Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

When your car needs repairs, do you ask the first person you meet on the street what to do? Certainly not – you take it to an auto mechanic. When your home heating system breaks down in the middle of the coldest night of the year, do you call your doctor? Of course not – you call a heating expert. It would appear that calling an expert for help with situations beyond our normal experience is just common sense. So why is it that the farther removed a problem is from our everyday experience, the more likely it is that we will rely on our “gut feelings” or self-proclaimed “experts” for help? But that seems to be the case. Seemingly normal people will ignore the warnings of tens of thousands of scientists who have devoted their entire adult lives to studying climate change and the associated problems, and heed the anti-science ranting of talk radio pundits. As with any large group there are a few scientists who swim against the tide, and when one of these is discovered, his op...

I have just finished reading James A. Michener’s book, Space . Published in 1982, the semi-historical novel follows the development of America’s space program from the acquisition of the German rocket scientists at Peenemünde in 1945 to the flyby of the planet Saturn by Voyager 1 in 1980. After the highly successful moon landings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the public’s interest in science waned, and was replaced by a wide-spread return to fundamental religion. In my opinion it is regrettable that the interest in science was replaced ; I believe that science and religion can flourish in complementary harmony. The biblical writers were performing exactly the same sort of activities as those of today’s scientists. Using the resources at their command, they were looking at the ongoing flow of the Universe, and trying to make sense of it. Their tools for physical measurement consisted of a straight edge and a compass – there were no clocks, thermometers, or telescopes. ...

     I am beginning to think that high schools and colleges have discontinued the teaching of science, particularly to Congresspersons. Especially in the Republican Party, a complete lack of scientific education appears to be a requirement for membership. And it's a damned shame, because the world economy runs on scientific knowledge, and to make vital economic decisions on the basis of superstition or lack of knowledge is like driving a horse and buggy in the Indianapolis 500. Here are a few cases in point:      A perfect example is the recent comment by Representative Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee from Missouri. “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Rep. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”      I presume that “legitimate” rape is the situation in which the victim is physically forced to...

     On September 23rd researchers at CERN, Europe’s main physics laboratory, announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos had apparently sped from the lab’s headquarters near Geneva, through the Earth’s crust, to an underground detector 730km (450 miles) away, around 60 billionths of a second faster than light would take to cover the same distance. If this observation turns out to be true, it will mean that Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which sets the speed of light as the limit of velocity in the Universe, is in need of tweaking.      According to the Special Theory, traveling faster than light would open the possibility of travel through time, which would lead to several paradoxes. For example: There was a young lady named Bright, Who could travel faster than light. She took off one day, In a relative way, And came back the previous night. Could a person travel back in time and kill his grandfather before the ti...

     Recently I purchased a Philips “GoGear,” a gadget that holds music and/or pictures. It is 1-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 1/2” in size, and holds up to 900 songs or 1,500 pictures. If you have read previous entries in my blog, you know of my interest in music. I don't have 900 songs in it – yet - but I do have almost 800. Younger readers probably would not recognize the artists in my collection.      The GoGear not only holds the songs - they can be replayed either in the order they were entered into the device, or by individual selection. One can also replay them in random order, or by artist, album, or individually tailored playlist. The gadget cost me $40 at Walmart.      Now I am telling you this because the device is an example of the rapidly increasing amount of information which can be stored in smaller and smaller volumes. When I was young (a contemporay of Alley Oop), a collection of 900 songs would have required a minimum of...

      The disagreement between climatologists and deniers goes on. In a 2009 survey, 97% of respondents who listed climate science as their area of expertise, and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change, agree that human activity is "a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures."       In a recent CNN poll of the general public, when the question “. . . from what you have heard or read, do you believe increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century are due more to the effects of pollution from human activities, or natural changes in the environment that are not due to human activities?", 50% replied human activities, 46% said natural causes, and 4% were unsure.       There seems to be a general mistrust of the findings of science, which I believe is due primarily to the constant barrage of false information ...

      Dreams can take us to magical places and into seemingly impossible situations. In a dream we may walk out of our front door into a new and strange, even scary, landscape. We may be transported into a strange and nightmarish land of fantasy. There appears to be no limit to the range of our dreams.       But a limit does exist. All dreams are personal, and both research and common sense indicate that one can only dream of things that one knows about. That is not to say that one needs to actually experience dizzying heights or fierce dragons, but a person who has never heard of a dragon will not dream of one.       Dreams are usually triggered by an event which has occurred while one is awake: a problem that is being worked on, a traumatic event, or even something as innocuous as a scene in a book, or a song being played in the background. While one is asleep, the mind tries not only to file the memory of th...

