B24-ScienceB.txt

Graham L. Kendall
Modified 1/7/2009
Email grahamkendall74135@yahoo.com
I am found on IRC Efnet/Undernet/Dalnet as glk
Files found at http://www.grahamkendall.net/
All are free to use any of this material without limit.
*******************************************************************************
===
On January 8 in 1942, cosmologist Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, England,
"300 years after the death of Galileo," as he points out at his website. He
attended Oxford, studying physics, then earned his Ph.D. in cosmology at
Cambridge. By his 21st birthday, he had been diagnosed as having ALS (Lou
Gehrig's disease), or motor neurone disease. Despite his disability, confining
him to a wheelchair and forcing him to rely on mechanized speech, Hawking
became a research fellow, worked at the Institute of Astronomy, and in 1973
joined the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He became Lucasian professor of math in
1979. Hawking is celebrated for his work on unifying General Relativity with
Quantum Theory. His 3 popular science books are: A Brief History of Time,
Black Holes & Baby Universes & other Essays, and The Universe in a Nutshell.
Although some rationalists have been disappointed in his
tendency to use the term "god" too loosely as a metaphor, Hawking has made it
clear he does not believe in a personal god.
łAll that my work has shown is that you don't have to say that the way the
universe began was the personal whim of God.˛?
-- Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)
==
Ironically, the name Neander is a classical version of Neumann, which means
"new man." Even more ironic is the way the "New Man" Valley received its
name. In the mid 1600s, a young man named Joachin Neander settled in
Dusseldorf, Germany as rector of the Latin school. While suspended from
teaching during some disagreements with the Reformed church, he spent a great
deal of time walking in the nearby river valley and writing hymns. Apparently,
he spent so much time in that pleasant valley near Dusseldorf, it was later
named for him. His hymns were published and some, like the following verse,
are sung today.
==
In 1851, Foucault's Pendulum experimentally proved that the Earth rotates on
its axis.
==
Black holes came before galaxies claim scientists
The universe's equivalent of whether the chicken came first or the egg has
been solved by astronomers who have concluded that black holes predate galaxies.
Most if not all galaxies, including our own the Milky Way, are believed to
have massive black holes at their cores.
But did the black holes come first, helping to build galaxies by pulling
material towards them, or did they arise in the centre of already formed
galaxies?
This question has long preoccupied scientists but new research focusing on the
first billion years of the universe's history, indicates the former is most
likely to be true.
"It looks like the black holes came first," said Dr Chris Carilli, from the US
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, who took part in the study. "The evidence
is piling up."
Earlier studies had revealed an intriguing link between the masses of black
holes and the central "bulges" of stars and gas in galaxies.
Generally, the black hole's mass was seen to be about 1,000th that of the mass
of the surrounding galactic bulge.
This indicated an "interactive relationship" between the black hole and the
bulge. What was not clear was whether one grew before the other, or whether
they grew together.
New radio telescope observations reaching back almost to the birth of the
first galaxies may now have answered that question.
Radio waves received from these galaxies and travelling at the speed of light
were emitted only about a billion years after the Big Bang which started the
universe.
These young distant galaxies had much larger black holes in relation to their
bulge mass than older and closer galaxies.
"The implication is that the black holes started growing first," said Dr
Fabian Walter, another of the scientists from the Max-Planck Institute for
Radioastronomy in Germany.
The findings were presented at the American Astronomical Society's annual
meeting in Long Beach, California.
The next challenge is to work out how the black hole and the bulge affect each
other's growth, said the astronomers.
Powerful new telescopes now under construction will help to unravel the
mystery, said Dr Carilli.
He added: "To understand how the universe got to be the way it is today, we
must understand how the first stars and galaxies were formed when the universe
was young.
"With the new observatories we'll have in the next few years, we'll have the
opportunity to learn important details from the era when the universe was only
a toddler compared to today's adult."
---
Black Holes Preceded Galaxies, Discovery Suggests
Astronomers may have solved acosmic chicken-and-the-egg
problem: Which came first galaxies or thesupermassive black holes in their
cores?
For severalyears now, researchers have known that galaxies and black holes
musthave co-evolved, with budding galaxies feeding material to a growing
blackhole while the immense gravity of the black hole generated in its
vicinitytremendous radiation that in turn powered star formation. But the
scientistshadn't pegged the starting point.
"Itlooks like blackholes came first. The evidence is piling up," said Chris
Carilli ofthe National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico. Carilli
presented histeam's findings here today at the 213th meeting of the American
AstronomicalSociety.
Previousstudies of nearby galaxies revealed an intriguing link between the
masses ofthe black holes at their centers and the mass of the central"bulge"
(a mass of tightly packed stars and gas) in the galaxies:The black hole's mass
is always about one one-thousandth the mass of thesurrounding bulge.
The ratiois the same for galaxies of all ages and sizes, whether the central
black holeis a few million or many billions of times the mass of our sun.
"Thisconstant ratio indicates that the black hole and the bulge affect each
others'growth in some sort of interactive relationship," said study team
memberDominik Riechers of Caltech. "The big question has been whether one
growsbefore the other or if they grow together, maintaining their mass
ratiothroughout the entire process."
To helpanswer this question, Carilli, Riechers and the rest of their team used
the VeryLarge Array radio telescope in New Mexico and the Plateau de
BureInterferometer in France to peer back to near the beginning of the
universe,thought to be 13.7 billion years ago, when the first galaxies were
forming.
"Wefinally have been able to measure black-hole and bulge masses in
severalgalaxies seen as they were in the first billion years after the Big
Bang, andthe evidence suggests that the constant ratio seen nearby may not
hold in theearly universe," said study team member Fabian Walter of the
Max-PlanckInstitute for Radioastronomy in Germany. "The black holes in these
younggalaxies are much more massive compared to the bulges than those seen in
thenearby universe."
The upshot:"The implication is that the black holes started growing
first,"Walter said.
The nextpiece to place in the puzzle will be to figure out exactly how black
holes andcentral bulges affect each others' growth and how the bulges
eventually racepast the black holes to become more massive.
"Wedon't know what mechanism is at work here, and why, at some point in
theprocess, the 'standard' ratio between the masses is established,"
Riecherssaid.
Newtelescopes currently in the works, including the Expanded Very Large Array
andthe Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, will be key tools in
solvingthis mystery, Carilli said.
==
Milky Way 'bigger than thought'
Our galaxy is much bigger than once thought, according to research presented
at a major astronomy meeting this week.
The results suggest the Milky Way is roughly the same size as Andromeda, the
largest galaxy in our local group.
What is more, it is moving 15% faster than earlier predictions.
The greater mass means that future collisions with nearby galaxies could
happen sooner than thought, according to the researchers.
==
http://www.interactmath.com   lessons
==
Gas law   
P*V=n*R*t   R= 0.08205)   t in kelvins   n=moles    p=atmospheres 
v=liters
==
Scientistswere hot on the trail this year of a mysterious "force" called
darkenergy that has been expanding the universe at an increasing pace and was
onlydiscovered about 10 years ago.
Though,admittedly, scientists say they are more than a few years away from
solving thepuzzler of what dark energy is, a new method this year confirmed
its existence,suggesting the force is stiflingthe growth of galaxies in the
universe. Basically, in an expanding universedominated by dark energy,
galaxies fly away from one another rather than mingleand merge.
Theseresults also suggest dark energy takes the form of what Einstein called
thecosmological constant  a term in Einstein's theory of general relativity
thatrepresents the possibility of empty space having a density and pressure
associated with it.
==
 Blackhole antics
Black holesare so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their
gravitationalgrips. Though invisible, astronomers have inferred the presence
of the darkbehemoths from their effects on nearby objects. And this year, it
seems, allthe crazies came out of their cosmic closets.
Take thefastest spinning black hole, found to whirl around at speeds
approaching thespeed of light.
And when itcomes to obesity, oneblack hole could've gobbled up 18 billion
suns. This giant would dwarf thesmallest black hole found this year, weighing
in at about 3.8 times the mass ofour sun and spanning just 15 miles (24 km) in
diameter.
Researchersalso found this year that some supermassive black holes, which
reside at thecenters of many or all galaxies, spew out giant bubbles from the
tips of theirjets. (As material falls into the gravitational clutches of a
black hole, theenergy can be spit out as jets of radiation and high-speed
particles.) Thebubbles ultimately pop, spilling their gaseous guts. Turns out,
the hot gaskeeps the black hole and its galaxy from ballooning to mega sizes.
Black holescan also take the form of "masked fugitive." Computer
simulationsrevealed that when two black holes merge, the energy produced can
kick thenewly merged black hole clear out of its galaxy.
Also, forthe first time this year, scientists detected such arogue black hole
racing along at 5,900,000 mph (2,650 kilometers persecond).
==
The continents are made of rock higher in silicon dioxide (SiO2, or silica)
than basalt, from which it forms. Most basalt is about 50 percent silica, but
continental crusts are about 60 percent silica, and granite has up to
75 percent. Continental rock is formed from magma as relatively silica-poor
compounds crystallize out, leaving silica-rich material that solidifies later. 
==
Many insects during metamorphosis start their development with a body
plan that is characteristic of worms. Similarly, many amphibians start
their individual development with a body structure and behavior that
is characteristic of the class of fishes (they lack legs, have gills,
tail, tiny teeth, two-chambered heart, etc.) before developing their
characteristic amphibian body. Metamorphosis tells us that not only
different morphological traits but even widely different bodies of
various classes can be built with the same genes.
In cases of transgenerational developmental plasticity as well, in
response to specific environmental stimuli, animals induce in the
offspring specific adaptive changes that persist for a varying number
of generations, involving no changes in genes.

The occurrence of these sudden discrete changes in morphology,
inherited or not, is thought-provoking. If invertebrate/vertebrate
species are in possession of mechanisms for inducing adaptive
morphological changes, without changes in genes, might these
mechanisms have been used in the course of their evolution?

A first answer might be: Why not?

However, this would be an inference not a fact. Such facts, if
existing at all, will come from the study of particular evolutionary
changes.

I chose to consider here the evolution of the caste developmental
polymorphism in social insects where individuals of the same brood
(implying the same genotype) exhibit distinct morphologies and
behaviors.

Ants of the genus Pheidole have four castes: the queen, major workers,
minor workers and soldiers. Pheidole megacephala has a winged queen
caste, two wingless (major and minor) worker castes and one wingless
soldier caste. The final instar larvae of presumptive queens and of
major workers develop normal wing discs but only 71% of minor larvae
develop barely detectable wing disks. Late during the prepupal stage,
only queens larvae develop intercellular structures while wing disks
of major workers start degenerating as a result of programmed cell
death (PCD) (Sameshima, S-Y. et al. 2004. Wing disc development during
caste differentiation in the ant Pheidole megacephala (Hymenoptera:
Formicidae). Evolution & Development 6: 336-341).

Experimental evidence from P. megacephala and P. carinata suggests
that a neurally determined early pulse of juvenile hormone (JH) level
induces formation of incipient mesothoracic wing disks in both the
queen and worker lines and a second pulse is responsible for their
growth in major workers and absence of growth in minor workers
(Sameshima et al., 2004. Ibidem; Wheeler, D. and Nijhout, H.F. 1983.
Soldier determination in Pheidole bicarinata: effect of methoprene on
caste and size within caste. Journal of Insect Physiology 29:
847-854). All embryos develop wing disks which later degenerate
during the prepupal stage in all but the presumptive queen, by
evagination in major workers, and by programmed cell death in minor
workers.

In some cases the behavior of the colony has a great role in
determining the female individual that becomes queen. For example, at
the onset of the prepupal stage in females of the Japanese ponerine
ants of various Diacamma species, forewing buds of larvae develop
into a pair of glandular gemmae, secreting pheromones, while the
hindwing buds undergo programmed cell death (Gotoh, A. et al. 2005.
Apoptotic wing degeneration.Development, Genes and Evolution 215:
69-77). Workers of the colony then clip off or mutilate gemmae from
all but one female, which will develop into the sole reproduction-
capable queen in the colony (Miura, T. 2005. Developmental regulation
of caste-specific characters in social-insect polyphenism. Evolution &
Development 7: 122-129).

The evolutionary lability of the different points of interruption of
wing development is in strong contrast with the conservation of the
gene regulatory networks for evolutionarily long periods of time (325
million years according to Abouheif, E. and Wray, G.A. 2002. Evolution
of the Gene Network Underlying Wing Polypehenism in Ants. Science 297:
249-252) in these insects.

What made evolution of the wingless castes of major and minor workers
is a programmed cell death in major workers and a drop in the level of
juvenile hormone (JH) in minor workers.

The evidence presented above shows that the winged-wingless diphenism
in Pheidole megacephala is not related to any genotypic differences
between the presumptive queen, major workers, minor workers, and
soldiers. Development into each of the above castes is determined by
two epigenetic factors: the number of JH pulses and the occurrence/
absence programmed cell death of the wing disks.

It is well known that the secretion of juvenile hormone is determined
by signals coming from the central nervous system in the form of
neurohormones (allatotropins) and its inhibition by antagonist
neurohormones (allatostatins), but also by neurogenic signals coming
to corpora allata via nervi corporis allati I and nervi corporis
allati II originating from the suboesophageal ganglion.

The programmed cell death in insects is also under neural control. The
generalized signal cascade for programmed cell death in insects starts
in the brain with the synthesis of the neurohormone PTTH in response
to internal signals
PTTH--> Ecdysone --> a number of genes --> Effector caspases --->
Apoptosis

Compare this with the signal cascade for apoptotic remodeling of the
intestine in X. laevis:
Catecholamines in the nonhypothalamic brain--> hypothalamic TRH
(thyrotropin releasing homone)--> pituitary TSH (thyroid stimulating
hormone)--> Thyroid hormone -->MMPs (matrix metalloproteinases) -->
Integrins -->signals for apoptotic gene expression --> Apoptotic
remodeling of the intestine).


==
Stars of intermediate mass, around one to eight times the heft of the sun,
terminate their life as an Earth-sized white dwarfs after the exhaustion of
their nuclear fuel. During the transition from a nuclear-burning star to the
white dwarf stage, a star becomes very hot. 
==
Black hole found in Milky 
There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.
German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the
Milky Way, using the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the
paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including
light - can escape them.
According to Dr Robert Massy, of the Royal Astronomical Society, the results
suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl
forms around grit.
'The black pearl'
Dr Massy said: "Although we think of black holes as somehow threatening, in
the sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have
had a role in helping galaxies to form - not just our own, but all galaxies.
"They had a role in bringing matter together and if you had a high enough
density of matter then you have the conditions in which stars could form.
"Thus the first generation of stars and galaxies could have come into
existence".
The researchers from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in
Germany said the black hole was 27,000 light years, or 158 thousand, million,
million miles from the Earth.
"Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study, is that it has
delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that
super-massive black holes do really exist," said Professor Reinhard Genzel,
head of the research team.
"The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass
concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any
reasonable doubt."
==
Only about 175 meteor impact craters are known worldwide.
==
Science routinely deals with processes that a) take millions or billions 
of years to occur; b) are going to occur in the far future, long after 
you and I are dead.
Examples include:  Continental drift; the formation of the planets; the 
formation of stars; the evolution of stars from dwarf stars (like our 
own Sun) into red giant stars; the production of heavy elements from the 
explosions of supernovae; the origin of the basic subatomic particles 
and forces of nature from the Big Bang tens of billions of years ago, etc.
==
The island of Antikythera lies 18 miles north of Crete, where the
Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. Currents there can make shipping
treacherous and one ship bound for ancient Rome never made it.
The ship that sank there was a giant cargo vessel measuring nearly 500
feet long. It came to rest about 200 feet below the surface, where it
stayed for more than 2,000 years until divers looking for sponges
discovered the wreck a little more than a century ago.
of things, the ship seemed to be carrying luxury items, probably made in
various Greek islands and bound for wealthy patrons in the growing Roman
Empire. The statues were retrieved, along with a lot of other unimportant
stuff, and stored.
Nine months later, an enterprising archaeologist cleared off a layer of
organic material from one of the pieces of junk and found that it looked
like a gearwheel. It had inscriptions in Greek characters and seemed to
have something to do with astronomy.
That piece of junk went on to become the most celebrated find from the
shipwreck; it is displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Research has shown that the wheel was part of a device so sophisticated
that its complexity would not be matched for a thousand years it was
also the world's first known analog computer.
==
Scientists recently (2005) petrified wood in one week! This is actually
true but it was done in temperatures of 1400C.
==
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~eric/     space physics
==
In addition to the most common XX and XY chromosomal sexes, there are
quite a few other possible combinations such as Turner syndrome (XO),
Triple X syndrome (XXX), Klinefelter syndrome (XXY), XYY syndrome
(XYY), XX male, Swyer syndrome (XY female), and there are many other
individuals who do not follow the typical patterns (such as individuals with
four or even more sex chromosomes) .
==
The Indian plate completed its cruise across the Indian Ocean to collide with
Asia starting 40 to 50 million years ago, raising the Himalayas & Tibetan
Plateau, which led to some important climatic & atmospheric circulation 
changes. About eight million years ago, the Rift Valley opened East Africa.
===
Monster Black Hole Busts Theory
A stellar black hole much more massive than theory predicts is possible has
astronomers puzzled.
Stellar black holes form when stars with masses around 20 times that of the
sun collapse under the weight of their own gravity at the ends of their lives.
Most stellar black holes weigh in at around 10 solar masses when the smoke
blows away, and computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing
black holes more massive than this.
The newly weighed black hole is 16 solar masses. It orbits a companion star in
the spiral galaxy Messier 33, located 2.7 million light-years from Earth.
Together they make up the system known as M33 X-7.
"We're having trouble using standard theories to explain this system because
it is so massive," study team member Jerome Orosz of the University of
California, San Diego, told SPACE.com.
The black hole in M33 X-7 is also the most distant stellar black hole ever
observed. The findings, detailed in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Nature,
could help improve formation models of "binary" systems containing a black
hole and a star. It could also help explain one of the brightest star
explosions ever observed.
Black hole eclipse
Black holes can't be seen, because all matter and light that enters them is
trapped. So black holes are detected by noting their gravitational effects on
nearby stars or on material that swirls around them.
The companion star of M33 X-7 passes directly in front of the black hole as
seen from Earth once every three days, completely eclipsing its X-ray
emissions. It is the only known binary system in which this occurs, and it was
this unusual arrangement that allowed astronomers to calculate the pair's
masses very precisely.
The tight orbits of the black hole and star suggests the system underwent a
violent stage of star evolution called the common-envelope phase, in which a
dying star swells so much it sucks the companion inside its gas envelope.
This results in either a merger between the two stars or the formation of a
tight binary in which one star is stripped of its outer layers. The team
thinks the latter scenario happened in the case of M33 X-7, and that the
stripped star explodes as a supernova before imploding to form a black hole.
However, something unusual must have happened to M33 X-7 during this phase to
create such a massive black hole. "The black hole must have lost a large
amount of mass for the two objects to be so close," Tomasz Bulik, an
astronomer at the University of Warsaw in Poland, writes in related Nature
article. "But on the other hand, it must have retained enough mass to form
such a heavy black hole."
The team estimates the black hole's progenitor must have shed gas at a rate
about 10 times less than models predicted before it exploded.
"[M33 X-7] might thus provide both the upper and lower limits on the amount of
mass loss and orbital tightening that can occur in the common envelope," added
Bulik, who was not involved in the study.
Twin black holes
If other massive stars also lose very little material during their last
stages, it could explain the incredibly luminosity of 2006gy, one of the
brightest supernovas ever observed, the researchers say.
One day, the lone star in M33 X-7 will also disappear, notes study team member
Jeffrey McClintock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
Cambridge, Mass. "This is a huge star that is partnered with a huge black
hole," McClintock said. "Eventually, the companion will also go supernova and
then we'll have a pair of black holes."
While 16 solar masses is hefty for a stellar black hole, it is miniscule
compared with the black holes thought to lie in the heart of many large
galaxies. Such "supermassive" black holes have masses millions to billions
times that of our sun, but they are thought to form by mechanisms different
from the stellar variety
==
Analysis of the radio tracking data from the Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft has
consistently indicated the presence of an anomalous small Doppler frequency
drift. The drift can be interpreted as being due to a constant acceleration of
a_P= (8.74 +/ 1.33) x 10^{8} cm/s^2 directed towards the Sun. Although it is
suspected that there is a systematic origin to the effect, none has been found.
The nature of this anomaly has become of growing interest in the fields of
relativistic cosmology, astro and gravitational physics as well as in the
areas of spacecraft design and highprecision navigation.
==
The first generation of stars were massive, fast-burning stars that produced
elements heavier than hydrogen, helium & lithium. When they exploded in
supernovae, they seeded surrounding areas with these heavier elements, which
got incorporated into the next generation of stars, some of which were
smaller, like this one. The smallest, red dwarfs are cooler and dimmer than
the sun. The cooler a star the redder it is, just as a dying ember fades from
yellow-orange to cherry-red. They burn for immense periods, so could
last about as long as the universe. Red dwarfs stay active (undergoing
hydrogen fusion) so long because they're so small, ranging between a third to
half the sun's mass, & shine only 1/100 to 1/1,000,000 as brightly. Proxima
Centauri, Earth's closest extrasolar star, is a red dwarf one fifth the
size of the sun. If it were to trade places with the sun, it would shine on
Earth only a tenth as much as the sun currently does on Pluto.
Red dwarfs, because of their small size, undergo fusion much less quickly than
a solar mass star. Therefore, they use up their supply of hydrogen much
less quickly than a main sequence star, so can live for more than 100 trillion
years. The sun is a third-generation star, similarly seeded by a nearby
supernova nearly five billion years ago. It's a yellow dwarf about half way
through its main sequence, so will go red giant in about another 4.5
billion years, engulfing earth unless its previously weakened gravity has
allowed our planet & Venus to escape to a safely wider orbit. Mercury of
course is doomed. Nevertheless, earth's biosphere (if it still exists,
which is doubtful*) will be destroyed as the sun gets brighter while its
hydrogen supply becomes depleted. The extra solar energy will cause the oceans
to evaporate to space, causing our atmosphere to become temporarily similar to
that of Venus, before its atmosphere also gets driven off into space. Venus
will become a burnt out planet; its atmosphere having long been driven off,
and its rock will melt. Life has a better chance of virtually perpetual
existence on planets that might orbit close to long-lasting, effectively
eternal red dwarves. Earth will probably lose its oceans within another
billion years from tectonic plate subduction, coming to resemble Mars, which
due to its small size has evolved more rapidly toward its dry, grim fate than
has earth.
===
Layer by layer the rock grew. For 200,000 years it felt temperatures swing
from high to low and then back again. It watched the sea level rise and fall.
The world hurried by, two ice ages passed, Neanderthals came and went,
civilisations developed and crumbled. All the while, the stalagmite sat in its
quiet cave watching the sea roll in and out. Then, one day, it met a violent
end as Fabrizio Antonioli hacked it from the cave floor.
Antonioli took it back to his lab at the Italian Institute for Alternative
Energy in Rome and sliced it in half down its length. He and his collaborator,
Edouard Bard of the University of Aix-Marseille III in southern France, took a
look inside. They were amazed at what they saw. It contained a perfect record
of the long-term changes in sea level dating back 200,000 yearsenough to cover
the two most recent ice ages.
The researchers now believe this stalagmiteand others like itcould be the
Rosetta stone for climate change. Earth has swung in and out of ice ages for
at least the past two million years, and alongside these variations the oceans
have gone up and down. Some scientists predict that sea levels may rise by 2
metres or more in the next few hundred years, inundating low-lying land and
cities occupied by hundreds of millions of people (New Scientist, 30 October
1999, p 5). But our only real chance of knowing what dangers we face in the
future is to find out what has happened in the past, and that's where the
stalagmite comes in.
Antonioli's discovery was an enormous piece of good luck. Aside from his job
studying how the Earth's past climate is reflected in its geology, he is also
a keen scuba diver. In 1991 he was diving near a small island called
Argentarola, just off the west coast of Italy about 100 kilometres north of
Rome. He chanced upon an uncharted labyrinth of caves nearly 30 metres below
the surface.
As soon as he saw a host of knobbly grey stalagmites on the cave floor, he
knew it must once have been above sea level. That's because stalagmites form
as drips of water strike the floor of a cave and precipitate tiny amounts of
dissolved calcite. Antonioli thought the rocks might have something to say
about past sea levels, but didn't have the means to find out what.
Eight years later, though, he mentioned the cave to Bard, who is one of the
world's experts in dating rocks. Bard was convinced he could decipher the
rocks' secrets, so they set out to collect a sample.
Cutting off a stalagmite and carrying it such a long way up to the surface is
no easy matter. Antonioli went back to the cave equipped with a hacksaw and
set to work. "The biggest problem I had is that the cave walls are covered in
a blanket of thick mud," he says. "After one minute of sawing the base of the
stalagmite I had stirred up so much mud that I couldn't even see my hand in
front of my face." But he persevered, and eventually managed to detach a
30-centimetre long stalagmite and haul it to the surface.
"The first step was to cut the stalagmite in half lengthways so that we could
see its internal structure," said Bard. When they did, they were thrilled by
what it revealed: yellow-brown rock layers alternating with white deposits.
"It told us the stalagmite had observed the sea going up and down," Bard says.
In the past the sea must have fallen far enough to expose the stalagmite to
fresh air on more than one occasion. During these periods it collected the
yellowish layers as calcite-laden water dripped from the roof of the cave.
Then, when the sea level rose again, marine worms colonised the surface and
left the white deposit. "It is at the perfect altitude to record the sea as it
yo-yos up and down over the ice ages," says Antonioli.
The pair realised that if they could accurately date the changes between the
white marine deposit and the yellowish rock layers, they would have an
excellent record of when the sea rose and fell. And it would be far more
precise than other methods, which are based on corals and tiny organisms
called foraminifers. These are often unreliable, not least because the seabed
rises and falls due to movements of the tectonic plates it rests on (see
"Maritime monuments"). "This section of the Italian coast has been very stable
tectonically for at least the last 200 to 300 thousand years," says Antonioli.
They dated the yellowish rock layers using a technique Bard has developed. It
involves measuring minute amounts of the isotopes of uranium and thorium
trapped in the rock. Water always contains trace amounts of uranium, a highly
soluble element. Whenever rock precipitates out of wateras happens when a
stalagmite formsit retains a small amount of uranium-238. This uranium isotope
radioactively decays over time, first into uranium-234, and then into
thorium-230, which is very insoluble and stays put in the rock. As time goes
by, increasing amounts of thorium become trapped in the mineral lattice. The
older the rock, the greater the ratio of thorium-230 to uranium-238. "We know
the half-life of each isotope so this allows us to calculate the time elapsed
since the rock was formed," Bard says. "By measuring the uranium and thorium
isotopes we can date a rock very accurately."
The researchers dated the stalagmite along its whole length and found that it
had started growing a staggering 206,000 years ago. By dating the boundaries
between white deposits and yellowy rock they could identify two periods when
the sea level had reached a "highstand", or maximum, and times in between when
it had fallen to a "lowstand" (see Graphic, p 41). They found that the first
white marine layer began growing 202,000 years ago and stopped 12,000 years
later. This tells us the sea level was at least high enough to submerge the
stalagmite for that period. After that, an ice age began, reducing the sea
level and exposing the rock to further deposits from water dripping off the
cave's ceiling. Then, 145,000 years ago, the ice melted, the sea levels rose,
and the rock has remained submerged. Until, that is, Antonioli brought it to
the surface.
Antonioli and Bard believe their estimates are accurate to around 2000 years,
and their work is to be published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters (vol
196, p 135). An estimate for the same highstand made by looking at corals and
foraminifers is much more uncertain. Errors are about 4000 years either way
and results seem to vary wildly. Gideon Henderson, a geochemist at Oxford
University, thinks the stalagmite is a great find, since researchers have long
sought something that is tectonically stable and can be dated so accurately.
It's particularly welcome because the dates it covers are important ones for
understanding climate changeand ones that we previously had little information
about. "These results provide robust constraints on the timing of sea level
change in a crucial period," Henderson says.
Having established the rock as an accurate record of sea levels Bard and
Antonioli are now investigating whether it says anything about why the ice
ages that cause the fluctuations come and go.
The root cause of this cycle is thought to be the natural variation in the
shape and attitude of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Over many thousands of
years, the orbit changes from an almost circular shape to more of an oval, and
then back again. The tilt of the Earth's axis also varies over time, and these
two effects cause periodic variations in the distribution of heat that the
Earth receives from the Sun.
In the 1920s a Serbian geophysicist called Milutin Milankovitch suggested that
the Earth dips in and out of ice ages depending on where we are in the orbital
cycle. Since then astronomers have calculated extremely precisely how the
Earth's orbit has changed over the past million years, providing accurate
dates of when we would expect the Earth to be in glacial and interglacial
stages. The periodic variations are called Milankovitch cycles in honour of
his idea.
When Bard and Antonioli checked their dates from the stalagmite with the dates
predicted by the Milankovitch cycles, they found precise agreement for a period
of high sea level just before the penultimate ice age. This lasted from 202,000
years ago until 190,000 years ago when the penultimate glaciation started. Both
the orbital data and the stalagmite indicate that the sea was at a similar
height to today around 195,000 years ago. "No coral or foram has ever given
such good agreement and this gives us real confidence in the stalagmite," Bard
says.
But that doesn't mean the stalagmiteor the Milankovitch cyclehas all the
answers. The relationship between climate change and the Milankovitch cycle is
not straightforward because there are actually three subtle, superimposed
cycles. And their effects are complicated by feedback mechanisms that kick in
here on Earth. The cycles could set off a chain of eventsmostly to do with
atmospheric carbon dioxide and ice-sheet reflectivitythat would skew the
apparent correlation between the cycles and the climate.
This complexity is borne out by correlating information from the stalagmite
with data from other sources. The date it gives for the rise in sea level
after the penultimate ice age140 000 years agois several thousand years before
the date predicted by the Milankovitch cycle. To find out why, Bard and
Antonioli compared the stalagmite dates for sea level shifts with records of
atmospheric carbon dioxide preserved in the ice cores removed from Vostok,
Antarctica. The sea level rise 140,000 years ago was associated with a jump in
atmospheric carbon dioxide of 100 parts per million. But the sea level rise
202,000 years ago had a tiny increase of around 20 parts per million. Although
both of the highstands indicated by the stalagmite were influenced by
Milankovitch cycles, the most recent one was accelerated by a carbon dioxide
feedback reaction, offsetting it from the astronomical cycles.Mark Maslin of
University College London thinks that stalagmite data could contribute a great
deal to the debate over the mechanisms behind the ice ages. "The precise dating
feeds into the discussion on whether ice-sheet feedback mechanisms or carbon
dioxide are important in stopping and starting ice ages," he says.\
Finding out could give us a much better idea of what the results of our carbon
emissions might be. However, the Argentarola stalagmite won't tell us enough
because it doesn't date back far enough to reveal the full variation in
Milankovitch cycles. To see the long-term pattern in the cycles you'd need
data going back 440,000 years.
==
Burning more brilliantly than a billion suns, the energy-packed star deaths
known as supernovas have lately enabled scientists to discover fundamental
properties of the universe.
Now physicists hope to uncover new cosmic secrets by recreating some supernova
features in the lab.
The REsonator SOLenoid with Upscale Transmission (RESOLUT) joins a small
number of facilities around the world able to recreate some of the emissions
and reactions of nature's biggest fireworks display.
"We're doing experiments that replicate, in a very controlled manner, the
explosions that take place in stars," said Ingo Wiedenhover, a physicist at
Florida State University, where RESOLUT is housed in a particle accelerator
lab.
Recently, RESOLUT was used to create specific types of radioactive nuclei
found in Type 1a supernovas.
Type 1a supernovas occur when a type of star known as a white dwarf reaches a
critical mass and ignites carbon fusion near its center. The nuclear explosion
spreads through the star in about one second and blasts the star's contents
apart. The thermonuclear inferno leaves no remains behind.
Because all Type 1a supernovas release virtually the same amount of energy,
the observed brightness of such an explosion varies only with its distance
from Earth, and so can be used as a gauge for measuring interstellar distances.
"It is what astrophysicists call a 'standard candle' for mapping out
distances," said Wiedenhover. "At the same time they look at the observed
redshift [which describes the supernova's velocity away from Earth] and
measure the expansion of the universe."
Recent observations of ultra-distant supernovas suggest that the universe is
expanding at an increased rate, which contradicts the steady-expansion
viewpoint of famed astronomer Edwin Hubble. A better understanding of the
reactions that take place within a supernova could help astrophysicists create
a more accurate map of the universe.
"Not all Type 1a supernovae have exactly the same brightness," said
Wiedenhover. "Our effort is to make a model of brightness differences. To do
this we need to understand the physics of the explosions."
The reactions themselves are not well-studied, mainly because the highly
unstable isotopes containing the radioactive nuclei are not found on Earth.
"Astrophysicists tell us they need more information on the nuclear physics of
these exotic isotopes," said Wiedenhover. "This type of physics has really
taken off in the last five years because of facilities like this one."
RESOLUT is not the only facility in North America using a beam of atomic
particles to isolate rare nuclei in a particle accelerator, but it is unique
in its flexibility. The TRIUMF Accelerator at the University of British
Columbia and the ORELA facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
Tennessee have, Wiedenhover admits, "better beams, but we can select more
freely which isotopes to study."
Nor are these experiments the first to mimic the calamity of deep space. In
2001, physicists experimenting with a type of matter called Bose-Einstein
condensate managed to create a miniature explosion that in some ways resembled
a supernova.
==
Stars are born out of icy cocoons of gas and dust that form a disk and clump
together into planets. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was able to detect water
vapor as it smacks down on a disk circling a forming star called NGC 1333-IRAS
4B. This vapor started out as ice in the outer envelope, but vaporized upon
its arrival at the disk. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The stellar nursery called NGC 1333. Spitzer discovered a pre-planetary disk
of dust surrounding an embryonic star within this region, called NGC 1333-IRAS
4B, that is drenched with water vapor. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech /
Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
An artist's rendition of a fledgling solar system, like one located in the
young star system NGC 1333-IRAS 4B (buried in center of image). Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
This data shows water's "fingerprint" deep within the core of an embryonic
star system, called NGC 1333-IRAS 4B. The Spitzer Space Telescope gathered the
data from light in the distant star system. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech /
University of Rochester
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed a dusty star system being soaked
with a "steamy rain" of water vapor.
The water, pulled from gassy stellar leftovers into a dusty disk, provides
what astronomers think is the first direct look at how the life-giving liquid
makes its way into planets. The disk is the same sort of thing that forms
around many stars and, in the case of our sun, was the seedbed for planet
formation.
The amount of water in the newly observed disk is thought to equal more than
five times that of all oceans on Earth.
"For the first time, we are seeing water being delivered to the region where
planets will most likely form," said Dan Watson, an astrophysicist at the
University of Rochester in New York.
Watson and his colleagues' work will be detailed in the Aug. 30 issue of the
journal Nature.
Steamy surprise
Water is abundant throughout our universe, existing as ice or gas around stars
and in the space between stars, but rarely as a liquid.
"On Earth, water arrived in the form of icy asteroids and comets," Watson
said. "Water also exists mostly as ice in the dense clouds that form stars."
Astronomers found the watery evidence in a young star system called NGC
1333-IRAS 4B, located 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The
system still grows inside a cooled cocoon of gas and dust, and Spitzer data
show that ice is falling from the cocoon into a warm disk of potential
planet-forming materials circling the star.
As the ice smacks into the dust, it vaporizes.
"Now we've seen that water, falling as ice from a young star system's envelope
to its disk, actually vaporizes on arrival," Watson said. "This water vapor
will later freeze again into asteroids and comets."
Dry search
Watson and his team's discovery comes after a detailed look at 30 similarly
young star systems with Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, an instrument that
reveals "fingerprints" of molecules like water. Of the 30 stellar embryos
investigated, only NGC 1333-IRAS 4B harbors significant amounts of water.
The dry search, however, may not be due to a lack of water in the other star
systems, the astronomers explained. NGC 1333-IRAS 4B is in just the right
orientation for Spitzer to view its dense core and, they added, such a watery
phase is short-lived and hard to catch.
"We have captured a unique phase of a young star's evolution, when the stuff
of life is moving dynamically into an environment where planets could form,"
said Michael Werner, a project scientist with the Spitzer mission at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The astronomers explained that water serves as an important tool for studying
the planet formation process, which is not very well understood.
"Water is easier to detect than other molecules, so we can use it as a probe
to look at more brand-new disks and study their physics and chemistry," said
Watson. "This will teach us a lot about how planets form."
==
Rare dead star found near Earth
Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star
with some unusual characteristics.
The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and
ground-based observatories.
But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key
characteristics found in other neutron stars.
Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will
appear in the Astrophysical Journal.
If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" -
meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant,
binary companion, or radio pulsations.
Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is
some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind
The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western
film The Magnificent Seven.
"The seven previously known isolated neutron stars are known collectively as
The Magnificent Seven within the community," said co-author Derek Fox, of
Pennsylvania State University, US.
"So the name Calvera is a bit of an inside joke on our part."
The authors estimate that the object is 250 to 1,000 light-years away. This
would make Calvera one of the closest neutron stars to Earth - and possibly
the closest.
Neutron stars are one of the possible end points for a star. They are created
when stars with masses greater than four to eight times those of our Sun
exhaust their nuclear fuel, and undergo a supernova explosion.
This explosion blows off the outer layers of the star, forming a supernova
remnant. The central region of the star collapses under gravity, causing
protons and electrons to combine to form neutrons - hence the name "neutron
star".
Data search
Robert Rutledge of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, originally noticed
the object.
He compared a catalogue of 18,000 X-ray sources from the German-American Rosat
satellite, which operated from 1990 to 1999, with catalogues of objects that
appeared in visible light, infrared light, and radio waves.
Professor Rutledge realized that a Rosat source, known as 1RXS
J141256.0+792204, did not appear to have a counterpart at any other wavelength.
The group aimed Nasa's Swift satellite at the object in August 2006. Swift's
X-ray telescope showed that the source was still there, and was emitting about
the same amount of X-ray energy as it had during the Rosat era.
The Swift observations enabled the group to pinpoint the object's position
more accurately, and showed that it was not associated with any known
astronomical object.
The researchers followed up with the 8.1m Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii and
a short observation by Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Unusual properties
Exactly what type of neutron star Calvera is remains a mystery. According to
Dr Rutledge, there are no widely accepted alternative theories to explain
objects such as this that are bright in X-rays and faint in visible light.
"Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it
is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind," said Dr Rutledge.
Calvera's location high above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy is also a
mystery. The researchers believe the object is the remnant of a star that
lived in our galaxy's starry disc before exploding as a supernova.
In order to reach its current position, it had to wander some distance out of
the disc.
==
How Did the Universe Begin?
How did the universe come to be?
It is perhaps the greatest Great Mystery, and the root of all the others. The
rest of humanity's grand questions-How did life begin? What is consciousness?
What is dark matter, dark energy, gravity?-stem from it.
"All other mysteries lie downstream of this question," said Ann Druyan, the
author and widow of astronomer Carl Sagan. "It matters to me because I am
human and do not like not knowing."
Even as the theories attempting to solve this mystery grow increasingly
complex, scientists are haunted by the possibility that some of the most
critical links in their chain of reasoning is wrong.
Fundamental mysteries
According to the standard Big Bang model, the universe was born during a
period of inflation that began about 13.7 billion years ago. Like a rapidly
expanding balloon, it swelled from a size smaller than an electron to nearly
its current size within a tiny fraction of a second.
Initially, the universe was permeated only by energy. Some of this energy
congealed into particles, which assembled into light atoms like hydrogen and
helium. These atoms clumped first into galaxies, then stars, inside whose
fiery furnaces all the other elements were forged.
This is the generally agreed-upon picture of our universe's origins as
depicted by scientists. It is a powerful model that explains many of the
things scientists see when they look up in the sky, such as the remarkable
smoothness of space-time on large scales and the even distribution of galaxies
on opposite sides of the universe.
But there are things about it that make some scientists uneasy. For starters,
the idea that the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation early in its
history cannot be directly tested, and it relies on the existence of a
mysterious form of energy in the universe's beginning that has long
disappeared.
"Inflation is an extremely powerful theory, and yet we still have no idea what
caused inflation-or whether it is even the correct theory, although it works
extremely well," said Eric Agol, an astrophysicist at the University of
Washington.
For some scientists, inflation is a clunky addition to the Big Bang model, a
necessary complexity appended to make it fit with observations. Nor was it the
last such addition.
"We've also learned there has to be dark matter in the universe, and now dark
energy," said Paul Steinhardt, a theoretical physicist at Princeton
University. "So the way the model works today is you say, 'OK, you take some
Big Bang, you take some inflation, you tune that to have the following
properties, then you add a certain amount of dark matter and dark energy.'
These things aren't connected in a coherent theory."
"What's disturbing is when you have a theory and you make a new observation,
you have to add new components," Steinhardt added. "And they're not connected
... There's no reason to add them, and no particular reason to add them in
that particular amount, except the observations. The question is how much
you're explaining and how much you're engineering a model. And we don't' know
yet."
An ageless universe
In recent years, Steinhardt has been working with colleague Neil Turok at
Cambridge University on a radical alternative to the standard Big Bang model.
According to their idea, called the ekpyrotic universe theory, the universe
was born not just once, but multiple times in endless cycles of fiery death
and rebirth. Enormous sheet-like "branes," representing different parts of our
universe, collide about once every trillion years, triggering Big Bang-like
explosions that re-inject matter and energy into the universe.
The pair claims that their ekpyrotic, or "cyclic," theory would explain not
only inflation, but other cosmic mysteries as well, including dark matter,
dark energy and why the universe appears to be expanding at an
ever-accelerating clip.
While controversial, the ekpyrotic theory raises the possibility that the
universe is ageless and self-renewing. It is a prospect perhaps even more
awe-inspiring than a universe with a definite beginning and end, for it would
mean that the stars in the sky, even the oldest ones, are like short-lived
fireflies in the grand scheme of things.
"Does the universe resemble any of the physical models we make of it? I'd like
to hope that the effort society pours into scientific research is getting us
closer to fundamental truths, and not just a way to make useful tools," said
Caltech astronomer Richard Massey. "But I'm equally terrified of finding out
that everything I know is wrong, and secretly hope that I don't."

==
Most Massive Star Discovered
The most massive star known in the universe has been discovered and "weighed,"
astronomers announced today.
The star, part of a binary system, topped the scales at 114 times the mass of
the sun.
Though astronomers suspected that stars with masses up to 150 times the mass
of the sun must exist, this discovery marks the first time a star has broken
the 100-solar-mass barrier. The previous record holder was only a measly 83
solar masses.
The newly weighed star, known simply as A1, is the brightest hot star at the
heart of a giant, but dense, young star cluster called NGC 3603, which lies
20,000 light-years from Earth. The star's companion has a mass 84 times that
of the sun.
These massive stars were "weighed" by inspecting their orbits with the Very
Large Telescope and combining that data with eclipses observed by the Hubble
Space Telescope.
Stars have a mass limit of 150 solar masses because above that, the pressure
pushing outward from the star overwhelms the inward pull of gravity and causes
the star to become unstable.
In the early universe, however, stars with masses up to several hundred times
that of the sun are believed to have existed because the pressure in the stars
was not as high because the heavier elements had not yet been "cooked" by the
nuclear fusion taking place in the cores of stars.
==
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html
size of things
===
Record ice core gives fair forecast
As long as humans do not mess it up, the Earth's climate is set at fair for
the next 15,000 years. That is according to information extracted from the
oldest ice core ever drilled.
The Antarctic core is the first to reach as far back as a warm period with
characteristics similar to our own interglacial. So it should help make more
accurate predictions about when to expect the next deep freeze.
The ice core, drilled from a feature in central Antarctica called Dome C, is
around 3 kilometres long and 10 centimetres wide. Changes in the relative
proportions of hydrogen isotopes in the ice layers allow scientists to compile
a complete record of Antarctic temperatures going back 740,000 years.
The core shows the waxing and waning of eight ice ages. Most critically for
making predictions about our climate, it is the first core to record a period
known as Termination V, around 430,000 years ago.
Warming pattern
At this point, the world moved from a glacial period into a long, warm
interglacial, similar to this era. The previous longest ice-core record,
drilled by the Soviet Union at Vostok in Antarctica between 1980 and 1988,
went back only 420,000 years.
"All interglacials are slightly different, but we believe Termination V is the
most similar to our own," says chief author of the new study, Eric Wolff, at
the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. It mirrors the pattern of solar
warming between seasons and at different latitudes that are caused by
fluctuations in the Earth's orbit known as the Milankovitch cycles.
It shows that the Termination V interglacial was unusually long, lasting
28,000 years. The current interglacial is now 12,000 years old, and some
scientists feared that we might be heading for an ice age soon since at least
one post-Termination V interglacial lasted just 10,000 years.
But the new findings suggest that even without the human hand in global
warming, a new ice age would be unlikely for perhaps another 15,000 years,
Wolff says.
Ice blanket
The core also sheds light on how ice ages have changed over the past million
years. Since Termination V, ice ages have been very intense, with periods of
cold weather that blanketed much of the northern hemisphere in ice for 80,000
years punctuated by short interglacials lasting typically 20,000 years.
But the new core shows that, prior to Termination V, the cold and warm periods
of the glacial cycle each lasted around 50,000 years but were much less
intense.
"Marine deposits suggested some of this, but it stands out much more clearly
in the ice record," Wolff says.
Meanwhile, European and US scientists are discussing plans to survey for a
site in Antarctica that will extend the record still further. "We want to go
back at least 1.2 million years next time," Wolff says. "But we have to find
somewhere that we can do it."
==
Out-of-This-World Hypothesis: Cosmic Forces Control Life on Earth
The rise and fall of species on Earth might be driven in part by the
undulating motions of our solar systemas it travels through the disk of the
Milky Way, scientists say.
Two years ago, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley found the
marine fossil record shows that biodiversitythe number of different species
alive on the planetincreases and decreases on a 62-million-year cycle. At
least two of the Earths great mass extinctionsthe Permian extinction 250
million years ago and the Ordovician extinction about 450 million years
agocorrespond with peaks of this cycle, which cant be explained by
evolutionary theory.
Now, a team of researchers at the University of Kansas (KU) have come up with
an out-of-this-world explanation. Their idea hinges upon the fact that,
appearances aside, stars are not fixed in space. They move around, sometimes
rushing headlong through galaxies, or approaching close enough to one another
for brief cosmic trysts.
In particular, our Sun moves toward and away from the Milky Ways center, and
also up and down through the galactic plane. One complete up-and-down cycle
takes 64 million years suspiciously similar to Earths biodiversity cycle.
Galactic bow shock
The KU researchers independently confirmed the biodiversity cycle and have
proposed a novel mechanism by which the Suns galactic travels is causing it.
Scientists know the Milky Way is being gravitationally pulled toward a massive
cluster of galaxies, called the Virgo Cluster, located about 50 million light
years away. Adrian Melott and his colleague Mikhail Medvedev, both KU
researchers, speculate that as the Milky Way hurdles towards the Virgo
Cluster, it generates a so-called bow shock in front of it that is similar to
the shock wave created by a supersonic jet.
Our solar system has a shock wave around it, and it produces a good quantity
of the cosmic rays that hit the Earth. Why shouldnt the galaxy have a shock
wave, too? Melott said.
The galactic bow shock is only present on the north side of the Milky Ways
galactic plane, because that is the side facing the Virgo Cluster as it moves
through space, and it would cause superheated gas and cosmic rays to stream
behind it, the researchers say. Normally, our galaxys magnetic field shields
our solar system from this galactic wind. But every 64 million years, the
solar systems cyclical travels take it above the galactic plane.
When we emerge out of the disk, we have less protection, so we become exposed
to many more cosmic rays, Melott told SPACE.com.
How cosmic rays affect life
The boost in cosmicray exposure could have both a direct and indirect effect
on Earths organisms, said KU paleontologist Bruce Lieberman. The radiation
could lead to higher rates of genetic mutations in organisms or interfere with
their ability to repair DNA damage, potentially leading to diseases like
cancer.
Cosmic rays are also associated with increased cloud cover, which could cool
the planet by blocking out more of the Suns rays. They also interact with
molecules in the atmosphere to create nitrogen oxide, a gas that eats away at
our planets ozone layer, which protects us from the Suns harmful ultraviolet
rays.
Richard Muller, one of the UC Berkeley physicists who co-discovered the cycle,
said Melott and his colleagues have come up with a plausible galactic
explanation for the biodiversity cycle. Muller and Robert Rohde also
speculated that our solar systems movement through the galactic plane was
behind the cycle, but the pair could not conceive of any reason why conditions
on the north and south side of the galactic plane should differ.
Thats where they succeeded, Muller said in a telephone interview. They
came up with something we didnt think of, which puts an asymmetry in. Im
delighted they did that and I congratulate them.
A first-step hypothesis
Richard Bambach, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
who was not involved in the study, said he is excited the biodiversity cycle
has been independently confirmed, but cautions the galactic hypothesis is
still in the early stages of formulation.
Its a first-step hypothesis, Bambach said. Its an interesting idea, but
were a long way from knowing if that is really why biodiversity changes.
For one thing, scientists have yet to discover a bow shock around the Milky
Way, though such shock waves have been found around other galaxies.
I think its a very nice idea, said Philip Appleton, a Caltech astronomer.
I think were only beginning to come to grips with these kinds of behaviors.
Were realizing that not only do galaxies interact with each other
gravitationally, but also that the environment theyre traveling throughthe
wind they createcan actually produce noticeable effects.
Last year, Appleton and his team discovered a bow shock surrounding a galaxy
in Stephans Quintet, a galactic cluster located 300 million light years away.
The shock wave is traveling about 620 miles (1,000 km) per second relative to
the cluster.
The Milky Way is hurtling toward the Virgo Cluster at about 125 miles (200 km)
per second, so any bow shock it generates would consequently be weaker,
Appleton said.
If future studies confirm the galaxy-biodiversity link, it would force
scientists to broaden their ideas about what can influence life on Earth.
Maybe its not just the climate and the tectonic events on Earth, Lieberman
said. Maybe we have to start thinking more about the extraterrestrial
environment as well.
==
Earth's Protective Magnetic Field Older Than Thought
Earth's magnetic field was at least half as strong 3.2 billion years ago as it
is today, researchers report.
That means the planet was pretty well protected way back then from solar
output that could otherwise have stripped away the atmosphere and doused early
living organisms with lethal radiation.
"The intensity of the ancient magnetic field was very similar to today's
intensity," said geophysicist John Tarduno of the University of Rochester.
"It's interesting because it could mean the Earth already had a solid iron
inner core 3.2 billion years ago, which is at the very limit of what
theoretical models of the Earth's formation could predict."
Records of Earth that far back are difficult to find, because geologic
activity has folded most rocks from that era back into the planet multiple
times and spat it out as molten rock. Further, scientists don't know exactly
what Earth was like early on, nor when it cooled enough to form the rocky ball
with an iron core that we know today.
Why it matters
The Earth's rotating and convecting iron core gives rise to the planet's
magnetic field, which billows out from the poles along invisible field lines
that can be thought of as resembling the wireframe model of a giant pumpkin.
The field acts as a shield against harmful solar radiation and cosmic rays.
Scientists don't know exactly how the magnetic field is created, however, and
a better understanding will be needed when pondering the possibility for life
on other worlds.
For instance, Mars, which has only limited magnetic activity, is considered
very inhospitable to most life as we know it because of the extra radiation
that reaches its surface. Scientists think Mars once had a stronger magnetic
field, and its loss allowed the sun to erode the planet's atmosphere away.
The new finding, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Nature, adds to
mounting research about continents and the presence of water that suggest
Earth was a much more habitable place 3 billion years ago than scientists have
long suspected.
Back in time
Tarduno had previously estimated that as far back as 2.5 billion years ago,
Earth's magnetic field was just as intense as today. The new estimate was made
by using a laser to heat ancient crystals of feldspar and quartz and measuring
their magnetic intensity.
The tiny grains were picked out of out of 3.2 billion-year-old granite
outcroppings in South Africa.
"The data suggest that the ancient magnetic field strength was at least 50
percent of the present-day field," Tarduno said. "This means that a
magnetosphere was definitely present, sheltering the Earth 3.2 billion years
ago."
==
1 Telomeres have been compared with the plastic tips on shoelaces because they
prevent chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, which would
otherwise result in genomic instability. Telomeres are also thought to be the
"clock" that regulates how many times an individual cell can divide. Telomeric
sequences shorten each time the DNA replicates. When the telomeres reach a
critically short length, the cell stops dividing and ages (senesces) which may
cause or contribute to age-related diseases. Telomeres are essential regulators
of the cellular lifespan and chromosome integrity, however it has recently been
shown that telomeres may also play a role in complex genetic disorders such as
hypertension and diabetes.
==
*The Earths radius is about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers). The main
layers of its interior are in descending order: crust, mantle and core.
*The crust thickness averages about 18 miles (30 kilometers) under the
continents, but is only about 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the oceans. It is
light and brittle and can break. It is where most earthquakes originate.
*The mantle is more flexible  it flows instead of fractures. It extends
down to about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below the surface.
*The core consists of a solid inner core and a fluid outer core. The fluid
contains iron, which, as it moves, generates the Earths magnetic field.
*The crust and upper mantle form the lithosphere, which is broken up into
several plates that float on top of the hot molten mantle below.
==
Gould defined "scientific fact" best when he said:
"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be
perverse to withhold provisional assent.'"
==
The Suns atmosphere, or corona, can reach a bubbling 3.6 million degrees F
(2 million degrees C),
==
On the Intermediary Metabolism Chart
In the Citric Acid Cycle. Pick isocitrate dehydrogenase. This enzyme
converts threo-D-(2R: 3S)-isocitrate to alpha-keoglutarate.
==
Although it may seem an anathema to hard-core, fact-loving geeks, there is a
rich seam of philosophy lurking behind science. The key concept that concerns
us here is the principle of the "scientific method" - basically the way in
which science works. In its purest form, the scientific method is a kind of
question-and-answer game. You come up with an idea, or hypothesis, which asks
a question (e.g. all people who carry gene "X" have disease "Y"), then do the
research to either prove or disprove your idea (e.g. screen lots of people for
gene "X" and see if they have the disease or not). Your hypothesis may just be
a wacky idea, or it may be based on observation (in my example, noticing a few
people with both gene "X" and disease "Y"). Once you have proved or disproved
your hypothesis, you have moved forward the frontiers of science! Either you
can say with certainty that your hypothesis holds true, at least under your
experimental conditions, or that it does not. The next step is to formulate a
new hypothesis. If your original idea turned out to hold true, does it work
under all conditions and in all circumstances? Are there any exceptions? Can
other people get the same results? Alternatively, if your idea turned out to
be wrong then your next hypothesis might be another idea you think might be
right. In this rather tortuous way, scientists have managed to demonstrate
millions of principles about life, the universe and everything.
But another tenet of the scientific method is that experiments should be
controlled. This doesn't mean that an uncontrolled experiment is one in which
you flail wildly round the lab, rather that you are controlling things to be
sure your method is working and that your results are reliable. Controls can
be either "positive" or "negative", and both are important in experiments in
all scientific disciplines from ecology to particle physics. Positive controls
ensure that your experimental methods are actually working. This is like doing
a "dead cert" experiment, where you know what should happen. If your positive
control doesn't work, you can't trust the rest of your data as you can't be
sure that the experiments were working for all the other samples you are
investigating. Negative controls are basically the opposite (you expect
something not to work), but are equally important. In the example I gave
above, the negative control would be looking at people without disease "Y" to
make sure none of them had gene "X". So, in a nutshell, science progresses by
doing controlled experiments which attempt to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
Let's assume we've done that, got some interesting results and now we want to
tell the world!
Tell me about it
As a scientist, I can't just rattle off a few exciting experiments then phone
up the newspapers and tell them to hold the front page. How can I be sure my
experiments are reliable and that I have interpreted the results correctly?
And how can I tell the rest of the scientific community about it? At this
point, scientific journals play a key role. A multitude of journals are
published around the world, brimming with new findings and ideas. You may have
heard of some of the top ones like "Science" or "Nature", and they range from
the all-encompassing (such as the "Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences") to the highly specialised ("Blood", "Gut" and "Brain", to name but
a few). Remember the furore that surrounded Dr. Arpad Pusztai's research
showing that feeding GM potatoes to mice was harmful? The scientific community
found it hard to trust research that was first published in a tabloid newspaper
rather than in a respected journal.

