
...I'm not saying this method is the correct way to do things, but I wonder about this myself sometimes. There's loads of research out there, but time is really the only thing they can't fully replicate. Technology is everywhere, most people have a device within a foot of them, if not on them 24/7 these days. Will there be any long term effects .. ?
-
-
-
-
VANTABLACK!
Here's What Happens When You Shine A Laser On The Blackest Material Ever Made
This new material is so black, scientists can't even measure it. In fact, it barely reflects any light at all.
This is a highly unusual property for most substances. Normally, when you shine a laser on a material, you can see the light from the laser drift across it as it reflects back at you.
This is how our eyes can see the colors that make up the world around us.
But when engineers from British company Surrey NanoSystems trace a laser over the blackest material ever, the light disappears
Where does the light go? Basically, it gets trapped inside the material.
Vantablack, as the material is called, is made by tightly packing carbon nanotubes — rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair — so close together that light goes in, but can't escape.
Surrey NanoSystems made the original Vantablack back in 2014, which they said absorbed 99.96% of the light that hit it.
But this new version of Vantablack (which we first heard about from ScienceAlert) is so black that their machines aren't powerful enough to measure its darkness.
Vantablack is mainly being used in research applications now, so you can't, say, buy a can of it to paint your walls with.
But that would be cool. Let us know if they ever start doing that.
American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains: Flores, Dan: 9780700624669: Amazon.com: Books
Tremarctinae - Wikipedia
Here's What Happens When You Shine A Laser On The Blackest Material Ever Made