      President Obama has announced a change in NASA’s mission; he has decided that the agency should bypass the moon, and concentrate instead on developing the necessary equipment for deep space exploration of the solar system.       He has also decided to rely on private contractors to handle near-earth orbit functions – for example, ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station. In this way, NASA can concentrate and what it does best, the application of science to space technology, and beaucoup jobs will hopefully be created in the private sector.       Not surprisingly, opposition to the plan surfaced immediately – Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, criticized the decision; on the other hand, “Buzz Aldrin, the second moonwalker, endorsed it. Congress has yet to weigh in on the plan.       The announcement brings into focus the different styles of planning. ...

      In the blog “Dark Science” on April 4th, I wrote about the similarity between the search for “luminiferous aether,” during the 19th century, and “dark matter” during the 21st century. Both of these are good examples of what scientists do.       Both experiments follow the same pattern. Here is an outline of the general procedure: 1.) A scientist observes an event in his particular area of expertise – an event that has some questionable aspect, such as light waves traveling through empty space without an intervening medium, or the actual mass of the universe exceeds the sum of the observable mass. He postulates some reasonable explanation such as luminiferous aether or dark matter. 2.) He sets up an experiment or observation whereby his postulate can be tested. (Michelson-Morley Experiment or the Large Hadron Collider.) 3.) He runs the experiment and systematically observes the results. 4.) He interprets the results based on...

      The theory that light consists of waves was proposed as early as the last half of the 17th century, and was almost universally accepted until the late 19th century. However, the theory did pose a significant problem.       It was thought that waves always were propagated through some kind of medium. For example, water waves needed water to spread and sound waves needed air. But how could light waves propagate through empty space? How did light from the sun travel through the vacuum of space to arrive on earth?       So scientists came up with the idea of the “luminiferous aether,” an invisible medium which pervaded space. This idea held sway until 1887, when Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed their ground-breaking experiment which proved that the luminiferous aether did not exist. Although in some experiments light appeared to be a wave, it did not require a propagating medium.   ...

      In my blog of March 29, There Is Life Outside Of Football , I wrote some disparaging things about the science curriculum at my old high school. Shortly thereafter I received a very polite email from Mr. Seth Kensinger, the AP Chemistry teacher at Manheim Central. Since then I have talked to him on the telephone, and received an education about how things are done outside the blog world.       I was concerned that no students from Manheim Central entered the Annual North Museum Science and Engineering Fair in Lancaster. He was very familiar with the fair – he had entered it as a student, later served as a judge of the entries, and even had a few students who entered projects. It is his contention that there are some political shenanigans that are not always conducive to the welfare of the entrants.       He told me, “Instead of the pushing the science fair at MC, we offer team-oriented opportunities such a...

      It’s time for my annual rant about the condition of science non-students at my alma mater. This happens whenever the winners of the North Museum and Science Fair are announced. At least it starts that way, although it expands a bit by the time I get to the end. Stay with me.       If this were about football, it would be a glowing review. Since 1992, Manheim Central’s record is been 215 and 29 – not too bad. A football scholarship to Penn State is considered a very successful high school career.       But it’s not about football.       I counted winners from 16 Lancaster County Schools at this year’s science fair. How many were there from Manheim Central? None, nada, nil, zilch, goose egg! Same as last year! I don’t think they even had anyone entered!       I have spoken to several of my classmates and other alumni about this lack, and what do I get? “We...

      According to a recent poll conducted by Yale University, the percentage of respondents who believe climate change is happening dropped from 71% in 2008 to 57% in 2010, while those who do not believe climate change is happening rose from 10% to 20% over the same period. The rest “don’t know.”       Given the assumption that climate change is real, the percentage that think it is due to human activities dropped from 57% to 47%, while those who think it is natural rose from 33% to 36%. Again, the rest don’t know.       This is in spite of the increasing barrage of dramatic pictures of cracking and shrinking polar ice caps at both poles, the poleward migration of warm water animal and vegetable species, and the gradual submersion of low lying islands. How much proof does one need?       I believe the decline in belief in climate change is due to the recent release of emails from U.K ...

      Last night Barbara and I watched the 1960 movie Inherit The Wind starring Spender Tracy, Fredric March and Gene Kelly. Although based on the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, names and some of the plot were changed somewhat from the original event. But we enjoyed it – as we expected, the acting was superb.       The original case was sparked by the ACLU, which wanted to test the constitutionality of the state’s Butler Act, which decreed "That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."       A further contention was that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of the ...