But how do the journals ensure they are printing reliable data?
In order to get your research published in a journal, you first write it up as
a research paper. This includes your original idea that you were trying to
prove, the methods with which you tried to prove it, the results you found and
what you think it all means. As much raw data as possible is included, such as
photographs and measurements. The paper is then sent to the editor of a
journal, who decides if it is the sort of thing they want to publish. Of
course, not all journals are created equal, and some have a much higher
profile in the scientific community than others. Generally, all journals
publish reliable research, although the equation which dictates the standing
of a particular publication is a complex one. This relates to how
ground-breaking (or trendy) their papers are, how rigorously the results have
been proved and also how interesting the research is to the wider scientific
community.

The main thing that links virtually all the journals is the process of peer
review. Once an editor is interested in a paper, it will be sent out to around
three other senior scientists who work on similar things. These people know
about the subject and the other experiments that have been done in that area.
They will read the paper and assess it, ultimately reporting back to the
journal editor whether they think it is genuine research or not. Often a paper
will be returned to whence it came, with suggestions for new experiments to do
or other interpretations of the results which must be addressed before the
paper can be accepted for publication. Sometimes a paper may be completely
panned by the critics and demand a serious rethink about the entire thing. For
scientists the most frustrating thing can be when reviewers suggest that
although the science is OK, the paper would be suited to a less high-profile
journal. After a long and fretful process, the paper is finally accepted and
published in the public domain. Science journalists will then see what new
research is being published and write stories based on these papers, bringing
the hottest science straight to your desktop.

Although this system of peer review works well, and seems to have maintained
the integrity of the body of scientific knowledge over the years, there are a
few holes in it. The principle problem is that the identity of the reviewers
of your paper is hidden. In principle, this gives reviewers the freedom to
make fair positive and negative criticism. Unfortunately, your identity is not
hidden from them. In the worst case scenario your paper could be sent to a
major competitor who might swipe your ideas, reject your paper then cash in on
it themselves. Or they might be very close to publishing similar work
themselves and deliberately try to stall the publication of your results. And,
as we are all just human, people may choose to use the peer review process to
grind personal axes or push through the papers of their friends.

One other problem with the journal system is that it is very hard to get
negative results published. By this I mean results that disprove an idea. In
the example I used above, the investigation might find that there is no strong
evidence to link people with gene "X" and their likelihood of having disease
"Y". Providing the study was controlled and thorough, this is still a valid
piece of data. However, unless the established dogma is that the two things
are linked (and you've just proved they're not), it's hardly going to set the
world on fire. As a result, it may be difficult to get such work accepted by a
journal and other researchers working on either gene "X" or disease "Y" will
never know about it. People might then needlessly repeat the same experiments,
wasting time and money, when it might be better to investigate other genes or
diseases. Believe it or not, there is actually now a Journal of Negative
Results, aiming to combat this problem.
==
Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the
last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms.
The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of frozen
snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.
The East Antarctic core is the longest, deepest ice column yet extracted.
Project scientists say its contents indicate humans could be bringing about
dangerous climate changes.
"My point would be that there's nothing in the ice core that gives us any
cause for comfort," said Dr Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
"There's nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the increase
in carbon dioxide. The ice core suggests that the increase in carbon dioxide
will definitely give us a climate change that will be dangerous," he told BBC
News.
The Antarctic researcher was speaking here at the British Association's (BA)
Science Festival.
The ice core comes from a region of the White Continent known as Dome
Concordia (Dome C). It has been drilled out by the European Project for Ice
Coring in Antarctica (Epica), a 10-country consortium.
The column's value to science is the tiny pockets of ancient air that were
locked into its millennia of accumulating snowflakes.
Each slice of this now compacted snow records a moment in Earth history,
giving researchers a direct measure of past environmental conditions.
Not only can scientists see past concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane
- the two principal human-produced gases now blamed for global warming - in
the slices, they can also gauge past temperatures from the samples.
This is done by analysing the presence of different types, or isotopes, of
hydrogen atom that are found preferentially in precipitating water (snow) when
temperatures are relatively warm.
Earlier results from the Epica core were published in 2004 and 2005, detailing
the events back to 440,000 years and 650,000 years respectively. Scientists
have now gone the full way through the column, back another 150,000 years.
The picture is the same: carbon dioxide and temperature rise and fall in step.
"Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000
years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate
change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to
well outside the natural range," explained Dr Wolff.
The "scary thing", he added, was the rate of change now occurring in CO2
concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order of 30
parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 years.
"The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really are in
the situation where we don't have an analogue in our records," he said.
The plan now is to try to extend the ice-core record even further back in
time. Scientists think another location, near to a place known as Dome A (Dome
Argus), could allow them to sample atmospheric gases up to a million and a half
years ago.
Some of the increases in carbon dioxide will be alleviated by natural "sinks"
on the land and in the oceans, such as the countless planktonic organisms that
effectively pull carbon out of the atmosphere as they build skeletons and shell
coverings.
But Dr Corinne Le Quere, of the University of East Anglia and BAS, warned the
festival that these sinks may become less efficient over time.
We could not rely on them to keep on buffering our emissions, she said.
"For example, we don't know what the effect will be of ocean acidification on
marine ecosystems. There is potential for deterioration," she explained.
More CO2 absorbed by the oceans will raise their acidity, and a number of
recent studies have concluded that this will eventually disrupt the ability of
marine micro-organisms to use the calcium carbonate in the water to produce
their hard parts.
==
Trofim Lysenko - fiction over fact

Science is not about certainties. Hypotheses or theories that do not fit the
facts are discarded or superseded. Newton's description of the physical world
was the work of a genius (albeit a very odd genius) but have been superseded
by Einstein's theories which have stood the test of experiment and are to-date
the best description we have of how the Universe works. In turn eventually
these will be incorporated and enlarged by whatever comes next (perhaps the
Superstring hypotheses). The point is a hypothesis needs at some point to be
supported by the evidence (in contrast to hypotheses like Intelligent Design
which seem to have more to do with blind faith than science). A great example
of this (and there have been many) is one of the greatest scientific frauds in
history, the Russian Trofim Lysenko (1898 - 1976).
Lysenko came from a peasant family in Ukraine and attended the Kiev
Agricultural Institute. In 1927, at the age of 29, while working at an
experiment station in Azerbaijan he was credited by the Soviet newspaper
Pravda with having discovered a method to fertilize fields without using
fertilizers or minerals, and that he had proved that a winter crop of peas
could be grown in Azerbaijan, "turning the barren fields of the Transcaucasus
green in winter, so that cattle will not perish from poor feeding, and the
peasant Turk will live through the winter without trembling for tomorrow" (a
typical peasant "miracle" of the early Soviet press). The winter crop of peas,
however, failed in succeeding years.
Such was the pattern of Lysenko's success with the Soviet media from 1927
until 1964 reports of amazing (and impossible) successes, which would be
replaced with claims of new successes once the old ones became failures. What
mattered more to the press was that Lysenko was a "barefoot scientist"an
embodiment of the mythical Soviet peasant genius.
Lysenko's "science" was practically nonexistent. When he had any clearly
formed theories, they were generally a mishmash of Lamarckism and various
confused forms of Darwinism.
Lysenko was put in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the
Soviet Union and made responsible for ending the propagation of "harmful"
ideas among Soviet scientists. Lysenko served this purpose faithfully, causing
the expulsion, imprisonment, and death of hundreds of scientists and the demise
of genetics (a previously flourishing field) throughout the Soviet Union. This
period is known as Lysenkoism. He bears particular responsibility for the
death of the greatest Soviet biologist, Nikolai Vavilov, at the hands of the
NKVD.
He had the trust of Stalin and together they broked no criticism of his
methods and the bad results were soon hushed up. At first he had the trust of
Khrushchev but other biologists under the relative thaw of the 60's eventually
had him demoted and eventually virtually exiled. Scientific biology returned to
Russia though his influence was still felt in China for many years.
His work was almost a total disaster and his legacy has been, rightly, almost
forgotten.
see also:
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Lysenkoism
==
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060807_mm_huble_revise.html
[excerpt]

Universe Might be Bigger and Older than Expected
(Space.com, 8/7/2006)

A project aiming to create an easier way to measure cosmic distances
has instead turned up surprising evidence that our large and ancient
universe might be even bigger and older than previously thought.
A research team led by Alceste Bonanos at the Carnegie Institution
of Washington has found that the Triangulum Galaxy, also known as
M33, is about 15 percent farther away from our own Milky Way than
previously calculated.
The finding, which will be detailed in an upcoming issue of
Astrophysical Journal, suggests that the Hubble constant, a number
that measures the expansion rate and age of the universe, is
actually 15 percent smaller than other studies have found.
Currently, most astronomers agree that the value of the Hubble
constant is about 71 kilometers per second per megaparsec (a
megaparsec is 3.2 million light-years). If this value were smaller
by 15 percent, then the universe would be older and bigger by this
amount as well.
Scientists now estimate the universe to be about 13.7 billion years
old (a figure that has seemed firm since 2003, based on measurements
of radiation leftover from the Big Bang) and about 156 billion light-
years wide.
The new finding implies that the universe is instead about 15.8
billion years old and about 180 billion light-years wide.
The researchers reached their surprising conclusion after using a
new method they invented to calculate intergalactic distances, one
that they say is more precise and requires fewer steps than standard
techniques.
The new method took 10 years to develop and relied on optical and
infrared measurements gathered from telescopes all around the world.
The researchers looked at a binary star system in M33 where the
stars eclipsed each other every five days. Unlike single stars, the
masses of paired stars can be precisely calculated based on their
movements. With knowledge of the stars' masses, the researchers
could calculate their true luminosities, or how bright they would
appear if they were nearby.
The difference between the true luminosity and the observed
luminosity gives the distance between the stars and Earth. The
team's results suggested that the stars were about 3 million light-
years from Earthor about half-a-million light-years farther than
would be expected using the commonly accepted Hubble constant value.
==
The genes for colour vision in humans appear on two unrelated chromosomes.
==
Geologists have identified zircon crystals over 4.4 billion years old in a
metaconglomerate in Australia. These are the oldest objects known on Earth. Not
only do they indicate that granitic rocks (and hence continents) existed by
that time, their ratios of O-18 to O-16 suggest that they were formed in rocks
which had contact with liquid water. This means there could have been oceans of
water on Earth just 200-300 million years after it formed. Remarkable news!
==
The Escape Velocities from the Surface of the Planets: (miles/hour)
Mercury 6215.02
Venus 19266.56
Earth 25046.53
Mars 11187.03
Asteroid (typical) 62.77
Jupiter 51211.76
Saturn 20260.96
Uranus 17402.05
Neptune 24611.47
Pluto 894.96
==
This color image shows the faint red galaxies of the galaxy cluster XMMXCS
2215-1738 in the center, along with the bluish haze which represents the
invisible X-ray emission from the extremely hot gas that exists in between the
cluster galaxies. Credit: European Southern Observatory Imaging Survey; NOAO
ghostly blue blob amid a swarm of red dots in a
new cosmic image is the superhot intergalactic gas permeating the space within
the most distant cluster of galaxies found to date.
Located nearly 10 billion light-years away, Cluster XMMXCS 2215-1738 is being
hailed by its discoverers as a tantalizing glimpse of what galaxy clusters
were like at their earliest stages of formation.
Individual galaxies have been detected at greater distances. But the newly
discovered cluster contains several hundred galaxies bound together by mutual
gravitational attraction.
The finding was announced here this week at the 208th meeting of the American
Astronomical Society.
Young and old
A light-year is the distance that light can travel in a year, so the light
from this cluster took almost 10 billion years to reach us. Since the universe
is thought to be 13.7 billion years old, the record-setting cluster must have
formed when the universe was relatively young.
"Yet this distant cluster appears to be full of old galaxies," discovery team
member Adam Stanford noted with amazement.
Stanford and his colleagues said the total mass of the cluster is enough to
contain 500 trillion stars comparable in mass to our Sun. That's a surprising
stellar mass for a galaxy cluster to have achieved at such an early era in the
evolution of the universe, said Stanford, a researcher at the University of
California, Davis, and at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Stanford and the other members of the XMM Cluster Survey, an international
team of astronomers, made their discovery by combining X-ray observations from
the European X-ray Multi Mirror (XMM) Newton satellite with optical
observations using the 10-meter W.M. Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Intergalactic gas in the record-setting cluster glows with powerful x-ray
emissions at a temperature of 10 million degrees, said team member Robert
Nichol, from the University of Portsmouth, England. That's what made the
detection of this distant cluster possible, says Nichol. It also makes this a
"hot" find in every sense of the word, since this is the hottest cluster yet
found at an extreme distance.
But it doesn't end there. Within the patch of the universe covered by the
Cluster Survey, Nichol says they can see hints of more tan 1,600 additional
galaxy clusters waiting to be confirmed and studied in detail.
"The total number of clusters depends on the amount of dark matter there is,"
Nichol said. "So this will give us a wonderful measure of how much dark matter
there is in the universe."
Dark matter is
mysterious stuff that astronomers say must exist, based on the fact that there
is not enough regular matter in galaxies to keep them from flying apart.
More discoveries
Extremely distant galaxy clusters like these, Stanford said, give astronomers
a great chance "to study galaxy formation by looking at what they were like in
the earlier stages of their lifespan."
Stanford is also a team member for a separate galaxy-cluster study that
presented its results at the same meeting. Co-led by Mark Brodwin of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, this team used the Spitzer Space
Telescope to discover a total of almost 300 galaxy clusters and groups (galaxy
"groups" contain far fewer members than the average galaxy cluster).
Nearly 100 of their finds are at immense distances of over 8 billion
light-years.
"The Spitzer Space Telescope sees the thermal radiation of these galaxy
clusters at infrared wavelengths," Brodwin explained. "Now, we'll be able to
use this large sample of clusters as a laboratory to study the evolution of
galaxies."

==
Type Ia supernovae are believed to result from the explosion of old stars known
as 'white dwarfs' - the endpoint of most low mass stars such as our Sun.
However, a white dwarf only explodes when its mass reaches a certain critical
value (about 1.4 times the mass of our Sun). The general consensus is that this
critical mass can only be attained if the white dwarf has a nearby companion
star from which it can gain matter. Their generally uniform properties combined
with their intrinsic brightness means that Type Ia supernovae can be used to
measure relative distances (see ESO PR 21/98). They have been used to infer
that the Universe is currently accelerating.
==
Recent ice-core samples from the Antarctic have shown that CO2 levels are
higher now than at any time in the last 650,000 years.
===
Soils hold somewhere between 1,500 and 2,300 petagrams--or as much as two
quintillion grams--of carbon globally; this is two to three times the amount
of carbon present in all the plants in the world. A large fraction of this
soil carbon is ancient--hundreds to thousands of years old--meaning that it
has escaped conversion into carbon dioxide by soil decomposers.
==
Tectonic Plates Moved Earlier Than Previously Thought
A new study published in this week's issue of Science concludes that tectonic
movement on earth may have started 500 million years earlier than 1.9 billion
years ago, a date suggested by current theory. Timothy Kusky and colleagues at
St. Louis University, along with researchers from Washington University in St.
Louis, found the oldest complete section of oceanic sea floor on the planet
last summer. Oceanic earth crust is usually "recycled" back into the mantle
through subduction, but a few fragments survive in mountain belts that form
during the collision of two tectonic plates. That is exactly what happened
with Kusky's sample, found in a mountain belt in the Eastern Hebei Province in
China. The sample turned out to be about 2.5 billion years old, dating back to
the Archeanearth's earliest geologic time period.
"This discovery shows that the plate tectonic forces that create oceanic crust
on the earth today were in operation more than 2.5 billion years ago," Kusky
says. He thinks that these findings could help shed a light on when the first
complex organisms evolved on earth: "Because hot volcanic vents on the sea
floor have provided the nutrients and temperatures needed for life to flourish
and develop, it's possible that life developed and diversified around these
vents as plate tectonics began."
==
Credit for sculpting the earth's surface typically goes to violent collisions
between tectonic plates, the mobile fragments of the planet's rocky outer
shell. The mighty Himalayas shot up when India rammed into Asia, for instance,
and the Andes grew as the Pacific Ocean floor plunged beneath South America.
But even the awesome power of plate tectonics cannot fully explain some of the
planet's most massive surface features.
Take southern Africa. This region boasts one of the world's most expansive
plateaus, more than 1,000 miles across and almost a mile high. Geologic
evidence shows that southern Africa, and the surrounding ocean floor, has been
rising slowly for the past 100 million years, even though it has not
experienced a tectonic collision for nearly 400 million years.
==
http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html#reliability

http://www.c14dating.com/int.html which has a list of items which
have been successfully carbon dated.

#1 A Radiometric Dating Resource List
updated & links checked, 23 August 2005
Reliability of Radiometric Dating
http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html#reliability

#2 Radiometric dating
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Radiometric_dating

The first (#1) of these mentions the following:

"A Radiometric Dating Resource List" links to the following:

Breakthrough Made in Dating of the Geological Record
By F.J. Hilgen et al.
From EOS 78(28): 285,288-289 (July 15, 1997), a weekly newspaper of
geophysics from the American Geophysical Union.
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eos96336.html

"The 'breakthrough' documented in this report is an intercomparison
between sedimentary, radiometric and astrochronological dates (also
known as Milankovitch cycles). This evidence of strong agreement
between disparate dating methods is another example of the consistency
between radiometric dating and nature, and another demonstration of
reliability."

The second (#2) of these, for example, mentions the strong agreement
("concordances") which exist between different radiometric dating
methods, then concludes,

"If such variations happened, then it would be very unlikely that they
would happen in exact sync, which is what would be necessary to
produce the observed concordances. In fact, if such discrepancies
existed, it would be possible to produce plots of U-Pb age vs. K-Ar
age. However, searching for such discrepancies has resulted in some
sensitive upper limits, as described in The fundamental constants and
their variation: observational status and theoretical motivations."
==
Astronomers using another space telescope, called Spitzer, think they have
probed even further back in time, to the very first generation of stars. By
subtracting the light from all visible stars and galaxies, they say they can
see the infrared glow of the first stars, which appear to have lit up all at
once.
And two separate teams of astronomers announced in January that sound waves
that roared through space just 400,000 years after the big bang left a
detectable imprint in how galaxies are clustered today. They found that
galaxies are slightly more likely to be grouped together at 500 million light
years apart than any other distance.
The sound waves were freed at the same time the first photons were and these
are detected today as the cosmic microwave background radiation. This year,
astronomers found a pattern in the alignment of elements of this radiation and
dubbed it an "axis of evil" that casts doubt on the theory that the universe
was created in a big bang. But later analysis suggested this alignment might
simply be caused by the largest concentration of mass known in the universe a
supercluster of galaxies called Shapley. An X-ray survey revealed
that this cluster is, in fact, drawing the Milky Way towards it.
==
There are fundamental differences between telomerase and reverse
transcriptase. The most important of which is that telomerase acts
on DNA and is thus a DNA polymerase. Telomerase supplies the
template from which it will extend the strand of DNA. It is also
only capable of producing repeats.
Reverse transcriptase, on the other hand, is a component of
retroviruses, which have genomes composed of RNA. Since infected
host cells do not transcribe RNA, the reverse trancriptase
transcribes the RNA into DNA (this includes whole genes, in fact the
whole viral genome), enabling the virus to take over the machinery
of the host cell.
Reverse transcriptase is used in the lab to evaluate gene
_expression. When a gene is expressed, it must be transcribed from
DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA). You can pop open cells and isolate the
RNA, thus giving you a picture of total gene _expression within the
cells. RNA is unstable and difficult to work with, so we use reverse
transcriptase to turn it back into DNA (which in this case is called
complementary DNA or cDNA). The poly-A tails of mRNAs provide
perfect priming sites to produce cDNA. And there are a number of
ways to quantitate mRNA levels including RT-PCR, microarrays, and gels.
Ligase is the enzyme used to join DNA fragments in the lab. Usually
one isolated from the bacteriophage T4 is used. Doesn't matter where
the DNA came from, when used in combination with restriction
enzymes, it can be joined together.
Unless you're referring to DNA repair mechanisms. DNA polymeases
have proofreading ability, but they still make mistakes. E. coli has
~100 genes that remove and replacing abnormal nucleotides. Look up
base excision repair and nucleotide excision repair. Also, look up
the disease xeroderma pigmentosum. Individuals with this disorder
have a mutation in one of the 7 genes that are part of the
nucleotide excision repair system. They cannot repair damage caused by UV.
==
156 billion light-years is the diameter.
That's based on a view going 90 percent of the way back in time, so it
might be slightly larger.
==
Pure Newtonian physics seemed to exactly explain the motion of all of the
planets except for Mercury. There was a minor inconsistency with Mercury: the
perihelion (the point where the planet is closest to the sun) advanced by 38"
per century more than could be accounted for from pure Newtonian physics
Applying Einstein's general relativity perfectly resolved this
The observed precession of 43" of arc per century was explained by relativity.
==
Analysing the isotopic
composition of ancient raindrops. With this approach, the authors show that
Tibet continuously grew northward over millions of years in response to the
thickening of Earth's crust associated with the collision of the Indian and
Asian continental plates. The driving forces for this collision are
generated deep in Earth's mantle. But the key to unravelling the uplifting
history of the central Tibetan plateau is found in lake sediments on the
plateau, some of which formed as long ago as 40 million years.
2) In these lakes and their surrounds, changes in the oxygen-isotope
composition of surface water (which is controlled by regional climate and
elevation) are recorded in sediments. Systematic variations in
oxygen-isotope composition across the plateau reveal that spatially
variable uplift of the plateau to 4000 meters or more above sea level was
intimately linked to the timing and rates of convergence of India and Asia.
Rowley and Currie[1] estimate that uplift to 4000 meters was initiated as
long ago as 40 million to 50 million years, in the early stages of that
convergence.
==
Flinders Range, South Australia, 5 to 10 km sedimentary succession deposited
between 850 and 550 Million years old, Neoproterozoic.
===
At the core of the bacterial tail is a miniscule rotary motor consisting of
about 30 different protein types that interlock and move in concert. The tail
acts as a propeller, spinning at up to 60,000 revolutions per minute.
==
Scientific statements use well defined terms with generally precise meanings.
You see, science is the way we try to keep from fooling ourselves, or getting
fooled by others, and misunderstood terminology is one of the easiest ways that
happens.
A theory is never ever proven, it is demonstrated. Proof is only valid
in mathematics, when used as a technically rigorous term. What this
means is that a theory in science is much more than just a best guess,
it is a full blown conceptual construct of some class of phenonema!
Furthermore, a theory in science rests upon testable hypotheses.
Testable hypotheses are statements that are derived from a proto-theory
that can be rigorously tested. What that means is that the statement is
generally in the form of "If - Then". If this is true, then we should
expect that. The idea is pretty simple: if you can predict something
successfully, odds are very good that you understand that something well
enough to foretell its behavior. But this is really just the beginning.
A testable hypothesis must be laid out so that a test can be completely
understood, and reproduced/duplicated on demand. It's more than a "Hey,
this works for men, why don't you try it?", it's a "hey, stand where I'm
standing and do what I did, and see if you see what I see!". And then
there's one more thing, and that is that a testable hypothesis has to
withstand any and all attempts to show that it is invalid for whatever reason.
==
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/
Continents.shtml

"The Earth's rocky outer crust solidified billions of years ago, soon after
the Earth formed. This crust is not a solid shell; it is broken up into
huge, thick plates that drift atop the soft, underlying mantle."
"Under the crust is the rocky mantle, which is composed of silicon, oxygen,
magnesium, iron, aluminum, and calcium. The upper mantle is rigid and is
part of the lithosphere (together with the crust). The lower mantle flows
slowly, at a rate of a few centimeters per year. The asthenosphere is a
part of the upper mantle that exhibits plastic properties. It is located
below the lithosphere (the crust and upper mantle), between about 100
and 250 kilometers deep. "
==
Down Syndrome
DS is caused by an extra chromosome 21, a condition called trisomy - a
third copy of a chromosome in addition to the normal two copies. Children
with DS have a variety of abnormalities, such as slowed growth, abnormal
facial features and mental retardation. The brain is always small and has
a greatly reduced number of neurons.
==
Scientists estimate that red dwarfs make up to 85 percent of the stars in
our Galaxy. These stars are about one-fifth as massive as the Sun and up to
50 times fainter.
==
The most commonly-used methods of dating geological formations
involve the process of radioactive decay. Certain atoms are unstable,
and their nuclei sometimes break apart and change into another
element through a process known as "radioactive decay". Some of these
radioactive elements transform themselves by emitting a high-energy
particle consisting of two protons and two neutrons, a process known
as "alpha decay". Other radioactive elements decay when a neutron
inside the nucleus breaks into a proton and an electron. The proton
stays in the nucleus, and the electron is ejected at very high speed--
a process known as "beta decay".
Probably the best-known of the radioactive elements is uranium, which
is the heaviest element found in nature. The uranium nucleus comes in
several versions. Each version is known as an "isotope". All isotopes
of uranium have 92 protons in the nucleus (it is the number of
protons which determines to which chemical element an atom belongs),
but the number of neutrons can range from 141 to 146. Thus, the total
number of particles in the nucleus (protons plus neutrons) in uranium
can vary from 233 to 238. Each of these isotopes is identified by its
"atomic number"--the total number of particles in its nucleus.
Uranium, for instance, is found in three different isotopes, uranium-
233 (abbreviated chemically as U-233), U-235 and U-238.
All of the isotopes of uranium are radioactive, and decay by emitting
an alpha particle. Through a series of intermediate steps, the U-235
atom will decay to form an atom of the lead isotope 207 (abbreviated
chemically as Pb-207). The Pb-207 atom does not undergo radioactive
decay--it is "stable"--and thus over time all U-235 will tend to
decay to form increasing amounts of Pb-207. Other chemical elements
may have some isotopes that undergo radioactive decay, and other
isotopes that do not decay--they are also "stable". The other
radioactive elements will decay to form different stable "daughter
elements".
Radio-dating is possible because of the fact that the decay of a
radioactive element into its daughter element takes place at a
constant rate, known as the "half-life", and the half-life of various
radio-decay rates can be measured very precisely. U-235, for
instance, has a half-life of 713 million years. If we start with a
known quantity of U-235, say one pound, in 713 million years this
material will consist of half U-235 and half Pb-207. In another 713
million years, half of the remaining uranium will decay, and the
material will now consist of three-fourths lead and one-fourth
uranium.
Conversely, if we calculate what the ratio of lead to uranium is in a
given rock, we can calculate the length of time that has passed since
the original uranium started decaying. For instance, if we determine
that a rock consists of one-sixteenth U-235 and fifteen-sixteenths Pb-
207, we know that a total of four half-lives have passed since the
original uranium started decaying, and therefore the rock was formed
approximately 2.8 billion years ago.
Since rocks are virtually never found in a pure elemental state, but
consist of a number of different minerals mixed together when the
rock was formed, it is entirely possible (and even likely) that some
amount of lead was present along with the original uranium when the
rock was formed, and geologists must therefore find a way to
calculate how much of the lead in any given rock is "primordial", or
present from the beginning, and how much is "radiogenic", or produced
by radio-decay after the rock was formed. This is done using the fact
that the isotope lead-204 is non-radiogenic, and is not produced by
any process of radioactive decay. Any Pb-204 in a given rock,
therefore, must be primordial. And since all of the isotopes of any
given element are chemically identical, there is no way for any
natural process to move Pb-204 into a mass of rock without at the
same time moving all of the other isotopes as well. Thus, in a mass
of primordial lead, the ratio of the 204 isotope to the others will
remain the same, and this ratio will depend on the specific
concentration of each of the other isotopes at the time the
primordial lead was formed. This varies slightly from place to place,
but the average rate is 15 parts lead-204 in every 1,000 parts of
primordial lead. Thus, when radio-dating a rock using the uranium-
lead method, we can estimate that for every 15 parts of lead-204 we
find, 985 parts of lead-207 are primordial and are not the result of
uranium decay. Whatever lead-207 is left after we subtract this
amount must therefore be radiogenic, and by comparing this amount
with the amount of uranium-235 left, we can calculate an age. (In
practice, the actual calculation is much more complex since there are
other lead isotopes which must be taken into account, but the
description here is complete enough to illustrate how the process
works.)
One advantage of the uranium dating method is that rocks which
contain U-235 also contain the isotope U-238, which decays to form
lead-206 with a half-life of 4.47 billion years. This provides a
method of cross-checking the dating results by comparing the date
calculated from the U-235---Pb-207 series to that calculated from the
U-238---Pb-206 series.
However, since in the uranium-lead process there is no way of
precisely determining the original amount of primordial lead (the
best we can do is use an estimate based on the average concentration
of lead-204 found today), some error is introduced in this part of
the calculation (most radio-dates using the uranium-lead techniques
vary by a few percent plus or minus). Therefore the uranium-lead
dating technique tends to give a wider range of dates than other
methods, and it is generally considered to be the least precise of
the radio-dating methods. As a result, it has largely been abandoned
in favor of newer radio-decay methods. However, the oldest rocks so
far discovered on earth have been uranium-dated to approximately 3.6
billion years old, plus or minus 0.5 billion years, while rocks from
meteors and the surface of the moon, which are believed to have
formed at the same time as the earth, have been dated to about 4.5
billion years. (The original surface of the earth has long since been
destroyed through erosion.)
A much more precise method of radio-dating depends on the decay of
the isotope potassium-40 (chemical abbreviation K-40) to form argon-
40 (chemical abbreviation Ar-40) through beta decay, with a half life
of 1.2 billion years. The precision of the potassium-argon method
comes from the means it presents for determining the original amount
of "daughter element" that was present in the primordial rock, thus
eliminating the source of the error in uranium-lead dating. Many of
the minerals containing potassium form precise crystalline internal
structures, with a specific number of potassium atoms locked into a
specific position. And since argon is a chemically-inert gas, there
is little opportunity for any atoms of argon to become trapped within
the crystals (the rocks selected for potassium-argon dating are
almost always volcanic rocks which were liquid at the time they were
formed, thus allowing any gaseous argon contamination to diffuse out
of the liquid). Thus, each argon atom that is found should correspond
to exactly one potassium atom which has undergone decay, and the
amount of original potassium atoms can be known exactly because the
mineral crystals will always contain a set number of potassium atoms
per crystal. This makes it possible to determine the amount of
radiogenic argon-40 very precisely, and thus greatly reduces the
error in measuring the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40. And when the potassium-
argon method is used on the oldest terrestrial rocks, we once again
obtain the age of 3.8 billion years, plus or minus one or two
percent. And meteors and moon rocks also date to about 4.5 billion years.
Another very precise method of radio-dating is called "isochron"
dating, and depends on the beta decay of the isotope rubidium-87 (Rb-
87) to strontium-87 (Sr-87), with a half-life of 4.8 billion years.
The rubidium-strontium method takes advantage of the fact that three
other nonradiogenic isotopes of strontium are usually found with
strontium-87; these are Sr-84, Sr-86 and Sr-88. As with the isotopes
of lead, all of the isotopes of strontium are chemically identical,
and no means exists in nature to move one isotope without also moving
the others, in the same ratios.
In any given mineral, no matter how much primordial strontium was
originally present, the proportion of Sr-87 to Rb-87 will increase
over time (as the rubidium decays to strontium), while the ratio of
Sr-87 to each of the non-radiogenic isotopes (Sr-84, Sr-86 and Sr-88)
will also increase. In other minerals present in the same rock, which
may have different initial amounts of primordial strontium, the
proportion of strontium to rubidium will differ (since they have
different amounts of rubidium), but the ratio of the strontium
isotopes to each other will be the same, since they are chemically
identical and cannot be separated. Thus, in each mineral, over time,
the ratio of Sr-87 to Sr-84 or Sr-88 will change, but this change
will itself be proportional to the ratio of rubidium to strontium.
When these ratios are plotted against each other, they will form a
straight line. And the slope of this line will vary according to the
change in the ratio of rubidium to strontium, i.e., according to the
age of the rock.
These sloping lines are known as "isochrons", and they present a
powerful method of radio-dating. In this method, there is no need to
estimate the amount of daughter element that may have contaminated
the sample, because if any strontium or rubidium has been removed or
added from the original rock, this will produce a point that lies
outside the isochron line, thus indicating that the sample has been
contaminated. In any sample which produces ratios lying on a straight
isochron line, it is a certainty that the sample is uncontaminated,
and the calculated half-life age will be correct. Using this method,
the oldest terrestrial rocks so far found have been dated to about
3.7 billion years, while moon rocks and meteors have been dated at
around 4.2 billion years.

The strong and weak nuclear forces which govern radio-decay are very powerful,
but operate at only very short distances (less than the diameter of an atomic
nucleus). They are not affected by temperature, pressure, magnetism, or any
other known physical phenomenon. Even under the most extreme environmental
conditions which can be produced in the lab, the decay rates of radioactive
elements have not been observed to vary by more than four percent

Some of these tests were done on "pillow
basalts" which form during underwater volcanic eruptions.
It was suspected by geologists that dissolved argon gas from the
surrounding sea water might enter the newly emerged lava, and would
not be able to escape quickly enough to dissipate from the rock
before it cooled, and that therefore argon might become trapped
inside the potassium crystals. To test this, geologists selected an
area of basalt that was known to have formed during an eruption in
1801, and used the K-Ar method to date the outer surface. The average
date obtained was 22 million years, thus demonstrating that such
rocks were indeed contaminated and were not suitable for radio-
dating. As geologist G. Brent Dalrymple reported, "The purpose of
these studies was to determine, in a controlled experiment with
samples of known age, the suitability of submarine pillow basalts for
dating, because it was suspected that such samples might be
unreliable . . . The results clearly indicated that these rocks were
unsuitable for dating, and so they are not generally used for this
purpose." (cited in Strahler, 1987, p. 206)
The remaining tests were done on each of the islands in the Hawaiian
chain. And, since the Hawaiian Islands were formed several hundred
million years apart by volcanic eruptions and are not all the same
age (the large island of Hawaii is the youngest, and the islands
become progressively older as one travels west along the chain), it
should not be surprising that the radio-dates given for each island
will differ from the others.
==
Faure, Gunter, 1986. Principles of Isotope Geology (Second Edition).
New York: John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-471-86412-9.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html
==
Previous to Pangaea, in the pre-Cambrian, there was another supercontinent
called Rodinia. It broke up, and the pieces later drifted back together to
form Pangaea.

The seashells at the top of the Himalayas are from the ocean and
not from any flood. The continents of India and Africa were once much
further south of Eurasia, leaving a great body of water called The
Tethys Seaway.

Both India and Africa are moving in a northerly direction. India is
moving much faster than Africa and as a result it has slammed into
Asia, pushing up the Himalayas. It continues to do so. This is the
reason for the earthquake and underwater landslide that caused last
year's deadly tsunami in Thailand. That whole region of the world is
seismically active.

Africa is on the move too, slowly moving north towards Europe. Italy
once laid against the northern part of Africa in an east-west
direction. It has broken off, spinning clockwise as well as heading
north, slamming into Europe. Italy is what pushes up the Alps and is
continuing to do so.

Spain and Portugal is a micro continent all unto itself. It came from
out in the Atlantic heading in a northeasterly direction slamming
into Europe and spinning in a counter (anti) clockwise direction. It
is what pushes up the Pyrenees Mountains.

The Aral, Caspian, Black, and Mediterranean Seas are remnants of the
Great Tethys Seaway. The Aral, Black, and Caspian have long been
pinched closed. They will soon be filled in with silt from the rivers
that feed into it. The Mediterranean isn't very far behind. It will
someday be pinched closed and be filled with silt too.

Some of the geologic future is known. For instance, Central America
will someday split open allowing the much cooler and less salty
Pacific Ocean to enter. This will not only affect that area of the
world but also as far away as England as the Gulf Stream will be
interrupted.

Life will be significantly affected throughout the Gulf of Mexico
area. It is estimated that a third of all species will hardly be
affected. One third will adapt and change and the last third will
become extinct. The extinctions will open up a niche for evolution to
do its magic. Extinctions and evolutions filling in of the niches are
the norm here on Earth.
==
*How to argue against a scientific theory:*

/Method One:/ If you want to present a *rational* argument against a
theory -- instead of a meaningless rant -- probably the best method is
to point out a verifiable fact that clearly /contradicts/ the theory.
But to do this, you must understand the theory *[take note here, Joel]*,
so that you understand what might contradict it.

You will accomplish nothing if you argue against an incorrect comic-book
version of the theory, one which no scientist accepts or teaches.
Building up and tearing down straw-men is a useless exercise.*
[Attention: Joel]*

The evidence you present can be something newly discovered, or the
discrediting of something discovered earlier, which turns out to have
been wrongly understood -- or even bogus. However, even if you've really
got something, you must be careful, because this is the stage where
kooks and cranks and Einstein wannabes so often go astray.

For your discovery to completely overturn a theory, the new evidence (or
newly-discredited old evidence) must be /essential/ to the theory, so
that without it, the theory collapses. Merely pointing out that some
unneeded datapoint is wrong -- even a famous one like Piltdown Man --
doesn't bring a well-established theory crashing down in ruins if (as
with Piltdown Man) the theory never depended on such evidence in the
first place. At best, such discredited evidence might require a
footnote, or perhaps a minor correction in the next edition of a
textbook. This goes on all the time as our observations improve. It's no
big deal.

/*Pay close attention to this next part, Joel:*
/

/Method Two:/ Another method of arguing against a theory is to present a
/testable/ /theory/ of *your own,* one which explains /all/ of the
available evidence better than the existing theory. It's a difficult
task, but not impossible. Contrary to the frequent complaint of cranks,
scientists are not closed-minded to new theories. In the last century,
general relativity, quantum mechanics, the big bang, and plate tectonics
prevailed over initial skepticism. But to devise a new theory, you need
to know two things.

First, you must know what a scientific theory is, and what it isn't.
This will help: What's a Scientific Theory?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory] Asserting as a competing "theory"
something that isn't testable is a waste of everyone's time in a
scientific discussion.

Second, you must be aware, at least generally, of the evidence which
supports the existing theory. That is what your competing theory must
explain. The more evidence an existing theory explains, the more
difficult it becomes to devise a credible alternative. Your new theory
has to thread a lot of needles. *[Calling Joel]*

A competing theory which offers an explanation of only /one/ thing (an
ad hoc explanation) isn't of much use. Science is not a collection of
numerous mini-explanations, each of which operates by its own unique
rules, in grand isolation from all the others. One thing, considered as
if it were unrelated to anything else, may have many possible
explanations, and your explanation may seem as plausible as any other.
But does your theory explain all the evidence that the existing theory
explains? Can it survive the same tests that the existing theory has
survived? Is it consistent, or inconsistent, with other branches of
science? If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then you're
unlikely to be successful.

*How* /not/ *to argue against a theory:*

1. Neither ignorance of, astonishment at, dislike of, nor refusal to
accept an existing theory will serve as scientific objections. All such
arguments are really about /you,/ not the theory.

2. No scientist claims that he knows everything, or that he has solved
all problems; and no theory has been subjected to all possible tests.
Therefore, pointing out that that there are things not yet known, or
problems not yet solved, isn't much of an argument. /Theories are based
on that which is known./ A newly-discovered fact may upset an existing
theory. But a list of unknowns is inevitable; and does not refute a theory.

3. It should be obvious that denial of verifiable facts doesn't score
any points; it just costs you credibility. And blindly copying material
found at frequently discredited websites -- especially their often bogus
quotes from alleged experts -- is both foolhardy and ridiculous.

4. A theory is not disproven by pointing out occasional acts of academic
misconduct, or even outright fraud. There are tens of thousands of
scientists, and a few have disgraced themselves. (Similarly, a religion
is not discredited because of the personal flaws of a few clergymen.) A
demonstration of fraud /could/ be a successful attack on a theory, but
/only/ if the theory can't survive without the fraudulent material. This
would amount to a demonstration of evidence that contradicts the theory,
which is Method One described above.

5. Other worthless arguments are attempts to discredit the character of
individual scientists, or to quote them on unrelated topics, because
such matters are irrelevant to the scientific merits of a theory. Isaac
Newton probably was an unpleasant man, and Einstein was a socialist; but
the value of their scientific work is not affected by such
irrelevancies. [Like the foolish and untrue claim Darwin was a racist]

7. Likewise, quoting /opinions/ of people who aren't practicing in the
field is probably of little value, because a scientific theory isn't
about opinion -- it's about testable explanations of verifiable data.

8. Claiming that the theory somehow causes undesirable consequences --
even if such claims were true -- is irrelevant to the validity of the
theory. Atomic theory, for example, is not discredited because of the
bomb, nor is gravity discredited because someone gets tossed out of a
window.

9. Claiming that your opponent's religious views aren't the same as
yours is irrelevant in a debate about a scientific theory. Also
irrelevant is claiming that you can't harmonize your religious views
with the theory. The subject under discussion is the /theory,/ not your
religion, and not your opponent's.

==
http://www.legion-fourteen.com/image.htm Greek Science
==
The year 2005 started with a bang as NASA's Swift telescope, launched at the
end of 2004, observed the first of its quarries: powerful and fleeting
explosions called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
These come in two forms long bursts lasting
from seconds to minutes and short ones that rage for only a split second.
Astronomers had previously traced the long bursts to powerful supernovae,
implying they occur when massive stars explode and their cores collapse into
black holes. But the short bursts simply disappeared too quickly for
astronomers to track their source.
Swift, which can swivel towards a gamma ray burst in seconds, changed that in
2005. Astronomers reported in February that a short, bright burst detected in
December 2004 came from magnetic field disturbances in a highly magnetised
neutron star, or magnetar, within our galaxy.
But a short burst in May and two in July suggested that most short GRBs arise
through a different mechanism the violent merger of two neutron stars, or a
neutron star and a black hole.
Swift also discovered that the black holes births that create long GRBs are
messy affairs that can last a day or more. And in September, Swift detected
the most distant GRB ever it exploded when the universe was just 900 million
years old.
Sound waves
Astronomers using another space telescope, called Spitzer, think they have
probed even further back in time, to the very first generation of stars. By
subtracting the light from all visible stars and galaxies, they say they can
see the infrared glow of the first stars, which appear to have lit up all at
once.
And two separate teams of astronomers announced in January that sound waves
that roared through space just 400,000 years after the big bang left a
detectable imprint in how galaxies are clustered today. They found that
galaxies are slightly more likely to be grouped together at 500 million light
years apart than any other distance.
The sound waves were freed at the same time the first photons were and these
are detected today as the cosmic microwave background radiation. This year,
astronomers found a pattern in the alignment of elements of this radiation and
dubbed it an "axis of evil" that casts doubt on the theory that the universe
was created in a big bang. But later analysis suggested this alignment might
simply be caused by the largest concentration of mass known in the universe a
supercluster of galaxies called Shapley. An X-ray survey revealed in December
that this cluster is, in fact, drawing the Milky Way towards it.
==
1991 "The Golem" by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch offers a insightful view of
science for the interested reader.
==
When 10,000 professional scientists hold one view and a wee handful another,
that doesn't constitute a controversy, but the existence of a lunatic fringe.
==
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
A highly readable book that may help understanding how decisions are made
and why bad decisions are simply a byproduct of an imperfect universe, rather
than some evil intentions.

The information you have is not the information you want.
The information you want is not the information you need.
The information you need is not the information you can obtain.
The information you can obtain costs more than you can afford to pay.
p. 202 Against the Gods
==
First 144 Primary Fundamental Physical Constants
001) radiant volume = 1.3554076(23) x 10^-113 m-s^2/kg
002) volume of gravity = 6.6467639(49) x 10^-104 m^3
003) gravitational volume = 1.2181796(21) x 10^-96 m^3/kg
004) luminous efficacy = 3.7229891(12) x 10^-96 cd-sr-s^3/kg-m^2
005) current volume = 1.3838179(77) x 10^-93 m^2/A
006) luminous energy = 1.8257112(76) x 10^-86 cd-sr-s
007) charge volume = 4.1485819(27) x 10^-85 m^3/A-s
008) moment of inertia = 8.9530792(67) x 10^-77 kg-m^2
009) gravitational fluidity = 1.0031222(77) x 10^-70 m-s/kg
010) area of gravity = 1.6408674(64) x 10^-69 m^2
014) electric moment = 6.4900394(48) x 10^-54 A-s-m
015) Ezra constant = 1.6752612(69) x 10^-49 kg-m^3/A-s^2
016) Euclid capacitance = 5.234567901... x 10^-48 A^2-s^4/kg-m^2
017) Nehemiah constant = 1.1634040(12) x 10^-47 kg-m/A^2-s
018) magnetic moment = 1.9456648(79) x 10^-45 A-m^2
019) luminous intensity = 1.9720204(06) x 10^-45 cd
020) Einstein time = 1.3511888(38) x 10^-43 s
021) luminous flux = 1.3511888(38) x 10^-43 cd-sr
022) gravitational moment = 2.2102208(82) x 10^-42 kg-m
023) self-mutual inductance = 3.4877974(86) x 10^-39 kg-m^2/A^2-s^2
024) absorption-emission = 2.4763790(61) x 10^-36 s/kg
025) wavelength of gravity = 4.0507622(30) x 10^-35 m
027) Planck constant = 6.6260755(09) x 10^-34 kg-m^2/s
028) relative expansion = 2.8154365(22) x 10^-33 /K
029) electric resistivity = 1.0456153(81) x 10^-30 kg-m^3/A^2-s^3
031) unified substance = 1.6605402(10) x 10^-27 kmol
032) kinematic viscosity = 1.2143879(66) x 10^-26 m^2/s
035) inverse electric current = 8.4334536(86) x 10^-25 /A
037) heat capacity constant = 1.3806578(67) x 10^-23 kg-m^2/s^2-K
038) thermal resistance = 9.7865580(66) x 10^-21 s^3-K/kg-m^2
040) gravitational molality = 3.0433399(76) x 10^-20 kmol/kg
041) elementary charge = 1.6021773(38) x 10^-19 A-s
043) first radiation = 5.9552196(79) x 10^-17 kg-m^4/s^3
045) specific heat = 2.5303881(55) x 10^-16 m^2/s^2-K
046) magnetic flux = 4.1356692(24) x 10^-15 kg-m^2/A-s^2
047) electric permittivity = 1.2922426(95) x 10^-13 A^2-s^4/kg-m^3
048) magnetic exposure = 2.9363759(53) x 10^-12 A-s/kg
049) permittivity of vacuum = 8.854187817... x 10^-12 A^2-s^4-sr/kg-m^3
050) magnetic pole strength = 4.8032068(25) x 10^-11 A-m
052) Newton constant = 6.6723563(41) x 10^-11 m^3/kg-s^2
053) S-B primary constant = 1.3897405(80) x 10^-10 kg/s^3-K^4
054) density of states = 2.0391992(76) x 10^-10 s^2/kg-m^2
055) radiant distribution constant = 3.335640952... x 10^-9 s/m
056) gravitational mass constant = 5.4563086(06) x 10^-8 kg
057) permeability of vacuum = 1.256637061... x 10^-6 kg-m/A^2-s^2-sr
058) electric conductance = 3.8740461(38) x 10^-5 A^2-s^3/kg-m^2
059) magnetic permeability = 8.6102251(57) x 10^-5 kg-m/A^2-s^2
061) fine-structure constant = 7.2973530(80) x 10^-3 /rad
062) second radiation constant = 1.4387688(01) x 10^-2 m-K
063) dielectric constant = 1.4594706(16) x 10^-2 /sr
065) spin half constant = 5.000000000 x 10^-1 sr/rad
066) length fraction = 1.000000000 m/m
067) mass fraction = 1.000000000 kg/kg
068) time fraction = 1.000000000 s/s
069) current fraction = 1.000000000 amp/amp
070) temperature fraction = 1.000000000 K/K
071) spin two constant = 2.000000000 rad/sr
072) gravitational momentum = 1.6357601(69) x 10^1 kg-m/s
074) relative permeability = 6.8517994(75) x 10^1 sr
075) inverse fine-structure = 1.3703598(95) x 10^2 rad
076) molar heat capacity = 8.3145102(91) x 10^3 kg-m^2/s^2-kmol-K
077) spin angle constant = 9.3894312(09) x 10^3 sr-rad
078) Micah constant = 1.1614098(14) x 10^4 A^2-s^2/kg-m
079) electric resistance = 2.5812805(64) x 10^4 kg-m^2/A^2-s^3
082) inverse gravitational mass = 1.8327409(10) x 10^7 /kg
083) Faraday constant = 9.6485308(14) x 10^7 A-s/kmol
084) speed of light in vacuum = 2.99792458 x 10^8 m/s
085) gravitational energy = 4.9038856(17) x 10^9 kg-m^2/s^2
089) Josephson primary = 2.4179883(50) x 10^14 A-s^2/kg-m^2
090) electric displacement = 3.9552490(31) x 10^15 A-s/m
091) absorbed dose = 8.9875517(87) x 10^16 m^2/s^2
092) luminous density = 2.7467671(33) x 10^17 cd-sr-s/m^3
094) gravity displacement = 4.4930522(70) x 10^18 kg-s/m^2
095) molar mass constant = 3.2858635(84) x 10^19 kg/kmol
096) magnetic potential = 1.0209607(45) x 10^20 kg-m/A-s^2
097) thermal conductance = 1.0218097(04) x 10^20 kg-m^2/s^3-K
099) electric current constant = 1.1857538(29) x 10^24 A
100) luminance constant = 1.2018157(77) x 10^24 cd/m^2
102) luminous flux density = 8.2346007(05) x 10^25 cd-sr/m^2
104) Avogadro constant = 6.0221366(15) x 10^26 /kmol
105) gravitational field = 1.3469831(84) x 10^27 kg/m
106) electric potential = 3.0607633(12) x 10^28 kg-m^2/A-s^3
107) electric conductivity = 9.5637460(76) x 10^29 A^2-s^3/kg-m^3
108) Celcius temperature = 3.5518470(84) x 10^32 K
110) gravity wave number = 2.4686711(86) x 10^34 /m
111) mass flow rate constant = 4.0381539(96) x 10^35 kg/s
112) molar energy = 2.9531869(13) x 10^36 kg-m^2/s^2-kmol
114) surface concentration = 1.0119892(35) x 10^42 kmol/m^2
115) frequency of gravity = 7.4008900(30) x 10^42 /s
116) gravitational force = 1.2106081(12) x 10^44 kg-m/s^2
117) inverse luminous intensity = 5.0709414(41) x 10^44 /cd
118) angular velocity = 1.0141882(88) x 10^45 rad/s
122) electric flux density = 9.7642093(17) x 10^49 A-s/m^2
123) radiant intensity = 5.2968739(54) x 10^50 kg-m^2/s^3-sr
124) gravity field strength = 2.2187310(14) x 10^51 m/s^2
125) gravitational power = 3.6293118(17) x 10^52 kg-m^2/s^3
126) magnetic flux density = 2.5204163(73) x 10^54 kg/A-s^2
127) thermal conductivity = 2.5225121(74) x 10^54 kg-m/s^3-K
129) magnetic field strength = 2.9272363(12) x 10^58 A/m
130) absorbed dose rate = 6.6515882(43) x 10^59 m^2/s^3
132) surface density constant = 3.3252585(75) x 10^61 kg/m^2
133) electric field strength = 7.5560181(98) x 10^62 kg-m/A-s^3
134) dynamic viscosity = 9.9688744(17) x 10^69 kg/m-s
135) molar concentration = 2.4982686(65) x 10^76 kmol/m^3
136) surface tension constant = 2.9885933(65) x 10^78 kg/s^2
137) electric charge density = 2.4104622(20) x 10^84 A-s/m^3
138) angular acceleration = 7.5058959(93) x 10^87 rad/s^2
139) thermal transfer constant = 6.2272531(21) x 10^88 kg/s^3-K
140) current density constant = 7.2263839(39) x 10^92 A/m^2
141) gravitational density = 8.2089700(31) x 10^95 kg/m^3
142) energy density = 7.3778543(28) x 10^112 kg/m-s^2
143) radiance constant = 3.2280937(18) x 10^119 kg/s^3-sr
144) irradiance constant = 2.2118250(84) x 10^121 kg/s^3

1) luminous intensity = 1.9720204(06) x 10^-45 cd
2) Einstein time = 1.3511888(38) x 10^-43 s
3) wavelength of gravity = 4.0507622(30) x 10^-35 m
4) unified substance = 1.6605402(10) x 10^-27 kmol
5) gravitational mass = 5.4563086(06) x 10^-8 kg
6) electric current = 1.1857538(29) x 10^24 A
7) Celsius temperature = 3.5518470(84) x 10^32 K
8) relative permeability = 6.8517994(75) x 10^1 sr
9) inverse fine-structure = 1.3703598(95) x 10^2 rad
==
Warped Passages : Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's
Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall
==
The following radioactive decay processes have proven particularly useful in
radioactive dating for geologic processes:
Parent 	Half-life
(billion yrs. Daughter Materials Dated
U235 0.704 Pb207 Zircon, uraninite, pitchblende
K40 1.251 Ar40 Muscovite, biotite, hornblende, volcanic rock,
glauconite, K-feldspar
U238 4.468 Pb206 Zircon, uraninite, pitchblende
Rb87 48.8 Sr87 K-micas, K-feldspars, biotite, metamorphic rock,
glauconite

Note that uranium-238 and uranium-235 give rise to two of the natural
radioactive series, but rubidium-87 and potassium-40 do not give rise to
series. They each stop with a single daughter product which is stable.
==
South Africas Vredefort Dome-- an Earth impact crater
Natural and cultural sites are listed to be protected due to their outstanding
universal value around the world.
The roughly circular pattern of Vredefort Dome, approximately 75 miles (120
kilometers) south west of Johannesburg, is a representative part of a larger
meteorite impact structure, or astrobleme. Dating back some 2 billion years
ago, it is the oldest astrobleme found on Earth so far.
With a radius of 118 miles (190 kilometers), the impact feature it also the
largest and the most deeply eroded.
In inscribing the site, the Committee noted: Vredefort Dome bears witness to
the worlds greatest known single energy release event, which caused
devastating global change, including, according to some scientists, major
evolutionary changes.
==
What kind of star produces a supernova?
Two types of stars generate supernovas. The first type, called a type Ia
supernova is produced by a star's burned-out core. This stellar relic, called a
white dwarf, siphons hydrogen from a companion star, thereby making it 1.4
times more massive than our Sun [called the Chandrasekhar limit]. This excess
bulk leads to explosive burning of carbon and other chemical elements that make
up the white dwarf.
A star that is more than eight times as massive as our Sun generates the second
type, called type II. When the star runs out of nuclear fuel, the core
collapses. Then the surrounding layers crash onto the core and bounce back,
ripping apart the outer layers.
==
Scientists found a tiny brown dwarf, or failed star, less than one hundredth
the mass of the sun, surrounded by what appears to be a disk of dust and gas.
==
The Atlas of Life on Earth, by Professor Michael J. Benton
==
Data also indicate that ocean tides on Earth have a direct influence on the
Moon's orbit. Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate
of about 3.8 centimeters per year. Ranging has also improved historic knowledge
of the Moon's orbit, enough to permit accurate analyses of solar eclipses as
far back as 1400 BC.
==
A certain percentage of potassium 40 atoms decay to argon 40 with a half life
of about 1.28 billion years. Thus, if we find argon in a crystal where it
has no other way to get in there, we can be pretty sure it came from the
potassium. The ratio of 40K to 40Ar atoms will tell us how long the crystal
has been a solid rock crystal. Of course some things can upset such dates. A
partial melt, for example, might drive out some of the argon, making the rock
seem younger than it actually is (but not as young as the time of the partial
melt.
==
Neuweiler's Biology of Bats
==
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know
that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,'
and then they actually change their minds and you never
hear that old view from them again. They really do it.
It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists
are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens
every day. I cannot recall the last time something like
that happened in politics or religion.
- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
==
There are ancient tidal flats of what's dubbed the Sundance Sea, which is
thought to have covered Wyoming, Colorado and other parts of the western United
States. It might have been warm and relatively shallow, much like the Gulf of
Mexico is today, scientists say.
==
Bartusiak, Marcia. Archives of the Universe. Pantheon Books, 2004.

