Here is a great video showing the extent of the universe as we have observed it so far:
“The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.”
Apart from being a breathtaking video and tribute to the amazing work done by astronomers and astrophysicists around the world it made me think of the Total Perspective Vortex from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”
An unfortunate side effect of being placed in the Total Perspective Vortex is that the shock of being shown just how infinitesimally small you are compared to the Universe annihilates your soul. Watch with care.
Thanks to @Rablenkov on Twitter for the heads up on the video.
The great Carl Sagan would have been 75 today. Most famous for the 1980s TV series and accompanying book, Cosmos, he was a prolific science writer producing more than 600 papers and articles and was the author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books including the novel Contact which was the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.
As well as being an engaging writer and presenter, Sagan was a critical thinker, scientist and visionary and was also a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life and an advocate of SETI. He was part of an all too brief popularisation of science and is quoted as saying “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology“. His efforts at putting this right were not wasted but there is still a long way to go.
Cosmos covers a wide range of subjects including the origin of life, the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the earth in comparison to the universe. Even thirty years on it is still a must watch for anyone even remotely interested in science and remains an astounding piece of television. You can watch Cosmos on Google Video starting here.
I’ll leave you with another quote from the great man:
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” – Carl Sagan
Remember all the exciting things we were promised? Back when the year 2000 seemed unfathomably distant the future looked rosy, by now we would be living in a Star Trek like world where robots would do all the work and we would be able to spend all our time on leisure pursuits. A world where diseases and even the common cold would be a thing of the past.
Now here we are, nearly ten years into the 21st century, where is it all? Where is my jetpack, my electric flying car, the underwater cities and the day trips to the moon? What happened to being able to control the weather?
Instead, we have a growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots and the technological wonders that would bring our new peaceful, prosperous society have not appeared.
Our cars are still grounded and powered by fuel extracted from the earth at great cost (both monetary and politically) not electricity. The electricity which by now was supposed to be “too cheap to meter” instead of increasingly expensive and still generated by pollution spewing power stations burning a dwindling supply of fossil fuels.
Even some of the things that have materialised are disappointing, the household robot is here after a fashion, but it’s really just a vacuum cleaner. The jetpack is here too but you won’t be going to work on one anytime soon.
Recreational space travel might be on the cards but it’s not going to be the ubiquitous, even routine image portrayed in the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey for a long time, if ever.
So what went wrong? Well I think a lot of the time, investment and talent that should have gone towards bringing us these things has been squandered on military development, procurement and war. The oil companies and others tried to strangle the electric car at birth for their own financial gain (at least this seems, finally, to be making progress again) and fear of nuclear power killed our cheap electricity. Maybe those were just more optimistic times too.
Sure, it’s not all doom and gloom; Computers, the internet and gadgets such as smartphones are bringing a different, perhaps unpredicted, slice of “the future of the past” into our present but it’s not for all, there is still war, famine, sickness and a huge percentage of the worlds population still don’t even have basics such as clean drinking water. Maybe William Gibson was right when he said “the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”.
At the very least, we’re more than a bit behind schedule and frankly, it’s all a bit disappointing really.
Yesterdays debate at the Royal Institute of Great Britain between Dr Ben Goldacre (author of the Bad Science blog, Guardian column and book) and the science minister, Lord Drayson is now online to watch on demand. I watched this live and it was a really enjoyable hour and a half, certainly better than anything TV had to offer last night.
For those viewing online there were some problems with not being able to see the slides used by the speakers but Twitter filled in there nicely. Some of the questions from the audience later on were inaudible too but host Simon Mayo did a good job of summarising them before they were answered.
Lord Drayson was putting forward the view that the lessons of the MMR debacle have been learned and science reporting in the UK is now one of the best in the world, he admitted it wasn’t perfect but his basic premise was that we should concentrate on the good not the bad. Naturally Ben Goldacre disagreed in his usual style saying that attitude would encourage editors to keep running crap and that articles should link to the papers they are based on so that readers can see for themselves.
Lord Drayson started off with a slide of a front page headline from The Sun stating that “SEX KILLS” saying it was a good summary as it may cause the spread of two different kinds of cancer in women. He later claimed that the “world will end” reporting about the Large Hadron Collider creating black holes was good for science as it drew attention to it! So anything is OK in the name of publicity then?
Ben Goldacre said healthy living advice has not changed in decades but people are basing their lifestyle choices on the media and pointed to the Daily Mails ridiculous “what causes/prevents cancer” roundabout as featured in the The (New) Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project (coffee does both by the way!).
Someone from the Daily Mail later asked a fair question about what are they supposed to do, making the point that they don’t have the resources to do a peer review on everything they report on. Fair point I think but that doesn’t excuse printing rubbish. It’s a tricky issue and one that isn’t going to go away easily. Ben Goldacre thinks features by specialist writers would be better than front page articles by general journalists, hard to disagree with that I think. This stuff is too important to be flippant about.
At one point during the question segment it seemed like everyone in the audience was a blogger; Jack Of Kent asked a question about antiquated libel laws preventing stories critical of bad science getting into the UK media but Lord Drayson dodged that one claiming sub judice, presumably because of the Simon Singh case.
I must say, kudos is due to Lord Drayson for saying that scientists misrepresented in the media could email him and he would look into it, true to his word he later posted his email address on Twitter for all to see. I hope he will be as true to the promise to look into these things.
One interesting question that didn’t really get answered was “Is science reporting any worse than the rest?”. I’m not sure it is, what do you think?
I’ve recently been reading Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science which takes a no nonsense approach to the claptrap the public are often fed about medical science and alternative therapies. It’s an interesting read, dealing with how statistics are misunderstood and manipulated, how research is dumbed down to make good copy and how the media just wants a good scare story. MMR, homeopathy, nutritionists, it’s all here.
Bad Science will make you stop and think about the rubbish presented to us as fact by the media and the charlatans that present themselves as experts. It’s an eye opener, read it.
Apparantly Bees are going missing… and mobile phones could be to blame (hey, at least it’s not 4×4s this time). According to The Independent as much as 70 per cent have gone on the east coast of the US and it’s spreading across Europe.
Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid in which the viscosity changes with the applied strain rate. As a result, non-Newtonian fluids may not have a well-defined viscosity.
Half of the world’s human population is infected with Toxoplasma, parasites in the body and the brain! The parasite has been shown to alter the brain function of rats, causing behavior that benefits the parasite but is suicidal for the rat. Are parasites like Toxoplasma subtly altering human behavior?
These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD — part of a test conducted by the US government during it’s dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950’s. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils.
“Upon completing the drawing the patient starts laughing, then becomes startled by something on the floor.”
“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy” – Carl Sagan