Christianson, Gale E. Hubble, Mariner of the Nebulae. Farrar,
Strauss and Giroux, 1996.

Folsing, Albrecht. Albert Einstein. Penguin Books, 1997.

Guth, Alan H. The Inflationary Universe. Helix Books, 1997.

Pais, Abraham. "Subtle is the Lord" The Science and Life of
Albert Einstein. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Siegfried, Tom. Strange Matters. Joseph Henry Press, 2002.

Thorne, Kip S. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's
Outrageous Legacy. W. W. Norton and Company, 1994.
==
Three billion years ago, the sun was 4/5 as bright a now.
==
5-methylcytosine is the only significant modified nucleotide in the
human genome. Up to 5% of all cytosine residues can be methylated
in some tissues under some conditions. Typically, in an average human
genome about 3% of the C's are methylated. Since cytosine makes up
about 25% of the total nucleotides, this means that 0.75% of the total
nucleotides contain methylated bases.
Flowering plants also have a high percentage of methylated cytosines
in their genomes but most other eukaryotes have very little of this
modified base. In addition to 5-methylcytosine, there are about a
dozen other modified bases in DNA from various species. The most common
ones are N6-methyladenosine, N2-methylguanosine, N4-methylcytidine,
and 5-hydroxymethylcytidine. None of these are present in the human genome.
The way DNA sequencing is done it isn't possible to distinguish
between 5-methylcytosine and unmodified cytosine. However, we know that
the methylated version is created by an enzyme that recognizes the
dinucleotide -CG- and methylates the C. The vast majority of methylated
C's are at -CG- dinucleotides. These dinulceotides can be located in
the human genome sequence where they tend to occur in clusters called
CG islands. We can predict regions of the genome that are likely to
contain a high proportion of 5-methylcytosine by mapping the location
of the CG islands. These CG islands tend to be located near the promoters
of genes, which is consistent with the idea that methylation of C plays
a role in the regulation of gene expression in mammals.
During DNA replication 5-methylcytosine is recognized as C and a G
is inserted in the opposite strand. 5-methylcytosine base pairs with
G and when the G is copied during DNA replication a normal C is
inserted in the opposite strand. This normal C can then be modified
to 5-methylcutosine once DNA replication is complete.
If you start with 5-methylcytosine in the two C's of a double-standed
-CG- sequence, you will end up with daughter DNA strands that have a
5-methylcytosine in one strand and a normal C in the other strand.
m m
-GC- -GC- -GC-
m m
This is because DNA replication is semi-conservative. Each new daughter
molecule contains one parental strand and one newly replicated strand.
Now, here's the neat part. Notice that the two new daughter strands are
hemimethylated. In other words only one strand contains a methylated
C residue. The methylation enzyme specifically recognizes the
hemimethylated DNA and not DNA where neither C is methylated. Thus,
the methylation enzyme will scan newly replicated DNA looking for
-CG- sites where one the the strands has a 5-methycytosine and the other
strand does not. When it finds these sites it methylates the normal
C on the opposite strand.
In this way the original methylated site is preserved after DNA has
been replicated. This is the basis of many epigenetic effects where
specific base modification is preserved from one generation to the
next. If a gene is regulated in one cell by methylating -CG- islands,
then this will be preserved when the cell divides. If, on the other
hand, the gene has been regulated by removing the 5-methylcytosine
(by a demethylase enzyme) then this pattern will also be preserved when
the cell divides because neither of the daughter strands will have a
5-methylcytosine.
5-methylcytosine does not seem to affect RNA polymerase so the DNA is
copied as though it had C instead of 5-methlcytosine. The messenger
RNA (mRNA) is normal and protein synthesis is normal. The presence of
5-methylcytosine in DNA mostly affects the binding of regulatory proteins
to DNA itself. This can have an effect on whether a nearby gene is
transcribed or not transcribed and that's why 5-methylcytosine is often
found at -CG- rich sequences near transcription start sites (promoters).
(The role of methylation in regulating transcription is controversial.
It's also possible that methylation affects transcription indirectly
by altering the packaging of DNA into chromatin.)
The presence of 5-methylcytosine in coding regions is probably
irrelevant. It's an accidental by-product of the methylation reactions.
==
The Higgs particle is as yet a hypothetical particle invoked to explain why the
carriers of the electroweak force (the W and Z bosons) have mass. Quantum
electrodynamics requires the photon to have zero mass (which is good because
indeed it does), but early attempts to develop and electroweak theory also
required the bosons to be massless.
==
When stars above about eight solar masses run out of fuel to burn, they
explode in what is called a supernova. What remains can collapses into a
neutron star.
==
The liver filters medications and toxins in the body and metabolizes
carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
==
Cosmologists propose extra dimensions and membranes--"branes," as they are
called for short. Branes are domains or swaths of several spatial dimensions
within a higher-dimensional space. The everyday world we live in could be a
three-brane, for example
==
May 2004 Revision 4
Beginning Date (millions of years ago) Period Era Eon
0
23.03 Neogene Cenozoic Phanerozoic
65.5 Paleogene
145.5 Cretaceous Mesozoic
199.6 Jurassic
251.0 Triassic
299.0 Permian Paleozoic
359.2 Carboniferous (Mississippian and Pennsylvanian)
416.0 Devonian
443.7 Silurian
488.3 Ordovician
542.0 Cambrian
600 Ediacaran Neoproterozoic Proterozoic
850 Cryogenian
1.000 Tonian
1.200 Stenian Mesoproterozoic
1.400 Ectasian
1.600 Calymmian
1.800 Statherian Paleoproterozoic
2.050 Orosirian
2.300 Rhyacian
2.500 Siderian
2,800 ? Neoarchaean Archaean Eon
3.200 ? Mesoarchaean
3.600 ? Paleoarchaean
3.800 ? ? Eoarchaean
? ? ? Hadean ?
4.55 Origin of solar system
===
Type Ia supernovae occur when a small compact star, called a white dwarf,
gobbles up mass from a companion star. At a certain point, the mass becomes too
great and the white dwarf explodes. Because Type Ia supernovae are uniformly
bright, astronomers have used them to determine how fast the universe is
expanding. The data somewhat surprisingly say that the expansion is
speeding up. Our own solar system is thought to reside in a huge cavity,
riddled with pockets and tunnels all carved out by exploded stars, long ago.

What kind of star produces a supernova?
Two types of stars generate supernovas. The first type, called a type Ia
supernova is produced by a star's burned-out core. This stellar relic, called a
white dwarf, siphons hydrogen from a companion star, thereby making it 1.4
times more massive than our Sun [called the Chandrasekhar limit]. This excess
bulk leads to explosive burning of carbon and other chemical elements that make
up the white dwarf.
A star that is more than eight times as massive as our Sun generates the second
type, called type II. When the star runs out of nuclear fuel, the core
collapses. Then the surrounding layers crash onto the core and bounce back,
ripping apart the outer layers.
===
Theorists say the universe began with the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years
ago. For some 2 million years, stars could not form. Then things cooled enough
for knots of gas to condense into the first stars. The gas present then was
raw, primordial. It was mostly hydrogen and helium, with traces of lithium,
helium and deuterium.
The first stars were composed of these raw materials, the thinking goes. Within
the furnace of eachfirst-generation star, heavier elements were created, then
cast into the cosmos when the stars died explosively. Subsequent generations of
stars created more and more heavier elements, including all the stuff that
makes planets and living things.
The first stars should have been virtually bereft of iron, for example, while
iron is common in latter-day stars like our Sun. They are challenging to find
and study, because all that's left are the burnt embers of their previous
shimmering glory.
===
Meteor Crater
The roughly circular pattern of Vredefort Dome, approximately 75 miles (120
kilometers) south west of Johannesburg, is a representative part of a larger
meteorite impact structure, or astrobleme. Dating back some 2 billion years
ago, it is the oldest astrobleme found on Earth so far. With a radius of 118
miles (190 kilometers), the impact feature it also the largest and the most
deeply eroded. Vredefort Dome bears witness to the worlds greatest known
single energy release event, which caused devastating global change, including,
according to some scientists, major evolutionary changes. It provides critical
evidence of the earths geological history and is crucial to our understanding
of the evolution of the planet.
===
Gamma ray burst
It turns out to be the oldest and most distant explosion anyone has ever
observed. Reichart dated the explosion as having occurred an incredible
13 billion years ago, only some 700 million years after the Big Bang. "This is
uncharted territory," Reichart said. "This burst smashes the old distance
record by 500 million light-years. We are finally starting to see the remnants
of some of the oldest objects in the Universe."
==
SUMMARY OF PAST HISTORY:
The precise measurements of planetary motion by
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and observations by
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) were plotted by
Johann Kepler (1571-1630 ) resulting in Kepler's
Three laws:
1. The planets move about the sun in elliptical orbits
with the sun as one focus of the ellipse.
2. The straight line joining the sun and a given planet
sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time.
3. The square of the period of revolution of the planet
about the sun is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis a.
t^2 = K a^3
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1721 ) concluded that it was a
force F = G*m1*m2/r^2 that caused the orbital motion.

==
Body Mass Avg. Radius Avg. Density Rotation Period
(kg) (km) (g/cm3) (days)

1.Sun 1.991 x 1030 695,950 1.410 24.66
2.Mercury 3.181 x 1023 2,433 5.431 58.82
3.Venus 4.883 x 1024 6,053 5.256 244.59
4.Earth 5.979 x 1024 6,371 5.519 1.00
5 Moon 7.354 x 1022 1,738 3.342 27.40
6. Mars 6.418 x 1023 3,380 3.907 1.03
7. Jupiter 1.901 x 1027 69,758 1.337 0.41
8 Saturn 5.684 x 1026 58,219 0.688 0.43
9 Uranus 8.682 x 1025 23,470 1.603 0.45
10 Neptune 1.027 x 1026 22,716 2,272 0.66
11 Pluto (1.08 1.00) x 1024 5,700 1.65 1.57 6.41
==
Penrose Road To Reality

The Wisdom of the Bones
The Man Who Found the Missing Link, by Pat Shipman
==
The longer-term magnwtic fluctuations are due to variations in the motion of
the fluid outer core of the earth at a depth of ~2900km. (For a review of the
subject, see: Courtillot, V. and LeMouel, J.-L., 1988, Geomagnetic Time
Variations, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science, v16, pp389-476.)
==
Name:
Earth is (beside Sedna) the only planet in the solar system, whose name is
not derived from the Greek or Roman mythology, the origin of the now used
form of naming comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Erda (Erdaz), which means
ground, soil, and Earth, the word changed to Eorthe or Erthe in Old English
and to Erde in German.
==
Science, unlike religion, is not dogmatic. But it is also not democratic
To get a place at the table, you have to show your research is credible and
could withstand peer review.
==
Markov Process
A random process whose future probabilities are determined by its most recent
values.
==
AFRICA - THE WHIRLING DERVISH CONTINENT

We are placing the movements in time and position !
(1) Africa ------southeast
(2) Africa rotated to the northwest
(3) Africa rotated counterclockwise---
Africa collides with Europe
(4) Africa ----due east
(5) Africa -----northwest

==============================================================
AFRICA AND EUROPE - AND THE TETHYS SEA
270 MILLION YEARS OF BUMPER-CAR CONTINENTS

Late Permian (286 to 245 mya)
Early Triassic (245 to 208 mya)

GOODBYE AFRICA -"The Extension" circa 230 to 250 mya
Action: Africa & Europe move apart -- late
Permian

(1) Africa moves Southeast-- Europe relatively stable
Cause --"triggered by the initial formation of the Atlantic
Ocean")
Result--"Formation of Tethys Ocean between Europe and Africa.
("North-Northeast trending ocean")

Jurassic (208 to 146 mya)

Action--Tethys Ocean spreads during the middle and upper Jurassic

Late Jurassic
Action --large trough between the Tethys and the European plate.
"sub-plate boundary between Europe and what would become
the Iberian peninsula"

AFRICA, MISSING FELLOWSHIP WITH EUROPE, BEGINS TO RETURN

(2) "Africa rotated to the northwest" == aka "Africa moves northeast" "closing
the Tetyhys"

Action: Atlantic Ocean Opens --->
Result: Southern Europe "pushed east"

Action: Africa starts swallowing the Tetyhys
"The oceanic crust of the Tethys then began being subducted beneath
the African plate"

Action: Iberian sub-plate pushed into European plate
Result: formation of Pyreeness

"Spreading in the Tethys either stopped or was outpaced by the spreading of the
Atlantic"

Cretaceous (146 to 65 mya)

KA-BOOM -AFRICA AND EUROPE COLLIDE

(3) The African plate continued to rotate counterclockwise until about 70
million years ago.
Africa--Europe Collide --"started during the Cretaceous" -- Alps form !!

AFRICA, NURSING ITS BRUISES, RETREATS - . "go east young continent"
(4) Africa heads directly East.

Tertiary (65 to 1.8 mya)

AFRICA DECIDES TO FIND A GOOD HOME
(5) Africa heads NW

==
When fighter pilots undergoing training in the g-centrifuge pass out, they
experience many of the same things reported by "out of body" or "near-death
experience" people. They have the same sensation of being outside themselves,
the same sensation of rushing through a long tunnel towards a light, and the
same sense of peacefulness until they are forcibly dragged back to
consciousness. Seems as if much of this is a simple reaction of the brain to
being deprived of blood.
==
Four parts of the brain known to be involved in processing and responding to
pain, namely the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the pregenual rostral
right anterior cingulate, the right anterior insular cortex and the left
nucleus accumbens. Furthermore, activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
was associated with the expectation of pain relief.
==
Lf=33.5*10^4J/Kg,
Cice=2*10^3J/Kg, and
Cwater=4186J/(kg.C)
==
Timeline of signicant events
Big Bang 13.7 billion BC
Formation of solar system 4.55 billion BC
Representational art (caves) 30,000 BC
Dogs tamed (for hunting) 13,000 BC
Pleistocene ice age ended 12,000 BC
Agriculture (neolithic era) 11,000 BC
Ceramics (Jomon culture) 10,000 BC
Cats tamed (against mice) 7,500 BC
Oxen tamed, and the plow 7,000 BC
Cities 4,000 BC
Copper 4,000 BC
Writing (Mesopotamia) 3,500 BC
Bronze 3,300 BC
Horses tamed 2,500 BC
Aryans invaded India 2,000 BC
Sanskrit 2,000 BC
Glass 2,000 BC
[Hindu Veda] written 1,800 BC
Hammurabi Laws (Babylon) 1,700 BC
Ugarit [Old Tes. stories] 1,300 BC
[Abraham] 1,300 BC
Shasu tribe [Yahweh] 1,300 BC
Phonetic writing (Phoenicia) 1,200 BC
Iron (Hittites) 1,200 BC
Zoroaster [New Tes.Stories] 1,000 BC
[Moses, Exodus, Joshua] 1,000 BC
King Josiah of Hebrews 650 BC
[Torah, Old Tes.] written 650 BC
Confucius 500 BC
Gautama Buddha 500 BC
Voting (among wealthy Greeks) 500 BC
[Ramayana] written 300 BC
Aristotle (logic) 300 BC
Carthage destroyed 146 BC
Caesar 50 BC
Imaginary Year 0 BC
------[Jesus]---------------
Constantine (Rome Christianized) 300 AD
Byzantine Empire 400 AD
Mohammed 500 AD
Chinaporcelain (Tang dynasty) 600 AD
Uighurs invaded Turkey 700 AD
Magyars invaded Hungary 900 AD
Chalemagne(SaxonsChristianized) 800 AD
Alfred (VikingsChristianized) 900 AD
Beowulf 1000 AD
Renaissance(old knowledge&trade) 1100
Genghis Khan Empire 1210
Guns 1300
Plague (Black Death) 1350
Chaucer 1350
Ottoman Empire 1500
Galileo (experiment) 1600
Newton (mathematical physics) 1700
European porcelain 1710
Watt (industrial revolution) 1750
U.S.A. (broad-based democracy) 1776
Pasteur (germs, vaccines) 1870
Edison (practical electricity) 1880
Einstein(sophisticated physics) 1905
GLK born 1932
==
The white dwarf orbiting Sirius began its life as a blue star with five
times the Sun's mass, say astronomers in Arizona and New Mexico. If this
blue star still shone today, Sirius would be so bright it would cast shadows
on Earth.
The full story is at http://KenCroswell.com/LifeAndTimesOfSiriusB.html
==
Has the Moon always been so close?
It used to be much closer! A billion years ago, the Moon was in a tighter
orbit, taking just 20 days to go around us and make a month. A day on Earth
back then was only 18 hours long. The Moon is still moving away -- about 1.6
inches (4 centimeters) a year. Meanwhile, Earth's rotation is slowing down,
lengthening our days. In the distant future, a day will be 960 hours long!
==
The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles
(6,378 kilometers). Much of Earth is fluid. The mostly solid skin of the planet
is only 41 miles (66 kilometers) thick
======
The retina is the screen in the back of the eye upon
which light is focused. In our eyes the light has to first pass
through a layer of roughly 20 cells of at least 4 different types
before reaching the photodetectors. Most of these cells are signal
processing cells- ganglion cells, amacrine cells, bipolar neurons and
horizontal cells.... They process the signals generated by the
underlying rods and cones then hand these processed signals off to
nerve cells which are bundled together in increasingly large bunches
until they are all joined as a single large nerve bundle right in the
middle of the light collecting screen. This optic nerve then plunges
through the screen itself and heads off to the back of the
brain where the signals are further processed and presented to ones
consciousness as a visual image.
All these cells and nerves are on top of the
light receptor array, between the incoming light and the light-
sensitive cells. The plunge of the optic nerve through the receptor
array causes a blind spot in each eye which then must be cancelled out
(in most cases) by fancy image processing in the brain. The brain
cancels out this blind spot in almost the center of our field of
vision by filling in the missing information with information
supplied by the ether eye, as well as information from the area
directly surrounding the blind spot. It basically fills in the blank
spot with the surrounding pattern if need be, and then trains your
consciousness not to notice any anomalies.
These mollusk eyes evolved separately from the vertebrate eye.
Apparently the molluskan precursor (a worm-like critter) had light
sensitive patches which happened to be oriented so that the
photosensitive cells were on top of the nerves innervating them; the
vertebrate precursor (a Rush Limbaugh-like critter) happened to have
light sensitive patches with photosensitive cells under the nerves.
Most cells are fairly transparent, so it would not be a big problem
for light to get through these cells. In each case these light
sensitive patches developed into cups, which would
allow for direction of incoming light to be determined, a lens of
translucent cells began to be selected for , etc., etc,.
Two types of eyes resulted, looking remarkably alike superficially,
yet differing in one important point- one has all the processing and
wiring behind the photoreceptors, the other has it all in front of
the photoreceptors. The developmental pathways leading to each are
complex and the organism is, in both cases, committed to each major
pathway. No tinkering by mutation and variation is likely to change
this. Each major lineage- the molluscs and the vertebrates- are, for
better or worse, stuck with their particular kind of eye.
As vision became more important to the animals, and the eyes became
more and more specialized, more and more processing was needed to be
done by the nerve cells both in the eye itself and in the brain, so
more and more cells were added. Much less processing would be needed
if our retinas were right side out. Now we are stuck with about 20
cells which must be traversed by light before being detected in our
eyes. It seems to work fine, the 20 cells are unpigmented and light
gets trough them OK, but there is of course some image degradation.
Another problem caused by the vertebrate arrangement is retinal
detachment. This is a fairly common cause of blindness or impaired
eyesight. The light-detecting rod and cone cells in our eyes are
actually neural tissue- they are modified nerves of the brain itself.
The rods and cones themselves are the terminal ends of a series of
nerves. The rods and cones form a smooth layer, their only attachment
to other cells is toward the center of your eyeball, the nerves and
subsidiary cells which form the optic nerve.The only real anchoring
point is the single optic nerve which runs through the middle of it.
This makes it quite easy to peel the whole thing off the
inside of the eye. A good blow to the head will do it. With squid and
other mollusks the retina is directly and tightly adhered to the
inside of the eyeball by every nerve cell and every rod and cone
axon, because, for one thing, plenty of connective tissue back here
is simply not a problem for vision.
==
The limestone in the Grand Canyon is 500 feet thick
==
For the past 400,000 years, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has
fluctuated between about 180 and 280 ppm (parts per million, the
number of CO2 molecules per million molecules of air). But in the
late 1800s, when humans set about burning fossil fuels in earnest,
atmospheric CO2 began to increase with alarming speedfrom about 280
ppm to the current level of almost 380 ppm, in a scant 100 years.
Experts predict that CO2 could climb as high as 500 ppm by 2050 and
possibly twice that by the end of the century.
Humans dump about 28 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
==
Universe by Kaufmann, 2nd Ed, 1988. ISBN 0-7167-1927-4
==
"About two billion years ago, Oklo must have been the site of a natural reactor
see "A Natural Fission Reactor," by George A. Cowan; Scientific American,
July 1976]. .... According to recent work by Keith Olive of the University of
Minnesota, Maxim Pospelov of the University of Victoria in British Columbia and
heir colleagues, at the time the rocks formed,the fine structure constant was
within two parts in 10 to the 6th of its current value. "
==
Science is provisional in the sense that new evidence if sufficiently strong
can cause us to revise our theories. However we are restricted, or rather
proscribed, in our scientific claims in that we must provide this evidence
through experimentation, observation, mathematics and logic. Without such
evidence we have...well...nothing.
One thing we cannot do, however, is rule out the possibility that some
supernatural intervention, divine or otherwise, has occurred that accounts
for the way we find the world. Our entire enterprise, so far the pinnacle of
the human mind rests on the assumption that we can find natural explanations
for natural occurrences. We scientists rely only upon one thing; that the
natural world is knowable to us to the limit of our senses and intelligence.
==
A COULOMB EXPERIMENT FOR THE WEAK NUCLEAR FORCE. Physicists at the
SLAC accelerator have measured, with much greater precision than
ever before, the variation in the weak nuclear force, one of the
four known physical forces, over an enormous size scale (a distance
of more than ten proton diameters) for so feeble a force. Although
the results were not surprising (the weak force diminished with
distance as expected) this new quantitative study of the weak force
helps to cement physicists' view of the sub-nuclear world. The
SLAC work is, in effect, a 21st century analog of the landmark 18th
experiments in which the intrinsic strength of the electromagnetic
and gravitational forces were measured (by Charles Coulomb and Henry
Cavendish, respectively) through careful observation of test objects
causing a torsion balance to swing around.
The weak force, in the modern way of thinking, is a cousin of the
electromagnetic (EM) force; both of them are considered as different
aspects of a single "electroweak" force. The EM force is much
better known to physicists and to non-experts: it's responsible for
all electric, magnetic, and optical phenomena, and keeps atoms
intact and holds atoms together in all the molecular and crystalline
forms which make up our world. Over sizes larger than the atom, the
strength of the EM force is prescribed by Coulomb's law, which
states that the force between two charged objects (say, two
electrons) is proportional to the charges of the electrons and
inversely to the square of the distance between them. For
sub-atomic distances the Coulomb way of describing electron
scattering gets complicated because of vacuum polarization, a
process which takes into account the fact that at short distances an
electron can no longer be portrayed as a lone pointlike particle;
instead we must view it as accompanied by a cloud of virtual
particles sprouting out of the vacuum. These extra short-lived
particles serve to redefine, or "renormalize," the effective
electron charge and along with it the very nature of the EM force
mediating the interaction with the other electron.
The weak force is an important force---responsible for some kinds of
radioactivity and for select fusion reactions vital to energy
production inside the sun---but is very different from the
electromagnetic force and generally operates only over the tight
confines of the nucleus. In this realm, the weak force is right
there along with the EM force, a doppelganger that can often be
ignored because it is so very weak. But physicists, in search of a
fuller explanation of the universe, don't want to ignore the weak
force. At SLAC they painstakingly extract weak effects from the
much larger EM effects involved when two electrons interact. In the
case of their present experiment (E158), a powerful electron beam
scatters from electrons bound to hydrogen atoms in a stationary
target. By using electrons that have been spin polarized---that is,
the electron's internal magnetism (or spin) has been oriented in a
certain direction---the weak force can be studied by looking for
subtle asymmetries in the way electrons with differing polarizations
scatter from each other.
One expects an intrinsic falloff in the weak force with the distance
between the electrons. It should also fall off owing to the great
mass that the Z boson, unlike its EM counterpart, the massless
photon. Finally, the weak force weakens because the electron's "weak
charge" becomes increasingly shielded (just as the electron's
electrical charge had been) owing to a polarization of the
vacuum---but this time with virtual quarks, electrons, and W and Z
bosons needing to be taken into account. Previously, the weak
charge has been well measured only at a fixed distance scale, a
small fraction of the proton's diameter. The SLAC result over
longer distances confirms the expected falloff.
==
SUMMARY OF PAST HISTORY:
The precise measurements of planetary motion by
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and observations by
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) were plotted by
Johann Kepler (1571-1630 ) resulting in Kepler's
Three laws:
1. The planets move about the sun in elliptical orbits
with the sun as one focus of the ellipse.
2. The straight line joining the sun and a given planet
sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time.
3. The square of the period of revolution of the planet
about the sun is proportional to the cube of the mean
distance from the sun. t^2 = K L^3
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1721 ) concluded that it was a
force F = mL/t^2 = k m_1 x m_2 /L^2 that caused the
orbital motion.
==
Two biological mechanisms that influence gene activity. In one, called DNA
methylation, enzymes inside a cell attach a minuscule molecular decoration to a
gene, deactivating that gene. In the other, called histone acetylation, a
dormant gene is made active again.
==
The sea level has risen more than 120 metres since the peak of the last
ice age about 18,000 years ago. The bulk of that occurred before
6000 years ago.
==
The sun will eventually enter the red giant phase of the solar life-cycle, the
subsequent blast of the expelled outer layers of the Sun (comprising about 1/3
the mass of the Sun or so) when the Sun expels them due to the explosive
ignition of the helium shell flash just outside its spent carbon-oxygen
inner core propelling them with speeds exceeding the Sun's escape velocity
and producing a planetary nebula about the Sun.
==
http://www.geology.wisc.edu/zircon/Earliest%20Piece/Images/28.jpg
history of the earth
==
WH Peck, JW Valley, SA Wilde, and CM Graham (2000) Ion microprobe Evidence for
Pre-4.4 Ga Continental Crust and Low Temperature Water/Rock Interaction. Geol.
Soc. Am. Abstr, vol 32, no. 7, p376.

SA Wilde, JW Valley, WH Peck and CM Graham (2001) Evidence from Detrital
Zircons for the Existence of Continental Crust and Oceans on the Earth 4.4 Gyr
Ago. Nature. 409: 175-178.

WH Peck, JW Valley, SA Wilde, and CM Graham (2001) Oxygen isotope ratios and
rare earth elements in 3.3 to 4.4 Ga zircons: Ion microprobe evidence for high
d18O continental crust and oceans in the Early Archean. Geochimica et
Cosmochimica Acta, vo. 64, no 22, pp 4215-4229

John W. Valley, William H. Peck, Elizabeth M.King, Simon A. Wilde (2002) A Cool
Early Earth, Geology. 30: 351-354.

Cavosie AJ, Wilde SA, Liu D, Valley JW, Weiblen PW (2004) Internal zoning and
U-Th-Pb chemistry of the jack Hills detrital zircons: a mineral record of
early Archean to mesoproterozoic magmatism. Precambrian Research, 135:231-279.
==
Actually, the compositional evidence is strongly in favor of this
scenario. Except for some tiny variations the ratios of the amounts of
the various stable and non-radiogenic isotopes for *each* of the
elements are essentially fixed throughout the material of the Earth.
However material having an extraterrestrial origin (coming from another
region of the pre-solar nebula) these isotope ratios vary by significant
amounts. For instance the isotope ratios for Martian material are
characteristic of Mars, the ratios for Venus are characteristic of
Venus, the ratios for Earth are characteristic of Earth, etc. The
ratios for meteorites are not as fixed and depend on the particular
formational history of each of them. Now the isotope ratios for lunar
material are measurable distinct from those for terrestrial material,
but they are much closer to terrestrial ratios than those known for any
other body in the solar system. It appears that the moon is made of
stuff that is mostly the same stuff of the Earth, but is mixed up
somewhat with foreign material.
If the Moon was formed from the debris ejecta from a collision with a
non-terrestrial body with the early earth, these close-but-not-quite-on
isotope ratios for the moon would be naturally explained by the
natural mixing of the material from the foreign body with ejected
material from the early earth in the material that eventually coalesced
to form the Moon.
In addition, the chemical mix of the composition of the material of the
Moon is significantly different from that of Earth in just the way we
would expect if the Moon formed in the aftermath of such a collision.
The Moon has much less core iron than the Earth and is very depleted in
volatiles compared to Earth. The Moon seems to be made of stuff that
is mostly the same as mantle material of the Earth with the exception
that it is very desiccated of volatiles. This is naturally explained by
the collision scenario because the collision would have disrupted
(vaporized & melted & ejected) the outer layers of the early Earth, but
would have not done a whole lot to the Earth's iron core. This means
that the stuff thrown off by the collision would have been all the
volatile material from the Earth's near surface as well as a lot of
material from the mantle. The Moon would have formed from this hot
mix of ejected material but its gravity would not have been sufficient
to capture the liberated volatiles, water, CO2, N2, etc. The high
temperatures in the ejection processes would have baked out the
water & other volatiles from the rocky material from which the Moon
formed sort of like what a cement factory does to crushed limestone.
Meanwhile the rest of the impacted Earth would have reformed from the
material that didn't achieve escape velocity and eventually fell back
down and was accreted to it. The stronger gravitation of the Earth
would have recaptured a lot of the ejected volatiles allowing a new
atmosphere (and eventually oceans) to subsequently form.
==
All scientists build on the work of their predecessors. Sometimes the great
achievement of a scientist is to take the separate works of others, clearly see
how they are in fact related to each other, add some new elements of his own,
and put out a comprehensive theory where there had only been scattered works
previously. That isn't plagiarism, that is good science.
==
Science presupposes naturalism for purposes of its investigation. It does not
know whether the phenomenon occured naturally or not, but investigates on the
Science searches for the material component of an explanation because it is the
ONLY component it can search for. It is not a bias but a limitation.
==
Hypernova
Mmost supernovae do not generate these high-speed emissions, jets or blobs and
thus have no potential to generate a GRB.
Only a few, which he and other researchers have come to call hypernovae, are
capable. Their origins involve stars 50 to 100 times as massive as our Sun.
"These are very rare objects, but they were perhaps more numerous in
star-forming regions of the early (distant) universe," Fishman said. But, he
added, "there are likely to be several of the massive pre-hypernovae stars in
our galaxy. If any go off within several hundred parsecs (a parsec equals about
3.26 light-years) and are beamed toward Earth, it would be very bad for us."
One known supernova, suspected by some of being a hypernova, sits right in our
cosmic backyard. Eta Carinae is the most luminous object in our galaxy and less
than 8,000 light-years away. The exploding star is thought to be 100 times more
massive than our Sun and it radiates about 5 million times more power.
This massive supernovae, Eta Carinae, is less than 8,000 light years away.
It doubled in brightness in less than 18 months recently. Yikes.
Do gamma ray bursts cause mass extinctions? Without question, the answer is
probably yes or no, according to the experts. But most would tell you that it
was an asteroid, not a GRB, that did the dinos in. That's one view that has
changed and become firm since the discovery of proof -- a crater in Mexico.
As seen from Earth, Eta Carinae brightened dramatically about 150 years ago,
then faded to become a dim star. But it has brightened again since about 1940
and it doubled in brightness between 1998 and 1999.
Eta Carinae does not seem to point in our direction.
==
Neutrinos are among the most abundant and energetic particles in the universe;
the Sun alone makes unfathomable quantities of them. But they are invisible,
carry no electrical charge and have almost no mass. So they are tough to spot.
A billion pass through our body every second. There are a billion neutrinos in
the universe for every proton," including 300 left over from the Big Bang in
every cubic centimeter in the universe.
==
Objectifiability, causality, and persistence of phenomena permit observations
to be conducted, and the concept of natural law to be introduced as
acodification of the regularity seen in those observations.
Epistemologically the activity of science deals with those objects of our
experience which can be apprehended through human senses (allowing for
augmentation via instrumentation, and including indirect measurements),
comprehended via human intellect (allowing for computational augmentation
through devices), and communicated via human language (including mathematics,
and allowing for augmentation via instrumentation). These constitute the
necessary conditions for an activity being called scientific.
The sufficient conditions would then involve techniques, methods, and
conventions that do not require the violation of any of the necessary
conditions stated above. Fundamentally, all observations and measurements are
statistical in nature and all knowledge is incomplete, leading to scientific
conclusions which are inferential in nature. Such inferences are often called
inductive but this really only means that they are deductions made in absence
of complete information. A better term would be tentative. The recognition of
the incompleteness of scientific knowledge combined with the notion of the
tentativity of scientific results leads to the notion that science is
investigative. All of this is motivated by a notion of utility, which leads to
a notion that scientific results should be parsimonious. There is a strong
notion that novelty is required. So, to recap, for science: Ontology:
Uniformity, objectifiability, causality, persistence of phenomena.
Epistemology:
Necessary conditions: apprehensibility, comprehensibility, communicability
Sufficient conditions: tentativity, investigativity, utility, parsimony,
novelty
Methodology:
Investigations are formalized, peer reviewed, and published in the free
marketplace of ideas: adopted, rejected, or ignored as per the above notions.
Members of the community carry with them the notion of how to do science, with
the notion that many things they learn as students will be modified or
discarded during their career as scientists.
==
In 2003, on January 4 our Earth made its closest approach to the Sun for the
year, an event astronomers call perihelion. At perihelion, the Earth is about
147.5 million km away from the Sun. At the greatest separation, the two are
about 152.6 million km apart. In 2003 that occurred on July 4. That's a
difference of about 5 million kilometers (a bit over 3 million miles).
==
Karl Popper, one of the most well-known scientific historians, said that
science yields objective, culture-value-free knowledge. There is a real
world, independent of the scientist, and although we may never get to know
that real world completely, in science we progress to ever-better
understanding. (Popper, K.R. "Objective Knowledge".)
==
The voids in space are typically 100 million light-years across, and yet they
contain only a few galaxies each. Taken together, the voids fill 40 percent of
the volume of the universe, but their galaxies account for less than 5 percent
of all galaxies.
For the first 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the entire Universe was one
great fog of protons, electrons, and radiation. No stars existed.
About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the fog lifted and light broke through
This light -- essentially the afterglow of the Big Bang, the very first light
to shine in the Universe
They showed the star indeed conformed to the light pattern of a Type 1A
supernova, its brightness first waxing and then waning over 40 days. In turn,
this confirmation could be used to estimate the star's distance and age.
However, instead of appearing to accelerate away from the astronomers and seem
dimmer, as a supernova would do in an accelerating universe, it appeared to be
somewhat brighter than normal. The brightness indicates the star exploded in an
era of the universe when galaxies were closer to one another and gravity
dominated the expansion of the universe.
==
Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than
40,000 years by counting annual layers.
==
Since scientists began hunting for extra-solar planets about a decade ago, they
have found more than 150. The overwhelming majority of them are Jupiter-like
giants close to their host stars, enabling them to impart a significant wobble
with relative frequency.
==
Roger Bacons On Experimental Science was published in 1268.
==
Wertheim's book, Pythagoras' Trousers
==
How does one establish that an experimental result is mostly likely correct
unless.
1. The assumptions underlying the experiment are examined by others beside the
experimenter.
2. The instrumentation of the experiment is examined by others beside the
experimenter.
3. The results of the experiment are reproduced by others besides the orginal
experimenter.
==
1) Observation of something
2) Developing a theory that would explain the things that I observed.
3) Use the theory to develop some predictions that could be used to
verify the theory. If the theory is true these are the additional
things that I would expect to discover. Existing data may be used to
verify the prediction. Or the prediction may point us to something
previously unknown.
4) Testing the theory to see if it does indeed provide a reason for the
observations. Are the predictions made by the theory verified?
5) Repeat steps 1-4, modifying the theory or developing alternative
theories as necessary, until a theory is found that best fits the data.
6) Continue testing and refining the theory as new observations are made.
7) Present the theory for peer review along with all pertinent data.
The purpose of this is to assist in verifying the results and to ensure
that nothing was overlooked or falsified. The use of a critical
audience for peer review is the best way to verify a solid theory.
==
Earth name origin
The origin of the now used form of naming comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Erda
(Erdaz), which means ground, soil, and Earth, the word changed to Eorthe or
Erthe in Old English, to Erde in German and Greek Era.
==
The results of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has mapped the
distribution of the oldest light in the universe dating back to some 380,000
years after the big bang. This is "baby picture" of the cosmos.
==
Science is the foundation of our technology which is the foundation of our
prosperity. The original raw research which resulted in computers and
superconductors was conducted in the 1930s. It was the kind of research the
right-wingers scoff at today (and then too, fortunately they didn't have a lot
of power then). Without science and technology our society would collapse. It
would look like Saudi Arabia. A few rich folks and for everyone else lots of
religion to comfort that nasty, brutish and short life.
==
Type Ic supernovae result from massive stars whose winds have shed their outer
envelopes of hydrogen and often all their helium, or that have lost these outer
layers to a binary companion. Only the core is left, composed of the elements
produced by fusion in the star's center - mostly carbon and oxygen but other
heavy elements as well, down to a solid iron center.
The collapsar theory proposes that the solid iron sphere at the very core of
the star collapses under gravity to a black hole, but that the split-second
collapse takes place in a unique way. As the iron and surrounding matter fall
inward, the spin of the core increases, flattening the in-falling material into
a disk that flows inward along the equator. The congestion of in-falling matter
pushes some of it right back out along the path of least resistance - the two
blowholes at either pole.
The matter shot out from the poles rams into the other layers of the star,
which it may not be able to penetrate. The lack of a hydrogen and helium
envelope presumably increases the chances the jet will punch through.
"It has so much energy that it pushes through these outer layers of the star,
which are of relatively small density compared to the disk of in-falling
material in the center of the star," said Foley. "Eventually, if it punches
out, you have a gamma-ray jet. Some Type Ic supernovae may be failed gamma-ray
bursts, which means the jet tried to push out, but there was too much material
in the way, and it never actually broke out. That would explain why we don't
see gamma-ray bursts associated with some of these objects."
==
The first principle of science is natural causality. Over the course of
human history, two approaches have been taken to the study of life and
other natural phenomena. The first assumes that some events happen through
the intervention of supernatural forces beyond our understanding. The
ancient Greeks believed that the god Zeus hurled thunderbolts from the
sky and that the god Posiedon caused earthquakes and storms at sea. In
contrast, science adheres to the principle of NATURAL CAUSALITY: All
events can be traced to natural causes that are potentially within our
ability to understand. For example, until relatively recently epilepsy
was commonly thought to be a visitation from the gods. Today we realize
that epilepsy is a disease of the brain in which groups of nerve cells
are activated uncontrollably. The principle of natural causality has an
important corollary: The evidence we gather about the causes of natural
events has not been deliberately distorted to fool us. This corollary
may seem obvious, yet not so very long ago some people argued that
fossils are not evidence of evolution but were placed on Earth by God as
a test of our faith. If we cannot trust the evidence provided by nature,
then the entire enterprise of science is futile.

THE NATURAL LAWS THAT GOVERN EVENTS APPLY EVERYWHERE AND FOR ALL TIME
A second fundamental principle of science is that natural laws, laws
derived from nature, are uniform in space and time and do not change
with distance or time. The laws of gravity, the behavior of light, and
the interactions of atoms, for example, are the same today as they were
a billion years ago and will hold just as well in Moscow as in New York
or even on Mars. Uniformity in space and time is especially vital to
biology, because many events of great importance to biology such as the
evolution of today's diversity of living things, happened before humans
were around to observe them. Some people believe that all different
types of organisms were individually created at one time in the past by
the direct intervention of God, a philosophy called CREATIONISM. As
scientists, we freely admit we cannot disprove this idea. Creationism,
however, is contrary to both natural causality and uniformity in time.
The overwhelming success of science in explaining natural events through
natural causes has led almost all scientists to reject creationism.
==
The Hindu fundamentalist BJP party that governed India
from 1998 to 2004 aggressively promoted something called 'Vedic
science'. This claims that all scientific knowledge can be found in
the Hindu sacred texts that were revealed 'in a flash' over a
millennium ago. The best scientific techniques are not
experimentation and verification but yoga and meditation. It is, in
other words, not science but religion. As a result, India's
earthquake prediction systems were steered away from scientific
method towards 'Vedic' practices. The Department of Health invested
millions in the research, development and sale of cow urine as a
treatment for TB and Aids.
==
Air pressure is measured using a unit called a "Pascal" (or "pa"). One
Pascal is one millibar of pressure. For reference, standard atmospheric
pressure is 101,325 pa. In laboratories vacuums of 10^-13 pa have been
created.
==
there's 78,498 prime numbers between 2 and 1,000,000
==
p=mv/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2)) p= momentum in relativity v = velocity c= light speed
==
Chemolithotrophy is a metabolic process used by microorganisms to obtain
energy from inorganic molecules.
==
The Archean was roughly 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago.
Recent molecular evidence exists for the presence of algae 2.7 billion years
ago in Pilbara, Australia. There is also evidence for the complete operation of
the sulfur cycle in Pilbara, with oxidation and reduction (or redox reactions')
dating back 3.5 billion years. The Australian Archaean system was in a shallow
marine environment,
==
Consider the development of a consistent mathematical solution of Einstein's
equations, devised in 1931 by Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest and physicist
The solution required what today we call the Big Bang. By confronting the
conventional scientific wisdom that the universe was eternal, and instead
demonstrating that it was likely to have had a beginning in the finite past
==
there are more than two genders. Some other possibilities are:
1) Super Male (XYY)
2) Super Female (XXX)
3) Kleinfelter's syndrome (XXY)
4) Turner's syndrome (XO)
It is interesting to note that Turner's children are more like
females in appearance because of having no Y chromosome, and that
Kleinfelter's are more male in appearance (although effeminate)
because the Y is present (which is responsible for teststerone development).

It is also interesting to note that this situation is reversed in
birds where the male is the homogametic sex (ZZ) while the female is
the heterogametic sex (ZW). In this case, the early fetus resembles the male.

GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE GENDERS":
1) Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY) - effeminate male with small testes.
he will be sterile.The voice is high pitched and gynecomastia
(vestigial mammaries) are common. The chance for mental retardation is
high. incindence is 1 in every 400 male births.
2) Turner's syndrome (XO) - short and chunky female with webbed neck
and stubby fingers. There is no breast enlargement at puberty, at
which time estrogens are usually admunistered artificially. They are
completely infertile. Mental deficits in spatial & numerical functions
are common. Incidence is 1 in every 4,000 female births.
3) Supermale (XYY) - unusually tall and often mentally dull. The high
incidence of these individuals in prisons have led some to believe
that the extra Y causes aggressive bahavior, but this view is still
controversial, I think. Richard Speck, who murdered 8 nurses in
Chicago in the 1960s, was XYY.
4) Superfemale (XXX) - females with exagerated secondary sex
characteristics and pronounced mental retardation.
5) Mosaics (XXY/XY or XX/XO) - Many times there may be a loss of a
chromosome during early embryonic development so that there are two
different lines of development in the fetus. The results are variable,
depending on which tissues receive which chromosome complement.
6) XY Females (XY) - They are genetically male, but a suppression of
factors on the Y will supress male development. This alludes to the
fact that fetuses are originally more female in form, unless a male
factor from the Y acts upon them.
==
The "sea quarks," the virtual
quarks whose ephemeral presence has a noticeable influence over the
"valence" quarks that are considered the nominal constituents of a
hadron. A proton, for example, is said to consist of three valence
quarks---two up quarks and one down quark---plus a myriad of sea
quarks that momentarily pop into existence in pairs.
==
1893 F. H.Bradley published a Appearance and Reality
==
Linear motion formulas
s = vo * t + 0.5 * a * t^2
v = vo + a * t
v^2 = vo^2 + 2 * a * s
v0x = v0 * Cos[theta]
v0y = v0 * Sin[theta]
a = -9.8 for gravity
KE= .5*mass*v^2
PE=mass*g*height
Spring F=k*x Energy .5*k*x^2

Rotation motion formulas
theta = wo * t + 0.5 * alpha * t^2 = angle(radians)
w=angular velocity(radians/second)
alpha= angular acceleration(radians/sec^2)
w = wo + alpha * t
w^2 = wo^2 + 2 * alpha * theta
T= torque
T* dt=I*dw
Torque= force * radius * cos[theta)
energy = 0.5 * I*w^2
Power=watts=Joules/sec = Torque * w
Work=Torque * delta(theta)
w=2*pi*freq
frequency(Hz)=1/period(time)
rate of work=power= torque * w
Moment of inertia=sum( dm * r^2 )
==
A supernova of the type used to measure cosmic distances, photographed in 1994.
hese "Type 1a" supernovae are believed to erupt when a compact, dead star
(known as a white dwarf) sucks in matter from a neighboring star. When
the total mass of the white dwarf hits a certain limit, it blows to pieces.
It has a known brighness.
==
Sigma(i=1 to n) i^2 = n(n+1)(2n+1) /6
==
In 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from
each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted.
==
Science can be done by anyone, of any viewpoint, with any religious beliefs.
No other "belief system" can. It is is just based on what is testable and a
certain kind of way of examining things
==
Markov Analysis (MA) is a powerful modeling and analysis technique with strong
applications in the time-based reliability and availability analysis. The
reliability behavior of a system is represented using a state-transition
diagram, which consists of a set of discrete states that the system can be in,
and defines the speed at which transitions between those states take place. As
such, Markov models consist of comprehensive representations of possible chains
of events, i.e., transitions, within systems, which in the case of reliability
and availability analysis correspond to sequences of failures and repair.
The Markov model is analyzed in order to determine such measures as the
probability of being in a given state at a given point in time, the amount of
time a system is expected to spend in a given state, as well as the expected
number of transitions between states, for instance representing the number of
failures and repairs.
Markov models provide great flexibility in modeling the timing of events. They
can be applied when simple parametric time-based models, such as Exponential or
Weibull Time-to-Failure models are not sufficient to describe the dynamic
aspects of a system's reliability or availability behavior, as may be the case
for systems incorporating standby redundancy.
==
Black Sea Filling
The names of the geologists doing the research are Bill Ryan and Walter
Pitman of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The time of occurrence
is given as approximately 5600 BC. The two major pieces of
oceanographic evidence for the sudden flood are: a) shell fragments
indicating untimely demise of all shellfish at about 5600 BC, and b)
the earliest salt-water mollusk fossils showing appearance all at about
5600 BC (not over a long interval, which would have indicated slow
flooding of the basin). Core samples from the bottom also revealed
terrestrial sediments below the marine sediments.
==
A study of stars similar to our Sun in our Galaxy, that is lone
stars with the same brightness, composition and size as ours,
reveals that our star is very unusual indeed. Other sun-like
stars produce enormous superflares once a century, which would be
powerful enough to destroy the ozone layer on Earth and melt the
ice on Jupiter's moons. A typical example is the star S-Fornax
which was observed to increase 3 magnitudes over a 40 minute period.
It would make life much more difficult to evolve on orbiting planets
and adds weight to those astronomers who believe that life on Earth
is unique. It appears that the Sun is a particularly stable star as
there are no records of it ever having produced a flare of this
magnitude. The big question is why is the Sun so unusual, and will
it always be so docile?
Well there never has really been any dispute that the sun is a relatively
rare star. At least half of the solar systems and perhaps as many as two
thirds of all solar systems contain multiple stars, G class stars are much
rarer than the smaller colder M and K stars (though much more numerous
than the larger brighter the O, B, A, F class stars). And yes the Sun is
unusually stable as stars go, and appears to have maintained that
stability for Billions of years. However, lets consider a moment that the
sun is really rare... suppose that only 1/10th of 1 percent of all stars
in our Galaxy are both stable and warm enough and long lived enough for
life to form. Even assuming that our galaxy has a very conservative 100
billion stars, there are still 100 million suitable stars in our Galaxy
alone, let alone in other Galaxies.
it is actually S Fornacis. The convention is that you denote
variable stars in a constellation with capital Latin letters starting
with the letter R, and when you run out of single letters you use
combinations of two letters starting on RR, and when you reach ZZ, you
go back to AA and start all over again. When you reach QZ you have used
up 334 combinations. If that is not enough you write V (for variable)
followed by a number starting on 335. It is always followed by the
Latin name in its genitive case. Who said astronomy had anything to do
with logic.
Anyway S For is an F8 star according to what I have found. That is it
is a bit heavier, brighter and hotter than the Sun. As far as I know
that does not make it a typical flare star, unless it is a binary of the
RS CVn-type, which I do not think. As you said most flare stars are
small, cold stars, spectral type dMe.
I do not think that they are. The best place to look for information
on activity on solarlike stars may be in the data that a research group
has been collecting on Mount Wilson for a couple of decades. They have
been looking for activity cycles in solarlike stars by measuring the
strength of Ca II H and K emission lines. These emission lines are
primarily not produced by flares but by the more mundane forms of
activity that we can see in the solar chromosphere. IIRC some stars,
but not all, show activity cycles similar to that of the Sun, other
stars may show more chaotic variations or be quiescent, and a few stars
may even have been seen making a transition between quiescence and an
active state.
There's a paper by Brad Schaefer in ApJ 337, 927 (1989) which summarises
that's been monitored on several hundred G-dwarfs as part of the Mt Wilson
programme for the last few decades. There are papers by Soderblom et al
and Baliunas et al scattered through the literature. based on observations
of cluster stars (known age), activity declines fairly rapidly with time,
and there's also the possibility of Maunder minimum-like phenomena
(quiescent sun & mini ice ages cf 17th century).
There simply aren't good statistics on the frequency of any large-scale
flares - although those parameters ought to be determinable from MACHO
data, and since there are U Washington astronomers involved with MACHO,
maybe that's what this refers to. Schaefer cites some photographic work by
Johnson which predicted a modest (0.5 mag) flare every 125 days or so in
the average field star - but I suspect that the radial velocity montioring
programmes (planet searches) on G dwarfs can set better limits on that
prediction, since I'm fairly certain they've never seen a flare of that
magnitude during an observation. (Flares are relativel frequent in low-mass
stars, but they're also easier to detect there - lower luminosity star, so
lower-luminosity flares have higher contrast).
==
Europe's so-called Little Ice Age (1645-1715) coincided with the
Maunder Minimum---a period during which sunspots and auroras were exceedingly
rare.
==
Sir Roger Penrose new book, The Road to Reality:
A Complete Guide to the Laws of Nature,
==
A more appropriate and structurally correct name for heme would be
Fe(II)-conjugated protoporphyrin IX. It's still routinely called heme more
out of habit, and to keep references to it as simple as possible, than because
heme is a more accurate name. In fact, protoporphyrin IX is simply a container
for a metal ion.
The cytochromes are a group of iron-containing electron-transferring proteins
of aerobic cells that act sequentially to transfer electrons from
flavoproteins to molecular oxygen. They all contain iron-porphyrin prosthetic
groups, resembling hemoglobin and myoglobin in this respect.
The cytochromes undergo reversible Fe(II)-Fe(III) valence changes during
their catalytic cycle. In the mitochondria of higher animal and plant cells,
where the respiratory chain has been most thoroughly studied, at least five
different cytochromes have been identified: cytochromes b, c, c1, a, and
a3. Their molar ratios to each other appear to be constant. In addition to
the cytochromes found in mitochondria, another type, cytochrome b5, occurs
in the endoplasmic reticulum. Vertebrate cells also contain other heme
enzymes, such as peroxidase and catalase. Although catalase has been very
intensively studied, its role in biological oxidations is not known with
certainty. Since it is found in the microbodies in some cells, it is
believed to catalyze decomposition of hydrogen peroxide produced in the
latter structures....
The porphyrin ring is present not only in the various heme enzymes and heme
proteins but also in the chlorophylls of green plant cells. Porphyrins are
derivatives of the parent tetrapyrrole compound porphin....
[Here Lehninger is establishing the biochemical basis that makes porphyrins
fundamentally different from all other biomolecules. Note the absence of
any discussion of peptide bonds, amino acids or iron.]
The porphyrins are named and classified on the basis of their side-chain
substituents, e.g., etioporphyrins, mesoporphyrins, protoporphyrins, and
coproporphyrins. Of these, protoporphyrins are by far the most abundant.
Protoporphyrin contains four methyl groups, two vinyl groups, and two
propionic acid groups. Since protoporphyrins contain three different kinds
of substituent groups, they may exist in fifteen isomeric forms depending on
the sequence of substitution in the eight available sidechain positions. Of
these many possible forms, one, protoporphyrin IX..., is the most abundant.
It is found in hemoglobin, myoglobin, and most of the cytochromes.
[Here Lehninger is establishing what makes the different types of porphyrin
molecules qualitatively different from one another. Notice again the
absence of any discussion of iron.]
Protoporphyrin forms quadridentate (literally "four teeth") chelate
complexes with metal ions such as iron, magnesium, zinc, nickel, cobalt,
and copper. Such a chelate complex of protoporphyrin with Fe(II) is called
protoheme, or more simply, heme; a similar complex with Fe(III) is called
hemin or hematin.
Though called heme, Fe(II)-protoporphyrin IX can now be seen to be virtually
identical to naked protoporphyrin IX, when these two are compared with other
types of porphyrins or even other isomeric forms of protoporphyrin.]
Harper's Review of Biochemistry_ 19th Edition 1983,
which is an excellent source for this kind of information.
"A peptide consists of 2 or more amino acid residues linked by peptide
bonds. Peptides of more than 10 amino acid residues are termed
polypeptides." pg. 21.
"All proteins are high-molecular weight polypeptides. Whether a polypeptide
is termed a protein or merely a polypeptide is largely an arbitrary
decision, although the dividing line between large polypeptides and small
proteins is customarily between MW 8000 and 10,000.
\While all proteins are polypeptides, many contain additional, non-amino
acid materials such as heme, vitamin derivatives, lipid, and carbohydrate.
Historically, these proteins are referred to as complex proteins and those
which consist solely of amino acids as simple proteins." pg. 31
The two chapters these quotes come from were written by Victor W. Rodwell, a
professor of biochemistry at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
A \pure and simple\ polypeptide formed by linking amino acids has the
following structure (P in this case is the peptide bond
H
-N-C-
||
O
and not phosphorous, C is carbon, NH2 is the amino end, COOH is the
carboxy end, and Rn represent the various R groups of the amino acids,
most Hs are deleted for simplicity):
H2N-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-COOH
| | | | | | | |
R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8
The reason this structure is called a \polypeptide chain\ is *solely*
because of the repeating 'C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P' backbone. Different
polypeptide chains will differ in the sequence of the R groups (which is
why proteins/peptides can be sequenced).
Now I will add a chain of sugars (S) to this \pure and simple\
polypeptide, making it a glycopeptide:
H2N-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P-COOH
| | | | | | | |
R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8
|
S
Note that the 'C-P-C-P-C-P-C-P' backbone is unchanged. Thus this
molecule still has a \polypeptide chain structure\ and is still called a
polypeptide, peptide, or protein. It will often be called a
glycopeptide or glycoprotein to indicate that it has a chain of sugars
attatched to one or more side chains. It is still a polypeptide for the
same reason that the porphyrin ring of heme is called a porphyrin ring
whether or not it contains a metal ion, namely that the term
\polypeptide chain\ is a description of a class of structures, not a
name given to a specific structure and the above structure still has the
*sole* necessary feature of a polypeptide, the polypeptide backbone.
==
A tiny speck of zircon crystal that is barely visible to the eye is believed
to be the oldest known piece of Earth at about 4.4 billion years old. For the
Scientists made the breakthrough discovery that the early Earth was much
cooler than previously believed based on analysis of the crystal.
With the aid of a microscope, anyone will be able to check out the tiny grain,
which measures less than two human hairs in diameter.
Analysis of the object startled researchers around the world by concluding
that the early Earth, instead of being a roiling ocean of magma, was cool
enough to have oceans and continents -- key conditions for life.
The miraculous thing about the crystal is that we've been able to make such
wide-ranging inferences about the early Earth, this is our first glimpse into
the earliest history of the Earth.
They found that the planet had cooled to about 100-degrees Centigrade less
than 200 million years after it was formed. Before the research, the oldest
evidence for liquid water on the planet was from a rock estimated to be much
younger -- 3.8 billion years old. It was discovered in Australa in 1984.
=
THE FLY IN THE CATHEDRAL
By Brian Cathcart. Illustrated. 308 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.
==
The temperature of the CMB ranges from 2.7251 to 2.7249 degrees Kelvin (a
measure of degrees above absolute zero). These tiny variations reflect the
earliest lumps and bumps in the universe -- seeds for galaxies and stars.
These seeds, then, formed roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Scientists
have no observations to tell them what happened next, but here's what they
imagine:
Nodes of matter were connected by long filaments, much like a spider web.
Clumps of hydrogen -- something like drops on the spider web -- developed along
the filaments. Each drop had heft, gravity and a random velocity, and
eventually they were drawn toward the nodes, where material gathered to
generate the first galaxies.
===
The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
no angels, no devil, no demons. Materialism claims that matter was in
existence before mind/intelligence originated, in humans. An adherent
of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform arose via
non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level, totally-mindless processes from
non-living matter. A materialist does not think that God made physics, and
made physics such that physics would give rise to life.
==
The top 3,000 feet of Mt. Everest (from 26,000-29,000 feet) is made up of
sedimentary rock packed with seashells and other ocean-dwelling animals.
It was originally at the bottom of the Tethys Sea, laying between India and
Asia.

Global Tectonics -- by P. Kearey, et al
==
"Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System" by Ivars Peterson
"Islands of Truth" and "The Mathematical Tourist" by him too

Brian Greene - the eminent physicist and writer - The Fabric of the Cosmos,

Jeremy Bernstein "Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos"

Deep Down Things by Bruce Schumm particle physics

_The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion and the Search for God_ (1994)

C.J. Isham, "Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process"
_Physics, Philosophy, and Theology_, eds. Russell, Stoeger, and Coyne

Steven Weinberg, _Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for
the Ultimate Laws of Nature_ (1993), 247:(1988), 378:

Gould "Unweaving the Rainbow (1998)"
==
Stars die when they have used up most of their hydrogen. For the Sun, this will
happen in about 5 billion years. But some stars will experience a brief
rebirth when their helium suddenly ignites, and the remaining hydrogen in their
outer envelope is drawn into the helium shell. After the explosive re-ignition,
he star will expand to giant proportions - expelling tons of carbon in the
process - before rapidly burning out again to become a white dwarf.
==
Chemical composition of the earth by mass:
Iron 34.6%
Oxygen 29.5%
Silicon 15.2%
Magnesium 12.7%
Nickel 2.4%
miscellaneous 5.6%
==
The current measured rate of spreading results in an age estimate for the
western margin of the Pacific basin of approximately 170 million years - an age
which has been confirmed by radiometric dating.
==
The sun's life zone is 0.95 to 1.67 times the earth's average distance.
==
You can't see binary stars at cosmological distances, but the light curves
(variation with time) for supernovae of type Ia, which are all thought to be
due to the same physical mechanism (the sudden deflagration [complete
nuclear fusion burning] of a white dwarf in a binary), do show a time
dilation exactly in proportion to their red shifts. Very distant supernova
light curves appear to take longer to go through their rises and falls.
ISTR a paper some time ago that also looked at the "flickering" in quasars,
and noted that at large redshifts the frequency spectrum was peaked at
slower variations. So you can see physical processes that are not themselves a
redshift that partake of the same dilation.
==
Hawking quote
"A very important part of turning cosmology into a science is to
understand all the implications of a seemingly trivial statement:
There is nothing "outside the universe". One aspect of this is that
there can be no observer outside the universe. We must understand the
universe in a way in which the scientific description of it is a
description made and used by observers who are part of the system
itself. This seems to go against the idea that the scientific view of
nature is objective, and an objective description is always based on
observations of a system from outside. If cosmology is to be a
science, we must invent a new notion of objectivity that allows the
observers of the system also to be part of it."
==
20 life amino acids are common. Two mare are observed in some bacteria.
--
L, DL-Alanine
L-Arginine
L-Aspartic Acid
L-Cysteine Hydrochloride Monohydrate
L-Cystine
L-Glutamic Acid
L-Glutamine
Glycine
L-Histidine
L-Isoleucine
L-Lysine Monohydrochloride
L-Leucine
L-Methionine
L-Phenylalanine
L-Proline
L-Serine
L-Threonine
L-Tryptophan
L-Tyrosine
L-Valine
==
Scientists know that frauds will almost certainly be found out, because it is
in the nature of science to continue testing even accepted ideas, either
explicitly, or implicitly as a part of researching other things. Science works
by repeatedly testing and re-testing claims, often over several generations,
in many different ways, so a major fraud of scientific importance will
eventually be found out because the claims made will contradict other
scientific evidence, leading to exposure.
==
Mutagenesis is the generation of mutants.
ENU (N-nitroso-N-ethylurea, an alkylating agent) is an extremely nasty
chemical used by many zebrafish labs (and fly labs and mouse labs) to
greatly increase the rate of mutations in their stocks. The stuff is
lethal even at fairly low concentrations, and is a potent carcinogen
as well as mutagen.
==
"A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises,
the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its
are of applicability. Therefore the deep imptession that classical
thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal
content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework
of applicability of its basic concepts.''"
A. Einstein (from Kittel's _Thermal Physics_)
==
Book list:
Black Holes and Time Warps
Climbing Mount Improbable
Evolution by Carl Zimmer
Evolution by Mark Ridley
Finding Darwin's God
Flim-Flam!
Galileo's Finger
Genome by Matt Ridley
Intelligent Design Creationism
Pale Blue Dot
The Ancestor's Tale
The Antiquity of Man
The Blind Watchmaker
==
Here is the scientific method:
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to
predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several
independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
5. If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected
or modified. If rejected, go back to step 2.
==
Lots of PhD's have believed lots of completely silly things. Dr Buouw thinks
the sun revolves around the earth. Dr Krantz believed Bigfoot is real;
Dr Mackal believes the Loch Ness Monster is real.
Dr Mack thinks space aliens are kidnapping people from their beds.
There are PhD's who accept everything from ghosts to the Lost Continent of
Atlantis.

Being a credentialed scientist is no guarantee against being an utter idiot.
==
Another fact about neutrinos; there are actually three types of neutrinos (six
types if you count the anti-neutrinos). The three types (called flavours) are
the electron-neutrino (ne), the muon-neutrino (nu) and the tau-neutrino
(nt); they correspond to the three known "generations" of particles that make
up the known roster of elementary particles. Normal "earthly" matter is made
from first generation particles, protons, neutrons and electrons. The higher
generation particles can be created in particle accelerators (that is how they
were discovered), but they rapidly decay back to the first generation due to
their larger mass.
Now the sun only produces electron neutrinos, and, to date, detectors on earth
have only been sensitive to electron neutrinos. So if the neutrinos were
undergoing a "flavour" oscillation then the probability of detection would be
reduced. There is a proposed scenario, called the MSW effect, where the large
mass densities in the sun could greatly enhance this oscillation effect. This
turns out to be a very attractive possibility for the solution to the solar
neutrino problem.
===
The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief
are overpowering. Thanks to science we have learned to tell the difference
between fantasy and reality.
==
In reality, the gap between subatomic quantum effects and large-scale macro
systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum (Prometheus
Books, 1995), University of Colorado physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that
for a system to be described quantum-mechanically, its typical mass (m), speed
(v) and distance (d) must be on the order of Planck's constant (h). "If mvd is
much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically."
==
The realisation that big strings are possible has come from exploring the most
esoteric implications of the theory. For instance, the only way strings can
vibrate in enough different ways to mimic all the known fundamental particles
is if the strings vibrate in a space-time of 10 dimensions. Since we appear to
live in a universe with a mere four dimensions - three of space and one of time
- string theorists have been forced to postulate the existence of six extra
space dimensions "rolled up" so small we have overlooked them.
The existence of the extra dimensions opens up the possibility of more complex
objects. In addition to
strings, which extend in only one dimension, it is possible to have objects
with two, three or more dimensions. These are dubbed branes, or p-branes, where
the "p" denotes the number of their dimensions. This has raised the possibility
that our universe is a three-brane - a three-dimensional "island", adrift in a
10-dimensional space. And, if it is, it may not be alone. Some have suggested
that the big bang was caused when another brane collided with our own 13.7
billion years ago (See "Highly strung", The Independent, 7 July 2004).
Crucially, a collision between branes creates strings - both within each brane
and as a kind of spaghetti connecting the branes. And these can be stretched to
cosmic dimensions to make cosmic superstrings. "Cosmic strings turn out to be
pretty much inevitable in the brane scenario,"
==
Brues 1990 (People and Races),

Karl Popper The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 2.
==
The gravitational field, described by the metric of spacetime g_uv , is
generated by the stress-energy tensor T^uv of matter. Various field equations
relating g_uv to T^uv have been proposed. The most succsessful have been the
Einstein field equations which are of course, the foundation of general
relativity. G_uv == R_uv - 1/2 g_uv R = 8pi T_uv where R_uv and R are the Ricci
tensor and scalar curvature derived from the metric g_uv , and G_uv is the
Einstein tensor. The equations are non-linear, since the left hand side is not
a linear function of the metric. When the gravitational field is weak, the
geometry of spacetime is nearly flat and the equation is: g_uv = n_uv + h_uv
where all h_uv are << 1. This linearized theory is very interesting.
--
A Journey Into Gravity and Spacetime by John Archibald Wheeler.
==
Stochastic actually comes from the Greek stokastikos which roughly"
translated means "goodness (or accuracy) of aiming"
==
"The Arrow of Time"
Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, Fawcett Columbine, 1990.
==
Every branch of the sciences has committees that
meet, discuss, vote on, and publish, definitions. 'Atom' and
'charge' and 'spin' and 'valence' and 'second (of time), and
'species', and 'force' and 'work' and 'joule' and 'mass' and
'weight' and 'time' have SPECIFIC definitions in science that may or
may not be the same as the ordinary definitions that people use at home.
==
_Fluid Analogies_ by Hofstadter
===
The whole point of an axiomatic proposition is that you're not developing
theories and approaching the proposition in a falsifiable manner with evidence
and so forth. its an ASSUMPTION, unquestioned
==
"The Whole Shebang" Author Timothy Ferris,ISBN#0-684-81020-48
Popular book about the big bang
==
The Science Channel has been running a series featuring the greatest
science discoveries of all-time. The finale counted down the Top Ten
Greatest Science Discoveries. Please note what was voted to the #1 spot.

10. Newton's Three Laws of Motion
9. Microorganisms
8. Penicillin
7. Germ Theory of Disease
6. Heredity
5. The Earth Moves
4. Periodic Table of Elements
3. E=M*C^2
2. General Relativity
1. Natural Selection
==
The infinity of natural numbers. (aleph null)
The infinity of real numbers. (aleph one)
The infinity of the set of all curves. (aleph two)
==
Baryons account for 4 percent of the total matter and energy in the universe,
dark matter is thought to make up 23 percent. The remaining 73 percent of the
so-called matter-energy budget consists of what scientists call "dark energy."
This energy acts like an anti-gravitational force that, in theory, is causing
the universe to expand rather than contract.
==
All the systematic, logical, scientific method of investigation requires is
that the investigation be carried out in a systematic and logical manner,
based on evidence verifiable by anyone, which means that the null is the
only reasonable default presumption (like the presumption of no guilt in
criminal court, where no means zero), the null is the only reasonable
default presumption.
==
Science's answers are just a consensus of ideas
competing to explain the same methodically-gathered data.
--Noelie S. Alito--
==
If something impacts our universe in an observable way,
then science can study it.
If it doesn't, true or not, it is simply irrelevant, since it is impossible
to distinguish it from all sorts of other absurd things.
If there are no answers that science can provide,
then there are no answers that science can provide.
==
The impact theory can explain why the Earth rotated at a relatively fast rate
in its early history - possibly with days as short as 4 or 5 hours. The Moon's
tidal interaction with the Earth's oceans has now slowed the rotation to the
current 24-hour day, and has caused the Moon to drift 15 times further from
Earth. The theory also accounts for the lack of iron in the Moon.
==
[T]o shut our eyes against facts, and to take from nature no response
but such as suits our fanatical belief of what nature ought to be . . .
must do deadly mischief to the causes of inductive truth.
- Adam Sedgwick - 19th century geologist
==
Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm
==
Heme is not organometallic (read: does not involve carbon-metal
bonds). There is only one example of an organometallic molecule in
biology: cobalbumin( Vitamin B12 = cobalt transport protein )
The cobalt-carbon bond makes it easy to transfer the organic group to another
carbon compound.
Porphyrin groups (for example, heme) seem always to coordinate a metal
ion with imidazole- or pyridine-like nitrogen structures in the plane of
the porphyrin ring. There's often a histidine from the protein (there
is in the case of mammalian hemoglobin, at least) which coordinates
below the ring, and a water molecule or something above. Not a carbon-metal
bond to be seen. Cobalbumin is not the only organometallic in biology. There
is also a hydrogenase enzyme from the soil bacterium _Clostridium pasteurianum_
which has iron atoms with cyano and carbonyl ligands. But heme's still not
organometallic.
==
Very small fragments of hemoglobin protein (3 or 4 amino acids) remained
intact after 65 million years of decay.
Schweitzer, Mary H., Mark Marshall, Keith Carron, D. Scott Bohle,
Scott C. Busse, Ernst V. Arnold, Darlene Barnard, J. R. Horner, and
Jean R. Starkey
1997A Heme compounds in dinosaur Trabecular bone Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. USA Vol. 94, pp. 6291-6296, June
Schweitzer, Mary H., Mark Marshall, Darlene Barnard, Scott Bohle,
Keith Carron, Ernst V. Arnold, Jean R. Starkey
1997B Blood from a Stone Dinofest International 101-104
Schweitzer, M.H., Johnson, C., Zocco, T.G., Horner, J.H., Starkey,
J.R.,
1997C 'Preservation of biomolecules in cancellous bone of
_Tyrannosaurus rex_' Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Volume 17,
No. 2, June 19. 349-359
==
Unlike B cells, T cells do not recognize antigens directly. They see
antigen as peptides ONLY in association with host surface MHC (Major
histocomptability) molecules. Since MHC molecules can only bind peptide
molecules of 7-15 amino acids long, T cells only recognize their
specific antigen in the form of small peptides. The antigen presenting
cells such as macrophages and B-cells take up antigen and partially
degrade it into peptides which then occupy the antigen-presenting groove
in MHC-I and MHC-II molecules.
Note that T cells can NOT recognize whole intact antigens nor
non-proteinaceous antigens such as carbohydrates.
Note Sean's conflation of the generally weak *immunogenicity* of a short
sequence with the *specificity* of an immune response to an epitope.
Here Sean implies that the *specificity* of the response requires a
large protein when the data say otherwise. Immune molecules always
respond to small diffences because they can only bind small sequences.
One can easily have a specific response against even a single amino acid
difference in an epitope.
Small molecules are generally less immunogenic than larger ones. But
there are many factors that determine immunogenicity, of which size is
only one. Other factors include the degree of difference from self,
the presence or absence of adjuvants, the method of introduction, the
number of different epitopes different from self, whether the molecule
forms a hapten with larger materials, and simple chance and individual
differences in the organism injected with the antigenic material.
No. Surface epitopes generally produce a more effective *immunogenic*
response than buried epitopes. This is not because of any problem with
specificity or immunogenicity of the buried epitope. Rather it is
because a buried epitope is hidden from large immunoglobins. Even if
the organism produces a strong immunogenic response to a buried epitope
(and they can), because the epitope is not available to that
immunoglobin, the immunogenic response is limited.
==
The continents are periodically eroded and then are periodically
innundated by the sea and are covered with fresh sedimentary deposits.
Most
creatures are destroyed by predation, by decay, by erosion (visit
any beach) or by later destruction after becoming part of the
strata, due to erosion or subduction into the crust. Only a tiny
fraction of the creatures which have lived are preserved today,
which accounts for the gaps in the fossil record.
Nevertheless, there are always environments where rapid burial or
lack of decay or predation make preservation of body parts likely,
and then mineral replacement completes the fossiization process
later. All that remains is for erosion or digging to enable us to
find the fossils.
Land animals can be buried in sediments in streams, in floods,
in lakes, in tar pits, in sand dunes, in bogs and in other land-based
traps. Their method of burial is reflected in the sediments they
are found in.
A question for the creationist is why sedimentary rocks world
wide show similar progressions of trends in fossils, impossible
to explain by hydrological sorting, and illustrating huge quantities
of extinct organisms? One formation in North America has enough
crinoids pieces to cover the earth.
Sedimentary rock
is ultimately derived from the weathering of igneous rock or from
biological material like shells or silicate organisms. When
igneous rock weathers, it forms minerals, clays and the longest
lasting product, quartz, or sand. These products are deposited,
weathered, re-deposited, re-eroded, and even re-assembled into
living things. Limestones and silicious shales are formed from
biological material that has been weathered, but it too can be
re-deposited and reworked. All rock can be metamorphosed under
the right settings, and then weathered again.
The vast majority of the sedimentary rock we find was laid down
by water because water is able to supply more energy for transport
than wind and gravity is uni-directional. On an airless world
like the moon, we should expect meteor impact to be the dominant
form of erosion, and ballistic transport or tectonics the main
form of transportation.
A question for the creationist is why sedimentary rocks can show
evidence of re-working, transport and redeposition that mix
rocks of widely varying origin, indicating different processes
and different timescales impossible to explain by short-period
processes. An example would be a conglomerate made of reworked
quartz pebbles, limestone pebbles, metamorphic rocks, alluvial
sands and cherts, found in Utah.
Cave stalactites are formed as dilute acid, carbonic
acid, dissolves the limestone strata in a cave and re-deposit it
as the water/acid evaporate along the stalactite column. Where the
mix drips frrom the column, stalagmites form on the floor.

A question for the creationist is why caves are found at elevations
of over 10,000 ft, with old-growth stalactites (as indicated by
rings), from seafloor-derived limestones (from fossil evidence)?
The cave formation and stalactite growth indicate the limestone
has been in place for longer than hundreds of thousands of years.
Burial and compression of carbon-rich sediments.
Coal is forming in many places today. Besides peat bogs, it is
likely forming beneath tundras and coastal swamps. We see coal-
production underground where near-surface natural gas is high,
like in the Arctic.
The question for the creationist is why coal exists at all, contains
fossils, and exists in some locations, such as the Midwest, in
regular layers with sandstones, limestones and shales all less
than an inch thick, indicating long term periodic rise and fall of
sea level complete with changes in fossil fauna over time?
Rocks are plastic over time. Rocks can be bent with sufficient
pressure in laboratories, and show features of strain, grain
deformation and stress fracturing similar to rocks in situ.
Forces sufficient to shear and fracture rocks, as around faults,
will deform those rocks near the fault break. Forces act on
rocks after they harden, as evidenced by the deformation of
fossils within bent rock. Force applied over differing lengths
of time will show up as differing patterns of deformation, as
the rock is allowed to adjust to stress.
Any faulting which raises older rock can place it over younger
rock. Very low angle faults (thrust faulting) can place large
areas of older rock over younger rock, but thrust faulting can
be detected in place by examination of the contact plane. Faulting
and folding, followed by erosion, can place overturned beds,
which are explained by examining the regional stratigraphy and
tectonics. They do not occur in isolation.
Canyons exist where the steepness of the gradient give
flowing water the power to carve into existing rock. Where the
gradient is shallow, rivers lose that power. The Grand Canyon,
Hell's Canyon and other examples have steeply flowing rivers -
When the Colorado river reaches less steep terrain, it slows down and
drops its sediment load at its banks, becoming level with the
surroundings.
Because topography doesn't usually change back and forth between
steep and flat, there aren't many rivers with canyons at more
than one spot along their length, but I would guess that there
are rivers along the eastern US seaboard that leave the mountains,
flatten out, and then hit the Fall Line, which is the remanent of
an ancient coastal plain, and spawn waterfalls, and in some cases,
canyons again. The Niagara Falls and its gorge is an example of
a canyon produced by an abrupt change in topography.
River energy and its cutting power are controlled by slope.
Erosion is subject to the laws of physics. Rocks
are eroded more quickly and more deeply by greater force. The
depend on physical properties. The laws of physics can be applied
to sediment grain size, weight and pattern of deposition. So how
can the record of stratigraphy be explained in a manner consistant
with physics in a way that does not require billions of years
to produce the depositional sequences we see?
Very little deposition is so uniform over even a few years, let alone
millions. The closest approach would be deep sea oozes, and that's not
very close. Deposition is instead episodic. In a particular spot, there
may be hardly anything for a hundred years, and then several meters
deposited by a single storm, followed by another hundred years of nothing.
Long term, a single depositional environment seldom lasts more than a
few million years in a single place.
==
The Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia is considered an example where
peat being formed today that could eventually be turned to coal.
======
The study of fossilization is called taphonomy.. First, there's a
great variation in how susceptible different parts of different
organisms are to decay. Hard shells are more resistant than soft organs,
which is why most of the fossil record consists of snails, claims, and
echinoderm skeletons. Predation and decay are reduced in cold, anoxic
water. And many burials are not slow but quick, occasioned by such
things as slumps, turbidity flows, and floods. Terrestrial fossils
are formed in a variety of
environments. Water (like rivers) is involved in many but not all cases.
Especially in epicontinental seas, which during most
of earth's history have been much more extensive than they are now.
Sedimentary rock comes mostly from erosion of other rocks, mostly from
regions of uplift, and from the skeletons of shelled marine animals.
Plastic deformation under high heat and pressure, resulting from being
buried under sever miles of sediments.
Except in regions with lots of thrust faults.
There are all sorts of reasons why canyons of different sorts are cut.
The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon area happens to be flowing
through an area in which the rocks are being uplifted. It cuts down in
the area of uplift to maintain its gradient. Outside the area of uplift,
it's in equilibrium.
==
The oldest limestone sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the Early
Carboniferous Period, Arundian Age, calcium carbonates. The Early
Carboniferous Period limestone sedimentary rocks comprise the first
(1st) foreign construction material used by the Stonehenge builder.
This material is approximately 340 million years old. These rocks are
locally called the Birnbeck Limestone Formation (Stonehenge
Whitestones).
The outcrop sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the Late Cretaceous
Period, Santonian Age, calcium carbonates. The Late Cretaceous Period
outcrop sedimentary rocks comprise the first (1st) local [in situ]
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 85 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Seaford Chalk Formation (Stonehenge White Chalk).
The volcanic rocks (oldest geologically) at Stonehenge are the
Ordovician Period intrusive igneous diabases (dolerites), and
extrusive igneous felsites (rhyolites) and tuffs (basic). The
Ordovician Period igneous rocks comprise the second (2nd) foreign
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 470 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Ordovician Volcanics (Stonehenge Bluestones).
The oldest sandstone sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the Silurian
- Devonian Period micaceous sandstones. The Silurian - Devonian Period
sedimentary sandstone rocks comprise the third (3rd) foreign
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 417 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Old Red Sandstone Formation (Stonehenge Coshestons).
The youngest sandstone sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the
Oligocene - Miocene Period silicates. The Oligocene - Miocene Period
sandstone sedimentary rocks comprise the fourth (4th) foreign
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 24 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Reading Formation (Stonehenge Sarsens).
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/education/britstrat/timecharts/phaner.html
The ancients had dental (lintel) bridges too.
==
In 1863, Scottish geologist Archibald Geikie argued that plant fragments
found between layers of Scottish tills were clear evidence that sustained
intervals of warm climate intervened between different glacial ages. Then
in 1873, Amos H. Worthen, Director of the Illinois Geological survey,
showed that a humus-rich soil had developed on one till layer before being
buried by another. Since soils of this kind can only develop when the
climate is warm enough to support abundant plant growth, this was strong
support for the supposition that warm interglacial ages had occurred
between multiple ice ages. A few years later, John S. Newberry and W. J.
McGee clinched the argument by showing that in the American Midwest, two
sheets of till were separated by the remains of a former forest of
fully-grown trees. (See
http://www.finalkeno.freesurf.fr/temp/tj/osarsif/flood14.htm.)
Forests of fully-grown trees do not appear over a single summer. Clearly
there must be some explanation other than an ice sheet retreating a bit
over the summer.
This humus-rich soil and forest remnants appear to be the other phenomena
that Answers in Genesis refers to but doesn't even try to discuss.
Scientists had discovered this evidence and even estimated when these
various Ice Ages took place. They did so in the 19th century. However
initially there was no mechanism that could explain what caused these Ice Ages.
Then the Scotsman James Croll suggested that the orbit of the Earth changes
it shape periodically (becoming more elliptical) and this would cause
longer winters. Croll even calculated when these ice ages would have taken
place. The problem was that his calculations did not match the data from
the dating processes.
However about a half-century later, the Serbian engineer and meteorologist
Milutin Milankovitch modified Croll's calculations by suggesting that it is
the length and heat of the summer weather rather than the severity of the
winter weather that causes Ice Ages. Since then some other minor
adjustments have been made to the theories such as the observation that the
length and severity of an Ice Age is also partially dependent on whether
plate tectonics have covered the North and South Poles with solid land or
with water. (Currently the South Pole is covered by land and the North
Pole is covered by water.) Volcanoes also affect these patterns. However
after making these adjustments the data now closely matches theory.
It is worth noting that the data determining when Ice Ages have taken place
comes from sources other than radiometric aging. That data also includes
deep-sea core samples and O-16 and O-18 ratios within corals. This ratio
has been shown to change depending on the temperature of the water when the
shells were formed. All of these dating techniques very closely match each
other. It is difficult to explain this correlation of data if these dating
==
Science cannot account for supernaturalism.
It is, by definition, the search for natural
explanations about the real world. How could one make
predictions based on supernaturalism? What kind of
evidence could one gather? What test could one devise?
And, most important, as long as supernaturalism is a
valid explanation, what could falsify that
explanation? A clever god could simulate any natural appearance,
ancient earth and universe and evolution appearing to be supported
by the fossil layers and geological periods.
==
A comparison of the activities of
selected radioactive materials

Radioactive material Specific activity (kBq/g) Half Life

Iodine131 4,598,000,000,000 8 days
Cesium137 3,206,000,000 30 years
Plutonium239 2,298,000 24,110 years
Natural uranium 25
Depleted uranium 15 4.5 billion years

===
The formation of a planetary system is typically a violent, chaotic mess, a
divine demolition derby, according to observations made by NASAs Spitzer Space
Telescope. Small pieces of dust accrue over timelike the dust bunnies under
your bed, says Spitzer team member Scott Kenyoninto large craggy asteroids
that zip around the planetary system and pulverize one another. Sometimes they
meet more gently and even manage to stay together. Once things slow down,
whatever is left over from the chaos form into planets that are granted a
fairly stable environment for billions of years. On Earth, luckily for us, that
lull has permitted life.
Violence has framed the accepted view of planet formation for quite some time,
since it became apparent that lunar craters were bombarded into being by
asteroids and meteors. But this is the first direct evidence of a process that
is literally a dust-up. Images reveal immense ring-shaped dust clouds orbiting
a group of 71 stars some 500 light-years from Earththats still in our
neighborhood, the Milky Way. The only way to produce as much dust as we are
seeing in these older stars is through huge collisions of planetesimals,
==
Any planet with our Sun's initial planetary nebula had the following
options:

* Growth by the assimilation of other bodies
* Destruction by a high-speed collision
* Assimilation into a larger body
* Ejection out of the feeding zone.
(Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee "Rare Earth", 2000, pg 50)

Right now, the annual influx of outer solar system material falling to the
Earth is about 40,000 tons per year.(Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee "Rare
Earth", 2000, pg 49)

==
*Evolution of the Earth, 7th Ed. (2003)
by Donald R. Prothero & Robert H. Dott, Jr.

*Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd Ed.* (2002)
edited by Stanley S. Beus and Michael Morales

*Structural Geology of Rocks and Regions, 2nd Ed. (1996)
by George H. Davis and Stephen J. Reynolds

The Prothero & Dott book is an undergraduate intro text for
historical geology. The Davis & Reynolds book is a undergraduate
intro text for structural geology (and also covers plate tectonics
issues from a structural geology perspective). I reiterate here that
I would recommend the structural geology text over the Grand Canyon
book, except for the caveat that it has a number of sections in the
book that are quite technical (you know, getting into some
sophisticated math and stuff). I agree with you that the structural
geology text is a better choice with respect to the fact that it
covers geology more broadly in subject and in geography. However, my
thinking is that the Grand Canyon may actually be the better choice
for young earth creationists because serious distortions of Grand
Canyon geology feature prominently in YEC literature and this book
contains the information that just blows that nonsense away! I'm
thinking that in pragmatic terms it may be more effective for young
earth creationists to see the geology applied to a specific example
(and a very prominent example in the U.S. where most YECs are), and
to thus understand how badly their own YEC "science" does in
comparison when dealing with the actual features of the Grand Canyon.
==
Continental drift
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo5xx/geo527/index.html
and the links and references therein (it inlcudes a section on
Himalayan geophysics). Perhaps this paper will help:
http://www-sst.unil.ch/perso_pages/JEPARD/jle_abstracts_himalayas.htm
There may be something in this paper of interest to you:
http://www.natur.cuni.cz/~kfggsekr/pers/kalvoda/publ/recent.htm
You may or may not be aware that the continental plates involved in
the Himalayan and Tibetan Plateau uplift are still moving, at about
~3 cm per year, and the mountains themselves are rising from between
8 mm to 1 cm per year still.
The forces behind that movement appear to be convection, slab
pull and slab push. Convection refers to circular flow of magma
similar to boiling water. Convection moves the plates from below.
Slab push refers to the force created by upwelling magma between
plates. We see this action in sea floor spreading. Slab pull refers
to plate subduction. Once started the movement of the plate continues
to pull one plate under another due to gravity and momentum.
==
THE QUARK-MESON COUPLING (QMC) model, a theory which takes the
radical step of incorporating self-consistent changes in the quark
structure of a nucleon when it is bound in matter, has been
transformed into a theory of quasi-nucleons interacting through
many-body forces. Thanks to this, the QMC model can now challenge
the time-honored descriptions of the nucleus where nucleon structure
was supposed to play no role. The conventional hierarchy of
nuclear matter at the smallest scale goes like this: quarks are the
most elemental. Nucleons, the next bigger things, are clumps of
three quarks held together by a force carried from place to place by
gluons. Then the nucleus is made from nucleons held together by
mesons, which are themselves clumps of two quarks. Next up in size
are atoms, which consist of electrons (members of a separate
category of particle called leptons) hovering around the nucleus.
==
Preserved Grass Seeds at Site in Israel Are Evidence of First Human Farming
New research rolls back the starting point of human agricultural tendencies by
10,000 years. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a
team of archaeologists from the United States and Israel assert that humans
made their first step toward farming 23,000 years ago, when they began
collecting the seeds of wild grasses like barley and wild emmer wheat. Those
grasses were the progenitor of varieties grown today for subsistence.
Working in Ohalo, a Stone Age site in northern Israel, the team unearthed
evidence from the wonderfully preserved remains of 90,000 prehistoric plants.
They also dug up evidence of huts, camp fires and tools. Wild cereals and
grasses appeared to be the principal food eaten by those groups. The
researchers say the evidence they found points to these people, in the Near
East, as being the first to farm.
==
Science and religion don't ask the same questions and don't use the same
methods to reach their answers. They have nothing to do with each other.
Science can't answer moral/ethical/religious questions, and
ethics/morality/religion cannot answer scientific questions. That is not a
matter of what 'should be', and not a matter of 'how we should act'. It is a
simple statement of fact. Science simply cannot answer subjective questions.
==
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game
of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of
any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure
and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for
infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles
all the time.
==
What is the earliest recorded history?
"A band of criminals has disrupted the government by raiding the
treasury. Their gang rule has made money so scarce that many
farm hands are out of work and few farmers can afford to hire
them." -- papyrus fragment, Memphis, Egypt 3068 BCE

In China, the found tortoise shells that have pictograms carved in them
that date from somewhere between 6600 and 6200 BCE.
==
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
When the granite in the Appalachians cooled the mineral zircon formed. The
Appalachains eroded and tiny little pieces of crystals show up in sand stone
all around the east.
The zircons can be dated with the concordia/discordia method and the
date will reflect when the zircon become a closed system. Motivation
for dating a zircon in sandstone would something other than getting
the age of the sandstone, possibly to identify where the sand grains came from.
==
In Southern Ontario, here are some very thick shales underlying the
limestone. There are big limestone concretions in the shale, up to 6 feet in
diameter.Some of the concretions embedded in shale are partly exposed along the
shore of Lake Huron, at Kettle Point. Similar concretions occur in the same
formation in Ohio north of Columbus, called Ohio Shale.The basins of lakes
Ontario and Erie were eroded in shales.
glk has visited the Ohio shale zone north of Columbus . Big concretions are
common, some 3 feet across,
==
Raymond, S. N., Quinn, T. R. & Lunine, J. I. Making other Earths:
dynamical simulations of terrestrial planet formation. Preprint,
http://xxx.arvix.org/abs/astro-ph/0308159, (2003)
==
Lindberg's _Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler

Mithen, S. 2003. After the Ice: A Global Human
History 20,000 - 5000 BC. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
==
Pre-Harappan' (India/Pakistan) writing on it dating to about
3500 BC (or 5500 ybp). It appears to be material that later
found its way into the Rig Veda. If true, this is the oldest
_currently known_ writing.
Oldest Egyptian writing _currently known_ seems to date to King
Scorpion, somewhere between 3300 BC and 3200 BC. (This was
discovered about a year ago.)
Oldest known Mesopotamian writing _currently known_ dates from
about 3100 BC. This includes vast amounts of clearly historical
materials, without any question.
This is an area in which what is
known is subject to change with new, older writing. Both the
pre-Harappan and the early Egyptian writing may themselves have
precursors not yet found.
There has been some rumblings about old Chinese inscriptions,
some of which seem in some ways similar to the Shang characters
that are now considered the earliest Chinese writing. (Shang
dynasty lasted from ca 1766 BC to ca 1050 BC.) The problem with
them is that they are from some thousands of years *before* the
Shang; and there doesn't seem to be any temporal connection
between the older marks and the acknowledged Shang characters.
If future discoveries provide such a connection, there may be
reason to make a case for China as the earliest written language.
The ruins of Harrappan and Mohenjo-daro are also
extremely old, and their writting system hasn't been deciphered yet. the
egyptians of course have extremely old accounts, and malta and crete are
have a very old history for 'europe'. basically, written history started
about 6-7k years ago, givertake. what a coincidence that all those biblists
just happen to come up with the same number for the age of the universe.
==
Magnetic reversal
In this generalized example -- not directly related to the new study -- outer
circles show the core-mantle boundary in a computer-generated magnetic pole
reversal. Each image represents a jump in time as magnetic field lines are
shown reversing direction at the left of each image, from blue to red.
The next reversal -- which some scientists speculate might be underway -- will
see compasses change and behave differently in different locations.
Earth's magnetic field is thought to be generated deep inside the planet. An
inner core of solid iron is surrounded by an outer core of molten iron. They
rotate at different rates, and the interaction between the regions creates what
scientists call a "hydromagnetic dynamo." It's something like an electric
motor, and it generates a magnetic field akin to a giant bar magnet.
The process is not completely understood. In fact, one study suggests the
planet's mantle, which surrounds the core, also plays a role.
However it works, the setup has been in place for at least 3 billion of Earth's
4.6 billion years, scientists figure. But the field is shifty, periodically
growing stronger and weaker, moving around, and even flipping its polarity
entirely.
In the past 15 million years, there have been four reversals every 1 million
years, or about one shift each 250,000 years, Clement explained. The last one,
however, was 790,000 years ago. That might suggest we're overdue for a big
change. The flips are not periodic, meaning they don't adhere to a schedule of
even intervals.
Yet the intensity of the magnetic field has been dropping for the last 2,000
years, and "it has dropped significantly" during the past two decades, Clement
said. One recent study shows the decline in strength amounts to 10 percent over
the last 150 years.
Some scientists speculate a reversal is underway.
Researchers also have not known how long it takes for the magnetic field to
make a transition. Studies have suggested anywhere from 1,000 to 28,000 years
are required to initiate and complete a reversal.
"It is generally accepted that during a reversal, the geomagnetic field
decreases to about 10 percent of its full polarity value," Clement said. "After
the field has weakened, the directions undergo a nearly 180 degree change, and
then the field strengthens in the opposite polarity direction. A major
uncertainty, however, has remained regarding how long this process takes."
Clement examined sediment cores gathered from deep-ocean sites in a National
Science Foundation (NSF) program. The cores provided readings at multiple
sites for the past four flips. He found that each took about 7,000 years.
Interestingly, however, there is significant variation depending on latitude.
It takes less time -- around 5,000 years -- for the reversal to occur at lower
latitudes. And it takes longer -- about 10,000 years, for the flip to play out
nearer the poles. So not only would compasses gradually do a somersault in
readings, but Arctic dwellers would see changes that wouldn't match what
tropical observers would note across the generations.
Nobody understands how the shift occurs. Perhaps, Clement says, the magnetic
field shrinks to essentially nothing, leaving several "mini-poles" at the
surface before the main poles rebuild on opposite sides of the world.
Scientists have plenty of reasons to seek a better understanding. For one, the
magnetic field lines extend out beyond Earth's atmosphere and provide the first
line of defense against strong solar storms. And Clement wonders how the
reversals might affect navigation by migrating birds and other animals that key
in on the magnetic field to find their way.
"But 7,000 years is probably enough for them to adapt," he said.
"Clement has demonstrated that magnetic field reversal events occur within
certain time-frames, regardless of the polarity of the reversal,"
==
Science is not belief, but the will to find out.
===
The Aztecs also used a base 20 system, and - unlike the mayans - the
Aztecs were of interest for the Spanish conquistadors due to a certain
yellow metal (their number system was additive though, not a
place-value system). The only interest the Europeans had in the Maya
was to convert them to christianity and thus to *destroy* as much as
possible of Mayan culture and tradition. For instance, bishop Landa
burned every Mayan book he could lay his hand on and only a few have
survived. There was absolutely *no* influences from Maya to Europe.
The Roman counting board was marked off in columns associated with
decimal orders. Its counters were all the same and each had a value of
1. A given number was represented by placing in each column as many
counters as there were units in the corresponding decimal order.
It was simplified in the late tenth century. Instead of identical
counters that all had the value of 1, the new system used counters
called apices (apex in singular), each with a value from 1 to 9
indicated on it by a Roman, Greek alphabetic, or, more commonly,
Hindu-Arabic numeral. [called Gertbert's counting board below]
In this third phase of the Middle ages [the 12th century, my
comment], a decisive change took place in the practise of computation:
Gerbert's counting board gradually fell into disuse; arithmetical
operations were performed by writing numerals, *including* *zero*
[original emphasis], in sand or dust, and the columns disappeared.
Abacism (use of the counting board or abacus) gave way to algorism
(written calculation with the Hindu-Arabic numerals), which was more
elegant and rapid. For many generations, however, there were still a
few reconers that went on using the old, obsolete methods.
It was also during this time that European numerals began to aquire
forms that differed sharply from the apices and seemed to mark a
return to the original Arabic forms. They were stabilized little by
little and finally became our modern numerals. It is therefore in the
twelfth century (and not in the fifteenth, nor in the time of Gerbert
and his disciples) that we must place the real roots of the forms of
the Hindu-Arabic numerals that have been adopted all over the world,
for the apparently radical transformations that those numerals
underwent at the end of the Middle Ages were simply incorporated into
the general tendencies of humanistic writing.
And finally it was also in the twelfth century that the use of the
zero sign was propagated in the West, having been previously made
unnessecary by the columns of Gerbert's counting board.
Our number system is a place-value system. So is the Arabian and so
are the Indian. I don't see what you really mean here. One of the
Mayan systems is a hybrid between a place-value system and a
additive system. Position shows which order of 20 the number relates
to, but the number is made up by bars (representing five) and dots
(representing one). (The other system - with 20 different heads - is a
pure place-value system.) The oldest place-value system is the
Babylonian, that also had the first zero (in the 2nd millenium BC).
The Arab mathematicians didn't only borrow from the Indians, they also
inherited the Babylonian astronomers' work (and, of course got a lot
of stuff, like geometry, from the Greeks). The Babylonian system is,
however, in a kind of way also a hybrid between additive and
place-value with downward pointing wedges with a value of one and left
pointing wedges with a value of ten (but one can rightly argue that,
because of that the wedges were placed in a certain way for a certain
number, they were as true digits as ours - especially true about the
number nine in later notations which was made by only three wedges;
this was simply their writing style). The Babylonian zero was a
separate sign consisting of two wedges, either pointing left or
diagonally down to the right - it first case it differed from 20 by
the relative placement of the wedges:
==
Reality is out there, descriptions of reality are not". Data must always be
interpreted - our models of reality may be constrained (some useful, some less
useful) but data can be explained & interpreted in different ways -
much data would support multiple models.
==
Scientists in Switzerland may have caught a glimpse of the elusive Higgs boson,
known as the "God particle" for its importance to the Standard Model of
fundamental particles and interactions.
The Swiss team's observations, published in Nature, followed a particle
collision in Geneva's electron positron collider (LEP) shortly before its
recent dismantling. One of the particles resulting from the collision appeared
to have a mass of 115 gigaelectronvolts, a value that agrees with other
estimates for the mass of the Higgs particle.
"There's certainly evidence for something. Whether it's the Higgs boson is
questionable," said Peter Renton, a particle physicist at Oxford. "It's
compatible with the Higgs boson, certainly, but only a direct observation would
show that."
First proposed by University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs in the late
1960s, the all-pervading Higgs field informs the mass of all other particles.
The Higgs boson's high mass and instability have made it difficult to detect so
far, but researchers predict that Chicago's Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory or the LEP's replacement large hadron collider could soon announce
its discovery officially.
==
In statistics
A "3 percent margin of error" means that there is a 95 percent chance that the
survey result will be within 3 percent of the population value. To put it
another way, you would expect to see a less than 3 percent difference between
the proportion of people who say "yes" to the survey question and the
proportion of people in the population who would say "yes" if asked.
==
In the standard philosophy of science debate, "falsifiable" means that
if a generalisation has been made with covers the entirety of the
phenomena being explained, and there is a *single* counterinstance or
more, the generalisation has been falsified.
Unfortunately, a great many generalisations in science are rules of
thumb (and no science shows this more than biology), so that
counterinstances are "anomalies" rather than falsifications. This means
that the neat distinction made by Karl Popper between science
(falsifiable) and non-science (not falsifiable) fails in real science.
Instead, scientists tend to live with some anomalies until they get \too
great\, and the generalisation is dropped.
Also, according to Popper, science does not test generalisations to
"prove" or "affirm" them, only to "disprove" or "disconfirm" them.
But scientists affirm and confirm their rules all the time. It seems that
Popper has left out a large part of science in his view of what Real
Science should be.
The view known (now rather anachronistically) as the "new
experimentalism" allows that theories can be exceptioned, and that they
can be confirmed through observation. Read Ian Hacking's classic
_Representing and Intervening_ for a discussion.
==
There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position
in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies.
Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the
universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.
- Giordano Bruno 1548-1600 Burned by Catholics, 1600
==
The inference of change over longer periods of time works
continuously over many scales; from identification of the
human couple who first exhibited the Milano API mutation
a couple of hundred years ago through to study of changes
over many millions of years; and at every scale in between.
==
Science is the *only* way to know things about the world
that has *ever* worked.
==
Bob Bakker agrees to one species pterosaur, a
bristle-toothed species whose oral anatomy is convergent on that of
flamingos (and some baleen whales) which apparently was a shrimp-eater.
It may, like modern flamingos, have absorbed a pink coloration from its food
(which obtained it from red algae on which the shrimp feed). Now,
pterosaurs aren't usually considered dinosaurs (although, come to think of
it, Bob Bakker also considers *flamingos* and other birds to be dinosaurs),
but some paleontologists think that they are more closely related to
saurisichian dinosaurs than are ornithischian dinosaurs; if they are, then
either the Dinosauria would have to be rejected as a polypheletic group, or
pterosaurs would have to be considered a sort of dinosaur.
==
Benzon _Beethoven's Anvil_
==
Alan Turing later provided a constructive interpretation of Godel's
results by placing them on an algorithmic foundation
http://www.exploratorium.edu/complexity/CompLexicon/godel.html
A Turing machine is an abstract representation of a computing device.
It consists of a read/write head that scans a (possibly infinite)
one-dimensional (bi-directional) tape divided into squares, each of
which is inscribed with a 0 or 1.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine

Godel's _incompleteness theorem_ shows that it is
posible to generate formally _undecidable_ propositions in any
complete system. These are not contradictory statements, but statements
which are not formally decidable within the system they are formulated in
==
Science is, in the end, what scientists do. It has been remarkably successful
at changing the face of our civilization precisely because it has standards.
Theories that survive the repeated test of experiment become part of the
working toolkit of scientists who attempt to understand what has not yet been
understood. To be used by the scientific community, and discussed and
ultimately taught at universities and in high schools, theories must prove
useful by confronting data and making useful predictions. This has nothing to
do with one's religious leanings.
This is why we cannot simply throw up our arms and say, OK, just this once,
let's relax our standards. It is also the reason that the academy argues
against teaching Intelligent Design in science classes. The Supreme Court in
1987 ruled "the argument that life came from the action of an 'intelligent
mind' " wasn't science.
The validity of beliefs based purely on faith or the absence of data cannot be
disproven and cannot be studied scientifically, nor should they be a part of
Throughout human history we have come up with mystical explanations for things
we couldn't understand, only to have those beliefs discarded in the face of
new scientific discoveries.
The entire debate over teaching science versus religious theory and myth in
schools mystifies me. The two are not compatible, and the latter is for parents
and Sunday schools to attend to. All it takes is a bit of logical thinking to
realize this.
Scientific analysis consists of the hypothesis-testing-proof chain that leads,
more often than not, to the hypothesis being discarded. Many scientific
theories are discarded through the scientific process because they can't be
proven.
This fact does not stop dreamers from dreaming or inventors from inventing.
But it does force them to find alternate methods to prove that what they
imagine can actually happen.
The results of experimentation must be reproduced by others to be accepted.
Religion is quite the opposite. There is no proof of a belief, no matter how
fervently millions wish otherwise. There is not even a consensus among
believers regarding the details of the truth.
The theory cannot be tested or reproduced. The theory cannot even be deduced
from any logical sequence of known events. It is a belief, and not a fact,
no matter how pervasive the belief is.
==
An axiom is some
postulate of a formal abstract language on which all other theorems and
deductions are based, but which are not deriveable in that language from
anything else. They are held to be self-evident in that system.
Of course they can be written down, but that is not a definiens of them.
Nor are models axiomatic. Some can be (as in axiomatic set theory.
==
Two more boxes may need to be added to the periodic table. According to a
report in the current issue of the journal Physical Review C scientists have
observed the first ever evidence of superheavy elements 113 and 115.
Superheavy element hunting is not an easy task. The more protons and neutrons
that are packed into a nucleus, the less stable an atom becomes. In order to
manufacture elements heavier than uranium, which has 92 protons, scientists
smash together smaller nuclei to form short-lived heavy nuclei. In the new
work, a team of researchers from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in
Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory blasted a target of
americum-243 atoms (each having 95 protons) with a beam of calcium-48 atoms
(which have 20 protons each). Out of billions of candidates, the investigators
detected four atoms of element 115. After just 90 milliseconds, the novel
nuclei each decayed into element 113, which had also never been seen before.
Just over a second later, element 113 was gone, too, having decayed first into
element 111 and then dubnium (element 105).
==
Once an OMNIPOTENT supernatural is allowed as an alleged "scientific
explanation," there is NO observation that cannot be "reconciled"
with such an agency. "With God ALL things are possible."
==
Plants have a skill that scientists envy: the ability to split water into
hydrogen and oxygen through photosynthesis.
"Nature figured out how to split water using sunlight in an energy-efficient
way 2.5 billion years ago." "By revealing the structure of the water-splitting
center we can begin to unravel how to perform this task in an energy-efficient
way,too."Scientists used x-ray crystallography to take the
highest-resolution image yet of the catalyst essential to the photosystem II
complex in plants, which enables photosynthesis. The scientists analyzed
a plant bacterium known as Thermosynechococcus and determined that the
complex comprises four manganese atoms, four oxygen atoms and a calcium
atom arranged as a cube, with the most reactive manganese atom attached to
a corner oxygen. "Our structure also reveals the position of key amino acids,
the building blocks of proteins, which provide details of how cofactors are
recruited into the reaction center,"
==
A fallacious argument is not one the conclusion of which is necessarily false,
but one in which the conclusion does not follow from the facts.
==
While a meteorite has been largely accepted as the source of the
dinosaurs' demise, the root of The Great Dying has been a mystery. In
1991, however, Basu published a study in Science that showed a
massive and ancient lava flow in Siberia dated precisely to that
greatest of extinctions 251 million years ago. The lava did not shoot
out of the Earth like a giant volcano, but oozed molten rock for
thousands of years--so much lava, in fact, that if spread evenly, it
would bury the surface of the Earth under 10 feet of magma.
==
The oldest limestone sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the Early
Carboniferous Period, Arundian Age, calcium carbonates. The Early
Carboniferous Period limestone sedimentary rocks comprise the first
(1st) foreign construction material used by the Stonehenge builder.
This material is approximately 340 million years old. These rocks are
locally called the Birnbeck Limestone Formation (Stonehenge
Whitestones).
The outcrop sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the Late Cretaceous
Period, Santonian Age, calcium carbonates. The Late Cretaceous Period
outcrop sedimentary rocks comprise the first (1st) local [in situ]
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 85 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Seaford Chalk Formation (Stonehenge White Chalk).
The volcanic rocks (oldest geologically) at Stonehenge are the
Ordovician Period intrusive igneous diabases (dolerites), and
extrusive igneous felsites (rhyolites) and tuffs (basic). The
Ordovician Period igneous rocks comprise the second (2nd) foreign
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 470 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Ordovician Volcanics (Stonehenge Bluestones).
The oldest sandstone sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the Silurian
- Devonian Period micaceous sandstones. The Silurian - Devonian Period
sedimentary sandstone rocks comprise the third (3rd) foreign
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 417 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Old Red Sandstone Formation (Stonehenge Coshestons).
The youngest sandstone sedimentary rocks at Stonehenge are the
Oligocene - Miocene Period silicates. The Oligocene - Miocene Period
sandstone sedimentary rocks comprise the fourth (4th) foreign
construction material used by the Stonehenge builders. This material
is approximately 24 million years old. These rocks are locally called
the Reading Formation (Stonehenge Sarsens).
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/education/britstrat/timecharts/phaner.html
==
On geology, the following are really good:

Evolution of the Earth, 6th Ed. (2001)
by Donald R. Prothero and Robert H. Dott
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0073661872

Structural Geology of Rocks and Regions, 2nd Ed. (1996)
by George H. Davis and Stephen J. Reynolds
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471526215

Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd Ed. (2002)
by Stanley S. Beus, Michael Morales
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195122984
(This is the foremost text today on the geology of the Grand Canyon.)

On radiometric dating in particular, this is supposed to be the best
book:
The Age of the Earth (1994)
by G. Brent Dalrymple
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804723311

On paleontology, here are some references for you, both in general
and on specific areas:

Bringing Fossils To Life: An Introduction To Paleobiology, 2nd Ed.
(2003)
by Donald R. Prothero
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0073661708

Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants, 2nd Ed. (1993)
by Wilson N. Stewart and Gar W. Rothwell
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521382947

Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family
Equidae (2003)
by Bruce J. MacFadden
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521477085

On biological evolution in particular, this is supposed to be the
best one:

Evolutionary Biology, 3rd Ed. (1998)
by Douglas J. Futuyma
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0878931899

Note that this Futuyma book is a detailed undergraduate text. You
might also check out this much more general, but far more easily read book:

Climbing Mount Improbable (1997)
by Richard Dawkins
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393316823

Douglas Futuyma has also written the following book specifically on
the subject of creationism:

Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, 2nd Ed. (1995)
by Douglas J. Futuyma
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0878931848
==
Ocean currents had been discovered before Matthew Maury was even born.
The ocean explorers James Cook and Alexander Humboldt to him. (There's even a
Pacific ocean current that run along the west coast of South America that was
named the "Humbold Current" after Humboldt discovered it!)
==
In his book, "The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing
Number" (Broadway Books, 2002) Livio describes among other things the
remarkable connection between avian flight patterns, stormy weather and cosmic
pinwheels.
Phi (not pi) is the number 1.618 followed by an infinite string. Take a
rectangle whose sides conform to this Golden Ratio, carve from it a square, and
the remaining rectangle still follows the ratio.
==
Science is in the evidence business not the absolute truth business,
scientist leave that up to philosophers. No scientific theory or law can ever
be concluded as absolute fact, we have seen many scientific beliefs replaced
by more compelling evidence and new theories are constantly replacing old ones.
This is the strength of science, that nothing is sacred and any theory can
bechallenged by anyone with more compelling evidence.
==
A "tuff" is a layer of volcanic ash or rock, composed of the finer
sorts of volcanic detritis, usually fused together by heat. In
East Africa, tuffs are important to paleontologists, archaeologists
and anthropologists because they can be used to date fossil specimens
found immediately above or below them, using potassium-argon (K-AR)
and similar methods of dating on specimens taken from the tuff.
==
The differences between typical stars, brown dwarfs and sub-brown dwarfs were
noted. Stars have a mass of 75 Jupiters or greater, brown dwarfs have a mass
between 13 and 75 Jupiters, and sub-brown dwarfs are less than 13 Jupiter
masses. Yet many of the extrasolar planets discovered over the past ten years
are in the same mass category as sub-brown dwarfs. A sub-brown dwarf is born in
a star-generating cloud, while a planet is born in the disk of gas and dust
that surrounds a young star.
==
HeLa cells are derived from a cervical cancer from one Henrietta
Lacks, who died of the cancer in 1951. The cells have been
propagated in laboratories around the world since then. .
They are highly aneuploid and
the assortment of chromosomes you might have in your labs' HeLa
line, very likely might be different than that found in another's.
HeLa cells are mammalian cells (or at least derived from mammalian cells)
with the singular property that they never stop dividing. Most mammalian
cells stop dividing after 60 divisions or so. This property makes HeLa
cells very useful for tissue culture research
==
Toward the end of the first block of 1000 decimal digits, pi has a string of
six consecutive 9's; only one longer string (of seven 3's) occurs in the entire
first million digits.
==
The Arrhenius rule does not really say that. It says that reaction rates
vary with temperature proportionally to exp(u/RT) where u (Greek
letter mu) is the activation energy. A classic rule of thumb in
biochemistry and physiology is that biochemical reaction rates or
physiological processes tend to double or treble for every 10 degree C
change in temperature, not change by one log unit. That is, the Q10 is
2 to 3. It turns out that activation energies are often in the range
of 20 to 30 times RT (more or less) which is exactly what is needed to
get such a variation of rate with temperature. However, smaller or
larger activation energies change the story drastically.
==
Andromeda galaxy is a spiral cousin to our own Milky Way, about 200,000
light-years across and two million light-years away.
It is approaching us and will collide in a few billion years.
Be prepared.
==
A pair of new studies bolsters the long-held suspicion that the early
universe was cramped and violent, with galaxies packed tight and stellar
explosions greater than any that occur today.
The first stars in the universe, thought to form while galaxies were
still drawing together, were huge. Astronomers theorize that the
universe initially contained only hydrogen and helium, with perhaps
traces of lithium. With only these raw materials to work from,
primordial stars would have been up to 200 times as massive as the
Sun, according to theory.
Astronomers announced today a slew of remarkable findings about the
early cosmos, including a firm determination of the age of the universe
and the discovery of when the first stars were born.
The discoveries, based on an all-sky map that is like a baby picture of
the universe, were detailed at a NASA press conference. They provide
the strongest support to date for the Big Bang theory of the creation
of the universe and a sub-notion within that theory that asserts that
"hyperinflation" ruled during the first seconds.
The results come from measurements of radiation emitted before there
were any stars.
The snapshot shows the state of the universe about 380,000 years after
the Big Bang. The study of this so-called cosmic microwave background
(CMB) was made using NASA's space-based Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP)
observatory.
About WMAP and the Cosmic Microwave Background
New Observations of Early Universe Help Confirm Theories of Formation
Mystery Matter Helped Build First Galaxies, Study Suggests
All Galaxies to Become Ghosts, Frozen in Time and Space
The data were projected to a slightly more modern yet unseen era,
revealing that the universe had cooled enough for matter to condense
and form the first stars just 200 million years after the Big Bang.
The new data show the universe to be 13.7 billion years old, to within
200 million years, Bennett said.
Further, the study finds that early universe was 4 percent real matter
in the form of atoms, about 23 percent unseen dark matter, and about 73
percent dark energy, a totally unknown and exotic force that causes the
universe to accelerate at an ever-faster pace.
The results also confirm that the geometry of the universe is flat. This
sort of geometry, the same as what's taught in high school, does not allow
two parallel lines to intersect, even across great cosmic distances.
Hyperinflation
Among the more tantalizing findings is what appears to be the first
observational evidence that, as theorized, the first seconds of the
universe involved extremely rapid inflation.
Andrei Linde, of Stanford University, developed some of the inflationary
models that still seem to be alive.
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) was unleashed about 380,000 years
after the Big Bang, when the universe had first expanded enough to cool
and allow atoms to form. Around that time, a dense and impenetrable
primordial cloud cleared out. The radiation escaped in one form and, over
time, its wavelengths were stretched to the microwave range by the perpetual
expansion of the universe. The remnant radiation retains an imprint of the
end of that era and hints about what occurred before, much like the patterns
on a cloud's exterior provide clues to its insides.
The microwave radiation has since spread out and cooled, filling the universe.
It appears to be of nearly uniform temperature across all of space, but minute
variations first detected a decade ago provide the clues needed to help
decipher the primordial structure of the universe.
Tiny variations
The MAP spacecraft launched June 30, 2001. These are the first findings
attributed to it. MAP examines the CMB in greater detail than its predecessor,
the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite.
The temperature of the CMB ranges from 2.7251 to 2.7249 degrees Kelvin (a
measure of degrees above absolute zero). These tiny variations reflect the
earliest lumps and bumps in the universe -- seeds for galaxies and stars.
These seeds, then, formed roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Scientists
have no observations to tell them what happened next, but here's what they
imagine:
Nodes of matter were connected by long filaments, much like a spider web.
Clumps of hydrogen -- something like drops on the spider web -- developed along
the filaments. Each drop had heft, gravity and a random velocity,and eventually
they were drawn toward the nodes, where material gathered to generate the
first galaxies.
The cosmic microwave background was detected by accident in 1965, by Bell
Labs researchers who heard extra noise in a radio receiver they were testing.
At the time, Princeton physicist David Wilkinson had been working on a way to
detect the radiation. He helped write a scientific paper back then for the
Physical Review, describing the implications of the inadvertent discovery.
==
Chaos theory is a measure of the unknown, or our inability to predict
the outcome of a set of events over a certain span of time based on
the lack of complete knowledge concerning all starting variables.
==
DNA provides the primary sequence information for proteins to be synthesized).
All the DNA does is provide a template for the primary RNA or
DNA sequence of the product, but that's mostly enough.
For example, DNA *does* provide the information for alternative
splicing, in the sense that it encodes the RNA and protein components
of the spliceosome and the template for the RNA sequence at the
alternative splice site itself.
The primary amino acid sequence (which, of course is derived from the
DNA sequence) of a protein often is adequate to determine its final
conformation and, for enzymes, enzymatic activity, e.g. ribonuclease,
for a really robust example of that. But even in cases where you need
a chaperonin to assist in folding, that chaperonin's conformation and
activity are determined by its own primary sequence, the information
for which comes from DNA. Even if the protein needs to be glycosylated
to be active, the enzymes that attach the sugars are targetted to the
Golgi based on a tag sequence that ultimately comes from the DNA
sequence of the gene encoding them, and their enzymatic activity
depends on their higher-order structure, which depends on their
primary sequence, which is encoded in the DNA. DNA certainly does
control how proteases clip other proteins, simply by determining the
primary structure of both the protease and its protein substrate - you
can get proper proteolytic cleavage of HIV proteins following in vitro
transcription and translation from a DNA version of the HIV geneome.
DNA certainly controls the presence of DNA binding proteins - it
encodes them, it contains cis-acting elements that regulate their
expression and it encodes the trans-acting elements that bind the cis
acting elements.
There are some chicken and egg problems, of course. A modern cell
cannot, as far as I know, synthesize lipid bilayer membranes without
an existing membrane into which to insert the newly synthesized
components. In that sense, the DNA encoding the enzymes in the lipid
synthesis pathways does not fully specify the membrane structure.
==
Edwin Arthur Burtt's classic,
_The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science_ (rev. ed., 1952).
==
Through quantum mechanics. Actually, light is neither a particle nor a wave,
until someone decides which one they want to look for. If you decide to look
for particles, light becomes particles. If you decide to look for waves, light
becomes waves. Photons are the force carriers for the electromagnetic force.
As such they are virtual, in being neither wave nor particle, while being both.
There is no rest mass, which sets force carriers apart from leptons and
baryons. This is in itself interesting, as gamma rays contain enough
energy to condense into electron/positron pairs. By means of experimenting on
the photons, it is possible to induce them to become either wave or particle.
Thus, such experiments must be carefully designed with QM in mind. Wavelength
can be viewed as a probability sphere whose diameter = wavelength. This is
where the highest probability of the photon's location is, either as a particle
rattling around in the sphere, or as a discrete energy field which occupies the
sphere. The energy quantity of the photon determines the wavelength.Higher
energies have shorter wavelengths. In addition, particles, such as electrons or
protons, also act as a partical and a wave. So do footballs, automobiles and
people, but in those cases the wavelength is so miniscule that we cannot see
it. A good thing, since quantum motion is so counterintuitive (in quantum
mechanics, for example, particles routinely move from point A to point B
without passing anywhere in between).
Electrons are more likely to exhibit wavelike characters, as they are
always on the move. The electron's shell is analogous to the wavelength
to view the behaviour of the electron. Each shell holds a certain number
of electrons, and each electron in the shell can hold only a discrete
quantity of energy. An increase in the energy, the electron switches
shells. Release of the excess energy in the form of a photon drops the
electron back to the lower shell. Many technologies manipulate this
principle.
==
Since the acceleration idea became established with astronomers a few
years ago in the wake of observations of distant supernovae, it has
been conventional to apportion the supposed energy inventory of the
universe as follows: 5% in the form of conventional baryon matter
(out of which atoms are made), 25% in the form of dark matter, and
the biggest part, 70%, in the form of dark energy.
==
One of the products in the decay series of Uranium-238 is Uranium-234.
U-234 has a half-life of about 245,000 years. Right now, the level
of U-234 is about 0.005% of the level of U-238. This turns out to be the
level at which the two are in "secular equilibrium". New U-234 is being added
to the world's supply by the decay of U-238 as fast as it's being lost through
the decay of U-234.
==
Mt. Shasta (14,132 ft.) is the second most southerly
Cascade Range volcano. It is still considered active and has numerous
steam vents and hot springs, including some near the summit.
==
A "belt" of cometary bodies located outside the orbit of Pluto:
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a9503672/astro/seminar/kuiper.jpg
It does not form them, the objects already exist, leftovers from the
formation of the solar system.
==
Many scientists fought against neutralism, but in the end, it took its rightful
place in evolutionary theory. Same for transposons. Geology had an even
more dramatic revolution, and it had repercussions for evolution-
continental drift really made the earth move for us. So you see, although
scientists might be attached to our ideas, science in general moves ahead
and is eventually self-correcting.
Fanaticism, on the other hand, cannot be self-correcting, because its
dogmatic nature allows no divergence of opinion.
The peer-review process attempts to insure that the kookier ideas stay out of
science journals.
The problem is that, for the first time, creationists have taken the debate out
of the lab, out of the scientific journals, into the state legislaters and
classrooms of our children. They then try to make themselves out to be
bastions of reason by saying "Teach both sides". Unfortunately, this amounts
to teaching our kids wrong answers. Any scientist will tell you that evolution
has not been "proven to be true" because nothing in science can be proven
But, it is just as true that literal creationism (Genesis) has been refuted
over and over.
==
See http://www.phys.uu.nl/%7Evgent/astrology/newton.htm
The studies into Newton's unpublished papers mentioned above have
revealed that during the greater part of his scientific career, his
secret passions in fact lay in alchemy[18] and matters of theology ....
[18] Cf. B.J.T. Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, or The
Hunting of the Greene Lyon (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1975); B.J.T. Dobbs, The Janus face of genius: The role of alchemy in
Newton's thought (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991).
==
ABSTRACT:
Two classes of field evidence firmly establish that late Wisconsin
glacial Lake Missoula drained periodically as scores of colossal
akulhlaups (glacier-outburst floods). (1) More than 40 successive,
flood-laid, sand-to-silt graded rhythmites accumulated in back-flooded
flood-laid rhythmites by loess and volcanic ash beds. Disconformities
and nonflood sediment between rhythmites are generally scant because
precipitation was modest, slopes gentle, and time between floods was
short. (2) In several newly analyzed deposits of Pleistocene glacial
lakes in northern Idaho and Washington, lake beds comprising 20 to 55
varves (average = 30-40) overlie each successive bed of Missoula-flood
sediment. These and many other lines of evidence are hostile to the
notion that any two successive major rhythmites were deposited by one
flood; they dispel the notion that the prodigious floods numbered only
a few.
The only outlet of the 2,500-cubic-kilometer glacial Lake Missoula
was through its great ice dam, and so the dam became incipiently
buoyant before the lake could rise enough to spill over or around it.
Like Grimsvotn, Iceland, Lake Missoula remained sealed as long as any
segment of the glacial dam remained grounded; when the lake rose to a
critical level around 600 meters in depth, the glacier bed at the seal
became buoyant, initiating underflow from the lake. Subglacial tunnels
then grew exponentially, leading to catastrophic discharge.
Calculations of the water budget for the lake basin (including input
from the Cordilleran ice sheet) suggest that the lakes filled every
three to seven decades. The hydrostatic prerequisites for a jokulhlaup
were thus re-established scores of times during the 2,000- to
2,500-year episode of last-glacial damming.
J.Harlen Bretz's Spokane flood outraged geologists six decades ago,
partly because it seemed to flaunt catastrophism. The concept that
Lake Missoula discharged regularly as jokulhlaups now accords Bretz's
catastrophe with uniformitarian principles.
Waitt, Richard B. Jr., 1985, _Case for Periodic, Colossal J.9akulhlaups
from Pleistocene Glacial Lake Missoula_. Geological Society of America
Bulletin, v.96, p.1271-1286, October 1985
==
In preliminary results soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal,
Hubble astronomers report that the sizes of galaxies clearly increase
continuously from the time the universe was about 1 billion years old to an
age of 6 billion years. (This is approximately at half the current age of
the universe, 13.7 billion years.) GOODS astronomers also find that the star
birth rate rose mildly (by about a factor 3) between the time the universe
was about one billion years old and 1.5 billion years old, and remained high
until about 7 billion years ago, when it quickly dropped to one-tenth the
earlier rate. This is further evidence that major galaxy
building trailed off when the universe was about half its current age.
This increase in galaxy size is consistent with "bottom-up" models, where
galaxies grow hierarchically, through mergers and accretion of smaller
satellite galaxies. This is also consistent with the idea that the sizes of
galaxies match hand-in-glove to a certain fraction of the sizes of their
dark-matter halos. Dark matter is an invisible form of mass that comprises
most of the matter in the universe. The theory is that dark matter
essentially pooled into gravitational "puddles" in the early universe that
then collected normal gas that quickly contracted to build star clusters and
small galaxies. These dwarf galaxies merged piece-by-piece over billions of
years to build the immense spiral and elliptical galaxies we see today.
The Chandra observations amounted to a "high-energy core sample" of the
early universe, allowing us to "study the history of black holes over almost
the entire age of the universe," said Niel Brandt of Penn State University,
a co-investigator on the Chandra GOODS team, who studied the X-ray results.
One of the fascinating findings in this deepest X-ray image ever taken is
the discovery of mysterious black holes, which have no optical counterparts.
"We found seven mysterious sources that are completely invisible in the
optical with Hubble," They compared the X-ray and optical reslts. "Either they
are the most distant black holes ever detected, or they are less distant black
holes that are the most dust enshrouded known, a surprising result as well."
When comparing the Hubble and Chandra fields, astronomers also found that
active black holes in distant, relatively small galaxies were rarer than
expected. This may be due to the effects of early generations of massive
stars that exploded as supernovae, evacuating galactic gas and thus "
reducing the supply of gas needed to feed a supermassive black hole.
==
If science were about faith, it wouldn't involve experiementation, testing,
and the like; it would simply assert X is true and that would be that.
==
The "bang" in the Big Bang was the expansion of the universe, which does have
testable effects (the cosmic microwave background, the positive correlation of
galactic redshifts with galactic distances, the relative cosmic abundance of
hydrogen and helium, etc.). The cause (if any) of the Big Bang is not part of
the theory, although its current untestability may proceed from limits in
current knowledge, and may be rectified in the future.
==
_Plagues and Peoples_ by Mmcneill
==
It is a fact that clouds contain only 0.5 grams of liquid water per cubic meter
of air,
==
Science, as a practice, process, or institution,
has no metaphysics other than the assumption
that if you can measure it you can study it . . .
- John Wilkins -
==
Our planet will probably get moderately warmer, however. One of the landmark
scientific studies of recent times, by Dr. Gerard Bond of the Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory in New York. Dr. Bonds team analyzed iceberg debris on the
floor of the North Atlantic alongside records of solar activity in carbon-dated
tree rings and beryllium-10 in Greenland ice cores. They found that Earth has
had nine moderate global warmings and nine global coolings in the last 12,000
yearsin a 1300-year cycle that coincides almost exactly with a known cycle in
the magnetic activity of the sun.
Wed known about the Medieval Warming, from 950 to 1300 AD, and the Little Ice
Age which followed, from 1300 AD to 1850. Wed also had historic records of a
Roman Warming (200 BC to 400 AD) and an icy age which followed that. The Bond
study, however, took our knowledge of climate history back another 10,000
years and connected it directly with the suns variability.
Twentieth century temperature changes show a strong correlation with the suns
changing energy output. . .The low magnetism of the seventeenth century [during
the Little Ice Age] coincides with the coldest century of the last millennium,
and there is sustained high magnetism in the latter twentieth century [when
temperatures rose].
Are you still worried about the sea level rising and flooding all the coastal
cities? The alarmists say that huge chunks of ice are falling off the Antarctic
ice sheet, due to warming that could erase the ice sheet and suddenly raise sea
levels by fifteen to twenty feet.
A study led by Howard Conway of the University of Washington (Science, October
10, 1999) found that the West Antarctic ice sheet has been melting at its
current pace for 7,600 yearssince the end of the Ice Age 15,000 years ago. The
Antarctic ice may be entirely gone in just 7,000 more yearsif another Ice Age
doesnt intervene. In the meantime, Dr. Conway says we can expect the sea level
to continue rising as it has, about six inches per century, whether you drive
an SUV or not.
==
Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the True Age of the World
by Stephen Baxter 245pp, Weidenfeld
Hutton's theory of the Earth, first given in public that evening in 1785 and
then worked up into three volumes in the 1790s, held that the planet was in
a state of continuous change. Continents were constantly being eroded and
renewed by processes that are visible today, had operated similarly in the
past and would inevitably be repeated in the future. Soil was washed down
to the sea, consolidated into rock and then uplifted under the tremendous
force of subterranean heat. These cycles of decay and renewal occurred in
indefinite time, "so that, with respect to human observation, this world
has neither a beginning nor an end".
==
Is there an iridium spike at the Permian boundary?
Doesn't seem to be much evidence to support concentration of iridium (or any
other rare Earth element) in strata around the end of the Permian.
Any impact craters from around that time?
None big enough to cause a 95% loss of species. There is a hypothesis that
the meteor to cause this devastation would be so big it would cause
eruptions of magma that would erase the crater. There should be other
evidence though (like the iridium) which doesn't show up. There is some
evidence of shocked quartz grains in the Antarctic from late Permian rocks.
The current theory has 2 events causing the extinctions over a period of
about 80,000 years. The first was a flood basalt eruption that formed the
Siberian Traps. This gave a short Nuclear Winter effect. However it also
pumped lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. This caused global warming and the
climate changed. This led to a gradual loss of land species over about
40,000 years. At about this time there was a massive loss of marine species
over a 5000 year period. It is hypothesised that this was due to a huge
release of methane from methane hydrates due to the rise in sea temperature.
The slow disappearance of land animals continued for about another 35,000
years. This time line is very well documented from Permian rocks in
Greenland.
There is a summary of the programme, and a transcript, at -
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/dayearthdied.shtml>
==
ENTROPY: A quantity specifying the amount of disorder or randomness in
a system bearing energy or information. Originally defined in
thermodynamics in terms of heat and temperature, entropy indicates the
degree to which a given quantity of thermal energy is available for
doing *useful* work the greater the entropy, the less available
the
energy.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0817435.html
In this definition, please note the words useful work in the
definition (Not just any work, but useful work). Isn't that
interesting?
Here is a mathematical description of entropy:
At constant T,
dE = wmax + qrev (for a reversible process)
dE = dA + TdS (dS = qrev/T , Entropy change; TdS is the reversible
heat)
dA = dE - TdS (Helmholtz free energy change, or maximal work)
dG = dE - (-PdV) - TdS (Gibbs free energy change, or useful work)
dG = dH - TdS (dH = dE - (-PdV) , Enthalpy change)
dG = dA - (-PdV) (Useful work is maximal work minus the work done
against the atmosphere)
dG (represents that net useful energy of a chemical system)
The Gibbs free energy differs from the Helmholtz free energy by the
work (-PdV) performed against the atmosphere, which is not regarded as
"useful". The Gibbs free energy is sometimes called the useful work.
For most biochemical processes, no significant change in volume
occurs, and dA and dG have the same value.
The actual work obtained when a system changes state at finite rate is
always less than the maximal work, since some extra heat is generated
by "friction", which is transferred to the surroundings as an entropy increase.
==
Some stars are up to 120 times larger than the Sun. Their discoverers called
them extreme in every way. They are born rapidly, live short but wildly
luminous lives and will die explosively, likely forming black holes.
==
The Lower (HadeanArchean) Boundary contains approx 3,500 Ma ~ formation of
persistent crust
The oldest rocks known are those of the Isua Supracrustal Group of southwestern
Greenland, surviving from around 3700 Ma but, unfortunately, preserving no
fossils. The Isua rocks are strongly metamorphosed; although some sequences
have been demonstrated to be of sedimentary origin, and may have once contained
fossils, the heat and pressure to which they have been subjected will have
erased any traces.
==
The Oort cloud is based upon the observation that long period comets seem to
have aphelia which are strongly centered around 50,000 AU.
==
This is in fact the famous Einstein-Podolski-Rosen paradox, otherwise
known as quantum teleportation, and may one day have applications in
quantum computers.
Person A prepares an entangled pair of quantum particles x and y
(photons, electrons or whatever), then sends say x to person B and y
to person C, where particles x and y have complimentary spin
polarizations. Person B then sends particle z with a particular
polarization and causes it to interact with particle x, which destroys
the information. However, person C now receives particle y with the
information that person B sent using particle z.
It appears that information has travelled from B to
C instantaneously, but this is not the case. So to speak only half
the information has been communicated from B to C, and for any real
information, B has to communicate with C using conventional means.
Moreover, in a sense a quantum entangled pair is endowed with one
wavefunction, so quantum mechanically they are one entity, even though
they may be separated by a huge distance. By carrying out a
measurment or interacting with one member of the pair, you cause the
wavefunction to collapse, and effect the other member of the pair.
Until such a measurement is made, the pair is in an indeterminate
quantum supperposition of states. As I said before, no actual
information is transmitted until a connection is made via a more
conventional channel.

Take a look at http://www.aip.org/physnews/graphics/html/teleport.htm
for a better description.
==
I recommend "How To Think About Weird Things" by Schick and Vaughn,
Mayfield Press. It is a critical thinking textbook but very readable and has
many special sections on UFOs, ghosts, ESP, astrology and the like.
==
MUSLIM SCIENTISTS, MATHEMATICIANS AND ASTRONOMERS
Beore European Renaissance, 700 - 1500 C.E
http://cyberistan.org/islamic/
==
Martin Rees, Our Final Hour about possible future disasters
==
How are you going to determine the validity of a claim if you
_don't_ understand the relevant science?
==
A scientific theory is a scientific explanation that has been well tested.
A scientific explanation is an explanation that is testable. An explanation is
a description of the factors that restrict a range of outcomes.
==
Universe timeline
1.. 0 second to 10-43 second. Nobody knows or can know what happened
during this period of time. We know only that at least 9 dimensions of
space existed 13.7 billion years ago.
The universe existed as what is called singularity. All of the
universe-to-be existed as a point of no volume. Time as we know it was created.
2.. 10-43 second, also known as Planck time. This is the point at which
gravity, one of the four unified forces, became separate from the remaining
three forces.
3.. 10-36 second. The strong nuclear force (the force that holds the
nuclei of atoms together) separated from the other three unified forces.
4.. 10-36 to 10-32 second. Immediately following and triggered by the
separation of the strong nuclear force, the universe expanded rapidly for
this brief period of time.
5.. 10-32 to 10-5 second. The universe is filled with quarks antiquarks,
and electrons. The quarks and antiquarks combine and annihilate each other.
Quarks are in excess of antiquarks by a ratio of 1,000,000,001 to
1,000,000,000. The remaining quarks will make up all the matter that exists
in the universe.
6.. 10-12 second. The final two unified forces split from one another.
Electromagnetism, which controls the attraction of negatively and positively
controls radioactive decay.
7.. 10-5 second. The universe cools to 1,000,000,000,000 K allowing
quarks to combine to form protons and neutrons, the building blocks of
atomic nuclei.
8.. 1 second to 3 minutes. The universe continues to cool, allowing
protons and neutrons to combine to form the nuclei of future atoms.
9.. 10-32 second to 3000 years. Electromagnetic energy, produced during
the annihilation of quarks and antiquarks, dominates the forces of gravity.
10.. 3000 years to present. Matter becomes the primary source of gravity.
Matter begins to clump with the aid of large amounts of exotic or dark
matter. This matter interacts weakly with electromagnetic energy, but is
able to clump with itself through gravity, even during the domination of
electromagnetic energy.
11.. 300,000 years. Continued expansion and cooling allow matter and
electromagnetic energy to decouple. The nuclei of atoms are able to capture
electrons to form complete atoms of hydrogen, helium and lithium.
12.. 200,000,000 years. Galaxy formation begins as matter continues to
clump.
13.. 4.55 billion years ago. The solar system forms.
14.. 3.8 billion years ago years. Life begins on earth.
15. 0 billion years ago, glk lives, the obvioue goal of the whole process.
==
With the recent discovery of "dark energy" that produces a repulsive
force that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate,
American, the latest composition is given in a table as:
of Universe
--------- --------- -------------- --------------------
ordinary protons, 10^6 to 10^9 5%
matter electrons
radiation photons 10^87 0.005%
hot dark neutrinos 10^87 0.3%
matter
cold dark neutralinos 10^77 25%
matter
dark energy "scalar" 10^118 70%

the superpartners of the photon, the Z boson and perhaps other
boson synthesis during the Big Bang
==
The eccentricty of the Earth's orbit is 0.0167; that of Venus is 0.0068,
Mars: 0.0934.
==
The Big Bang Never Happened by Eric Lerner

Barrow and Tipler (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,
Oxford University Press, 1986
==
A observation was made of DG Tau, a T-Tauri object which is so young its center
star hasn't begun burning hydrogen; it's surrounded by a disc of dust and gas
that could form planets.
==
The people who become scientists are, by definition, people who believe in the
validity of repeatable empirical proof, are trained skeptics, and consider
their positions as open to future improvement or rejection. Honesty is
considered a vital part of their approach to the craft. Scientists are aware
that fraud and error are eventually exposed, with damage to their career.
==
Scientists
--
Founders of Natural Science: From Ancient Times to the Enlightenment
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Georgius Agricola (1494-1555)
John Ray (1628-1705)
Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Robert Hooke (1635-1703)
Archimedes was born in 287 BCE

Great Naturalists of the Eighteenth Century

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
William Paley (1743-1805)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Scientists associated with geology and evolution

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
William Smith (1769-1839)
Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844)
Patrick Matthew (1790-1874)
Mary Anning (1799-1847)
Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892)
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832).
Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873)
Thomas Henry Huxley (1824-1895)
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)
Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897)
Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935)
Alfred Wegener (1880-1930)
Humbolt, Alexander, baron von (1769-1859)

Natural Selection and Beyond

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Thomas Henry Huxley (1824-1895)
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)
Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897)
Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935)

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930)
Copernicus (1463-1543)
Bacon (1561-1626)
Kepler (1571-1630)
Pascal (1625-1662)
Harvey (1578-1657)
Boyle (1627-1691)
Faraday (1791-1867)
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879),
==
Thomas Henry Huxley [1825-1895] "Darwin's Bulldog" ---- _A Liberal
Education_ [1868]

Principia Mathematica, Russell and Whitehead
"Spacetime physics" by John Wheeler and Edwin Taylor
Quantum Reality": by Nick Herbery
David Chalmers The Conscious Mind
Complexification' by John L Casti
'The User Illusion' by Tor Norretranders.
Mark Noll "Science and Reason"
==
http://www.cs.stedwards.edu/~wright/text/atom.html
In the 5th century B.C., Democritus held that matter was not infinitely
divisible, and that if divided, it would become smaller and smaller etc. He
called the smallest particle the atom. Later Aristotle held that MATTER WAS
INFINITELY DIVISIBLE and that there was no need for atoms.
==
A 19th-century Englishman, William Smith. While working as a mine surveyor,
Smith noticed the layers, or strata, of rocks going down into the earth and,
through years of observations, painstakingly created a magnificent map that
dramatically advanced the field of geology.
This map is on www.
==
Einstein considered Newton and Galileo as the two greatest contributors
to scientific knowledge in history.
Einstein said:
"In my opinion, the greatest creative geniuses are Galileo and
Newton, whom I regard in a certain sense as forming a unity. And in
this unity Newton is [the one] who has achieved the most imposing feat
in the realm of science."
A. Einstein (quoted in Moszkowski, Conversations with Einstein)
==
"The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact
that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at
last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the
one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. "...
My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were
wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if
you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking
the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put
together." --Isaac Asimov
==
The five steps in the scientific method
1. Observation
2. Hypothesizing
3. Prediction
4. Additional observation, or
5. Comparision of observations to predictions?
==
"The cardinal rule in science is that all hypotheses must be testable--they
must be susceptible, at least in principle, to being shown wrong. In science,
it is more important that there be a means of proving an idea wrong than that
there be a means of proving it right. This is a major factor that distinguishes
science from nonscience. At first this may seem strange, for when we wonder
about most things, we concern ourselves with ways of finding out whether
they are true. Scientific hypotheses are different. In fact, if you want to
distinguish whether a hypothesis is different or not, look to see if there is a
test for proving it wrong. If there is no test for its possible wrongness, then
the hypothesis is not scientific. Albert Einstein put it well when he
stated, 'No number of experiments can prove me right; a single experiment can
prove me wrong.' "
==
After the Ice Age: A global human history 20,000-5000 BC, Steven Mithen
Life on earth after the ice age
==
The idea that critical thinking is the latest Western fad is silly.
If you're buying a used car in Singapore . . .
or a used chariot in ancient Susa . . . Carl Sagan
==
A team of astronomers based in Hawaii have discovered a distant galaxy 12.8
billion light years away which shows us what the Universe looked like when it
was only 900 million years old. They found the galaxy by using a special camera
installed on the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope which searches for distant
objects in a very specific frequency of light.
==
"The scientific method is a way of answering questions that helps remove bias
from the study. First, you form your question into a statement that can be
proven false, then you test it against observable facts."
(Joni E. Johnston, Psy.D.)
==
The more a claim fails to cohere with the existing body of knowledge,
the more evidence it takes to compel scientists to accept it.
==
Hansen, Kirk S. "Secular Effects of Oceanic Tidal Dissipation on the
Moon's Orbit and the Earth's Rotation Reviews of Geophysics and Space
Physics 20(3): 457-480, August 1982 (journal title has since then changed
to Reviews of Geophysics)
Kagan, B.A. & Maslova, N.B. "A stochastic model of the Earth-moon
tidal evolution accounting for cyclic variations of resonant properties of
the ocean: An asymptotic solution" Earth, Moon and Planets 66: 173-188,
1994
Ray R.D., Bills B.G., Chao B.F. "Lunar and solar torques on the
oceanic tides" Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth 104(B8):
17653-17659, August 10, 1999
Slichter, Louis B. "Secular Effects of Tidal Friction upon the
Earth's Rotation" Journal of Geophysical Research 68(14), July 15, 1963(JGR has
since broken into 5 separate journals published by the American Geophysical
Union)
==
Science practices methodological materialism.
It does not practice philosophical materialism.
"Every" scientific observation relies on naturalism. How else could we
exclude that Loki is not influencing our measuring devices, created
photons in mid-air to make us believe that Pluto exists etc. ?
==
January 2002 issue of the Geological Society of America's journal, Geology
Life After Snowball: The Old Complex Ediacaran Fossils
Experimental Mineralization of Invertebrate Eggs
Preservation of Neoproterozoic Embryos
==
Ellipses are a first approximation to planetary orbits. In a purely
Newtonian context there is the underlying two-body dynamics between the
planet and the sun and there are the perterbations of all the other
planets. If Kepler could have seen the true orbits accurately he would
never have solved the planetary motion problem, because he was lacking
dynamics to account for the motions.
It is fortunate that Tycho's numbers were only good to 1/30 of a degree
(two minutes of angle).
==
The Old Testament, from its manifestly false history of the earth, was no more
to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus, or the beliefs of any
barbarian. The New Testament is a damnable doctrine. [I can] hardly see how
anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true. -- Charles Darwin
==
A theory is a carefully formulated argument that is supported by logic,
mathematical principles, physical evidence, or some equally valid proof.
In short, it deals with facts.
==
Planetary masses
Planet Symbol Mass |
used for value |
each planet Earth=1 |
.. |
Jupiter MJU or 1 317.735 |
Saturn MSA or 2 95.147 |
Neptune MNE or 3 17.23 |
Uranus MUR or 4 14.54 |
Earth MTE or 5 1.000 |
Venus MVE or 6 0.815 |
Mars MMA or 7 0.108 |
Mercury MME or 8 0.055 |
==
We have Hubble pictures of young stars (for example HD141569, HD4796A
and Beta-Pictoris) that have disks of gas and dustaround them in which it is
proposed that planets have recently formed, or will form. We also see
regions of gas and dust clouds all over our galaxy where stars are forming.
==
The big bang is a model for the creation of the universe - a mathematical
model, which makes predictions about physical facts which can be observed.
The predictions made by the big bang model hold up - observations confirm
what's expected if the big bang, as a model, actually happened.
This doesn't mean the big bang theory is true. No amount of confirmation
will induce that conclusion. It will only be increasingly probable,
eventually reaching the point where no reasonable person would doubt that
it's accurate, without new (repeatable) evidence to the contrary.
It also doesn't mean that the qualitative description of the theory is
necessarily true, either. It's perfectly conceivable for two models to
arrive at the same correct conclusion. But there inevitably comes a point
where the two models (if they're not merely semantically different) will
make different predictions. Only the one that makes the correct
prediction (if either) is allowed to remain a viable theory.
The big bang theory has, to this point, remained a viable theory, while
many others have not. It's very nature makes a crude qualitative
description - a vast explosion - something we recognize, if only
imperfectly, from at least our direct entertainment experiences. But the
qualitative description is not the one on which its validity as a theory
is judged. It is, therefore, not necessary to witness the explosion.
It's only necessary to know what explosions are, and what effects they
have. Predict what effects such an explosion would have on the universe
as it exists today, and look for them. This we have done, and those
effects we have found.
Theories on the origins of life aren't models, at least not yet. There
may come a time when a model for the chemistry required to produce a
self-replicating molecule ends up predicting something like DNA, but we've
got a ways to go before we reach that point. Most of the current work is
experimental - trying to reproduce the chemistry of "life" formation.
We've come a ways in that endeavor as well, sufficiently far that no
reasonable person would deny that it's at least plausible for life to have
begun that way. Given the lack of evidence for another explanation, that
plausibility renders these standard chemical theories (as a whole - no one
particular theory is clearly more likely than the others) probable, until
better information comes along.
The evidence is repeatable if the observations can be repeated by
anyone who wishes to do so. The repeatability requirement is a
safeguard against observer error, and observations offered in support
of Big Bang cosmology count as repeatable so long as they can be
double checked by others. There is no need to repeat a Big Bang
because there is nothing about the theory that requires it. A
repetition of the Big Bang could result in a very different-looking
universe without invalidating the Big Bang proposition itself.
Big Bang cosmology has logical implications, and those implications
lead to conclusions about what the current state of the universe
should be. Where those conclusions go beyond what we have seen so
far, they predict what we should eventually find in future
observations. If the future findings don't match what is predicted,
the Big Bang theory will have to be reworked. If it can't be patched
up, or if a completely different theory comes along which accounts for
the same data more simply, the Big Bang theory will probably go on the
large heap of rejected theories.
We don't yet have a theory about life first came about. We are still
at the point of assembling plausible steps. We will have a theory (or
more than one) after we have assembled enough steps that we can go
from primordial conditions and basic chemicals to the simplest system
we can consider life. There are still gaps, but the gaps are shrinking.
==
"Breakpoint" is a planet diameter of about 600 km (radius about 300km).
At this point or above, and object's gravity is enough to form it into
a sphere.
==
There an interpretation of quantum theory called "hidden
variables", the point of view that the apparent indeterminacy of
quantum mechanics is really just a reflection of our ignorance of
some aspects of the system's state -- the "hidden variables". If we
knew what those variables were exactly, we'd be able to make perfect
deterministic predictions.
However, it is actually possible to experimentally test whether the
"hidden variables" hypothesis is correct, and the Aspect experiments
have shown that local hidden variables theories cannot account for
what we observe.
===
Astronomy
The Kuiper Belt is commonly thought to extend from the orbit of Neptune or
Pluto, about 39 Earth-Sun distances or astronomical units (AU), out to about
500 AU. Comets with periods (orbits around the Sun) of roughly 200 years or
less are thought to come from the Kuiper Belt. Comet Halley is a good example.
The belt is named for American astronomer Gerard Kuiper.
The Oort Cloud picks up from there and extends out to about 50,000
astronomical units, essentially into interstellar space. Unlike the relatively
flat shape of the Kuiper Belt (or the Asteroid Belt, which is between Mars and
Jupiter) the Oort Cloud is spherical, enveloping the whole solar system.
Comets kicked in from the Oort cloud can take thousands or millions of years
to go around the Sun once, and they often approach the inner solar system at
a steep angle compared to the plane through which Earth orbits. The cloud is
named for Dutch astronomer Jan Oort.
==
"The First Three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg, about the big bang
==
The Julian calendar. By the time of Julius Caesar, the accumulated error
caused by the incorrect length of the Roman year--and by the occasional
failure to add extra days at the proper times--had made the calendar about
three months ahead of the seasons. Winter occurred in September, and autumn
came in the month now called July.
In 46 B.C., Caesar asked the astronomer Sosigenes to review the calendar and
suggest ways for improving it. Acting on Sosigenes's suggestions, Caesar
ordered the Romans to disregard the moon in calculating their calendars. He
divided the year into 12 months of 31 and 30 days, except for February,
which had only 29 days. Every fourth year, it would have 30 days. To
realign the calendar with the seasons, Caesar ruled that the year we know as
46 B.C. should have 445 days. The Romans called it the year of confusion.
The Romans renamed Quintilis to honor Julius Caesar, giving us July.
Sextilis was renamed August by the Roman Senate to honor the Emperor
Augustus. The Senate also moved a day from February to August to make
August as long as July.
The Julian calendar was widely used for more than 1,500 years. A Julian
year lasted 365 1/4 days. But it was actually about 11 minutes and 14
seconds longer than the solar year. This difference led to a gradual change
in the dates on which the seasons began. By A.D. 1580, the spring equinox
fell 10 days earlier on the Julian calendar than its appointed date.
The Gregorian calendar was designed to correct the errors of the Julian
calendar. In 1582, on the advice of astronomers, Pope Gregory XIII
corrected the difference between sun and calendar by ordering 10 days
dropped from October, the month with the fewest Roman Catholic holy days.
The day that would have been Oct. 5, 1582, became October 15. This
procedure restored the next equinox to its proper date. To correct the
Julian calendar's error regularly, the pope decreed that February would have
an extra day in century years that could be divided evenly by 400, such as
1600 and 2000, but not in others, such as 1700, 1800, and 1900.
The Gregorian calendar is so accurate that the difference between the
calendar and solar years is now only about 26 seconds. This difference will
increase by 0.53 second every hundred years, because the solar year is
gradually becoming shorter.
The Roman Catholic nations of Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar almost
immediately after Gregory XIII devised it. Various German states kept the
Julian calendar until 1700. The United Kingdom and the American Colonies
changed to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Russia and Turkey did not adopt
the Gregorian calendar until the early 1900's.
==
I agree, in general, that different methods may not be antagonistic. I'll also
stipulate that the "scientific method" is notoriously difficult to define
completely; but in the broad brush, the gold standard of science is repeatable
observation and the accord of theory with observable evidence which certainly
seems incompatible with religions penchant for the authority of sacred texts,
or stories, accord with tradition , the fiat of authorotative religious
figures, or appeal to signs, omens, dreams, and so on. Thats either a
wonderful new truth which has eluded me (not just me) for eons, or its
bonkers. What could you mean? Isnt "science" the attempt to explain the world
in common sense terms without recourse to the unexplainably mysterious?
Scientists I suppose dont regularly invoke "gremlins" to explain phenomena,
but thats because gremlins belong to the world of fiction, fantasy, and
imagination. On the other hand, if there really were gremlin species (Flash!
TommyKnokers captured alive!) , if they could be demonstrably rescued from the
world of fancy, then they might "legitimately" be appealed to as
part of a "commonsense" explanatory scheme....Of course your hammer went
missing, the Tommyknockers knicked it. Well, maybe I've gotten it all wrong,
but it seems to me that thats precicely what "science" does...it posits
a "naturlistic" ontology which I take to mean that science assumes that
the world works according to consistent laws, through knowable mechanisms, and
works "of itself" more or less mechanically with no need for constant
intelligent (or capricious or whimsical) intervention on the part of unseeen
(and unknowable) powers. More science means less religion (or so it seems
statistically). That doesn't say "antagonism" to you? You dont see "magic" and
"science" as contradictory concepts? The only sense I can make of that is that
if magic were "real" and not fantasy, it would be a sort of science of itself.
No, Christians condemn unlicenced, unauthorized magic which they believed
(historically I mean, modern christians probably dont believe that these
days) is effected by evil spririts, demons, devils, so on. The objection to
magic performed outside of the church is that its tantamount to having truck
with "unclean spirits". The priest turns the wine and wafer into blood and
flesh by magic (or maybe its God who does the magic at the priests request.?).
God creates the world by magic. The various miraculous events in the Hebrew
Scriptures (plagues vistited upon the Egyptians, parting of the Red Sea,
Walls of Jericho falling down Sun standing still, and so on, are all magic).
There's no doubt that many great and beautiful things have been inspired by,
dedicated to, and shaped within the symbols and conventions of various
religions but I think claiming those things as "gifts" of theism is an
exagerated claim. I see it more like this: People have a capacity to build, to
decorate, to create, sculpt , paint, weave, craft stories, poems, plays etc
which they will exercise regardless of what the details of their culture. The
Greeks created marvelous statues, architecture, poetry, plays, etc. Many
creative greeks were not the least bit religious. but they created beauty
nonetheless. A Navajo sandpainting is a marvelously beautiful thing. Many many
non-theistic moderns have created the full range of physical and non physical
artistic creations. So if artistic creation doesnt depend on whether you're a
Greek skeptic, a Navajo, or an atheist, why should we give theism the "credit"
for the cathedrals or Choral Masses? A particular theistic culture provided
the language and symbolism, provided the icing so to speak, but the "creative
juices" if you like are native to the human personality. Unless we mean very
different things by "science" or "naturalism" I can't see what assumptions
I'ld have to make or what data I'ld need to make that assertion plausible.
==
Science definition
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin scientia, from
scient-, sciens having knowledge, from present participle of scire to know;
probably akin to Sanskrit chyati he cuts off, Latin scindere to split
1 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or
misunderstanding
2 a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the
3 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the
operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through
scientific
method b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the
physical world and its phenomena : NATURAL SCIENCE
4 : a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws
==
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, 14th Printing,
1977. First English Ed., Hutchinson, 1959. First published as Logik Der
Forschung in Vienna: Springer, 1934.
==
The creation of a scientific theory involves making observations, and then
organizing one's explanations for those observations into an explanatory
model- one that is falsifiable (in other words, there are observations that,
if made, will cause the model to be discarded) and makes testable predictions.
==
299,792,458 meters per second, speed of light, fixed definition.
==
Nearest Brown Dwarf Found
ESOA team of European astronomers have located the closest brown dwarf star
ever discovered. Epsilon Indi, located only 12 light-years from the Earth, was
thought to be a single star, but the ESO team spotted its companion. Epsilon
Indi B is 45 times the mass of Jupiter and takes 400 years to orbit the main
star.
--
When a massive star burns up all its hydrogen fuel, it casts its outer layers
into space and then collapses into a dense neutron star or black hole
Theorists believe that stars must be about 10-20 times the mass of the Sun to
support such an explosive scenario. Such heavy objects have brief lives,
typically less than 20 million years, compared to the Sun which is middle-aged
and already 4.6 billion years old.
Massive stars are short-lived, and they die violently. When a star more than
ten times as heavy as our Sun burns all its fuel after a relatively brief life
of 10 million to 15 million years, it collapses in about one second. Then its
core rebounds. More material falls in and puts a lid on the process. But
something then causes an explosion, lifting the spherical lid and sending
freshly produced elements into space. One supernova explosion can briefly
outshine an entire galaxy containing 100 billion stars.
==
The biases of scientists are all different, so they cancel out. Any bias
that one scientist has will be exposed by another scientist with a
different bias. Effectively, there is virtually no overall bias in
science, except for the commitment to truth that attracts people to
the field in the first place. Where biases tend to come into play are when
evidence is sparse or ambiguous. As scientists, they
are disproportionately well-educated and of better health than the
population as a whole, and are to a large extent self-selected into
areas of analytical thought. Even within a discipline, the nature of the
shared, derived terminology affects the way that reality is modeled
(e.g., some of the big breakthroughs in a particular field come from
someone with other than the standard background).
If anything, the scientific process encourages _skepticism_, which
demands that theories and conclusions be backed up with
verifiable observations and sound logic. (Hence, some of the
most aggressive challenges to a position can come from another
who *supports* the position, but appreciates the value of Devil's
Advocacy in bringing that position to scientific maturity.) The
scientists' culture allows for bias, but it strongly values intellectual
honesty, and has a tendency to vilify anyone caught faking or
consciously fudging the data.
==
Late in the 19th century, the next obvious step was taken. Attempts
were made to measure our velocity through the Aether. The most notable of those
attempts was the Michaelson-Morley experiment which, to everyone's chagrin,
produced a null result. The difficulty was first resolved in 1903 with
conclusions by Fitzgerald and Larmor. Fitzgerald concluded that what was
happening was that lengths became shorter in the direction of the velocity
vector and Larmor concluded that, if this were true, clocks must slow by a
reciprocal amount. The result was the Lorentz Transformation Aether Theory,
which, in conjunction with the fact that the velocity of light represented the
most rapid means of transferring information, insured that our absolute
velocity through space could not be measured. In 1905, Dr. Einstein showed that
the theory could be derived from fundamental principles and Special Relativity
was off and running. When examined objectively, both theories are found to be
identical (cross-derivable), and differ only in philosophical viewpoint.
One viewpoint asserted that the classical Aether exists but because of the
Lorentz Transformations and the limit on the transfer of information imposed by
the velocity of light, we could not, in principle, measure our velocity with
respect to it. The other viewpoint asserted that, because our velocity with
respect to the Aether could not be measured, it was not valid to include the
Aether in physical theory. This interpretation required that all velocity
reference frames were equally valid and reality did not consist of space and
time as separate entities but was a single entity which was named space-time.
The mathematics of space-time work as long as they are not abuse by
arbitrarily jumping from one velocity reference to another in the same problem,
but science was still left with the problem of explaining action at a
distance. This difficulty was overcome by the addition of the concept of
was of such short duration that the laws of quantum mechanics allowed
them to pop into and out of existence without violating the Law of
Conservation of
Energy and which acted to exchange momentum (force) between physically
separated entities. The elimination of the Aether from realm of acceptable
physical theory did not result from observations or the application of rigorous
logic. It was eliminated instead by a consensus opinion upon the part of the
scientific community. Since the Lorentz Contraction-Aether Theory is a special
case solution of the Special Theory of Relativity, the existence of the
classical Aether cannot be disproved without also disproving Special
Relativity. The existence of the Aether can be verified, however, if
information can be transferred between physically separated locations at a
velocity that exceeds the velocity of light! If that can be accomplished, all
that is necessary to determine our absolute velocity through space is to
compare the synchronization of clocks set by the hyperluminal information
transfer method with the synchronization of clocks set by electromagnetic
means. The difference in their now readings would allow their absolute
velocity to be measured and the establishment of our absolute velocity through
space (i.e.- the Aether) by direct observation, exactly as Michaelson and
Morley wished to do.
==
Explicit and implicit knowledge seem to be real, and seem to be represented
in separate brain systems. For example, procedural knowledge is
relatively-little affected by damage to hippocampus, whereas declarative
knowledge is seriously damaged.
==
==
Cantor's argument was "Pretend you have a list of all of the reals. Here's
how to construct one that's not in the list. In the Hilbert Hotel problem,
your method fails to exhibit an element that's not in the list. They're all
in there.
But you'll miss a bunch that way. There are all sorts of unique
binary fractions that don't correspond to any integer's reciprocal.
Consider 0.1101001000100001000001000000... The digits never repeat,
so it's an irrational number.
See math books by Raymond Smullyan
==
E^2 = m^2*c^4 + p^2*c^2
The particle doesn't have any Zero Point energy, it's the vacuum that has
that. The particle has squared potential energy m^2*c^4 and kinetic energy
p^2c^2 (in a particular frame). Different frames see different values for m
and p, but the sum m^2*c^4 + p^2c^2 is invarant over frames.
c^2*t^2 - x^2 - y^2 - z^2 is Lorentz invariant

The particle has squared potential energy m^2c^4 and kinetic energy
p^2c^2 (in a particular frame).
==
Glacial deposits sandwiched between Paleozoic layers -
"Earth's Pre-Pleistocene Glacial Record", Hambrey and Harland 1981
==
What is meant by scientific evidences and scientific proof? In truth, science
can never establish "truth" or "fact" in the sense that a scientific statement
can be made that is formally beyond question. All scientific statements and
concepts are open to reevaluation as new data is acquired and novel
technologies emerge. "Proof", then, is solely the realm of logic and
mathematics. That said, we often hear "proof" mentioned in a scientific
context, and, there is a sense in which it denotes "strongly supported
by scientific means." Even though one may hear "proof" used like this, it is a
careless and inacurrate handling of the term.
==
[T]o talk about causation or creation implicitly assumes there was a
time before the big bang singularity. We have known for twenty-five
years that Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that time
must have had a beginning in a singularity fifteen billion years ago.
(Hawking)

[D]educing that the laws of Nature and the values of the physical
constants were established (don't ask how or by Whom) so that humans
would eventually come to be...sounds like playing my first hand of
bridge, winning, knowing that there are 54 billion billion billion
[5.4 x 1028] possible other hand that I was equally likely to have
been dealt...and then foolishly concluding that a god of bridge exists
and favors me, a god who arranged the cards and the shuffle with my
victory foreordained from The Beginning. We do not know how many other
hands there are in the cosmic deck, how many other kinds of universes,
laws of Nature, and physical constants that could also lead to life and
intelligence and perhaps even delusions of self-importance...Clearly we
have not a glimmering of how to determine which laws of Nature are
"possible" and which are not. Nor do we have more than the most
rudimentary notion of what correlations of natural laws are "permitted."
(Sagan 1994:34-35)
==
"Chance" or "random" arises when referring to things involving a nearly
unfathomable number of reactions which arise from physical laws, many of which
are unknown, resulting in an outcome that may not be predicted by any known
method of computation.
==
The latest research seems to indicate that consciousness does not initiate
action, it actually serves to rationalize it afterwards?
==
The new data precisely determines the age of the universe at
13.7 billion years, with a remarkably small one percent margin of error.
==

Massimo Pigliucci "Tales of the Rational ...Skeptical
Essays about Nature and Science"

Dick Teresi "Ancient Roots of Modern Science"

_The Skeptical Environmentalist_ by Halstrom.

Scientific Metaphysics: The Philosophy of Chance, Law, Evolution
by Andrew Reynolds

Tarbuck Lutgens' "Earth Science" 5th edition (Prentice Hall)

R.D.Sider Classical World 73 (1980) in which he points out how often people
are misled -- even scholars.

Copernicus was famous for his book: De Revolutionibus Orbium
Coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres), published in 1543.

"[Newton's_Principia_ (1687)

David Deutsch 'The Fabric of Reality'

A Short History of Planet Earth: Mountains, Mammals, Fire,
and Ice, J.D. Macdougall, 1996

Radin The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena

Betrand Russell Theory of Knowledge

Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, The M.I.T. Press, March 1967

Milton Rothman's "The Science Gap" talking about myths of science

A.Rothman, Discovering the Natural Laws (GardenCity: Doubleday, 1972;
New York: Dover, 1989)

E. M.Rogers, Physics for the Inquiring Mind (Princeton:Princeton
University Press, 1960)

B.Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (NewYork: Simon & Schuster,
1945)

A.Einstein,"On the Method of Theoretical Physics"
(New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1954).

H.Kragh, Dirac: A Scientific Biography (NewYork: Cambridge University Press,
1990)

Milton A Rothman, The Science Gap, Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the
Reality of Science. Prometheus Books, 1991

Our Cosmic Habitat, Rees

"Principles of Quantum Mechanics", R. Shankar

Michio Kaku, physics professor at the City University of New York and author
of Hyperspace,

Hannes Alfven, Cosmic Plasma (1981 D.Reidel, Holland)

Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos (1984 Bantam Books)

Gregoire Nicolis, Physics of far-from-equilibrium systems and self-organisation
(from The New Physics ed. Paul Davis, 1989 Cambridge University Press,

Eric J. Lerner, The Big Bang Never Happened (1991 Simon & Schuster)
P.J.E Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology (1993 Princeton University
Press)

Andrei Linde, The Self-Reproducing Universe (Scientific American Nov. 1994,
Vol. 271, No5

A. Wheeler, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime

_How The Mind Works_ by Steven Pinker

Tuckerman, B. 1962, Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions 601 B.C. to A.D. 1,
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society).

Werner Heisenberg The History of Quantum Theory 1958

Peskin & Schroeder's _An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory_

History of Pi -- by Peter Beckman, Petr Beckmann; Paperback: $9.56

Pi -- by Darren Aronofsky; Paperback $11.20

The Joy of Pi -- by David Blatner; Paperback: $9.60

Fermats Last Theorem -- by Amir D. Aczel: $9.95

Putnam's "The 'Corroboration' of Scientific Theories". Vol I of
Putnam's papers and (with Popper's reply) in the Popper volume of the
Library of Living Philosophers.

Feyerabend's autobiography, Killing Time
===
The more precisely the position determined, the less
precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and
vice versa. --Werner Heisenberg, 1927
===
The data recorded by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a NASA
satellite, reveal that the universe had already made an abundance of stars
when it was only 200 million years old.
==
Physics indicates that the entire universe could be the result of a quantum
event in Hilbert space. If you want to go with the Copenhagen interpretation
of QM, (which posits that an observer is necessary to collapse a wave function
into an actual state - in other words, the act of observing forces the
universe to 'decide' which of the possible quantum states will become
'real'...) one can assume that the universe HAD to develop
life, because the collapse of the quantum state was necessarily one in which
observers existed to force the collapse in the first place. Call it the
Quantum Anthropic Principle, or maybe Schroedinger's Universe.
==
Newton's first law of motion is often stated as
An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay
in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an
unbalanced force.

The second law states that the acceleration of an object is dependent upon two
variables - the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object.
Force =mass times acceleration

Newton's Third Law
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
==
The Oxford Companion explains "fact" as follows:
"A fact is, traditionally, the worldly correlate of a true
proposition, a state of affairs whose obtaining makes that proposition
true. Thus a fact is an actual state of affairs. Facts possess
internal structure, being complexes of objects and properties or
relations (though facts themselves are abstract even when their
constituents are not)."

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press,1995
==
If something 'immaterial', it is dimentionless and cannot be detected by any
physical means then it is indistinguishible from something that does not exist.
==
Science is very unpopular among teenagers (generally),
and science is seen to be at odds with religion. Religion is being sold from
thousands of churches. It just doesn't turn on human emotions (except among a
very few of us) unless it is seen as an evil threat to the foundations of
religion.
When the average person goes to the hospital and has their life saved,
they really couldn't care less about the generations of science that
preceded it. They don't think about the science behind the airplane
or the car or even a golf ball. They live their lives caring about
other things. That's just the way most humans seem to be.
==
Thoughts are the activity of the brain. When a drug effects the chemistry of
the brain, thoughts are effected. A scan of the brain during thinking shows
neural pathways which respond to input from the senses and send signal out to
the muscles etc. Thoughts and memories in lab creatures can be
transferred from one brain to another by transplanting brain sections.
There is no evidence of some immaterial non-detectable, dimensionless
invisible non-matter, non-atomic influence animating the brain.
If you wish to pursue this hypothesis then please show that there is
such a thing . Please don't appeal to gaps in the vast amount of what we
already know about thought, memory and the proceses of the brain to claim some
'immaterial' animating entity.
==
A theory usually means something more appropriately called a model. This is a
description of the dynamics of a class of things. It is usually fleshed out in
one or more equations and describes the way those sorts of things change over
time, in what are called "transformations".
==
==
Popper, _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_
==
Damasio's book 'The Feeling of What Happens'. It discusses different levels of
consciousness and different 'selves' from a neuroscientific perspective.
==
Chalmers, A. F. 1999. What is this thing called science? An assessment
of the nature and status of science and its methods. 3rd ed. St Lucia,
Qld.: University of Queensland Press.
Feyerabend, PK. 1975. Against Method. New York: Verso Editions.
Hacking, Ian. 1983. Representing and intervening: introductory topics in
the philosophy of natural science. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Hanson, N. R. 1958. Patterns of Discovery. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a process: an evolutionary account of
the social and conceptual development of science. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions,
International encyclopedia of unified science; v. 2 no. 2. [Chicago]:
University of Chicago Press.
---. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd enl. ed,
International encyclopedia of unified science. Foundations of the unity
of science; v. 2 no. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
---. 1977. The essential tension: selected studies in scientific
tradition and change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, Imre, and Alan Musgrave, eds. 1974. Criticism and the growth of
knowledge: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy
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Lloyd, Elisabeth Anne. 1988. The structure and confirmation of
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Panchen, Alec L. 1992. Classification, evolution, and the nature of
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Popper, Karl R. 1959. The logic of scientific discovery.London:
Hutchinson.
---. 1965. Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific
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---. 1972. Objective knowledge; an evolutionary approach. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Smith, Andrew B. 1994. Systematics and the fossil record: documenting
evolutionary patterns. Oxford, OX; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell
Science.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922. Tractatus logico-philosophicus. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
---. 1968. Philosophical investigations. Translated by G. E. M.
Anscombe. Repr. of [3rd ed.] English text, with index. ed. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
==
"Newton - The Last Sorcerer", Michael White suggests that Newton was gay and
may have had a relationship with his long-time roommate Wickins and a younger
science/philosophy groupie by the name of Fatio de Dulillier.
==
Hubble's law states that an object exhibits a Doppler Shift equivalent
to a recessional velocity v_r as,
v_r = Hd
Where H is the Hubble term (~20 kiloparsecs/million Light years) and
d is the distance in millions of light years (mLy).
==
Specified complexity ( specified information) is equal to -log2(p),
==
Science References
APL: Applied Physics Letters
AS: American Scientist
CEN: Chemical & Engineering News
GD: Genes & Development
GR: Genome Research
ICAR: Icarus
JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
JCE: Journal of Chemical Education
NAT: Nature
NEJM: New England Journal of Medicine
PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
PRL: Physical Review Letters
PT: Physics Today
SA: Scientific American
SCI: Science
SW: ScienceWeek
TB: The Biochemist
TS: The Scientist
==
epistemology n.
The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its
presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity.
==
www.nr.com Numerical Recipes on line

Handbook of Mathematical Functions, With Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical
Tables, by Milton Abramowitz (Editor), Irene A. Stegun (Editor)
(Paperback - June 1974)
==
You seem to have a totally false
understanding of what science is all about - as if it were simply
another holy book, written down once for all time, which then has to
be accepted without question. The reality is that science is a PROCESS
for understanding how the world works - and it's by far the best we've
got. Science, in itself, does not make any claims, let alone claims of
infallibility. Science is a process carried out by certain people
called scientists, who are seeking to advance human understanding in
various fields. Since scientists are fallible human beings, they
sometimes make mistakes and arrive at incorrect conclusions. Who
points out these mistakes and corrects them? OTHER SCIENTISTS!
That is the whole point, and the fundamental difference between
science and religion. Every claim made by a scientist (note, I said by
a scientist, not by science) is tentative. It has to stand on its own
merits, not by mindless appeal to authority and dogma. It has to be
falsifiable, i.e. it has to go out on a limb and make predicitions
that can be confirmed or denied by observation.
Evolutionary theory is falsifiable
despite the claims of cretinists, and would be falsified by a single
mammal fossil in rock strata dating back before mammals were supposed
to exist, but this has never happened.)
In other words, science is an arena where different ideas compete, and
the fittest survive - at least until replaced by a fitter idea. Just
because one theory gets replaced by another doesn't mean that the
whole of science has suddenly become suspect - that is an extremely
naive and uninformed view.
Take Newton's theory of gravity for example. It happens to be an
extremely accurate theory which enables us to calculate things like
eclipses for thousands of years in advance. However, Newton's theory
becomes less accurate for extremely massive bodies like black holes,
or for objects moving at very high speeds. That is why Einstein's
relativity theory has won out over Newton's laws - because Einstein's
theory is even more accurate than Newton's.
In other words, science is an evolutionary process where bad theories are
eventually weeded out, and good theories survive until they are replaced
by even better ones. The results speak for themselves. Science has
done infinitely more to improve our understanding of how the universe
works than all the holy books ever written. (As Carl Sagan pointed
out, no religion has ever had a fraction as much success as science in
making predictions.) Science has done more to improve our standards of
living than trillions of prayers by pious worshippers on their knees.
Scientists are the first to admit that science isn't perfect and
doesn't have all the answers. But the whole point is that science is a
self-correcting and cumulative process, not a closed, rigid,
stultified system like religion.
==
The sun and moon are causing
earth to wobble like a top; that changes the time of perihelion, the point on
Earth's elliptical orbit at which the planet comes closest to the sun. Together
these two cycles - along with even slower perturbations in the shape of the
orbit - determine how much sunlight falls on a given latitude at a given
season. They are called Milankovitch cycles, after the Serbian mathematician
Milutin Milankovitch, who proposed in the 1930s that such regularly occurring
variations could explain why Earth's climate goes in and out of ice ages.
According to this theory, the most recent ice sheets began retreating from
Canada and Eurasia around 17,000 years ago because that's when the northern
hemisphere started getting enough sun during the summer to melt them. About
9,000 years ago, the northern sunlight curve was reaching a peak;
climatologists call this period the Holocene Optimum. The axial tilt was
higher than it is now, around 24 degrees, and perihelion was in July. Both
===
NIST says that a standard atmosphere is exactly
101325 Pascals, citing 1998 CODATA recommended values as their
source. But the current definition of a torr is 101325/760
Pascals (133.322368421_Pa. So
760_torr is exactly 1 standard atmosphere. Apparently the 760
comes from an older definition of standard atmosphere, and the
value of the torr was adjusted slightly lower to make it come
out this way. According to the U.K.'s NPL, a conventional mm of
mercury is based on an assigned density of 13595.1_kg/m^3 at 0
deg. C under standard gravity of 9.80665_m/s^2, which works out
to 133.322387415_Pa or 1.0000001424_torr. It would be quite a
job to measure the difference. NIST gives a conversion factor of
1.333224E+02 for both the torr and the mmHg conversions to
Pascals, and notes that additional digits for mercury manometers
are not justified,
==
Astronomers have captured light from the farthest galaxy ever seen in a finding
that will help reveal the universe as it was during the earliest stages of
development. The newly found galaxy is said to be 15.5 billion light-years
away. At this distance, the scientists know its light "turned on" about
780 million years after the Big Bang. That's 50 million years earlier than the
previously oldest-known gallery. In terms of another common measure of distance
n astronomy, the galaxy is at a redshift of 6.56. The most distant object
previously spotted, a galaxy with a supermassive black hole called a quasar,
was at a redshift of 6.28. The new record holder is not a quasar, but rather a
more normal galaxy that is less luminous.
Read Feb 2003 National Geographic for more details
==
Theory holds that less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang (and
after a sudden growth spurt known as inflation), the early universe, about the
size of a marble or a grapefruit, underwent a transition to a new state of
matter, as water does in cooling to form ice.
In this new phase, the cooling particle soup consisted mainly of quarks, a
species of subatomic particle, and force carriers known as gluons. This small
universe, after expanding to about the size of this solar system, then
underwent another transition, forming subatomic particles like the protons and
neutrons of everyday matter.
==
Nearly all biomolecules are chiral compounds.
They exist in two forms (enantiomers) which are non-superimposable mirror
images of each other. While otherwise identical, enantiomers typically have key
differences. For example, they may rotate the plane of polarized light in
opposite directions.]
==
"The theory goes that planet-like masses formed about 20 million years after
the coagulation of dust grains in our solar system. This is based on the
presence of carbonates found in meteorites."
==
Kepler's discovery of elliptical orbits marks the beginning of modern,
scientific astronomy. He based his explanations upon observations, rather than
making the observations fit an assumed model of the universe. Prior to Kepler,
planets were believed to orbit Earth in circular paths. The many variations of
their motions were accommodated by adding more and more complex sets of circles
upon circles in order to rationalize the observations. Although this worked
moderately well, the future position of planets could only be roughly
predicted.
Kepler changed all of that. Altogether, he discovered three relationships, now
called "Kepler's laws" that describe the orbital motion of the planets.

1.Law of Ellipses (1609). The orbit of each planet is an ellipse, with the
Sun located at one focus. Earth is closest to the Sun in January and farthest
from the Sun in July as it travels along its elliptical orbit.
2.Law of Equal Areas (1609). A line drawn from the planet to the Sun sweeps
out equal areas in equal times. This geometric description captures the fact
that a planet's orbital velocity varies in a regular way -- the farther the
planet is from the Sun, the more slowly it moves along its orbit. Earth moves
fastest in January, and slowest in July.
3. Harmonic Law (1618). The square of the sidereal period of a planet is
directly proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit. In
non-technical terms, planets move more slowly, and in a predictable way, the
greater their distance from the Sun. Mercury speeds once around the Sun in
just 88 days, Earth takes one year, Mars almost two years and distant Pluto
almost 250 years.
==
In 1994, folks at the Fly's Eye air shower detector in Utah observed a
cosmic ray whose energy was about 320 EeV. In case you forget what an
EeV is, it's a unit of energy equal to a billion GeV, and a Gev is equal
to a billion ev (electron volts). Current particle accelerators
routinely particles with energies about a hundred GeV, but a few hundred
*EeV* is a whole different story! That's about 50 joules, the energy of
a one-kilogram mass moving at 10 meters/second, all packed in one
particle!
Nobody knows what would produce cosmic rays of this energy. To make the
puzzle more mysterious, this energy is above the Greisen-Zatsepin-
Kuz'min (or GZK) cutoff for cosmic rays produced at moderate extragalactic
distances (30 megaparsecs). The idea of the GZK cutoff is that
particles of extremely high energies whizzing through space would
interact significantly with the cosmic microwave background radiation,
losing energy to produce pions.
So it seems that something is producing really high energy particles,
and this something is not too far away, by cosmic standards.
Established mechanisms don't get energies that high. A possibility
studied by various authors including P. Bhattacharjee and G. Sigl is
that these super-energetic cosmic rays are produced by the decay of
topological defects. Various grand unified theories, or GUTs, predict
that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces all act the the same
at really high temperatures, while at low temperatures (like any sort of
temperature you'd find around here) a spontaneous symmetry breaking
occurs which makes them split up into their observed distinct personalities.
==
The Hubble Space Telescope, together with the giant Keck telescope in Hawaii,
penetrated back almost to the beginning of galaxy formation time. They
discovered a cluster of stars more than 13 billion light-years from Earth that
formed less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
==
Any molecule in a gas at temperature T will have an average translational
kinetic energy of (3/2)kT. (5/2)kT for diatomic molecules (5 degrees of
freedom at room temperature).
Thus T=(2/3k)E works for single atoms only.
==
The Pennsylvanian Period (from the state of Pennsylvania, where many fossils
of this age are found) stretched from about 323 mya until 290 mya.
==
Ti isn't ferromagnetic. Fe, Co, Ni and a few rare earths are! Transition
metals are generally paramagnetic (reinforce an external field) if they have
unpaired d electrons (as Ti does). So Ti atoms themselves are magnetic. But
*ferromagnetism* (magnetism that remains when the external field is gone)
requires atoms to self-align in the solid to form spontaneous domains.
Those aren't present in Ti for some reason. Any magnetism in a Ti workpiece
means a metal defect! And even if there, it is very, very small. Ti like
aluminum can be used in places where you deliberately are trying to avoid
magnetization by strong fields.
==
Strong and weak forces: The weak forces are the forces responsible for the
change of neutrons and protons into each other in radioactive processes and in
the stars. The strong forces are the forces that hold quarks together inside
protons and neutrons, and that hold protons and neutrons together inside
atomic nuclei.
*gauge field theories: Quantum field theory is the mathematical fusion of
quantum mechanics with special relativity theory, and there are essentially 2
branches: quantum electrodynamics (applicable to charged particles involved in
electromagnetic interactions) and quantum chromodynamics (applicable to nuclear
particles involved in strong force interactions). In this context, a "gauge
theory" is any quantum field theory which has the property of "gauge symmetry",
i.e., the equations describing the field do not change when some operation is
applied to all particles everywhere in space. In general, fields with gauge
symmetry can be remeasured (regauged) from different baselines without
affecting their properties. Quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics
are examples of gauge theories.
*theory of quantum chromodynamics: Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a theory
that describes the strong interaction (strong nuclear force) in terms of quarks
and antiquarks and the exchange of massless "gluons" between them. The
"chromo-" in chromodynamics derives from the use of designated "color"
attributes of quarks, the various "colors" labels for various quark properties.

The venerable standard model says that all nuclear matter those particles that
can exert an influence among each other via the strong nuclear force consists
of arrangements of the six known quark types, or "flavors." Clumps of
three quarks are called baryons and clumps of two are mesons; other clumpings
may yet be found at places like Brookhaven's RHICmachine. The proton (two up
quarks and an anti-down quark) and neutron (two downs and one anti-up) are
notable examples of conventional bayons.
==
The continental crust is has a specific gravity
of approximately 2.6. Oceanic crust is about 3.5.
==
Greenwich Mean Time(GMT).
In the 1950s, the atomic clock was developed. In 1967 the second was
defined as the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of a particular
vibration of the caesium-133 atom. This is used to define
International Atomic Time (TAI).
In 1972 Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC) was adopted. It combines all
the regularity of atomic time with most of the convenience of GMT.
UTC is kept to within one second of GMT by the addition of extra seconds.
==
Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and
meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. The terms was coined by K.
Conrad in 1958 (Brugger).
http://skepdic.com/apophenia.html
Pareidolia
Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or
obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For
example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face
of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Theresa in a cinnamon
bun or the face of a man in the moon.
==
Physicists seem to have recently added to the 18-22 fundamental
dimensionless constants 4 brand-new constants
derived from a Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix
==
Rest mass is the magnitude of the energy-momentum 4-vector.
Mass is the norm (square root of the square) of the momentum four-vector.
Taylor and Wheeler
We differentiate with respect to time and space variables in the differential
equations that produce the eigenvalues which give the quantized energy
states.
==
The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of
light to across a distance equal to the Planck length. This is the quantum of
time, the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning, and is equal to
10-43 seconds. No smaller division of time has any meaning. With in the
framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, we can say only
that the universe came into existence when it already had an age of 10-43
seconds.
==
Proof can only exist in a closed system where the answer
is contained in the question. The real world is different.
==
Fraud in science is almost invariably uncovered by scientists. That's the
nature of science; it has an independent arbiter of objective evidence which
anyone can check. Religion has no such self correcting mechanism. It relies on
assertions and dogma and where objective evidence appears to contradict it the
evidence has to be discarded. Entities or elements - scientific theories takes
no account of any supernatural claims. Scientific theories are never proved in
the mathematical sense. A theory can ALWAYS be improved or modified by new
data. The mathematical proof of Pythagoras cannot be. The universe can be
described in mathematical terms. But the theories are empirical.
==
The scientific method is nothing more than reasonable, methodical, step by
step, publicly replicable exploration of what can reasonably be said is
known to be true about the nature of the universe. To qualify as fact it
must be publicly demonstrable, and replicable by any other investigator
using the same equipment and procedures.
==
Scientist, being humans, have their own individual theologies and philosophies.
Some scientists are staunch atheists. Others are pious Christians. Still
others are Buddhists or Muslims or Zen or Taoist or any combination thereof.
None of these have anything to do with science, though.
==
Exploring Cosmic Darkness, Scientists See Signs of Dawn
The dim haze from a distant epoch that astronomers have dubbed the cosmic dark
ages, a time so ancient that stars and galaxies had not yet begun to shine, has
been seen for the first time by earthly telescopes.
The discovery, if it withstands scrutiny by other scientists, who have been
searching for the effect for decades, amounts to a sighting of the first dawn
in the cosmos as starlight and other radiation began to pervade the heavens.
"It's the birth of stars, really."
The sighting was made by scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an
ambitious effort to map large swaths of the universe and catalog some
200 million celestial objects.
"There were no stars, there were no galaxies up until this point,"
"This is when matter finally got organized enough to create stars and
galaxies." Scientists have long believed that after the explosive genesis of
the universe some 13 billion years ago, there followed a barren, lifeless
period the dark ages before gases from the explosion could coalesce into
stars and galaxies like the ones gleaming in the sky today.
But as the universe expanded and cooled, large amounts of that gas remained
wafting through space like a thick fog or haze, in the form of hydrogen atoms.
That haze blocked much of the light thrown off by the first stars. In a way
eerily similar to a dawn on Earth, the fog would have quickly burned away as
more and more stars were born and their light ionized the hydrogen, making it
essentially transparent."The expectation is that the universe started off, the
first half-million years, being very hot," because of the initial explosion,
called the Big Bang. But as the universe cooled, the dark ages dragged on for
hundreds of millions of years, until stars started forming and finally ionized
the gas. "And then the fog suddenly lifts, as it were."
The astronomers saw what they believe is a shadow caused by the last traces of
that fog in the light of the most distant object ever seen, a cosmic beacon
called a quasar that members of the same team discovered earlier this year.
The effect was like seeing clouds on Halloween night by watching their
silhouettes drift across the face of the moon. The observations indicated that
the fog lifted when the universe was about 900 million years old. "We're in
some sense probing the end of the dark ages, which means the universe has lit
up."
Scientists predicted more than 35 years ago that neutral hydrogen gas should
absorb radiation and cast just such a shadow in the spectrum of distant
quasars.
The so-called Gunn-Peterson effect did not show up in decades of searching
until now. In retrospect, it's just that we had to find objects distant enough
to see it."
Searching out a million quasars has been achieved with spectacular success over
the last two years, as it turned up the four most distant such objects ever
found. Quasars are thought to be powered by matter pouring into the collapsed
objects called black holes. They can be seen from so far away because they
shine with an energy equivalent to billions of suns. Even so, the four recent
quasars were so faint that ordinary searches would be unlikely to find them.
The survey required covering a large area of sky and being able to comb out
that one-in-a-million object with unusual properties."
To study the four objects, the astronomers looked at the spectrums of the light
they emitted; three of the four did not show any sign of the haze. But when
closely examined by a more powerful instrument, the Keck Telescope on Mauna
Kea, in Hawaii, the spectrum of the most distant one displayed a dark swath in
which light was virtually absent. "It's the first indication that we're
starting to see maybe into the edge of the dark ages."
The quasar must have been burning just as the dark ages were giving way to the
glittering universe of today, said Dr. Frieman, who added that more extremely
distant quasars would be needed to confirm the result and discover whether the
dark ages ended at the same time
all over the universe. According to some theories, radiation from hot gas
collapsing to form stars, as well as light from the stars and quasars
themselves, may have helped to clear the cosmic fog. Scientists expect the
observations to answer those questions and to provide new information for
theorists trying to understand exactly how and when the first stars formed.
The first isolated stars must have formed before the clearing of the final haze
observed. Like the fragmentary chronicles that survived the dark ages on Earth,
persistent mysteries about the cosmic version remain. One of them was how
quasars began blazing into life as the dark ages waned.
"How in the devil did such massive beacons, with their accompanying huge black
holes, get created so quickly?" It tells us that we don't really understand
enough detail about how galaxies formed."
==
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only
to observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at
this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and
describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all
observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!
There are few thinkers in western history with more profound insights
into nature than Charles Darwin, but for my money this is one of the deepest
single statements ever made on the nature of science itself, particularly
in the understated denouement. If scientific observations are to be of any
use, they must be tested against a theory, hypothesis, or model. The facts
never just speak for themselves, but must be interpreted through the colored
lenses of ideas--percepts need concepts.
==
Working with equations based on Einstein's original hypothesis, Russian
physicist Alexander Friedmann presented the first mathematical model
for a universe expanding in time in 1922. Five years later, Belgian
cosmologist George Lemaitre proposed the universe began with the
explosion of a primeval atom. But where was the physical proof of such
a massive occurrence?

In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving apart
at a faster rate as their distance from earth increases, and concluded the
early universe must have once been very small and dense. Hubble's findings
inspired others to theorize the universe might have begun with the explosion
of a small, super hot fireball. By 1955, researcher Ralph Alpher suggested
searching for radiation traces as evidence of an explosion. He was right--
a decade later, two radio antenna operators accidentally detected an unfamiliar
static hiss. It was cosmic background radiation, and its temperature
(-270 degrees) was what it should be according to the theory of relativity.

The accomplishments of those unknown people in what are now the republics of
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan began to emerge over several decades of excavations
by archaeologists of the Soviet Union.
The people of that area, the archaeologists say, built oasis settlements with
imposing mud-brick buildings and fortifications. They herded sheep and goats
and grew wheat and barley in irrigated fields. They had bronze axes, fine
ceramics, alabaster and bone carvings and jewelry of gold and semiprecious
stones. They left luxury goods in the graves of an elite class.
Dr. Hiebert made the discovery last summer in ruins at Annau, a site near the
border with Iran and only eight miles from the Turkmenistan capital, Ashgabat.
The dozens of settlement ruins of the newfound civilization stretch east from
Annau across the Kara- Kum desert into Uzbekistan and perhaps the northern part
of Afghanistan. It is an area 300 to 400 miles long and 50 miles wide. Since no
one knows who the people were or what they called themselves, archaeologists
have given the culture the prosaic name of the Bactria Margiana Archaeology
Complex, or BMAC (pronounced BEE-mack), after the ancient Greek names of two
regions it encompasses.
==
Scientists report observation of two quasars with respective redshifts of 6.0
and 6.2, the most distant objects ever observed in the universe. The two new
quasars break the previous distance record established by last year's SDSS
discovery of a quasar at redshift 5.8. The data presented today also reveal
still another quasar of redshift 5.8. The redshift of an object directly
indicates the relative size of the universe when the light was emitted:
light from a redshift 6.2 quasar left that object when the universe was
7.2 times smaller than it is today. Quasars are precocious galaxies whose
massive black holes began accreting matter, lighting them up when the universe
was less than 800 million years old. They allow us to study the birth of
galaxies, and the first supermassive black holes. The SDSS's goal is the
observation of 100,000 quasars. To date, collaborators have discovered over
13,000, including the four most distant objects yet seen, and 26 of the 30 most
distant quasars. The intervening material between us and a distant quasar
absorbs some of the quasar light and leaves its imprint in the quasar's
spectrum that is observed by the SDSS.
This spectrum reveals a line of sight across the universe, sometimes passing
through hundreds of galaxies. With the SDSS spectrum of a single quasar we can
study hundreds of distant galaxies, some of which are just forming.
==
A particular number of wavelengths of a particular radiation from Krypton-86
was used to define the meter between about 1960 and 1983. Since 1983, the
second method is used. The meter is now a derived unit, defined as the distance
travelled by light in a vacuum, in 1/299,792,458 seconds. The second is defined
as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation from a particular
hyperfine transition in Cesium-133.
This link provides current as well as historical information on the
accepted definitions of SI units:
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/current.html
==
Era: Period: Start in Millions
of Years Ago
---------------------------------------------
Cenozoic Holocene .01
Pleistocene 2
Pliocene 6
Miocene 25
Oligocene 38
Eocene 55
Paleocene 65

Mesozoic Cretaceous 144
Jurassic 213
Triassic 248

Paleozoic Permian 286
Carboniferous 360
Devonian 408
Silurian 438
Ordovician 505
Camrian 590
==
Uranium + thorium
The average crustal rock has 3 ppm U and 9 ppm Th.

Fissioned in some variety of breeding cycle, the energy
yield of these elements is around 8e13 J/kg. So,
at 12 ppm, the energy available from a kilogram of
average crustal rock is around 10^9 J.

In comparison, the combustion energy of high grade
bituminous coal is perhaps 30 MJ/kg. The energy
required to completely melt your average crustal
rock is even less per kilogram.

The fission energy content of an average crustal
rock is more than *30* times the combustion energy
content of the same mass of coal.
==
Here is a simplified version of the scientific method:

1) Observation (directly or indirectly) of a phenomena.
2) Question the phenomena
3) Research the subject (scientists use accredited peer-reviewed journals).
4) Form a hypothesis/hypotheses.
5) Test/expirement the hypothesis/hypotheses
6) Conclusion: does the hypothesis/hypotheses pass or fail?
7) Publish results in at least one accredited peer-reviewed journal.
==
* There is no single "scientific method"
* That the so called hypothetical-deductive scientific method is a
nice way to introduce students to considering the limits of
science but that it is far too simple minded to act as anything
more than an introduction
* That scientific research can very well confirm as well as refute
* That science has three principle activities, observation,
description and explanation (and that much of the misunderstanding
about 'method' has to do with trying to force the description to
only have two activities, experiment and hyptothesis
* That testing is one of the tools of science, but it isn't
'falsification', since tests can confirm as well as deny and since
theories are subject to arbitrary ad-hoc modification
* That there are limits to what can be determined using the tools of
science
* That mathematics is not a science, but can often be a surprisingly
effective tool for scientists
* That the 'power' of science as an epistemological tool comes from
rigor and precision, through the use of empirical measurement and
mathematical description. I will go so far as to argue that there
is a strong correlation between the ease of applying rigor and
precision to a subject and the usefulness of science in
understanding that subject.
Let me also recommend, highly, as a lay introduction to the way some
physicsts think of science, Feynman's book "On the Nature of Physical
Law".
==
Strictly speaking, science does not provide incontrivertible "facts." This is
because, unlike religious faith, it does not claim infallibility. It only
provides varying certainty of a claim. We really only speak of "facts" only as
shorthand for things which are very very certain.

A "Theory" in science terms is just about the strongest level of certainty you
can get for an idea. Evolution is so well established, by so many different and
utterly independant fields of study, that it's nigh incontrovertible.
==
In order to better understand the history of the inner Solar System over
hundreds of millions of years, we carried out several accurate, long-term,
numerical simulations of the orbits of the nine major planets using physical
models with increasing complexity. Our best calculations show that the
dynamical state of the inner Solar System changed abruptly about 65 million
years ago.
==
To shorten the journey from New York to London, Benjamin Franklin was the first
to chart ocean currents in the Atlantic. In 1777, he mapped the Gulf Stream by
measuring water temperature. Franklin recommended that captains carrying mail
between America and Europe follow the Gulf Stream to save time.
http://sirius-ci.cst.cnes.fr:8090/HTML/information/presentation/alti_uk.html
==
METEORITE IMPACT AND THE K/T MASS EXTINCTION
The meteorite impact hypothesis and the K/T extinction,
1) Confirmation of the impact portion of the Alvarez hypothesis
marks a turning point in the study of the K/T mass extinction, a
turning point away from speculations about possible causes and
toward linking the extinctions to a single catastrophic event.
2)
Advances in computer modeling of the impact, coupled with
knowledge of the target rocks and their behavior under the
high-pressure shock, have shed light on what happened during the
first few seconds after impact. A key aspect of the Yucatan site
is that the upper 3 kilometers of rock were rich in water,
carbonate, and sulfate, which upon impact produced about 200
gigatons each of SO2 and H2O vapor and other gases that
greatly altered the properties of the stratosphere.
3) Early work predicted that smoke and dust from the impact
plunged the Earth
into a freezing blackout. Recent computer simulations and
atmospheric models indicate that within a few weeks to months
temperatures and light levels would have begun to rebound due to
the release of heat stored in the oceans and the coagulation and
fall of the dust and soot. The major effects of the dust and soot
would last about 1 year or less, but SO2 and water vapors
would remain in the stratosphere and ultimately produce sulfuric
acid aerosols. Models indicate that a global aerosol cloud would
be continuously produced for approximately 12 years, blocking out
over 50 percent of the sunlight during the first 10 years.
==
ASTROPHYSICS: ON THE COMPLEXITY OF THE DEATH OF STARS
In astronomy, the term "nebula" was originally applied to any
astronomical object that appeared fuzzy and extended in a
telescope, and over 100 such objects had already been catalogued
in the 18th century. The majority of these objects were later
identified as galaxies and star clusters. At the present time,
the term "nebula" (i.e., cloud) refers to a region of
interstellar gas and dust. "Emission nebulae" are bright diffuse
nebulae that emit light and other radiation as a result of
ionization and excitation of gas atoms by ultraviolet radiation,
the source of the UV usually one or more hot stars. A "planetary"
nebula is a nebula formed when a *red giant or *supergiant star
sheds its outer layers in the last stage of its evolution,
leaving a hot core that ionizes the expunged gas. The size of
planetary nebulae range from approximately the diameter of our
solar system to a light year across. Their lifetime is only about
10,000 years, and they are all expanding with speeds of
approximately 20 kilometers/second. In this context, the term
"planetary" has nothing to do with planets: the term is
historical, the first planetary nebulae discovered so named
because they gave the impression of planetary disks around stars
when viewed in small telescopes. The term "protoplanetary nebula"
has two separate meanings. In the context of this report, the
term refers to an early mass of gas and dust that will become a
planetary nebula. In the context of studies of planetary
formation, the term refers to the mass of gas and dust
surrounding young stars, the material from which planets will be
formed.
... ... Yervant Terzian (Cornell University) presents a review of
current research concerning planetary nebulae produced by the
death of stars, the author making the following points:
1) The images of planetary and protoplanetary nebulae
provided by the *Hubble Space Telescope have revealed previously
unsuspected morphological complexities of nebulae, and these new
complexities represent a challenge for researchers who study the
mechanisms of star death.
2) When a star similar to the Sun, with a mass of up to a
few solar masses, reaches the last stages of its evolution, the
star expands and becomes a relatively cool (e.g., 2500 degrees
kelvin) red giant, with a size so large that its outer perimeter
would include the orbit of Mars. Such a star loses mass in the
form of *stellar wind, followed by a more intense mass loss that
results from a "superwind". The star loses a substantial fraction
of its mass, and the ejected material forms a planetary nebula.
Following this, the stellar core contracts and becomes a "white
dwarf star", a star approximately the size of the Earth, with a
density of approximately 10^(7) times the density of the Earth,
and with a surface temperature of approximately 10^(5) degrees.
3) The material ejected from such a dying star initially
consists for the most part of atomic and molecular gas, which
partly coalesces shortly after ejection to form warm dust
particles. Eventually, the ultraviolet radiation of the hot white
dwarf ionizes the nebula, and the nebula becomes an emission
nebula. Within a few tens of thousands of years, the expanding
planetary nebula diffuses into the interstellar medium with a
velocity of approximately 20 kilometers per second.
4) The general stages of late stellar evolution are
reasonably well understood, but the mechanisms by which these old
stars eject their envelopes remain unknown, and researchers have
been unable to understand what factors contribute to creating any
particular nebular morphology. Not one of the images provided by
the Hubble Space Telescope shows a simple expanding bubble: most
objects have complex bipolar structures with central torii,
multipolar bubbles, jet-like filaments, globules, and in some
cases sets of circular rings. Many nebula show a detailed point
and mirror symmetry that can extend as much as 100,000
*astronomical units from the central star.
5) Hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations of
such dying stars show a multitude of morphologies, but the models
require magnetic field strengths and stellar rotations that are
not well understood in the context of present theory.
.. ... *red giant: A "red giant star" is a star in a late
stage of evolution, the star having exhausted the hydrogen fuel
in its core. It has a surface temperature of less than 4700
degrees Kelvin and a diameter 10 to 100 times that of the Sun.
... ... *supergiant star: A supergiant star is an extremely
luminous star of large diameter and low density. The diameter can
be as large as 1000 times that of our Sun.
... ... *Hubble Space Telescope: The Hubble Space Telescope was
launched from a space shuttle in 1990 into a 600-kilometer
low-Earth orbit and has been providing extensive imaging and
spectroscopic observations critical for the development of
astronomy and astrophysics. The new information has concerned hot
stars, stellar chromospheres and coronas, the interstellar
medium, galaxies and galactic clusters, quasars, etc. -- all of
it information uncorrupted by the Earth's atmosphere, which is
the problem for ground based telescopes.
... ... *stellar wind: In general, the term "stellar wind" refers
to the outflow of gas from the surface of a star. The Sun, for
example, loses approximately 10(-14) of its mass each year via
such a wind (solar wind).
... ... *astronomical units: (AU) 1 AU = the mean distance from
the Sun to the Earth = approximately 93 million miles, and

==
The existence of the Kuiper Belt was postulated by J. A. Fernandez and by
M. Duncan, T. Quinn, and S. Tremaine in the 1980s to explain the origin of
short-period comets. These comets move around the Sun in the same direction
as the planets, and are found in orbits that are tipped only modestly with
respect to the ecliptic plane. These researchers showed that short-period
comets could not have originated from the more distant spherical Oort Comet
Cloud as originally believed. They predicted that a second, more flattened
reservoir of proto-comets must lie beyond the orbit of Neptune.
The first Kuiper Belt Object was found in 1992 by David Jewitt and Jane Luu
of the University of Hawaii. Since then, astronomers have found over 400
KBOs, but tens of thousands likely remain to be discovered. These objects
are believed to be remnants from the formation of the Solar System, and
consequently are among the most primitive and least-evolved objects
available for study by planetary astronomers.
==
When stars at least 10 times more massive than our Sun exhaust their fuel
supply, they no longer have the energy to support their tremendous bulk. These
stars explode their outer shell of gas in an event called a supernova.
The remaining bulk, still several times more massive than the Sun, collapses
into a single point of infinite density, called a singularity. Neutron stars
form through a similar process, only from a slightly less massive star in which
the inner core collapses into a dense chunk as heavy as the Sun yet only 10
miles across.
==
EARTH SCIENCE: THE MASSES OF EARTH'S COMPONENTS
In terms of mass, how does the biosphere rank as a component
of this planet? Here are the approximate numbers in kilograms:

mantle: 4.1 x 10^(24) kilograms
core: 1.9 x 10^(24)
continental crust: 1.6 x 10^(22)
oceanic crust: 7.0 x 10^(21)
hydrosphere: 1.4 x 10^(21)
atmosphere: 5.3 x 10^(18)
biomass: 1.0 x 10^(15)

In terms of crust composition? Where does carbon rank in
crust composition in parts per million? Carbon, in fact, is
almost a trace element. Here are the approximate numbers, Earth's
crust composition in parts per million:

O 456,000
Si 273,000
Al 83,600
Fe 62,600
Ca 46,600
Mg 27,640
Na 22,700
K 18,400
Ti 6,320
H 1,520
P 1,120
F 544
S 340
C 180

==
BioTech Dictionary
" 9.theory
Definition:
In science, an explanation for some phenomenon which is based on observation,
experimentation, and reasoning. In popular use, a theory is often assumed to
imply mere speculation, but in science, something is not called a theory until
it has been confirmed over the course of many independent experiments. Theories
are more certain than hypotheses, but less certain than laws."

Harcourt: AP Dictionary of Science and Technology

"theory Science. an explanation for some phenomenon that is based on
observation, experimentation, and reasoning. Mathematics. the collection of
definitions, principles, theorems, and rules of calculation associated with a
class of mathematical objects. (From a Greek term meaning "a viewing;" "a way
of considering.")
Theory, in popular use, is often assumed to imply conjecture or speculation, as
in "Evolution is just a theory." In scientific use, however, to describe an
explanation as a theory does not indicate it is uncertain. Progressing in
degrees of uncertainty, a law is based on many observations of a natural
phenomenon that demonstrate it to be true without exception; e.g., the second
law of thermodynamics states that heat cannot flow spontaneously from a cooler
body to a warmer one. A theory is developed from extensive observation and
reasoning to explain a phenomenon; e.g., Einstein's theory of relativity
postulated that the speed of light represents an upper limit of velocity for
any particle having mass; this has since been experimentally confirmed. A
hypothesis is a preliminary explanation for an observed phenomenon that may or
may not be supported by more extensive observation; e.g., the current
hypothesis that the earth's climate is gradually becoming warmer because of the
effects of burning fossil fuels."
==

==
"Science is the human activity of finding an order in nature by organizing
the scattered, meaningless facts under universal concepts."- J. Bronowski
==
Scientific Method, term denoting the principles that guide scientific
research and experimentation, and also the philosophic bases of those
principles. Whereas philosophy in general is concerned with the why as well
as the how of things, science occupies itself with the latter question only,
but in a scrupulously rigorous manner. The era of modern science is
generally considered to have begun with the Renaissance, but the rudiments
of the scientific approach to knowledge can be observed throughout human
history.

Definitions of scientific method use such concepts as objectivity of
approach to and acceptability of the results of scientific study.
Objectivity indicates the attempt to observe things as they are, without
falsifying observations to accord with some preconceived world view.
Acceptability is judged in terms of the degree to which observations and
experimentations can be reproduced. Scientific method also involves the
interplay of inductive reasoning (reasoning from specific observations and
experiments to more general hypotheses and theories) and deductive reasoning
(reasoning from theories to account for specific experimental results). By
such reasoning processes, science attempts to develop the broad laws-such as
Isaac Newton's law of gravitation-that become part of our understanding of
the natural world.
==
Theories don't get proven, theorems do. Theorems exist in axiomatic systems
(mathematics is the overall term to describe such systems).
==
* The Mathematical Theory of Communication", Claude Shannon,
The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27. pp.379-423,23-656,
July, October, 1948.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html
==
Slow heating and cooling globally could have formed large areas of
cracks on Venus' surface. A major episode of resurfacing occurred on Venus
roughly 700 million years ago, in which water and sulfur levels in the
atmosphere rose. Mapping the size and distribution of the cracks will help
determine whether they are the result of local or global heating. Other
models, in which volcanoes heat the surface or flows erupt on the surface
and cool, have difficulties in explaining the size of these polygons.
==
Oceanic crust has a range of ages from modern (at the
ridges, of course) up to Jurassic (extreme NW Pacific, and a few
other bits and pieces). That's a span of about 150 million years.
The Farallon plate was everything east of the Pacific ridge,
until the North American plate overran it. It existed before
the Pangaea breakup, perhaps for long before it, so was around
before the oldest oceanic crust formed. Since there are still
some bits of Farallon left (Cocos and Juan de Fuca), you could
say that the Farallon was around for the entire span of time
represented by current ocean crust. However, the non-subducted
portions of the Farallon are all relatively young.
==
According to Kaspi, Taylor, & Ryba, observations of the binary pulsar
constrain any changes in the gravitational constant G to be
less than (-9 +/- 18) x 10^-12 per year, in other words, consistent
with no change in the gravitational constant.
==
'The User Illusion' by Tor Norretranders

Wilton M. Krogman, "The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine."

_Revolution in Science_ by I. Bernard Cohen (1985)

Butterfield _The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800_ (1949)

Hall _The Scientific Revolution 1500-1800_ (1954).
Popper, _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_.
_Scientific Revolutions_ edited by Ian Hacking (1981)

Lakatos "Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970

Hacking "Representing and Intervening", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983.

"Hyperspace: A Scientific Odessey Through Paralell Universes, Time Warps,
and the 10th dimension" ISBN 0-385-47705-8

John Barrow's "The Universe That Discovered Itself"

John Peacock Cosmological Physics (Cambridge)

John Archibald Wheeler
Theory of Gravitation and Inertia (Princeton)

Where Does the Weirdness Go? :
Why Quantum Mechanics Is Strange, but Not As Strange As You Think
by David Lindley.

Read the Nov 1979 Scientific American for a good article on
"The Quantum Theory and Reality"

"Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...and
Pseudoscience Begins" by Charles M. Wynn and Arthur W. Wiggins
200 pages, 2001 Joseph Henry Press

The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman
==
The QM unit used in the units is called h-bar, or slash-h, equal to h/(2*pi).
It happens to be the quantum of momentum. I'll just write it as h for brevity.
Dimensional analysis shows that you can arrange these constants so that all
the units except length cancel. This is the Planck length, and it is equal to
sqrt(h*G/c^3). Similarly, the smallest unit of time is the Planck time, equal
to sqrt(h*G/c^5). The Planck mass is sqrt(h*c/G), and the Planck energy is
sqrt(h*c^5/G). These are the smallest units of mass and energy, respectively.
==
Epiphenomenon:
An event that occurs in the presence of or incidentally accompanies some
other process or event but in fact plays no part in the process or event.
==
Stanford University Physicist Andrei Linde Modern cosmologist
==
http://www.medievalhistory.net/mdvlh/islamica.htm
Between the years A.D. 1050 and 1250, among Moslim scholars, a great change
took place, after which all serious scholarship had irreversibly adopted a new
emphasis upon empirical evidence.
==
Mendeleyev published his first version of the periodic table in 1869; in 1871
he published the improved version with gaps for proposed elements.
==
"Physics of The Earth" by Stacey
"Engines of Creation" by Drexler Nano science
"Fabric of Reality" Deutsch
==
Popper (1902-1994) . His "Logic der Forschung" was first published in 1935, and
was later published in English as "The Logic of Scientific Discovery"
Routledge, 14th Printing, 1977. First English Ed., Hutchinson, 1959.
==
The Church-Turing hypothesis is, roughly, that any process that can be
articulated well enough can be simulated on a computer.
==
For a given baryon mass fraction, the BBN calculations are more or less
independent of whether or not inflation happened; they're just nuclear
statistical equilibrium calculations, so things like the number of particle
species at symmetry-breaking energy scales is much more important than whether
or not the particles came from a decaying inflation field. This gives a good
sanity check in that we're able to verify things like the baryon abundance
found through the CMB model without having to make the same set of assumptions.
As I understand it, the state of the art for measuring the deuterium abundance
is using isotopic shift in the Ly-alpha forest of high redshift QSOs. The two
groups who initially did the measurements were a ways apart on their first
results, but have since converged towards the higher value for omega_baryon,
something like 0.015h, I believe. Judging from Wayne's animations, it looks
like the power for the second peak is something like 2 orders magnitude smaller
than the primary peak at that baryon fraction.
One should keep in mind here that it has happened several
times in the past that there have been reports on a discrepancy between the
deuterium abundance and the baryon density in the universe, but once the
observations have improved, and one has taken into account up-dated nuclear
parameters in the calculations things have settled down. I suspect what we
have seen in those cases is that people tend to underestimate uncertainties in
their own observations or models, and as you point out below we may be in for
another round of this.
==
"People like Newton, Darwin, and Einstein stand out in the history of
science not because they generated a great many facts, but because they
synthesized ideas with great explanatory power. Such ideas, broad in
scope and supported by a large body of evidence, are known as theories."
==
Carver Mead "Collective Electrodynamics"

Mara Beller's "Quantum Dialogue"

Frank H. Shu The Physical Universe.

Stanley P. Wyatt Principles of Astronomy :A Short Version

George O. Abell Exploration of the Universe

"The Sleepwalkers" Koestler, about the heliocentric model
The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, in an article by Professor of
Politics Leopold Labedz, says this, intriguingly:

"revolution. A term (meaning rotation or turn) which was applied by
Copernicus to the movement of celestial bodies in his treatise _De
Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium_ and which in the 17th century, after
the astronomical revolution, began to be applied metaphorically to
political and social upheavels. From this it has developed to mean any
fundamental or complete change in the mode of production (the Industrial
Revolution, technological revolution, etc.), in the political or social
system (the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc.), or in some
aspect of social, intellectual, or cultural life (scientific revolution,
CULTURAL REVOLUTION, etc.). ..."
--

JLE Dreyer 1906 _A history of astronomy from Thales to Kepler_ (New
York: Dover 1953)

EA Burtt's 1931 _The metaphysical foundations of modern science_,

Alexandre Koyre, "The Astronomical Revolution: Copernicus - Kepler - Borelli"

"The scientific revolution, 1500-1800" by A.R.Hall (1954)

"Galileo and the Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth
Century" Philosophical Review LII (1943)

Thomas S Kuhn. _The Copernican Revolution: Planetary astronomy in the
development of western thought_, New York: Vintage, 1957.

Copernicus ventured to assert that the earth moved. He
could scarcely have astonished and disturbed men more if
he had actually set it moving. The belief in the earth as
the firm center of creation, lighted by sun and moon, en-
circled by celestial spheres, and furnished for the great
drama of man's fall and redemption - this belief was itself
the firm center of all human belief. It seemed impossible
to move it without bringing down in ruin that whole grand
scheme of things to which man had been fitting himself for
centuries, and where he had at length come to feel himself
at home. How shall one find a place for God, and a place
for man, and how shall they find one another, in a universe
with neither beginning nor end, neither center nor bound-
aries? This was the problem to which the great martyr
Bruno devoted himself, and his death in 1600 may well
serve as a monument to mark the beginning of modern philosophy.

FOREWORD BY ANDREAS OSIANDER to the Copernicus book
To the Reader
Concerning the Hypotheses of this Work
There have already been widespread reports about the novel hypotheses of
this work, which declares that the earth moves whereas the sun is at
rest in the center of the universe. ...
So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain
from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth
ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a
greater fool than when he entered it. Farewell.
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/year-text-Copernicus.html


Another Copernicus quote: "If it is difficult today to pronounce the
name of Copernicus without thinking of a turning point in history, it is
not only because the name is connected with a profound transformation in
the science, but also because all our knowledge and thinking have been
deeply affected by his discovery. The statement that the earth does not
occupy the center of the world means more than an astronomical fact; we
interpret it as asserting that man is not the center of the world, that
everything which appears large and mighty to us is in reality of the
smallest significance, when measured by cosmic standards." Hans
Reichenbach, _From Copernicus to Einstein_, New York: Philosophical
Library, 1952: 12. Cf. also 24, where Copernicus is referred to as one

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,342845,00.html
The ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of
Samos was the first to propose such a heliocentric universe,
though few knew of his work. Later, the Pythagoreans took a
similar view. But Copernicus changed astronomy forever with
his heliocentric idea and started a revolution in science,
philosophy, and religion.

Accordingly, since nothing prevents the earth from moving, I
suggest that we should now consider also whether several motions
suit it, so that it can be regarded as one of the planets. For,
it is not the center of all the revolutions. This is indicated
by the planets, apparent nonuniform motion and their varying
distances from the earth. These phenomena cannot be explained
by circles concentric with the earth. (1)Therefore, since there
are many centers, it will not be by accident that the further
question arises whether the center of the universe is identical
with the center of terrestrial gravity or with some other point."
excerpt from Copernicus on the Revolutions...

Bruno saw that the world can no longer be divided into
terrestrial and celestial regions, with the empyrean beyond
There can be no God above nature, or before or after
nature, because nature itself is infinite. The universe is a
system of countless worlds, none more divine than the rest.
God is therefore not local, but universal; he is the life and
beauty of the whole. This idea, recovered by Bruno from
Stoicism and Neo-Platonism, and appropriated to the needs
of the age which Copernicus had robbed of its ancient land-
marks, persisted in the latent pantheism of Descartes and
his followers, and in the avowed pantheism of Spinoza, was
suffered to lapse during the eighteenth century, was revived
again by Lessing and Herder, and became one of the cen-
tral ideas of the great Romantic and Hegelian movements in
Germany in the nineteenth century.

"Lectures on the Harvard Classics"
P. F. Collier & Sons, New York, 1914 (pp. 153-155)
III. The Rise of Modern Philosophy
By Professor Ralph Barton Perry

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_pillars.html

"Perhaps there will be babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy
although completely ignorant of the subject and, badly distorting
some passage of Scripture to their purpose, will dare to find fault
with my undertaking and censure it. I disregard them even to the
extent of despising their criticism as unfounded."

-- Nicholas Copernicus from his introduction

?http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,117480+12,00.html?
The scientific revolution
Copernicus
In 1543, as he lay on his deathbed, Copernicus finished reading
the proofs of his great work; he died just as it was published. His
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI ("Six Books
Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs") was the
opening shot in a revolution whose consequences were greater
than those of any other intellectual event in the history of
mankind. The scientific revolution radically altered the conditions
of thought and of material existence in which the human race
lives, and its effects are not yet exhausted.
All this was caused by Copernicus' daring in placing the Sun, not
the Earth, at the centre of the cosmos. [...]

Aristarchus of Samos is sometimes called "the
Copernicus of Antiquity". He lived in the third century BC. and
is also famous for measurements of the size of and distance
to the Sun and Moon. Copernicus knew of Aristarchus, and refers
to him directly in an earlier manuscript than his famous "De
Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium". Copernicus also refers to
other scholars of antiquity who proposed motion of the Earth,
who did not adopt a geocentric cosmology.

Another significant ancient proposal was by Greek atomists;
Leucippus and Democritus, who proposed that the Earth was just
one of many essentially similar bodies moving in all
directions within a vast space. The Earth was not unique, nor
central, nor at rest; they considered that there were other
Earths, and other Suns, amongst the stars.

However, the major significance of these cosmologies is basically
in retrospect. At the time, they were minority viewpoints, and
that is why we do not refer to a revolution of Aristarchus, or
of Leucippus, or of the Pythagoreans. The major Greek influence
on Western cosmology came not from those figures who most closely
approximated the modern view, but from Plato, and Aristotle.

Plato, or more correctly his pupil Eudoxus, developed a system of
homocentric spheres (geocentric). The combined motions of these
spheres gave rise to the observed motions of planets. This model
did not persist, since it predicted that the planets were always a
fixed distance from the Earth, and failed to account for variations
in brightness; however it does show that we cannot single out one
set of prescient philosophers as the authors of an intellectual
revolution in their own time. In context, we see that there were
some philosophers who proposed systems which did anticipate modern
cosmology in many respects; but the general revolution in thought
which attended the wholesale adoption and assimilation of such
ideas did not come in their time.

The homocentric spheres used by Plato's students, and by Aristotle,
were soon replaced by a system of epicycles, in which the motions
of celestial bodies were explained by additional motions centered
on the perimeter of the primary circle of motion. The precise origin
of this model is unknown, but major development of the idea was made
by Greek philosophers Apollonius and Hipparchus, in the 3rd and 2nd
centuries BC; and Ptolemy (circa CE 150) is credited with a detailed
working out of a model that became the most influential approach in
Western astronomy up to the time of Copernicus.

One central aspect of Aristotelian thought remained, however.
Aristotle affirmed that the Earth was immobile. There were scholars
of antiquity who disagreed, of course; but Aristotle carried the
day as the primary influence on cosmology. The church also came
to insist on this view. As an aside, the church of course did not
simply accept all Aristotle's view! In fact, there were some serious
conflicts; for example Aristotle regarded the universe as eternal.
But generally, established cosmology prior to Copernicus was
geocentric, with an immobile Earth.

Copernicus' thesis on the matter of Earth's motion was not
immediately accepted. Amongst astronomers, views were divided.
One significant development was by Erasmus Reinhold, who wrote
a new set of astronomical tables using Copernicus' methods,
although he did not actually accept the notions of an Earth
in motion. (Copernicus' book was written mainly as a technical
mathematical innovation for calculations; and not as a sweeping
philosophical development.) Though these tables were not perfect
(for Copernicus' methods retained many defects of existing methods)
they were superior in most respects to prior tables; and the wide use
of Reinhold's tables meant an implicit recognition of the validity
of Copernicus' methods, whatever one thought of the principle of
Earth's motion.

It was only through the efforts of his friends -- in particular, his pupil and
disciple Georg Joachim Rhaticus, who studied with him for two years -- that he
finally published his work. In 1540 Rhaticus was permitted to take the
completed manuscript to Nurnberg, Germany, for printing. Because of opposition
from Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and other reformers, Rhaticus left
Nurmberg and went to Leipzig, where he passed the task of publication to
Osiander. Apparently fearing criticism of a treatise that proposed an annual
motion of the Earth around a stationary Sun, Osiander, on his own
responsibility, inserted a preface emphasizing that the hypothesis of a
stationary Sun was only a convenient means for simplifying planetary
computations."

However, from non-astronomers, and from the church in particular, there was
more unanimity. Copernicus' notion of the Earth's motion was absurd. Luther,
Melanchthon, Calvin, and the Catholic hierarchy all dismissed this as
heretical.

In his own lifetime, Copernicus was the subject of some venomous attacks from
various Protestant reformers; in particular Luther. After his death, others
joined in, including Calvin and Melanchthon.

Copernicus, however, was a Catholic, and did not have a problem within his own
church. He was a cleric in good standing. He dedicated his major work to the
Pope, and this dedication was accepted. The publication was at the Pope's
request, after the Pope had seen a widely circulated summary of Copernicus'
ideas.

We must note, however, that it took over 60 years for the Catholic
church to formally declare Copernicus heretical, and it was not
until 1616 that "De Revolutionibus" was placed on the index of
banned books. This was in part due to the fact that the book was
more technical and mathematical than philosophical, and in part
due to the fact the the Catholic church up until that time had
been rather more tolerant of diverse views. However, the church did
consistently adopt a fixed Earth; and the banning of Copernicus' book
in 1616 was just part of a ban on all teaching of a mobile Earth,
as a part of a general hardening of the Church's attitude to dissent.

In the early seventeenth century (about 60 years after Copernicus' death),
the Catholic church also hardened its attitude. Copernicus was in time declared
a heretic, and his book was banned.

This has been a publication relations disaster for the church, from which it
has never fully recovered. At the time of Copernicus, the Church could rightly
claim to be a haven and supporter of science. But in the years that followed,
the Church, by its own direct action, set itself up against science and was
seen by all to be mistaken.

The Catholic church has made a fair attempt at putting this right, though it
took a long time! The ban on Copernicus' book was not actually lifted until
1835 (and it was in 1992! that the church finally publically admitted it was
wrong in its treatment of Galileo).

Jean Etienne Montucla referred to Copernicus' work as a revolution in
philosophy in 1758,

There are two significant successors to Copernicus who share
major responsibility for the acceptance of a heliocentric model
and a moving Earth. (Though of course such a list is bound to
be subjective!) One is Gallileo, and another is Kepler.

Kepler's great innovation was to remove the dependence of
astronomical models on circles, and to introduce the ellipse.
Gallileo's great contribution was observation.

These two contributions did not immediately sweep away all
opposition to the new astronomy; but from then on the geocentric
models were consistently in decline.

It would be reasonable, I think, for any of these figures to
be associated with the revolution in cosmological thinking which
developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But one
can hardly say it is misleading to speak of a Copernican
revolution.

Gallileo and Kepler were contemporaries, and both regarded themselves
as indebted to Copernicus for their views of the solar system.
Gallileo, in a letter to Kepler, describes himself as Copernican,
and one of Kepler's most influential and widely read works was
"Epitome Astronomiae Copernicus", (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy).

Like Copernicus' own work, this was placed on the index of banned
books by the church.

Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" actually concerns itself
primarily with the strategies used by the Young Oxygenistas in their
(ultimately successful) struggle to overthrow the Phlogiston Hegemony?

The main change caused by the Copernican Revolution was the acceptance
of the belief that "science" had disproven the Bible. And, if the Bible
could be wrong about the earth not moving, it could be wrong on other
aspects of the creation, on Noah's Flood, the Virgin Birth,
Heaven...anything!
Thus, the Copernican Revolution began a process of replacing the Bible
with "science" as the new source of valid knowledge. Religion, business,
politics, science, art...everything had to get a new philosophical basis
as "science" dethroned the Bible with Copernican heliocentrism.
http://www.fixedearth.com/links/gram_semant.htm
==
As Popper puts it:

"The theories of natural science, and especially what we call natural laws,
have the logical form of strictly universal statements; thus they can be
expressed in the form of negations of strictly existential statements or, as
we may say, in the form of non-existence statements (Or 'there-is-not'
statements). For example, the law of the conservation of energy can be
expressed in the form: 'There is no perpetual motion machine', or the
hypothesis of the electrical elementary charge in the form: 'There is no
electrical charge other than a multiple of the electrical elementary
charge'.

"In this formulation we see that natural laws might be compared to
'proscriptions' or 'prohibitions'. They do not assert that something exists
or is the case; they deny it. They insist on the non-existence of certain
things or states of affairs, proscribing or prohibiting, as it were, these
things or states of affairs: they rule them out. And it is precisely because
they do this that they are falsifiable. If we accept as true one singular
statement which, as it were, infringes the prohibition by asserting the
existence of a thing (or the occurrence of an event) ruled out by the law,
then the law is refuted. (An instance would be, In such-and-such a place,
there is an apparatus which is a perpetual motion machine'.)"

(Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, 14th Printing,
1977. First English Ed., Hutchinson, 1959. First published as Logik Der
Forschung in Vienna: Springer, 1934. )
==
At high temperatures, above about 1800 K, water vapor (steam) begins to
dissociate into a mixture of H2, O2, H2O, O, H and OH. The extent of
dissociation increases with increasing temperature and decreasing
pressure. The water and the diatomic hydrogen and oxygen species
completely dissociate into H(atomic hydrogen) and O (atomic oxygen)
above about 3500 K under equilibrium conditions at 1 mm Hg absolute
pressure.
(from http://www.hionsolar.com/hion96.htm )
The sun's average surface temperature is high; roughly 5800 K. Even the
'cool' sunspots are around 3800 K.
(source: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/sol.html )
Also, the pressure at the surface of the sun is low (6.8 millibars, or
5.1 mm Hg)
(source:
http://www.onlineastronomy.com/astr162/lect/sun/photosphere.html and
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wbarocx.htm for the conversion)
While the occasional H2O molecule would probably form at random at the
surface (and considering the sun's size, one might even be able to
detect a faint emission line for H2O), the individual molecules would
have very short life spans and necessarily be in the gasseous phase.
==
The scientific method is propose a hypothesis to explain observations and then
test its accuracy by collecting data on events the hypothesis predicts. If the
predictions match the new data the hypothesis is supported. Generally the best
supported hypothesis is considered correct or if most than one hypothesis is
supported the simpler one is prefered over the more complex one
(Occams Razor)

Occams Razor is in fact named for William of Occam (c1285 - c1349)
a philosopher-theologian who was a member of the Franciscans. It is
generally believed that he died of the plague in Munich c1349
==
For our purposes, weapons-useable material is defined as either plutonium
239 or uranium enriched to at least 20% U235. The RAND Corporation
estimates that 5 kg of plutonium or 15 kg of 90% HEU are required to make
a primitive bomb in the kiloton range
==
Positivism is a theory-unfriendly school of philosophy started by Auguste Comte
(1788-1857) and intended to find positive knowledge about the world (somehow)
by empirical means, rather than by relying on dogmatic assumptions based on
religious or philosophical authorities or traditions. A prominent nineteenth
century version of Positivism is Phenomenalism which reduced metaphysics (and
scientific ontology) to mere sense impressions. An early twentieth century form
was Logical Positivism which debunked the notion of meaningful metaphysics in
science.

Positivism was replaced by various versions of Instrumentalism in the early
twentieth century as the primary philosophy of science held by scientists
themselves, thanks to the advent of SR and QM, and the philosophies of
Poincare, Einstein, Bohr, Eddington, Bridgman, and others.
==
Steven Pinker _How the Mind Works_

Gould _Eight Little Piggies_,_Dinosaur in a Haystack_,
Mismeasure of Man

-Collins Guide to Rare Mammals of the World, by
John A. Burton & Bruce Pearson, William Collins
Sons & Co., Ltd., 1987 ISBN 0 00 219172 5
==
Light wavelengths
400 nm is violet
440 nm is blue
520 nm is green
590 nm is yellow
640 nm is red.
==
Half-life of Pu-239 is 240,000 years.
==
R.Z.Sagdeev "Nonlinearity: from pendulum to chaos" where he wrote
(he is theoretician) that the most of theoretical models the physicists
use and the textbooks describe are the linear models but the natural
phenomena around us are essentially nonlinear.
==
Robert C. Yates, "A Handbook on Curves and their Properties,"
==
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see the light, but rather because
its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up
that is familiar with it." - Max Planck
==
Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed)_ defines
maieutic as: "relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new
ideas from another".
==
Schroedinger: Mind and Matter
Goswami(PhD Physicist): The Self Aware Universe
Herbert(PhD Phsysicist): Elemental Mind
Dossey(MD): Recovering the Soul (has a section on non-local mind theories)
Radin(PhD Physics): The Conscious Universe
Daives and Gribbin (Mathematical Phsysicist and Astrophsysicist) The Matter
Myth
Stapp's quantum model of non-local mind (see conference
proceedings Temple University 1992 "The Interrelationship Between Mind and
Matter (Rubik, ed.))
Searle (Cambridge Univ. Press) Minds, Brains, and Science.
Bass: "A Quantum-Mechanical Mind-Body Interaction: in Foundations of Physics
5 159 (1975)
Sirag: The Key to Matter and Mind
Penrose's controversial theories in The Emporer's New Mind
"Catastrophe: A Quest for the Origins of the Modern World" by David Keys
==
The universe is not bound by our ability to comprehend it. In quantum
mechanics, causality does some very strange things, if it doesn't disappear
entirely. Witness virtual particles, the double-slit experiment, and the
uncertainty principle. Likewise, traditional notions of causality change
somewhat at near-light speeds, as relativity predicts that in such cases
two observers can measure different elapsed times for the same event and both
be correct.
==
The San Andreas fault runs right through Pt. Reyes north of San Francisco.
You can clearly see the fault as a gouge that runs accross the the Bay Area
before running out into the ocean at Pt. Reyes. On one side of the
fault is the Pacific Plate, on the other the North American Plate. Surveys
of rocks in the segment of the Fault between Tejon Pass and the Salton
Sea show geologically similar rocks are now separated by 150 miles. The
total slip of the two plates relative to one another is estimated to be
350 miles. During the 1906 eartquake portions of the fault slipped 21 feet.
==
Spontaneous reactions: They introduce Gibbs energy,
and "If delta G for a reaction at constant T and P is negative, the
reaction can occur spontaneously; if delta G at a constant T and P is
zero, the reaction is at equilibrium." This is delta G for the *SYSTEM*.

Whitten, Gailey and Peck, General Chemistry, 5th Ed.
Index under "spontaneity of change" it lists pp 569-591

"A change for which the collection of products is thermodynamically more
stable than the collection of reactants under the given conditions is said to
be *spontaneous* under those conditions. At a more advanced level, Tinoco,
Sauer and Wang, Physical Chemistry: Principles and Applications in Biological
Sciences 3rd Ed. index for spontaneous has p 113, 123-125 for spontaneous
processes and pp 88-92, 124 for spontaneous reactions
==
D-glucose + ATP -ADP + D-glucose-6-phosphate -16.7 kJ/mol
==
There are some 85 million seamounts on the ocean floor There are some that are
more than 600 feet tall, in the North Atlantic. The fast growing ones are
like those in the East Pacific rise's mid-ocean ridge solidified magma form the
lower ocean crust. The slow growing ones are like those in the Southwest
Indian Ridge and also in the oceans of the top of the world in the Arctic.
Land is being formed in Hawaii as we speak. Yes, the seabed is new, where
ever a mid-ocean ridge is. The Azores are a chain of islands that are over
9000 meters tall, and they make up a portion of this mid-Atlantic Ridge. These
islands are underwater mountains, which themselves have mountains that go
upwards 2100 meters more. They are the result of the mid-Atlantic ridge.
==
Magnetic field units
1 Gauss =10^-4 Tesla (1 Tesla=1 Weber/m^2)
==
Perhaps the people who consider science just another religion and thus no
better than any other should be required to enter a public contract asserting
this belief. Part of this contract would be an agreement not to use any medical
knowledge or techniques acquired since the year 1500 even if they beg and plead
when in unendurable pain or suffering an illness now easily cured. After all,
those things are just rituals in a religion to which the non-science guys don't
belong. Only Bible based cures will be allowed, prayer by church elders and
application of holy oil.
==
There was a program on the Learning Channel in which a man had many
different areas of his brain 'wired' to electrodes (this was done as a
work-up for later brain surgery).
The man noted that whenever he stimulated a particular electrode (to a
pre-frontal lobe) he would then have the sensation of seeing himself
from the perspective of being outside of his body (i.e. as if
observing himself from behind and above his own body).
So much for 'astral projection' and 'near death experiences'.
==
The Lewis "overthrust" extends laterally from 15-30 miles. It is a huge block
of Precambrian limestone, thousands of feet thick and almost 10,000 square
miles in area, was thrust eastward over soft Cretaceous shale, resulting in a
formation older than 600 million years resting on top of a formation about
100 million years old.
The contact line at Wynn Mountain, Chief Mountain, and Roes Creek in the U.S.,
and at Crowsnest Pass, and near Mt. Eisenhower in Canada was studied. Evidence
for thrust-faulting along the contact line,is gouge (rock powder), mylonite
(coarsely ground rock), tectonic breccia (conglomerate including rock fragments
set in a matrix), and slickensides (striations on rock surfaces) are commonly
found along the sliding surface of such structures.
The classical Lochseite of the Glarus "overthrust" near Schwanden, Switzerland.
Here a huge block of Jurassic limestone (about 180 million years) rests on top
of a Eocene formation (about 60 million years) . The overlying rock of over a
mile in thickness was thrust almost 21 miles over the underlying Eocene age
formation.
==
An argon atom has the shells
1s (2 electrons) 2s (2) 2p (6) 3s (2) 3p (6)

and all shells are filled, resulting in a very nonreactive element.
Note that an electron has 1/2 spin, hence the 1s shell
can hold 2 electrons.)
==
God of the Gaps.
All you can say is that - as of some time - no available proposed naturalistic
explanation has been made. This does not preclude there being one later. For
example, Newton could not explain gravity, but nobody therefore suggested that
God was the attractive force. When Einstein explained gravity in terms of
space-time geodesics, he left the underlying mechanisms of that unexplained.
Nobody suggests that therefore God forces light and mass to attract along
spacetime geodesics.
==
Pythagoras left the island of Samos in 530 B. C. and emigrated to
the Greek colony of Croton in Southern Italy. He later died in
Metapontum, which is now Metaponto, Italy
==
Morse and Mackenzie, 1990, Geochemistry of Sedimentary Carbonates."

David Hull's 1988 _Science as a Process_ an evolutionary account of the
social and conceptual development of science. Chicago, University of
Chicago Press.

Hull, D. (1965). "The effect of essentialism on taxonomy: Two thousand
years of stasis." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 15:
314-326, 16:1-18

Hull, D. L., Ed. (1973). Darwin and his critics; the reception of
Darwin's theory of evolution by the scientific community. Cambridge,
Mass., Harvard University Press.

Hull, D. L. (1973). "A populational approach to scientific change."
Science 182: 1121-1124.

Hull, D. L. (1983). Conceptual evolution and the eye of the octopus.
Proceedings of the 7th International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and
Philosophy of Science, Salzburg , Austria.

Hull, D. L. (1984). Darwinism as a historical entity. The Darwinian
Heritage. D. Kohn. Wellington, New Zealand, Nova Pacifica.
==
Scientists have pinpointed the area of the brain responsible for love
feelings, the anterior singlate process(sp?).

Research in neuropsychology and evolutionary biology (see Fisher, Helen Anatomy
of Love, 1992 and The Sex Contract ) for a detailed discussion of the
underlying principles. Love is a series of biochemical changes in our brains
that serve to reinforce pair-bonding in our species.
--
Physics and our View of the World edited by Jan Hilgevoord
Cambridge U. (1995) ISBN 0 521 47680 1

"The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of
Naturalism" by edward oakes, sj.
==
Chandler Wobble: the tiny displacement of the earth's axis of
rotation which causes variation in latitude (and also longitude).
[S. C. Chandler (1846-1913), American astronomer.]
==
Local gravity variation.
The value of g in Panama is 9.78 while g in Greenland is 9.82.

G=6.67423(9) x 10^{-11} m^3/kg/s^2 = Universal gravity constant
==
The real power to change things for the better lies in the seeking of valid
models through finding facts and explaining them by creating efficient
theories.
==
Some 46 XY male chromosome babies look like females, some 46 XX female
chromosome babies have a penis and testicles, with internal ovaries (complete
fetal masculinization, female adrenogenital XX). Some do not have the required
46 chromosomes at all as in Turner Syndrome they only have 45 chromosomes with
a X, no other Y, no other X. With Klinefelter Syndrome they have a 47
chromosomes XXY, and others with XXX.

Likewise, you can have perfectly normal males with XX as their chromosomes, but
sterile. Further, there are those who are mosaic, having both XX and XY.
==
"Faith and science have at least one thing in common: Both are lifelong
searches for truth. But while faith is an unshakeable belief in the unseen,
science is the study of testable, observable phenomena. The two coexist, and
may at times complement each other. But neither should be asked to validate
or invalidate the other." Bill Allen, Editor-In-Chief, Nat'l Geographic
==
A chemical analysis of a rare, uncontaminated 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite
that fell to Earth in 2000 shows that its composition sets it apart from other
meteorites found on Earth, giving scientists a glimpse of the solar system
that has not been seen before. The findings, when added to other studies of the
meteorite, may provide new information about the first moments of the solar
systems formation.
Purdue University chemist Michael Lipschutz, and his graduate student Jon
Friedrich, have analyzed 45 chemical elements in the meteorite
Jon Friedrich, a doctoral student at Purdue University, uses an inductively
coupled plasma mass spectrometer to study the chemical composition of the
meteorite. The research, when added to other studies of the meteorite, may
provide new information about the first moments of the solar systems
formation.
Chemically speaking, the meteorite, called the Tagish Lake meteorite, falls
into a classification called carbonaceous chondrite. The carbonaceous
chondrites are very rare and extremely interesting to scientists. These
meteorites contain carbon as organic compounds, some of which are the basic
building blocks for life, and interstellar material, which comes from exploded
stars outside of our solar system.
The Purdue study shows, however, that some compositional and mineralogical
features set the Tagish Lake sample apart from other carbonaceous chondrites,
placing it into a gap between two subtypes of meteorites in that class.
This meteorite is unique, and represents a new kind of planetary material,
says Lipschutz, a professor of chemistry who has studied meteorites for more
than 30 years. From the chemical composition, its reasonable to assume it
came from parts of the solar system different than the ones that produced other
carbonaceous chondrites previously studied.
Lipschutz says the oxygen isotopes in the sample place the Tagish Lake
meteorite somewhere between the subtypes called CI and thermally metamorphosed
CM, putting the sample in a class by itself.
Thermally metamorphosed meteorites came from parts of their parent bodies that
went through some type of major heating experience that caused some volatile
elements to vaporize, he says. The fact that its not thermally metamorphosed
means that this meteorite is much more closely related to the CI meteorites
than to any other kind of meteorite.
CI meteorites are considered a measuring stick of sorts in cosmochemistry,
Lipschutz says, because they contain a chemical composition similar to the
outside surface of the Sun.
The Tagish Lake meteorite is, in fact, a sample of the pre-solar nebula, out
of which the planets formed, he says. We have never before had a sample of
this material.
==
The black hole, with a mass about 3 million times that of our
sun, lies at the center of our galaxy, 24,000 light years away.
==
The Small Magellanic Cloud, named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, lies
190,000 light-years away, and is visible only from the Earth's southern
hemisphere.
==
The official SI definition is: "The meter is the length of the path
travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of
a second."
==
Science isnt a singular thing. It is merely a blanket term for a logical,
precise study and observation of reality. Nothing more, nothing less.
==
Petford, N.; Cruden, A.R.; McCaffrey, K.J.W. and Vigneresse, J.-L., 2000
(Dec. 7). Granite magma formation, transport, and emplacement in the
Earth's crust. Nature, v.408, p.669-673.
==
There is a a giant star forming region in the Milky Way. It is known as
Messier 17 (M 17), or the Omega, Swan, Horseshoe, or Lobster Nebula, because
of its characteristic shape when photographed in visible light. It is
located at a distance of approx. 5000 light-years (1.6 kpc), and is seen in
the southern constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), near the main plane
of the Milky Way.
It is now well established that the formation of stars in our galaxy, the
Milky Way system, predominantly takes place in Giant Molecular Clouds.
However, while low-mass stars are common and relatively easy to find in
such clouds, it is much more difficult to find massive stars while they are
in the very early stage of their evolution.
This is because massive stars are comparatively rare and pass through the
different evolutionary phases much faster than low-mass and solar-like stars.
They are usually found within dense stellar clusters, located at large
distances from the Sun.
The earliest evolutionary stages of both low- and high-mass stars cannot be
observed at visible wavelengths. This is due to the very heavy obscuration in
that wavelength region by the dust in the parental molecular clouds. However,
infrared and millimeter emission from these objects is able to penetrate the
dust and thus allow us to investigate the complex processes that occur at
the earliest phases of stellar evolution. An infrared spectrum of one of the
reddest objects that was only detected at the longest wavelength, confirmed
it as a massive star in its earliest evolutionary phase.
The spectrum shows a featureless continuum that rises steeply towards long
wavelengths, exactly as expected for a star in the process of formation,
deeply embedded in dust. It is easily distinguishable from stars that have
already formed, since their spectra display several absorption features and
rise towards shorter wavelengths instead.
==
Parasite Rex : The Secret and Bizarre World of Natures Most Dangerous
Lifeforms by Carl Zimmer

Seven Theories of Human Nature - Leslie Forster Stevenson

The Extended Pheonotype - Dawkins

The Selfish Gene - Dawkins

Popper Selections - Popper edited by David

Alastair Rae "Quantum Physics:Illusion or Reality?
==
George Wald "The Origin of Life" 1954 The Scientific American
In 1970, Paleontologist Elso Barghoorn discovered micro fossils of
bacteria 3.5 billion years old, and organic carbon appeared 3.8 billion years
ago. The latter simultanious with liquid water on earth.
==
Fr. George Lematre' Ph.D. and Dean of Math and Physics University of
Belgium peer reviewed Einsteins work in 1925. The Big Bang is what
Fr. Lematre' called the "Primordial Atom" in 1927.

Here are a couple of other pages on the Cosmological Constant and how
it is being revived in astrophysics:

From NASA
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/html/lambda.html

This one references the articles by Schmidt and Perlmutter that are
revivving the non-zero Cosmological Constant.
http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaonews/jun98/node2.html
==
ASTROPHYSICS: C.J. Miller et al present an analysis of
acoustic oscillations in the early Universe. During its first
approximately 100,000 years, the Universe was a fully ionized
plasma with a tight coupling (by Thompson scattering) between
photons and matter. The trade-off between gravitational collapse
and photon pressure would cause acoustic oscillations in this
primordial fluid, and these oscillations should have left
predictable imprints in the spectra of the cosmic microwave
background radiation and the present-day matter-density
distribution. The authors make a comparison of recent acoustic
oscillation detections from two different cosmological epochs,
and suggest the results provide further support for the standard
"Hot Big Bang model" of the Universe.
==
Scablands of Montana
There were more than one flood. This ice dam formed and broke somewhere
between 5 and 50 times over the last few million years.

J Harlen Bretz, "Channeled Scabland of the Columbia Plateau,"
_Journal of Geology_ 31:617-49 (1923). Huge floods

Allen, J. E., Burns, M., and Sargent, S. C. (1986)
Cataclysms on the Columbia: Timber Press, Portland Oregon, 211 p.

Allison, I. S. (1933) New version of the Spokane flood.
Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 44, p.675-722.

Allison, I. S. (1941) Flint's fill hypothesis for
channeled scabland. Journal of Geology, v. 49, p.54-73.

Baker, V. R. (1973) Paleohydrology and sedimentology of
Lake Missoula flooding in eastern Washington. Geological
Society of America Special Paper 144, p.1-79.

Baker, V. R. (1995) Joseph Bretz and the Spokane
Flood Controversy Thomas Pardee and the Spokane
flood controversy. GSA Today. v. 5, no. 9, pp. 169-173.

Baker, V. R., and Nummedal, D. (1978) The Channeled
Scabland: A Guide to the Geomorphology of the Columbia
Basin, Washington (Prepared for the Comparative
Planetary Geology Field Conference held in the
Columbia Basin June 5-8, 1978): Office of Space
Science, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, D.C.

Bretz, J H. (1923a) Glacial drainage on the Columbia
Plateau. Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 34, p.573-608.

Bretz, J H. (1923b) The Channeled Scabland of the
Columbia Plateau. Journal of Geology, v. 31, p.617-649.

Bretz, J H. (1925) The Spokane flood beyond the
Channeled Scablands. Jounral of Geology, v. 33, p.97-115, 236-259.

Bretz, J H. (1927) Channeled Scabland and the Spokane
Flood. Journal of Washington Academy of Sciences, v. 18, p.200-211.

Bretz, J H. (1928a) Alternate hypotheses for channeled
scabland. Journal of Geology, v. 36, p.193-223, 312-341.

Bretz, J H. (1928b) Bars of Channeled Scabland.
Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 39, p.643-702.

Bretz, J H. (1928c) The Channeld Scabland of eastern
Washington. Geographical Review, v. 18, p.446-477.

Bretz, J H. (1929) Valley deposits immediately east
of the Channeled Scabland of Washington. Journal of
Geology, v. 37, p.393-427, 505-541.

Bretz, J H. (1930a) Lake Missoula and the Spokane Flood.
Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 41, p.92-93.

Bretz, J H. (1930b) Valley deposits immediately west
of the channeled scabland. Journal of Geology, v. 38, p.385-422.

Bretz, J H. (1932) The Grand Coulee. American
Geographical Society, Special Publication 15, p.1-89.

Bretz, J H., Smith, H. T. U., and Neff, G. E. (1956)
Channeled Scabland of Washington -- new data and
interpretations. Geological Society of America
Bulletin, v. 67, p.957-1049.

Bretz, J H. (1979) Memories of J Harlen Bretz"
with commentary by Jerry D. Vineyard. Missouri
Speleology, v. 19, Nos. 3 &4, Oct-Dec. 1979, p. 8.

Flint, R. F. (1938) Origin of the Cheney-Palouse
scabland tract, Washington. Geological Soecity of
America Bulletin, v.48, p.203-232.

Hobbs, W. H. (1943) Discovery in eastern Washington of
a new lobe of the Pleistocene continental glacier Science, v. 98, p.227-230.

Hobbs, W. H. (1947) The glacial history of the
Scabland and Okanogan lobes, Cordilleran continental
glacier. Ann Arbor, Michigan, J.W. Edwards, privately printed, 40p.

Hodge, E. T. (1934) Origin of the Washington scabland.
Northwest Science, v. 8, p.4-11.

Pardee, J. T. (1910) The glacial Lake Missoula.
Journal of Geology, v. 18, p.376-396.

Pardee, J. T. (1940) Ripple marks (?) in glacial
Lake Missoula, Montana. Geological Society of
America Bulletin, v. 51, p.2028-2029.

Pardee, J. T. (1942) Unusual currents in glacial
Lake Missoula, Montana. Geological Society of
America Bulletin, v. 53, p.1569-1599.

The size of the landforms, e.g. the giant current ripples, is such
that it is very difficult to take pictures from ground level in
which a person can see enough of the landform to recognize what
it is. This problem wasn't resolved until aerial photography
became available for the channeled scablands. The streamlined
loess hills, giant current ripples, and gravel bars are features
that have to be seen from the air to really appreciated what they
are. This is specifically true if a person hasn't seen features
of such large scale before and not expecting to see them.
Otherwise, the giant current ripple look like rolling hills of
no real significance.
==
Cave art
Samples of pigments and carbon were independently dated by 12
laboratories, and they all got the same results. The entry to the Cosquer
Cave is 100 feet below sea level, so what chance would there be that the
paintings would have been affected by "outside effects like electricity"?
Twelve independent laboratories say that the oldest paintings at Cosquer
were made 30,000 years ago.
==

==
Stalins Scientist - The Folly of Lysenkoism
The favored theory of Stalins chief scientist, Trofim Lysenko
(1889-1976), rejected orthodox genetics in favor of a belief that plants
could be trained to be other plants, e.g. wheat cultivated in the proper
environment could produce rye seeds, mainly because the orthodox theory
violated the doctrine of dialectical materialism.
Promising quicker, more numerous and cheaper crops than conventional
techniques could produce, Lysenkos theories merely dragged Soviet science
further behind the west, where Russian biology remains to this day.
Lysenko lost control of the Lenin Agricultural Academy under Kruschev, but
he and his followers retained their positions, doctorates and titles for
many years.
For details, read Gould HEN'S TEETH AND HORSE'S TOES
==
The story that geologists have deduced about Earths birth rests inside the
story that cosmologists have deduced about the universe. The evidence is well
documented and the physical laws involved are very solid.
Earth was not around at the beginningthe universe began without us some 10
billion years earlier than Earth. The universe started out with only two
elements, hydrogen and helium gas, which formed stars that burned these
elements in nuclear fusion reactions. Generations of stars were born in gas
clouds and died in explosive novas. The conditions in those novas produced all
the heavier elements we have with us today. This is basic, well-documented
cosmology and astrophysics.
Long, long ago (some 5 billion years ago) in a perfectly ordinary place in the
galaxy, a supernova exploded, pushing a lot of its heavy-element wreckage into
a nearby cloud of hydrogen gas and interstellar dust. The mixture grew hot and
compressed under its own gravity, and at its center a new star began to form.
Around it swirled a disk of the same material, which grew white-hot from the
great compressive forces. That new star became our Sun, and the glowing disk
gave rise to Earth and its sister planets. We can see just this sort of thing
happening elsewhere in the universe.
While the Sun grew in size and energy, beginning to ignite its nuclear fires,
the hot disk slowly cooled. This took millions of years. During that time, the
components of the disk began to freeze out into small dust-size grains. Iron
metal and compounds of silicon, magnesium, aluminum, and oxygen came out first
in that fiery setting. Slowly these grains settled together and collected into
clumps, then chunks, then boulders and finally bodies large enough to exert
their own gravityplanetesimals. This whole process is rather well modeled by
scientists like those at the Planetary Research Institute.
These bodies, as time went by, tended to grow by collision with other bodies,
and as their mass grew larger, the energies involved did too. By the time they
reached a hundred kilometers or so in size, planetesimal collisions produced a
lot of outright melting and vaporization, and the materialswhich we can
confidently call rocks and iron metalbegan to sort themselves out. The dense
iron settled in the center and the lighter rock separated into a mantle around
the iron, in a miniature of Earth and the other inner planets today.
Planetologists call this differentiation, and it is documented not only for the
planets, but also for most of the large moons and the largest asteroids.
At some point during this time, the Sun ignited. Although the Sun was only
about two-thirds as bright as it is today, that was energetic enough to blow
away most of the gaseous part of the protoplanetary disk away. The chunks,
boulders, and planetesimals left behind continued to collect into a handful of
Earth was the third one of these, counting outward from the Sun. We know that
the process was violent and spectacular, because the smaller pieces left huge
craters on the larger ones. Our studies of the other planets in the Space Age
document these impacts everywhere weve looked.
Near the end of this Great Bombardment, some 4 billion years ago, a very
large planetesimal struck Earth an off-center blow and sprayed much of Earths
rocky mantle into space. The planet got most of it back after a period of time,
but some of it collected into a second planetesimal circling Earth. Its still
thereits the Moon. Since this theory took center stage in the mid-1980s, it
has become everyones favorite.
The objection that such an event would be extremely rare is actually a point in
its favor, since the Moon is unique.
By the time the earliest surviving rocks on Earth were formed, all of this
activity was ancient history. The oldest rocks, dating from about 3.96 billion
years ago, show that there were volcanoes, continents, oceans, and life on
Earth in those days. While the eons that followed were full of strange stories
and far-reaching changes, the Earth had taken on its basic structure long
before.

The solar wind can be stopped (except during a substorm) by a small amount of
shielding (though long exposure, like a year-long trip to Mars, would need more
shielding). Furthermore, the solar wind is not dangerous for short exposures.
It's 5 hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter, travelling at 400 km/s.
==
Lunar meteorite ages present new, strong evidence for the "lunar cataclysm," a
20-to-200 million-year episode of intense bombardment of the moon and the Earth
at 3.9 billion years ago when the first evidence of life appeared on
Earth, planetary scientists report in the Dec. 1, 2000 issue of Science.
==
Time scale compiled by Palmer, which can be cited as: Palmer, A.R., 1983.
The Decade of North American Geology 1983
Geologic Time Scale. Geology, v.11, p.503-504.
==
Burtt, Edwin A.(1951) The metaphysical foundations of modern physical science;
a historical and critical essay,New York : Humanities Press.

Gordon Kane "Supersymmetry.
==
Moon-walking astronauts brought back a cache of lunar material. Later analysis
showed that virtually all impact rocks in the "Apollo collection" sported
nearly the same age, 3.9 billion years old.
==
"The history of Arab mathematics began with Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khawarazmi
who, in the ninth century, journeyed east to India to learn the sciences of
that time. He introduced Hindu numerals, including the concept of zero into
the Arab world. This number system was later transmitted to the West."
The concept of 0 was introduced into the arab world from the Hindu.
The 'Arabic' numbers were originally Hindu.
From "Introduction to the History of Science" by George Sarton.
==
Calender Change in English countries
September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

1582 Oct 4 was followed by Oct 15 in Catholic countries

Julian Day Number is a count of days elapsed since Greenwich mean
noon on 1 January 4713 B.C., Julian proleptic calendar. The Julian
Date is the Julian day number followed by the fraction of the day
elapsed since the preceding noon.

Calender changes
Dates Gregory eliminated by Papal bull to
realign his calendar with the solar year

Our concept of a year is based on the earths motion around the sun. The time
from one fixed point, such as a solstice or equinox, to the next is called a
tropical year. Its length is currently 365.242190 days, but it varies. Around
1900 its length was 365.242196 days, and around 2100 it will be 365.242184
days.

(This definition of the tropical year is not quite accurate)

Our concept of a month is based on the moons motion around the earth.
The time from one new moon to the next is called a synodic month, and its
length is currently 29.5305889 days, but it varies. Around 1900 its length was
29.5305886 days, and around 2100 it will be 29.5305891 days.

English has retained the original planets in the names for Saturday, Sunday,
and Monday. For the four other days, however, the names of Anglo-Saxon or
Nordic gods have replaced the Roman gods that gave name to the planets. Thus,
Tuesday is named after Tiw, Wednesday is named after Woden, Thursday is
named after Thor, and Friday is named after Freya.

January: Janus (god of portals - ie, between old year and new)
February: "Month of expiation", from februum, "purification"
March: Mars (god of war - good time to start a military campaign)
April: "latter, second" - originally the 2nd month of the year
May: Maia (goddess of bounty - ie, spring)
June: Juno (goddess of marriage; we still romanticize June weddings)
July: Gaius Julius Caesar
August: Augustus Caesar
September: "7th month"
October: "8th month"
November: "9th month"
December: "10th month"

Earth motions/ice ages
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2320crac.html
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/why_4_cool_periods.html
http://culter.colorado.edu:1030/~saelias/glacier.html
==
The universe was 1/6 of its present size 10 billion years ago.
The huge size of our Milky Way Galaxy means that light takes
about 25 000 years to reach us from the Centre of our Galaxy.
==
What is matter? Our ideas about matter have changed drastically in the past
2500 years!
600 BC - Thales of Miletus noticed that rubbing amber with fur caused it to
attract small bits of air and other light objects. He suggested that a
mysterious force came from the amber.
460 BC - Democritus, from Greece, developed the concept of dividing matter into
smaller and smaller pieces until you could divide it no more. He called these
smallest pieces atoms.
Aristotle considered the idea of atoms to be worthless.
1687 AD - Sir Isaac Newton used arguments based upon the theory of atoms to
explain the gas laws.
1803 - John Dalton, English chemist, formulated his theory that all matter
consists of atoms, that chemical reactions result from the union and separation
of these atoms and that atoms have characteristic properties.
1897 - English physicist, J.J. Thompson discovered the electron and proposed a
model of matter similar to raisins in a pudding.
1911 - Ernest Rutherford bombarded gold foil with helium nuclei (alpha
particles) and noticed that most go through the gold unchanged. But some
deflect into all directions and some even bounce back in the direction they
came. He concluded that matter is mostly empty space and consists of a small
positively charged center surrounded by negatively charged particles.
1912 - Neils Bohr suggested that the electrons orbiting the nucleus of atoms
can only have certain discrete energies and that each element had different
electron energies.
1924 - Louis deBroglie, from France, suggested that matter, like light,
consisted of waves not particles.
1925 - Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger formed a model of a complete atom
as interacting waves. The particles became like vibrations on a violin string,
only they were closed in circles.
1926 -German physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated his uncertainty principle
which says that you cannot know the position and momentum of a particle
simultaneously. The better you know one, the worse you know the other. Atoms
were now visualized as a nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electron waves.
1960 - Murray Gel-Mann, American physicist, proposed that protons and other
basic particles in the atom consist of even more fundamental particles he
called quarks.
==
Although atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the early Cenozoic era
(about 60 Myrm ago) are widely believed to have been higher than at present,
there is disagreement regarding the exact carbon dioxide levels, the timing of
the decline and the mechanisms that are most important for the control of
CO2 concentrations over geological timescales.
Here we use the boron-isotope ratios of ancient planktonic foraminifer shells
to estimate the pH of surface-layer sea water throughout the past 60 million
years, which can be used to reconstruct atmospheric CO2 concentrations. We
estimate CO2 concentrations of more than 2,000 p.p.m. for the late Palaeocene
and earliest Eocene periods (from about 60 to 52 Myr ago), and find an erratic
decline between 55 and 40 Myr ago that may have been caused by reduced CO2
outgassing from ocean ridges, volcanoes and metamorphic belts and increased
carbon burial. Since the early Miocene (about 24 Myr ago), atmospheric CO2
concentrations appear to have remained below 500 p.p.m. and were more stable
than before, although transient intervals of CO2 reduction may have occurred
during periods of rapid cooling approximately 15 and 3 Myr ago.
==
Deep pictures as time machines
Light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometres per second. Although this speed
is high it is finite and this means that light takes about 8 minutes to reach
us from the Sun. The huge size of our Milky Way Galaxy means that light takes
about 25 000 years to reach us from the Centre of our Galaxy. But the light
from the faint galaxies seen in these deep pictures has come from even farther
away so far away that the light has taken about 10 billion years to reach us!!
This is close to the estimated age of the Universe and hence the deep pictures
are probing not only out in distance but they probe back in time as well, since
we can see galaxies as they appeared early in the history of the Universe.
In this sense the deep pictures can be viewed as time machines allowing us to
see deep into our past. The allow cosmologists directly to observe galaxies in
the process of formation.
==
Dont Throw a Brick Straight Up, A Stupid Persons Guide To Life, By Samuel
Stoddard, Additional Material by David J. Parker

Atmospheric Science - an Introductory Survey, by Wallace and Hobbs

Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, M. Rees
Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, M. Jammer
The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological
Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos, M. Livio
The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist,
N. de Grasse Tyson, and One Universe:
A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe Through
the Big Bang Towards Reality, F. Hoyle, G. Burbidge, and J. V. Narlikar

==
Science is not an organization that dictates my belief. I leave that to
churches worldwide. Science tells us, See for yourself. If
you think science is wrong, feel free to do the experiments, produce
your own data and draw your own conclusions. Saying the same thing in
religion is heresy at the very least.
==
Bertrand Russell explained what he thought the scientific attitude was in his
earlier book Religion and Science:
The scientific temper of mind is cautious, tentative, and piecemeal; it does
not imagine that it knows the whole truth, or that even its best knowledge is
wholly true. It knows that every doctrine needs emendation sooner or later, and
that the necesary emendation requires freedom of investigation and freedom of
discussion.
Religious revelation and religious claims are not, however, left open to
criticism. They are not generally tentative and piecemeal. Religious claims,
particularly those made by fundamentalists, tend to be an all-or-nothing affair
and they do imagine that they are the whole truth.
Religionists claim not only to have a unique access to the grounds of truth
(i.e., the ultimate reality of their God), but also to particular truths
established by those grounds. This position is incompatible with science and it
is incompatible with the principles necessary for an open society.
==
un-Hui Zhao of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
MA; and Miller Goss and Geoff Bower of the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, NM, discovered that an object at the Milky Ways
center shows pulses in its radio emission every 106 days. The object, known as
Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), was discovered in 1974, and is believed
to harbor at its core a black hole 2.6 million times more massive than the Sun.
We think there is a rapidly-rotating disk of material that is being drawn
inward toward the black hole, explained Zhao. Because the material rotates
faster in the inner parts of this disk, friction heats up the inner parts of
the disk more than the outer parts. We believe that some of this hot, inner
material forms bubbles that move into the outer, cooler parts of the disk by
convection -- like boiling, Zhao said. The appearance of these bubbles causes
the object to emit more radio waves.
==
Chondrites are the building blocks of terrestrial planets, If more data
confirm Eros is primordial, Eros will be a link between the chondrite
meteorites found on Earth and the history of the solar systems formation.
With Eros, we could be looking at the structure of the solar system during a
time no longer recorded on Earth.
Astronomers and geologists believe chondrites formed from the nebula of gas and
dust that comprised the nascent solar system. Collisions between these dust
particles eventually formed larger bodies, called planetesimals, which then
collided under the influence of their mutual gravity to form planets. Asteroids
are relics of this earliest period in solar system history. The gravitational
tugs exerted on asteroids by Jupiter kept a large planet from ever forming in
the main asteroid belt. Even today, collisions continue and fragments of
asteroids occasionally fall to Earth as meteorites.
The most primitive meteorites, called chondrites, are a homogeneous mixture of
heavy and light materials - a sign that the asteroid from which they originated
was never subjected to melting. The process of heating and cooling that changes
the nature and distribution of these materials is referred to as
differentiation. If Eros is undifferentiated, like the chondritic meteorites
that fall to Earth, it probably never was exposed to intense heating.
In contrast, asteroids that were extensively melted have a layered structure -
like that of the Earth - resulting from the separation of materials of
different density. Heavy materials, like nickel-iron metal, tend to sink to
the center while lighter materials, composed mostly of silicon and oxygen, rise
to the surface. If Eros were composed mostly of light materials, it would
probably be a fragment from near the surface of a larger body, while an
abundance of heavy materials would point to the origin of Eros as the core of
a larger, broken-up asteroid.
==
Based on its study, the team concluded that the universe is 13.7 +- 0.2
billion years old and is expanding at an accelerating rate of 70 kilometers
per second for every 3.3 million light years in distance from the Earth.
==
Some thoughts about laws.
Laws are systematic organization and generalizations of observations.
Laws are good as long as they match reality.
Reality doesnt have to obey laws
Our laws correspond to reality perfectly or to varying degrees.
Laws need to be modified or have limits put on them or possible
rejected if they disagree with reality.
==
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
(Paperback - November 1996)
Karl Poppers Postcript III - Quantum Mechanics and the Schism in Physics.
Hummel, The Galileo Connection
Stuart Kauffman _At Home In The Universe_
The definition of science has been evolving since the 10th century.
What Is This Thing Called Science? : An Assessment of the Nature and
Status of Science and Its Methods by A. F. Chalmers - Paperback
- 288 pages 3rd edition (July 1999) Open Univ Pr; ISBN: 0335201091

_The Crucible of Creation : The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals_
by Simon Conway-Morris

Bohm, David. Causality and Chance in Modern Physics.
==
Monetary historians generally first associate the dollar with one
Count Schlick, who began striking such silver coins in 1519 is Joachims Thal,
Bavaria. Then called Schlicktenthalers or Joiachimsthalers the coins
became know simply as Thalers which transliterated into dollars
==
Dictionary of Scientific Literacy by Richard P. Brennan,
published by Wiley Science Editions/John Wiley and Sons, Inc. in 1992.

Big Bang: The accepted theory or STANDARD MODEL for the original of the
universe. This theory holds that the universe began when a single point of
infinitely dense and infinitely hot matter exploded spontaneously. It is
believed that this point, smaller than the head of a pin, exploded with an
almost unimaginable burst of energy. Out of the debris of this explosion,
all of the galaxies, stars, and planets were formed. This event, sometimes
called a SINGULARITY by astrophysicists, is believed to have occurred
between 12 and 13.5 billion years ago. Time begins at the Big Bang. The
discovery in 1929, by the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, that the
universe was expanding led logically to the conclusion that if one could
reverse the outward-expanding motion of the galaxies, they would all
eventually come back to one point. In short, the universe would have an
origin. As experimental and theoretical evidence mounted, it became clear
that the universe indeed must have had a beginning in time. In 1970 this was
finally proven mathematically by Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, on the
basis of Einsteins General Theory of Relativity.

Singularity: The term used by physicists and mathematicians to designate the
point in the universe where the equations of the General Theory of
Relativity break down. The universe at the first moment in time (Big Bang)
is called a singularity, as is a black hole. Physicists believe that at a
time in the past (currently estimated at between 12 and 13.5 billions years
ago) the distance between neighboring galaxies must have been zero. That is,
all matter in the universe was contained in one single point. At that time,
which we now call the Big Bang, the density of the universe and the
curvature of space would have been infinite.

The Big Bang was "invented" by a Christian, a Roman Catholic
priest, Georges Lemaitre.
==
Before there was the 'universe', reality was perfectly flat (as opposed
to being 'warped' by the existence of matter which bends the space-time
dimensions) but it was not empty. There is a 'scalar field' that,
apparently, covers all of reality. The scalar field is what interacts
with elementary particles (photons; W and Z particles - they transmit
the weak nuclear force). At this point, there was no difference
between the forces (electromagnetic and weak nuclear force)
because 'symmetry' had not been broken.
As dictated by the uncertainty principle, there will be constant
fluctuations in the scalar field. If these quantum fluctuations
persistently increase the energy of the scalar field to a certain
point, it will begin to inflate. The inflation began at the
minimum quantum level for space: 10^-33cm,
==
Bacteria cell wall structure.
Written by Julie Thomas in a talk.origins message.
Peptidoglycan structure
In bacteria, cell walls are essentially built around peptidoglycan. Such
cell walls often contain other molecules (such as teichoic acid and
various lipopolysaccharides), but peptidoglycan is the most widely
distributed molecule among bacteria and is not found in either
archaebacteria or eucaryotes. Since it is widespread but specific to
bacteria, and is probably primarily responsible for the rigidity of the
cell wall (or at the very least, serves as the foundation), we will
focus our attention solely on the origin of this important bacterial
macromolecule.
The basic unit of peptidoglycan consists of two sugar residues,
N-acetylglucosamine (NAG) and N-acetylmuramic acid (NAM) linked
together as an alternating series (ie, NAG-NAM-NAG-NAM-etc.).
Peptidoglycan chains can range from 10 to more than 170 disaccharide
units. Covalently attached to NAM is a tetrapeptide (a string of four
amino acids). The sequence of these tetrapeptides is intriguing. For
most bacteria, the sequence is L-Ala - D-Glu - meso-DAP(or L-Lys) - D-
Ala. What is intriguing is that neither D-Glu, meso-DAP, nor D-Ala are
used in protein synthesis but instead are specifically employed in
peptidoglycan synthesis.
Peptidoglycan exists as a complex of these NAG-NAM-tetrapeptide
units. This is accomplished because the tetrapeptide of one unit is
either directly attached to the tetrapeptide of another unit or the two
tetrapeptides are attached indirectly via a pentapeptide bridge. Thus,
the basic architecture includes two strands of NAG-NAM
polysaccharides running parallel to each other yet bound together
through the tetrapeptide interactions that run essentially perpendicular
to the polysaccharide strands. In cells, thousands of these NAG-NAM
strands surround the membrane all anchored to each other through
their tetrapeptides.
Biosynthesis of Peptidoglycan
Thus far, it appears that the biosynthesis of peptidoglycan is much the
same in all bacteria and includes several sequential metabolic steps all
catalyzed by different enzymes. Furthermore, some of the reactions
takes place in the cytoplasm while others occur outside the cell.
The first step that commits the cell to the synthesis of peptidoglycan is
that which transfers an enolpyruvate to NAG that has been previously
coupled with UDP. The enzyme that catalyzes this step is encoded by
the gene murZ and is inhibited by the bactericidal antibiotic,
phosphomycin. That an antibiotic targets this reaction and successfully
kills bacteria suggests there is no compensating secondary activity.
Thus, this reaction appears to be the first component of the IC nature of
this synthesis.
After the transfer has occurred, this species is reduced to UDP-NAM by
UDP-NAG-enolpyruvate reductase and is thus ready to serve as the
template for addition of amino acids.
First, L-alanine is added by the gene product of murC, the L-Ala adding
enzyme. Then, D-glu is added by the gene product of murD. However,
prior to this, D-glu had to be synthesized by the product of murI, which
synthesizes D-glutamate from alpha-ketoglutarate.
Afterwards, and while still remaining in the cytoplasm, murE adds the
amino acid, meso-DAP. Finally, a D-alanine dipeptide is added by the
product of murF to create a pentapeptide. However, D-alanine must
first be synthesized by an alanine racemase and the dipeptide, D-
alanyl:D-alanine is synthesized by the product of the ddl gene, D-
alanine:D-alanine ligase. These steps are inhibited by the antimicrobial
agent, cycloserine.
The final product, UDP-NAM-pentapeptide (which I will call UN5) is
now ready for the membrane-associated steps of synthesis.
The cytoplasmic UN5 is first associated, through the phosphodiester
group, with a lipid carrier called bactoprenol (this is an isoprenoid
alcohol with 55 carbons). Without this lipid carrier, UN5 could not pass
through the membrane as it is far too hydrophilic. This lipid carrier will
not only shuttle the peptidoglycan unit through the membrane, but will
position it for attachment to the pre-existing peptidoglycan outside the
cell membrane and then return to shuttle more units. The antimicrobial
agent, bacitracin, inhibits the return of the active form of bactoprenol to
the cytoplasm.
UN5 is attached to bactoprenol through the activity of the gene product
of mraY. This step is considered the first step in the lipid-carrier cycle.
Once attached to bactoprenol, the gene product of murG attaches NAG to
NAM resulting in a disaccharide pentapeptide unit. The murG activity is
associated with the inner face of the membrane. This unit is then
transferred across the cell membrane. At this point, a transpeptidase
and transglycosylase activity are involved in the addition of the new
peptidoglycan unit into the preexisting chains. Such reactions involve
the cleavage of the most terminal D-ala resulting in the incorporation of
an NAG-NAM-tetrapeptide unit. These reactions are inhibited by
antibiotics such as vancomycin and penicillin.
The addition of new peptidoglycan units to the cell wall is actually a
tricky feat. Such synthesis occurs during cell division and must be
tightly controlled. The problem stems from the fact that small openings
in the pre-existing cell wall must be sufficient enough for addition of
the new peptidoglycan units, but not large enough to compromise the
cell wall and lead to cell lysis. To create these small holes, bacteria
employ a set of autolysins, some of which are similar to lysozyme. But
again, the trick is in using just enough of this autolysin activity to create
a template for the incorporation of new units without causing autolysis.
Again, it should be pointed out that this mode of biosynthesis is
widespread and conserved. Not only is it found in gm+, gm-, and acid fast
bacteria, but the recently sequenced genome of Aquifex aeolicus uses all the
same genes to synthesize its peptidoglycan. This is significant because rRNA
sequence analysis suggests that A. aeolicus represents one of the earliest
diverging lineages of bacteria.
The fact that A. aeolicus has and synthesizes peptidoglycan much as E. coli
does strongly suggests that peptidoglycan structure and biosynthesis is
universal among bacteria (with the rare exceptions of secondary loss). In
fact, the recently sequenced genomes of Helobacter pylori, Haemophilus
influenzae, Bacillus subtilis, Treponema pallidum, and Mycobacterium
tuberculosis show the same genes for peptidoglycan synthesis. Thus, the
thematic-systematicl IC nature most likely reflects the Ur-IC state. When this
is coupled with the fact that Archeabacteria lack peptidoglycan, it looks as if
peptidoglycan evolved just prior to the radiation of all eubacteria, but after
the divergence of eubacteria and archaebacteria.
==
Insights from the Fossil Record
Recently, bacterial fossils were discovered in the Apex chert of northewestern
Australia. These fossils date from 3.5 billion years ago and are thus
the oldest known fossils. What is intriguing about the fossils is that look
like cyanobacteria. There are several types of cyanobacteria and these fossils
appear most like oscillatoriacean cyanobacteria (with this type, individual
cells link together to form a chain giving the bacteria a filamentous
appearance; they look somewhat like miniature tapeworms), which are considered
to be physiologically and morphologically advanced procaryotes. In fact, the
similarity between extant oscillatoriaceans and the fossils is so good that the
two forms are indistinguishable. As J. William Schopf, who is the perhaps
the worlds leading expert of these fossils notes:
There is little doubt that, if the Apex filaments had been discovered in
Proterozoic sediments, in which fossil oscillatoriaceans are well known and
relatively widespread, of if they had been detected in the modern
microbial community and morphology were the only criterion by which to infer
biological relationships, the majority would be interpreted as oscillatoriacean
cyanobacteria. [Schopf, J.W. 1996. Are the oldest fossils cyanobacteria?,
in Evolution of Microbial Life, Cambridge University Press]
Why is this relevant to our discussion? As is typical of bacteria,
cyanobacteria have cell walls built around peptidoglycan. Given the great
similarity between modern forms and the fossil forms, it would seem reasonble
to propose that the fossilized forms also had cell walls built around
peptidoglycan. Otherwise, we would have to propose that the fossilized
bacteria contained no cell wall but had the same exact morphology of cells
with cell walls. Or, we might propose that these ancient bacteria had cell
walls built around a different molecular species. If we choose this
explanation, this commits us to the view that these successful cell walls were
lost and replaced by peptidoglycan. But why would this occur? And why is
there not a shred of evidence for the existence of a different cell wall among
bacteria today? It would thus seem that the most parsimonious explanation is
that which views a continuity between the fossil forms and the modern forms
where both have cell walls built around peptodoglycan. And not only is the
explanation the most parsimonious, there is no evidence to contradict it.
If in fact these fossilized cyanobacteria possessed peptidoglycan cell
walls, this would allow us to infer their metabolism, given the mechanism
of peptidoglycan synthesis is so strongly conserved among so many
distantly related bacteria. At this point again, it would thus seem most
parsimonious to infer the existence of a modern, protein-based cell rather
than an imaginary ribozyme based cell (which would be consistent with the
observed fact that all cells are built around proteins). When this view is
coupled by the evidence that these bacteria underwent cell division in a
way that appears no different from extant, and the fact there is geochemical
evidence they could photosynthesize and fix carbon, there is no good
reason to deny these cells were indeed modern cyanobacteria. In fact,
on these basis of these fossils (and a fossil record that shows continuity
between these forms and modern species) Schopf himself has suggested
that modern cyanobacteria are indeed living fossils.
Of course, I am not suggesting that these fossils represent the first
bacteria, although they are quite consistent with the proposal of an early
design event represented by the appearance of modern cells. That such
fossils exist suggest bacteria were quite widespread by 3.5 billion years ago
(and thus if they did have cell walls without peptidoglycan, it becomes
even harder to explain why no extant species reflect this state). But the
fossils do pose a serious problem for a gradualistic, evolutionary view as
they suggest much evolutionary activity that predates the fossils. In fact,
rRNA analyses consistently place cyanobacteria near the top of the bacteria
tree. That is, in a span no longer than a few hundred million years, not only
would life have to originate from non-life,but it would then have to evolve a
creature that might very well be an example of one of the most advanced
procaryotes known. Thus, just as we found with DNA replication, a
nonintelligent cause for origins implies lots of earlier evolutionary
activity, all of which has completely become lost.
==
Stars are born within thick cocoons of dust very difficult to penetrate,
and for this reason current models describing the process are very
incomplete. Astronomers know, in broad terms, that the future star begins to
form within the dust cloud by accreting material which forms a disk, the
same disk out of which planets, comets and all the components of a planetary
system will probably form in the future --the disk is actually called a
protoplanetary disk. Once the star-to-be has gathered enough material, the
high pressures and temperatures in its centre trigger the first nuclear
reactions and the star lights up --it starts the ignition. During
this process the very young star or protostar emits jets of material that
can be detected with different techniques. Astronomers use these detectable
signs to classify the evolutionary stages of the new-born stars.

Brown dwarfs are intriguing objects, intermediate between stars and planets.
Often picturesquely described as failed stars, they are more massive than
Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, but they fall short of the
minimum mass a true star needs - 8% of the Suns mass. Stars can shine
constantly for billions of years because they generate nuclear energy from the
fusion of hydrogen into helium. But brown dwarfs cannot sustain nuclear power
production. After a modest initial flush, they cool off and become
progressively fainter.
Young brown dwarfs are now known to exist in the hundreds in the Suns
neighbourhood. They have surface temperatures that range down from about 3,500
K (3,200 degrees C) to 1,500 K (1,200 degrees C). Over most of this range their
appearances are similar to cool stars of the same temperature. However, as the
surface of a brown dwarf cools below 1,500 K, a dramatic chemical change takes
place: large amounts of methane form, considerably altering the appearance
of the brown dwarf.
==
The force lines have an extra dimension to dissipate in, so that
all the inverse square laws do indeed come out inverse cube if there
is a fourth spatial dimension big enough to matter. There is a good
discussion of extra spatial dimensions in Randall, L. (2002) Extra
Dimensions and Warped Geometries, Science, 296:1422. I think there is
also a good discussion of why the inverse square laws are inverse
square laws in Feynmans's Lectures on Physics,
==
Mar. 21, 2000
Outer space gases brought to Earth on buckyballs
Weird gases from outer space arrived on Earth during a dinosaur-killing
asteroid strike 65 million years ago, and survive in molecular cages called
buckyballs. Buckyballs, lacy-looking molecules made up of carbon atoms, are
also known as fullerenes and are named in honor of Buckminster Fuller because
they are shaped like the geodesic dome he invented. They can form on Earth
but also are born outside our solar system, in hot areas of the universe such
as the gas envelopes around embryonic stars. The buckyballs in question came
in on the killer asteroid. The gas-carrying buckyballs were found in various
parts of the globe, from North America to New Zealand to Denmark, in a layer
of sediment laid down after an ancient asteroid impact.The buckyballs
containing the gases arrived on Earth about 65 million years ago during an
asteroid impact that scientists theorize ended the age of the dinosaurs,
said Ted Bunch of NASAs Ames Research Center in California. The impact of
the big space rock may have killed the dinosaurs and most earthly life with
its globe-girdling dust cloud, but the sturdy little buckyballs survived with
their gaseous cargo intact, Bunch and his colleagues reported in the March 28
edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article
was available to subscribers on the Internet Tuesday. Inside the buckyballs
was a strange type of cosmic helium. Helium created on Earth usually has four
sub-atomic particles in its nucleus, while cosmic helium generally has only
three, the scientists said. Theyre enriched helium 3, Bunch said. We
know by the helium signature that it was formed probably outside the solar
system ... theyve trapped them inside (the buckyballs) at the site of
formation. This weird helium shows, as no other evidence has, that
buckyballs can transport extraterrestrial gases without letting them escape
on the way. Future research may focus on other gases that might have come
to Earth in this fashion. This research also supports the theory that gases
that make up Earths atmosphere and organic compounds came to Earths surface
during the so-called age of bombardment, some 3.8 billion to 4.5 billion
years ago, when asteroids were running wild in their orbits. This was the
period when the Moons craters were gouged out by asteroids, comets and
meteors, which also slammed into Earth, Mars and other celestial bodies.
Buckyballs probably drifted into the solar system early on, bringing
carbon and other material from far away. Most of the carbon in our bodies
came from outside the solar system.
==
NEUTRINO OSCILLATION HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED at
the Super-Kamiokande lab in Japan to a higher degree of certainty
than in previous experiments. Neutrinos, weakly interacting
elementary particles only detected for the first time in 1956, are
thought by some theorists to reside in a kind of schizoid existence;
that is, a neutrino would regularly transform (or oscillate) among
several alternative neutrino states, each having a slightly different
mass. Such a theory would help to explain the apparent shortfall of
neutrinos coming from the Sun. The oscillation proposition has
been tested using four neutrino sources: the Sun, Earths
atmosphere, reactors, and particle accelerators. Some tests find
tentative but ambiguous evidence for oscillation. Today, at the
Neutrino 98 conference in Takayama Japan, the Super-Kamiokande
collaboration (comprising 100 scientists from 23 institutions in
Japan and the US) is announcing the most exacting evidence yet for
neutrino oscillation. They study neutrinos made when cosmic rays
from outer space strike the upper atmosphere. Some neutrinos,
those made overhead above Japan, travel about 20 km or so before
entering the underground detector. Other neutrinos, those made in
the atmosphere on the far side of the globe, have a travel path of
20,000 km into the detector. In either case, they create, among
other things, a high energy electron or muon, which in turn emits
a telltale cone of light (Cerenkov radiation) observed by an array of
thousands of photodetectors mounted in a tank filled with pure
water. Sorting events by electron neutrino or muon neutrino, by
high energy or lower energy, and by zenith angle (overhead
approach or through the Earth), statistical evidence for oscillation
becomes evident. A 1-GeV muon neutrino seems to oscillate every
few hundred miles. Four years ago, the same group, using a
smaller detector, reported preliminary evidence on the basis of 200
events (Physics Today, Oct 1994). The new report is based on
several thousands of events, and provides an approximate mass
difference (the test cannot render any neutrino species mass
directly) of about 0.07 eV. Because they are so numerous in the
universe, neutrinos, with even a small mass, might play an
important role in the formation of galaxies.
==
Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert L. Park

Richard P. Feynman, What Do _You_ Care What Other People Think

Hilary Putnams _Reason, Truth, and History_ (1981, Cambridge Univ. Press).

Guari, K. L., Sinai, J. J., and Bandyopadhyay, J.K., (1995). Geologic
Weathering and its Implications on the Age of the Sphinx, Geoarchaeology,
Vol 10, No. 2, pp 119-133

1 Sagan, Carl & Druyan, Ann. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Random House,
New York. 1992.
2 Cicero, Marcus Tullius. The Nature of the Gods. Traslated by Horace
C. P. McGregor. Penguin Books, New York. 1972.
3 Johnson, B. C. The Atheist Debaters Handbook. Prometheus Books, Amherst,
New York. 1983.
4 Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, New York. 1988.
_Black Holes and Baby Universes_ by Steven Hawking

5 Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. Translated by
M. Friedlander. Dover Publications, Inc., New York.
==
Life had arisen almost immedately after the origin of the earth, which
suggests that life may be an inevitable chemical process on an Earth-like
planet. But life did not evolve much beyond blue-green algae for three
billion years, which suggests that large lifeforms with specialized organs
are hard to evolve, harder even than the origin of life.Carl Sagan *qua*
scientist, _Cosmos_, p. 32
==
A ribosome synthesizes proteins, but it also hydrolyzes ATP.
==
I define a meme as: the least unit of sociocultural information
relative to a selection process that has favourable or unfavourable
selection bias that exceeds its endogenous tendency to change. Dawkins
==
Plate tectonics was accepted because it explained how South America and
Africa fit together so well, and share similar fossil records, despite
being seperated by a huge expanse of water. It was suggested, and the
evidence supports the view (eg the MORS, the chemical composition of
igneous intrusive and extrusive rocks, the presence of similar fossils
in Scotland and America, but totally different fossils in England and
Wales (the result of the closing of the Iapetus Ocean - Plate tectonics)).
==
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those
who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that
this or that problem will never be solved by science -
Darwin, introduction of The Descent of Man
===
Glacial lakes form at the end of the glaciers which contain
distinctive varve shales, these are alternating layers of light and dark
sediment deposited during the summer and winter cycle of the glacier. Kettle
lakes are left behind by large pieces of ice resting on the valley at the end
of the glacier leaving an indentation on the ground. This and much more
evidence exists from viewing what galciation there is today. All you have to
do is go to New Zealand, or Norway - to mention but 2 places - to see evidence
of this. Many remnants of glaciation are seen around the world where glaciers
do not exist at the present time. The great lakes of the USA are signs of
glaciation, U shaped valleys exists all over Europe.
Ohio was 3/4 coverd by glaciers. Long Island is glacial till.
Cental Park has erratic boulders.
==
This is the method by which science works.
An hypothesis is proposed to explain a set of observed occurences
(facts). If this hypothesis is true, then under specified circumstances
certain other consequences must be observed (predictions). If observation
demonstrates that these predicted occurences are not observed, then the
hypothesis is disproved. If they _are_ observed the hypothesis is _not_
proven, because the observed phenomena may actually result from some
unsuspected cause unrelated to the hypothesis. But the hypothesis _has_
survived an attempt to disprove it, and is said to be tested. A system of
interconnected tested hypotheses is called a theory. A good theory has
enormous explanatory and predictive power.
A theory can be overthrown by a single test which disproves a critical
hypothesis of the theory. But what happens more commonly is that a failed
hypotheis shows a portion of the theory to have been based on mistaken
ideas, and so the theory is changed to incorporate the new hypothesis.
Sometimes this makes the theory more cohesisve, and improves its predictive
power. Sometimes the accumulation of ad hoc modifications produces a theory
so ramshackle that it is replaced by a new, more coherent theory. So far,
all the changes to the theory of evolution by natural selection have been of
the first sort, making the theory more coherent and improving its
explanatory and predictive power.

The consequence of this is that to a scientist all knowledge is conditional,
and there are no absolute Truths. And this attitude is both extremely
difficult to understand and highly disturbing to Creationists.

In science, theories must make predictions that can be tested. If the
theory predicts something that is shown to be false, then the theory
is false (and either must be discarded in favor of another theory, or
modified to incorporate the new information).
In religion and mythology, this is not the case.
In science, tests and experiments must be repeatable.
In religion and mythology, this is not the case.Neither rely on experiements.
Science does not require faith, nor does it address ideas that cannot
be tested. Religion and mythology do both of these things.

Main Entry: fact
Pronunciation: 'fakt
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin factum, from neuter of factus, past
participle of facere
Date: 15th century
1 : a thing done: as a obsolete : FEAT b :CRIME <accessory
after the fact c archaic : ACTION
2 archaic : PERFORMANCE, DOING
3 : the quality of being actual : ACTUALITY <a question of
fact hinges on evidence
4 a : something that has actual existence <space
exploration is now a fact b : an actual occurrence <prove
the fact of damage
5 : a piece of information presented as having objective
reality
- in fact : in truth

The InfoPlease Dictionary
"fact
Pronunciation: (fakt), [key]
n.
1. something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have
no basis in fact.
2. something known to exist or to have happened: Space travel is
now a fact.
3. a truth known by actual experience or observation; something
known to be true: Scientists gather facts about plant growth.
4. something said to be true or supposed to have happened: The
facts given by the witness are highly questionable.
5. Law.Often, facts. an actual or alleged event or circumstance,
as distinguished from its legal effect or consequence. Cf.
question of fact, question of law.
6. after the fact, Law.after the commission of a crime: an
accessory after the fact.
7. before the fact, Law.prior to the commission of a crime: an
accessory before the fact.
8. in fact, actually; really; indeed: In fact, it was a wonder
that anyone survived."
==
Karl Popper, epistemologist of science, defined a "fact" as
"an assertion that could conceivably be disproved".
==
A fact is has logical assertions, data, and observation supporting it, but
it makes no claim to be correct beyond its assertions and the current knowledge
of mankind. Simply put it can be proven incorrect and challenged, it is never
absolute nor Incontestable. A truth is absolute, without question or exception.

"Science: organized knowledge, especially when obtained by
observation and testing of facts, about the physical world,
natural laws and society; study leading to such knowledge."
Source: Oxford Advanced Learners Dictonary

Science is the procedure for creating propositions that match reality.

In all science, you can never actually find the truth. You attempt to
approach it as best you can, given the existing tools and ideas.

The validity of science models comes from the concensus of investigators
who have a good knowledge of the available facts and theories. Science
does not ever prove anything.
==
The Copernican Revolution. Thomas S. Kuhn. Harvard University Press
1957

I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is of having held
and believed that the Sun is at the centre of the Universe and immovable,
and that the Earth is not at the centre and that it moves.

... But whereas, after an injunction had been lawfully
intimated to me by this holy office to the effect that I
must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun
is the center of the world and immobile, and that the earth is
not the center of the world and moves, and that I must
not hold, defend, or teach in any way the said false doctrine,
after it had been notified to me that said doctrine was contrary
this new doctrine already condemned and brought forth arguments
in its favor without presenting any solution for them, I have been
judged vehemently...\ - Galileo, a loyal Catholic, acceding to
authority, 1632.

And all such books that taught either that the Earth was not the
center of the Universe and that Earth orbited the Sun were placed on
the Index of Forbidden books.

Galileo,Science and the Church
Jerome J. Langford

Koestler's _The Sleepwalkers_ History of the heliocentric model
==
"The word 'theory' in most common English dictionaries is defined (for
the present context) something like this:
"a formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of
certain observed phenomena which have been verified to some degree."

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another.
"1.a. Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide
variety of circumstances, especially a system of assumptions, accepted
principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise
explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena.]
==
sci-ence n. 1 the state or fact of knowledge 2 systematized
knowledge derived from observation, study and experimentation carried on
in order to determine the nature or principles of what is being
studied."
Webster's:
"sci-ence n. 1: the state of knowing : _knowledge as distinguished from
ignorance or misunderstanding_ 2: a: a department of systematized
knowledge as an object of study b: something (as a sport or technique)
that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge c: _one of
the natural sciences_."
Physicists used "theory" to refer to a mathematical structure built on general
physical axioms from which all results are derived, and "model" to refer to a
mathematical structure built (a posteriori) to reproduce some set of
observations.
==
http://www.bbcc.ctc.edu/~joer/theory.htm
A theory is well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world
that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences and tested hypotheses. (National
Academy of Sciences, 1998)
==
nat-u-ral-ism n. philos. the belief that the natural world, as
explained by scientific laws, is all that exists and that there is no
supernatural or spiritual creation, control, or significance."
==
My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas but
Ill leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown
plausible reason which I can grasp. - Antony Leeuwenhoek
==
* | Logic used | Logic not used | *
* -----------------|----------------|------------------|
* Data used | Science | Empiricism | *
* -----------------|----------------|------------------|
* Data not used | Rationalism | Mysticism |
==
Nature magazine, May 19,1999
Continental crust forms from, and thus chemically depletes, the Earths
mantle. Evidence that the Earths mantle was already chemically depleted by
melting before the formation of todays oldest surviving crust has been
presented in the form of Sm-Nd isotope studies of 3.8-4.0 billion years old
rocks from Greenland and Canada. But this interpretation has been questioned
because of the possibility that subsequent perturbations may have
re-equilibrated the neodymium-isotope compositions of these rocks.
Independent and more robust evidence for the origin of the earliest crust
and depletion of the Archaean mantle can potentially be provided by
hafnium-isotope compositions of zircon, a mineral whose age can be precisely
determined by U-Pb dating, and which can survive metamorphisms. But the
amounts of hafnium in single zircon grains are too small for the isotopic
composition to be precisely analysed by conventional methods. Here we report
hafnium-isotope data, obtained using the new technique of multiple-collector
plasma-source mass spectrometry, for 37 individual grains of the oldest
known terrestrial zircons (from the Narryer Gneiss Complex, Australia,
with U-Pb ages of up to 4.14Gyr.
==
Thorium-230 is an intermediate decay product of uranium-238 which has a
half-life of about 4.468 billion years (Strahler, 1987, p.131). Thus, it
will be continually generated as long as the supply of U-238 lasts.

According to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 7th
edition (1992), the naturally existing uranium isotopes are: U-234
(0.00054%); U-235 (0.7%); U-238 (99.275%). However, trace amounts of
U-236 also exist in nature. Dalrymple (1991, p.376) informs us that
U-236 is rare but is produced by nuclear reactions in some uranium ores
where sufficient slow neutrons are available.
Thus, Th-230 and U-236 are currently being generated.
==
Beta particles with E < 3 Mev are stopped within a meter of atmosphere.
Protons with E < 50 Mev are stopped within 1 meter.
Alpha particles with energies less than about 150 Mev
are stopped within a meter of atmosphere.
So, the overwhelming majority of the flux will be stopped
well within 1 meter of atmosphere at standard pressure. You
might ask about the flux high in the atmosphere. Well, at
10 km, close to where planes fly, pressures are about
one-third of sea level. This is obtained from the following
table for atmospheric density (in kg/m^3).

0 1.225
5km 0.736
10 km 0.413
15 km 0.194
20 km 0.088
So, the flux from a solar storm is stopped well up in the
atmosphere, before it reaches the surface of the earth.
==
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and
weighs 30 tons, computers in the future by the year 2000 may have only 1,000
vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons. -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
==
"What Is This Thing Called Science? : An Assessment of the Nature and
Status of Science and Its Methods" by A. F. Chalmers - Paperback - 288 pages
==
The Coconino Sandstone of the Colorado Plateau averages about 315 feet (96 m)
in thickness and covers an area of around 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq.
km). It contains cross-beds up to 30 feet(9m)thick. There are places where
there is evidence for the passage of time between layers. For instance, there
are documented cases of colonised sea-floors (hardgrounds) throughout the
geological record (Wilson and Palmer 1992). They are quite common in
Ordovician, Jurassic, and Cretaceous rocks. Hardgrounds are places where
sedimentation ceased, the sea-floor became hardened, and burrowing and boring
creatures like clams, worms, or shrimps colonised the hardened surface
Obviously, hardgrounds like these need time to develop.
==
Faure, G. Principles and Applications of Inorganic Geochemistry, MacMillian,
1991

==
White tailed jack rabbit
http://www.fw.vt.edu/fishex/nmex_main/species/050593.htm
Black tailed jack rabbit
http://www.fw.vt.edu/fishex/nmex_main/species/050591.htm
http://www.utep.edu/epbionet/cheklist/mammals/ml03jack.htm
http://www.wildernessexp.com/cal-eco/anideser/jack.htm
==
In the Precambrian, there are Vendian surface trails attributed to arthropods,
and a couple of claimed body fossils. I don't think there are any Vendian
fossils attributed to mollusks. The small shelly fauna of the Tommotian
includes both things that might be mollusks (they look like clams) and
things that certainly are pieces of lobopods rather like onychophorans
(Microdictyon).
==
Read some real scientific papers. they struggle to lay out all their
assumptions as explicitly as possible. If an experiment is based on other
experiments they are mentioned clearly and the relationships lain out.
This has something to do with issues of plagiarism, but the most important
reason is to see the connections, to see what is necessary and how things
would change is one piece is wrong.
==
Excluding the affects of man made chemicals, ozone is being created and
destroyed by solar radiation on the order of 300 million tons per day in the
upper atmosphere.
==
Prior to 2.0-2.2 Ga, the atmosphere and oceans contained very little O2.
Because Fe2+ is soluble in anoxic water, one of the consequences of
low O2 was the maintenance of substantial [Fe2+] dissolved in seawater.

http://www.primarysources.org/curricula/curric/iron/geology/

Surprisingly, BIF [banded iron formations] can tell scientists
much about Earth s early atmosphere. This formation was deposited
between 2.4 and 1.6 billion years ago, which places it in the
middle Precambrian geologic time period.

J. Sarfati is correct when he states that hematite (Fe2O3) is well
oxidized iron. However, the presence of hematite in early to middle
Precambrian rocks doesnt mean that free oxygen (O2) was at current
levels in the middle to early Precambrian atmosphere. The real
problem for young-Earth creationists (YECs) is how large areas of Banded Iron
Formations (BIFs) with abundant highly pure layers of hematite could
have developed in any O2-rich atmosphere that was needed to support
Adam and Eve. BIFs are iron-rich deposits that mostly consist of
magnetite (Fe3O4, a partially reduced iron mineral), chert
(fine-grained silica) and hematite (Fe2O3). Some BIFs extend over
distances of 1500 km (Blatt et al., 1980, p. 604), but contain very
few clastic materials (Blatt et al., 1980, p.599, 605), which
suggests that BIFs formed by chemical precipitation (Blatt et al., 1980,
p.604-607).
BIFs are rarely found in rocks that are less than about 1.8 billion
years old (Blatt et al., 1980, p. 604). The youngest BIFs are 600 to
800 million years old (Blatt et al., 1980, p. 607). The geologic
evidence indicates that after about 1.8-2 billion years ago, O2
levels in the atmosphere became sufficient enough to largely prevent the
formation of BIFs. Ironstones and red beds replaced BIFs in the Late
Precambrian and Phanerozoic geologic records (Blatt et al., 1980,p. 598-608).

The early to middle Precambrian atmosphere was probably rich in CO2
and low in O2, somewhat like Venus atmosphere is today.

In composition, perhaps somewhat, but not in density, at least by
the mid Precambrian. The early atmosphere was significantly different
from today, but not nearly so inhospitable to life.

A high CO2, low O2 atmosphere would have produced acidic oceans (Krauskopf
and Bird, 1995, p. 578).
Carbonic acid is quite weak, both in terms of reactivity and the
degree to which it dissociates in water. I cant recall how acidic
the ancient ocean is thought to have been as result of the greater partial
pressure of CO2 in the early atmosphere.

The presence of acidic oceans explains the formation of BIFs and the ususal
absence of dolostones and limestones in early and middle Precambrian rocks.

It might also explain the relatively late origin of calcareous shells in
either metazoans or single-celled organisms, which do not occur until the late
Precambrian, and which had very limited distribution until the Cambrian Period.

Dolomite and calcite would have been very soluble in the acidic waters and
would not have precipitated as dolostones or limestones. Acidic oceans and a
low O2 atmosphere could also readily explain the abundant silica in BIFs. When
compared with current mildly alkaline sea water, acidic ocean water would
have been more effective in breaking down silicate minerals and mobilizing
silica for later chert deposition (Krauskopf, 1979, p. 214).

I thought they occur in intracontinental rift basins? If so, that would
imply at least the strong potential for associated volcanism.
Perhaps, rather than volcanic eruptions, it had something to do with
extensive hydrothermal activity instead ?

Their iron probably came from the SLOW weathering of Fe2+ from silicates
(Blatt et al., 1980, p. 606-607).

There is an alternative
interpretation where much of the Fe2+ was provided by deep sea hydrothermal
vents that were relatively more active during the Precambrian than today, and
much of the iron remained in solution and was transported over long distances
because the ocean was density/chemically stratified. This allows for
somewhat higher atmospheric O2 levels during the times of BIF deposition.
At least some of the non-volcanic Superior-type Banded Iron Formations
formed in shallow water as event by granular and oolitic textures (see Blatt
et al., 1980, p. 606). Theyre miogeosynclinal. Density and chemically
stratified water shouldnt form in these shallow water conditions.

Blatt, H.; G. Middleton and R. Murray, 1980, Origin of Sedimentary
Rocks, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632.

Krauskopf, K.B., 1979, Introduction to Geochemistry, 2nd ed.,
McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York.

Krauskopf, K.B. and D.K. Bird, 1995, Introduction to Geochemistry,
3rd ed., McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York.

Meyer, R., 1997, Paleoalterites and Paleosols: Imprints of
Terrestrial Processes in Sedimentary Rocks, A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.

Rye, R. and H.D. Holland, 1998, Paleosols and the Evolution of
Atmospheric Oxygen: A Critical Review, American Journal of Science,
v. 298, October, p. 621-672.
--
http://www.jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/RogueComCollege/RCC_Lectures/Band
ed_Iron.html

"Archean granites have paleoweathering profiles
indicative of oxic environments" and the authors attempt to resolve
this by admitting that there may have been minute amounts of free
oxygen after all.

It is acknowledged that a PO2 of approximately 1 to 2 percent PAL
appears likely for an extended period prior to 2100 MA. At this rate,
they say, "metabolism of single-celled organisms becomes possible,
while an effective ozone screen expands the ecological possibilities of
life."

http://www.geol.binghamton.edu/faculty/naslund/Geol.111.lect25a.html
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/lectures/lecture5.html

Also, BIFs were formed by bacterial photosynthesis. The info is that, at
times, iron was dropping out in the Hamersley Iron Province in Australia at 30
milion tons a year, producing some 20 billion tons of iron ore. This
seems to suggest a lot of oxidation occurring, not confined to just the
oxygen sinks of BIFs but also to the oxygen sinks of anaerobic life
forms. This is said to have occurred around 2500 to 2000 Ma, before
eukaryotic development took place.

http://mac01.eps.pitt.edu/harbbook/c_xv/chap15.html
http://www.slip.net/~farb/atmos_evolution.htm
http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/coherentcultures/5BYS/5BYS-Chapt2.html
http://www.natureasia.com/get.pl5/abstracts/issue981203/abstract981203_4
50.shtml

A contrary theory that replaces O2 with S for deep ocean
waters is presented in the last site.
New evidence from Australian zircon crystals suggest that there
was liquid water on earth as early as 4.4 Bya (4400 Mya)

References:
Cleaves HJ, and Miller SL. (1998 Jun 23). Oceanic protection of prebiotic
organic compounds from UV radiation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA , 95, 7260-3.

Kasting J F. (1997). Warming early earth and Mars. Science, 276, 1213-1215.

Sagan C, and Chyba C. (1997). The early faint sun paradox: organic shielding
of ultraviolet-labile greenhouse gases. Science, 276, 1217-1221.

Kasting J F. (1993). Earth's early atmosphere. Science, 259, -60.

"Pyrite (iron sulfide) and Uranite (uranium oxide UO2) occur in rivers
from 3 to 2 Bya.
These minerals are not stable when O2 levels are high. Their presence in rivers
confirms our suspicions that oxygen levels were very low on the early Earth.
Still, it is a bit surprising that O2 remained so low, since oxygenic
photosynthesis almost certainly goes back to 3.5 Bya. Where is the oxygen
going?

Banded Iron Formations (BIF)
BIFs are common from 3.5 to 2.0 Bya. They are formed from
alternating bands of chert (SiO2) and iron oxide. Iron is continuously
supplied to the oceans through the weathering of rocks and from volcanic
eruptions. In an oxygen-poor ocean, iron is soluble in water, so chert
dominates the sediments on the ocean floor. In an oxygen-rich ocean, iron
is oxidized (it rusts), forming minerals that are insoluble in water, so iron
oxide dominates the ocean-floor sediments. These alternating iron oxide/chert
beds indicate that waves of O2 were being pumped into the surface ocean by
stromatolites. Ultimately, the oxygen is used up by the "rusting" of this
iron, and the ocean reverts to its oxygen-poor state.

More likely, the level of oxygen in the ocean remained low until the available
iron was used up, at which point oxygen levels rose rapidly until it killed the
organisms producing oxygen locally. At that point there is a population
collapse which allows iron levels to rise once again via weathering.
Eventually, the levels of O2 reached the point where there was no such input
iron, but the organisms, having undergone repeated oxygen-related stress cycles
Bacteria had, by this time, evolved mechanisms to tolerate higher O2 levels.
Eventually some of these tolerance mechanisms became the basis of
using oxygen aerobically. It should be noted that nitrogen fixation
probably was limiting at some early stages of life as well.

This process generated tremendous iron deposits, which are the
source of most iron ores that are mined today. For example, between
2.5 to 2.0 Bya, at least 6.5x1014 tons of BIF were deposited.

Aerobic Respiration?
Some of the O2 might have been sucked up as soon as it was produced if
stromatolite communities also contained bacteria capable of doing aerobic
respiration. If so, O2 would be used up close to its site of formation and
would not have leaked into the atmosphere or oceans.

Eventually, stromatolites overwhelmed the oxygen absorbing capacities
of these "sinks", and O2 began to build up in the atmosphere. There are two
geological signs of this event.

Pyrite and Uranite disappear from river gravels at 2.0 Bya.

Continental Red Beds
Beginning 2.3 Bya, iron minerals in soils on land began to be oxidized (rusted)
during weathering. Soils turned red. The atmosphere must have contained O2
for this to occur.

Based on the types of oxide minerals present in early Proterozoic soils, it has
been estimated that O2 levels were from 2 to 10% of modern. Today,
O2 comprises 20% of the atmosphere, so in the late Proterozoic, it may have
comprised 0.4 to 2% of the atmosphere.

One important environmental effect of higher O2 levels: an Ozone Shield

With O2 levels in the 1% range, the stratosphere would begin to develop an
effect ozone (O3) layer. Stratospheric ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation.
This ozone shield isn't especially important to aquatic organisms, who are
protected by water. However for living things to colonize land, an ozone shield
is essential or the organisms would get cooked by UV radiation.
--
Hematite (Fe2O3) is well oxidized iron. However, the presence of hematite in
early to middle Precambrian rocks doesnt mean that free oxygen (O2) was at
current levels in the middle to early Precambrian atmosphere. Banded iron
Formations are iron-rich deposits that mostly consist of magnetite (Fe3O4,
a partially reduced iron mineral), chert (fine-grained silica) and hematite
(Fe2O3). Some BIFs extend over distances of 1500 km (Blatt et al., 1980,
p. 604), but contain very few clastic materials (Blatt et al., 1980, p.599,
605), which suggests that BIFs formed by chemical precipitation
(Blatt et al., 1980, p. 604-607).

BIFs are rarely found in rocks that are less than about 1.8 billion years old
(Blatt et al., 1980, p. 604). The youngest BIFs are 600 to 800 million years
old (Blatt et al., 1980, p. 607). The geologic evidence indicates that
after about 1.8-2 billion years ago, O2 levels in the atmosphere became
sufficient enough to largely prevent the formation of BIFs. Ironstones and
red beds replaced BIFs in the Late Precambrian and Phanerozoic geologic
records (Blatt et al., 1980, p. 598-608).

The early to middle Precambrian atmosphere was probably rich in CO2 and low
in O2, somewhat like Venus atmosphere is today. A high CO2, low O2 atmosphere
would have produced acidic oceans (Krauskopf and Bird, 1995, p. 578). The
presence of acidic oceans explains the formation of BIFs and the ususal absence
of dolostones and limestones in early and middle Precambrian rocks. Dolomite
and calcite would have been very soluble in the acidic waters and would not
have precipitated as dolostones or limestones. Acidic oceans and a low O2
atmosphere could also readily explain the abundant silica in BIFs. When
compared with current mildly alkaline sea water, acidic ocean water would have
been more effective in breaking down silicate minerals and mobilizing silica
for later chert deposition (Krauskopf, 1979, p. 214).

Some of the older (older than 2.6 billion years) BIFs are clearly associated
with volcanics and the volcanoes could have been sources of abundant iron
(Blatt et al., 1980, p. 606). However, the 1.8 to 2.6 billion year old
Superior type BIFs typically show no association with volcanism
(Blatt et al., 1980, p. 604, 606). Their iron probably came from the
SLOW weathering of Fe2+ from silicates (Blatt et al., 1980, p. 606-607).
Considering how long weathering processes take (Meyer, 1997, p. 120),
it is doubtful that YEC could have provided enough weathering time for
the formation of the Superior type BIFs.

Under a low O2 atmosphere, Fe2+ would have been quite soluble and well
distributed in early acidic oceans, which can explain the widespread
distribution of hematite and magnetite layers in BIFs (Blatt et al., 1980,
p. 607). Initially, some of the dissolved Fe2+ in the acidic Precambrian
ocean waters probably precipitated as iron sulfides. The low levels of oxygen
in the Precambrian oceans also could have been sufficient enough to partially
oxidize Fe2+ to Fe3+ and precipitate magnetite or magnetite precursors over
widespread areas.
Also see:http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/RogueComCollege/
RCC_Lectures/Banded_Iron.html for more information. More extensive, but
still slow, oxidation of Fe2+ to Fe3+ would have formed colloids
(fine-grained, suspended, insoluble particles) or chemically precipitated
widespread thin layers of geothite, limonite or other iron oxyhydroxides
(Krauskopf, 1979, p. 212-213; Krauskopf and Bird, 1995, p. 360-363). Over
time (which is something that YECs dont have much of) buried geothite,
limonite and iron oxyhydroxide layers would have dehydrated and possibly
converted to hematite (Krauskopf, 1979, p. 212; Krauskopf and Bird, 1995,
p. 362).

Rye and Holland (1998) also present evidence from Precambrian soils that O2
levels dramatically increased to more than 0.03 atmospheres between 2.2 and
2.0 billion years ago. Increases in atmospheric O2 at 2.0 to 2.2 billion
years are consistent with the large disappearance of BIFs at about this time
or a little later. However, the formation of these soils under a low O2
atmosphere is completely inconsistent with the YEC Creation Week, where
abundant O2 is needed to support the birds and aquatic animals on the 5th
Day and the land animals and Adam on Day Six. Because the excellent and
consistent scientific evidence for a low-O2 early to middle Precambrian
atmosphere refutes their interpretations of Genesis, YECs will never accept
any of this evidence, no matter how good it is.

Blatt, H.; G. Middleton and R. Murray, 1980, Origin of Sedimentary
Rocks, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632.

Meyer, R., 1997, Paleoalterites and Paleosols: Imprints of
Terrestrial Processes in Sedimentary Rocks, A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
g
http://www.primarysources.org/curricula/curric/iron/geology/index_p.html
==
Slow heating and cooling globally could have formed large areas of cracks on
Venus' surface. A major episode of resurfacing occurred on Venus roughly 700
million years ago, in which water and sulfur levels in the atmosphere rose.
==
Milky Way eats small galaxies
Our Galaxy has engulfed several other small star systems in the course
of its history, according to two papers in the scientific journal Nature.
Amina Helmi of the Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands searched for
remnants of these ancient mergers in the diffuse cloud of stars (the
Galactic halo) that surrounds the dense stellar disk. Results showed
that one in ten of the old stars in the halo seems to be moving in a
coherent way, suggesting that they represent a fossil stream, part
of a precursory cluster to the present-day Galaxy.
The Andromeda galaxy will collide with our galaxy in about 3 billion years.
Get prepared.
==
In science, fact can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be
perverse to withold provisional assent. I suppose that apples might start
to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics
classrooms. -Stephen Jay Gould
Theories are the general principles which explain, organize or
illuminate facts; and which allow you to make inferences.
==
Asexual (i.e.- parthenogenetic) vertebrates.
Iindo-pacific geckos (*Hemidactylus garnoti*).
Some teiid (aka whiptail) lizards are also parthenogenetic.
This would be considered a secondary loss of sexuality in these lizards since
most members of the genera *Hemidactylus* and *Cnemidophorus* are sexual.
==
Dawkins argued about brains being agents constructed to act as proxies
for the genes that constructed them. Mainly because genes cannot act fast
enough on their own behalf.
==
_Phantoms in the Brain_, by V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee - best
of the bunch. It's brilliantly written, informative without being too
technical, and easy to understand.
_Matter of Mind_, by Kenneth Heilman - a bit dry and clinical, but very
comprehensive; presents evidence for neurological disorders affecting
virtually every part of the brain.
_Altered Egos_, by Todd Feinberg - the most likely to give you unsettling
dreams. ;) Descriptions of some bizarre, sometimes even disturbing brain
disorders, and some interesting speculations on the nature of the self.
_Descartes' Error_, by Antonio Damasio - some boring parts, but good
treatment of frontal-lobe disorders (those which typically have the
greatest effect on what we think of as the self), and the discussion of the
case of Phineas Gage in particular is the best treatment I've seen of that
topic.
==
Experiments show in the most direct way that clocks in a gravitational
potential run slower. The Mossbauer effect shows that the transitions which
produce gamma radiation take longer to occur in a stronger gravitational
field. See Pound, R. V., and G. A. Rebka, Apparent Weight of Photons,
Phys. Rev.Lett. 4, 337-341 (1960).
Pound, R. V., and J. L. Snider, Effect of gravity on gamma radiation,
Phys. Rev. B 140, 788-803 (1964).

Mossbauer effect
Pound, R. V., and G. A. Rebka, Apparent Weight of Photons, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 4, 337-341 (1960).
==
See G.J.Chaitin, Information, Randomness & Incompleteness.

Dretskes 1981 _Knowledge and the Flow of Information_

Theodore Schick, Jr. and Lewis Vaughn.
How To Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age.
==
http://museum.montana.edu/www/paleocat/research.html
Schweitzer, M. H., Johnson, C, Zocco, T. G., Horner, J. R. and Starkey, J.
R. 1997. Preservation of biomolecules in cancellous bone of
Tyrannosaurus rex. 17(2):349-359.
Schweitzer, M. H., Marshall, M., Carron, K., Bohle, D. S., Busse, S. C.,
Arnold, E. V., Barnard, D., Horner, J. R. and Starkey, J. R. 1997.
Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone. Proceedings of
the National Academy Science 94: 6291-6296.
==
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express
it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in
numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind .--- Lord Kelvin
==
The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to the north have risen very rapidly. In
just 50 million years, peaks such as Mt. Everest have risen to heights of more
than 9 km. The impinging of the two land masses has yet to end. The Himalayas
continue to rise more than 1 cm a year -- a growth rate of 10 km in a million
years! If that is so, why arent the Himalayas even higher? Scientists believe
that the Eurasian Plate may now be stretching out rather than thrusting up, and
such stretching would result in some subsidence due to gravity.
==
Geologists say the Canyons newest rocks, the gray-tan Kaibab limestone that
forms the rim, were laid down as ocean sediment 250 million years ago. The
oldest layer, the black Vishnu schist that lies alongside the Colorado, is
about 1.8 billion years old.
==
Luis Rodriguez of the National University of Mexico used the Very Large
Array (VLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Laboratory in New Mexico to
study a double-star system 450 light years away in the constellation Taurus.
He reported his results in the September 1998 journal Nature. Rodriguez
detected that each star was encircled by a thick ring of cosmic dust
and gas, exactly the sort of matter that coalesces to form planets. The rings
contained enough matter to form two such Jupiter-sized planets. Researchers
at the Extrasolar Research Corp. in Pasadena, California, looking in the same
constellation, now have what they think is the first photograph of a planet
using Hubbles new near-infrared camera. The planet, about twice the size of
Jupiter, has been provisionally called TMR-1C
==
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/pi/pi.html
DREAMS OF A FINAL THEORY. Steven Weinberg. 1992. NY: Pantheon Books. 334 p.
Cloth, $25.00. Weinberg says that the only way that any sort of science can
proceed is to assume that there is no divine intervention (p 247). As such
there is an incompatibility between the naturalistic theory of evolution
and religion as generally understood

January 1990 Discover magazine Big article on the Pi computation method by
the Chudnovsky method

Chudnovskys algorithm is at
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/papers/borwein/paper/html/
local/general/html/node1.html
This has much on Pi.
http://daisy.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/
node12.html#SECTION00510000000000000000

http://www.mathsoft.com/asolve/constant/pi/srs.html
http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~pvouplin/pi/piremark.htm
http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~dmjones/hbp/jcomp/Authors/chudnovskydv.html

The Joy of Pi, David Blatner.
The History of Pi by Petr Beckmann, Golem Press, CO, 1971 (fourth edition
1977)
==
Barrabes, C & Frolov, V P(1996) Creation of multiple de Sitter universes
inside a Schwarzschild black hole, Helv Phys Acta 69:253-256 (gr-qc/9607040)
Harrison, Edward R(1995) The natural selection of universes containing
intelligent life, Q J R Astr Soc 36:193-203

Vilenkin(1983) Quantum creation of universes, Phys Rev D 27(1983)2848-2855
Atkatz & Pagels (1982) Origin of the universe as a quantum tunneling event ,
Phys Rev D 25(1982)2065-2073
Andrei Linde (1998)Quantum Creation of an Open Inflationary Universe
gr-qc/9802038

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, about string theory
Michael B. Green, John H. Schwarz, and Edward Witten, Superstring
Theory, two volumes, Cambridge U. Press, Cambridge, 1987.

http://www.itp.ucsb.edu/online/bh_teach/thorne/

Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids,
Nuclei and Particles by Eisberg & Resnick

http://www.itp.ucsb.edu/online/bh_teach/polchinski/ string theory

Phillip Kitchers _The Advancement of Science_ 1992

Imre Lakatos presentation is found in _Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge_ 1972 as a very long essay
==
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/ Good math page with fractals
==
Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond about war and disease

Robertson and Noonan, Relativity and Cosmology, Saunders, 1968

Smolin, Lee}, "Sochastic mechanics, hidden variables, and gravity"
Penrose, R and Isham, C. J., Clarendon Press},1986
==
Charles Darwin said Accurate Knowledge is the true wealth of the world.
Science is not to be feared or hated, but embraced so that we may learn and
use it to better the conditions of life.
==
Maxwells Equations about electric and magnetic fields
del dot E = rho Coulombs law
del cross E = - dB/dt Faradays law
del dot B = 0 This one has no name it is just the observation of absence
of magnetic monopoles.
del cross B = J + dE/dt Amperes law (modified by
Maxwell through the addition of the last term.

the curl of H = J + partial B with respect to t

div(D) = pfree
curl(E) = -diff(B,t)
div(B) = 0
curl(H) = Jfree + diff(D,t)
==
Merril and McElhinneys book, The Geomagnetic Field. History and nature of
the field
==
In the journal Nature, a team of researchers unveiled a history of Earths
magnetic field stretching back 800,000 years. Pieced together from 33 sediment
reports, it goes back far enough to cover the last polar reversal 780,000
years ago.
==
He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart
of science. -Carl Sagan on Johannes Kepler in Cosmos
==
In large suns when hydrogen is exhausted and gravity contraction
ensures, and such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain the internal
pressure of support for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs.
The gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny
particles devoid of electric potential, and such particles readily escape
from the solar interior thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun
within a few days.
No tiny particles devoid of electric potential that could escape readily
from the interior of a collapsing star were known to exist in 1934. In fact,
the reality of such particles were not confirmed until 1956. The existence
of particles that might have such properties had been put forward as a
suggestion by Wolfgang Pauli in 1932, because studies on radioactive beta
decay of atoms had indicated that a neutron ould