Moon
Topic: Science

Keep your pants on. I'm talking about astronomy.

Pluto has been found to have 2 more moons: in addition to Charon, they've found one called Hydra and one called Nix.

More about that here.

Velocity
Topic: Science
The maximum velocity of a rocket propelled vehicle is reached when the vehicle's speed equals the speed of the propellant exhaust. In other words, when the craft is moving as fast as the fire that's pushing it, it can't go any faster.

How fast is that? It can't be anything approaching the speed of light. So if we want to go to another star, rockets are out of the question.

Ion drives are a better bet, but still only a fraction of light speed.

Simply put, there's no way to get to light speed, without violating the basic laws of space and time in a manner that changes the physics of the craft or space around the craft. By "warping," or "bending" space, or by suddenly having zero (or near zero) mass. Keep in mind that this twisting of the space/time continuum will, in and of itself, require as much, if not more, energy as it would take to move the craft near light speed in the first place, by any conventional means.

Therefore, if any intelligent life has traveled here, it has been at great expense of energy and, probably, whatever they use for money. I doubt highly that they'd have come here after that much effort just to look around and say "Yep. They're Earthlings." and then go back.

So. Either they're still here, or they never came. If they're still here, they're very quiet about it. They never call or write, or even drop in unannounced. And, again, that would be a huge waste of energy.

So I think they just never came at all. Oh, sure, they meant to get around to it, but you know how it is. They're still paying off the 'Veeber, and they don't want to put that many miles on it now that the damned warrantee has expired. Plus, Little G'Nort's greebing, and that makes herhim cranky on long trips. I wouldn't travel six million billion jillion trillion bazillion miles under those conditions. Not until I renewed my AAA* membership, anyway.

So yeah, I'm thinking they never came at all. They probably don't plan to, although they want to. Developing the technology will be difficult, and getting volunteers for a "generation ship" won't be easy, either. And by the time they get here, we might all be dead. So might their home planet. Or, maybe, their homies will have found a way to travel faster than light, against all odds, and actually beat the generation ship here. They'll land to find a Stargakk's graggasso shop on every corner.

Nah. I'm pretty sure we'll never see any alien life. Although we might talk to it via wormhole radio communications, some day. It'll be a kind of sad communications, probably. Something pointless and poignant. And it'll arrive too late.

"Keep Hitler out of politics" or something. Yeah, thanks a lot.

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*Antares Astronoautics Association

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Super-duper
Topic: Science
These people, especially Michael, are so smart, they're stupid.

The 16 year old kid, who takes math classes 3 times a week at University of California at San Diego, and who has been home schooled since fifth grade by a mother with a PhD in neuroscience and a father that is a software engineer, has won "a premier high school science competition..." and (get this) he's surprised.

He won it for resolving a math problem that's been around since the 19th century called The Dirichlet Problem.* Supposedly, it was a unique approach to the problem, and it has application in the design of airplane wings. I'm sure that it was an amazing triumph for airplane wing design all over the globe.

But that's not what bothers me. I'm all for the advancement of technology, regardless of the source, so long as it was obtained ethically, so don't throw Mengele in my face. If legitimate, safe, and ethical means were used,** then I wouldn't care if the discovery were made because someone's lobotomized monkey accidentally spelled out the formula using Puppy Chow. The point is that there was a breakthrough, and humanity gained some benefit from it.

So all these people pretending it's such an incredible thing that a 16 year old that's had intense scholastic training since he was elevenish is just sensationalism. It's like how publicists said Einstein was bad at basic math*** to make him seem more human. This is like that, only they're using the opposite spin... instead of saying "Wow! Someone so incomprehensibly brilliant can still be so ordinary!" they're saying "Wow! Someone so incomprehensibly ordinary can be so brilliant!"

But he's not ordinary! The very things that gave him the ability to create a unique and brilliant approach are also the things that set him apart from the ordinary! And I think they are presenting it this way so he won't feel alienated by people that are going to hate him for being brilliant.

Look, Michael. You're smarter than me. Big deal. I can get over that if you can. Let's move on so you can get to designing airplane wings for me. Thanks.

And everyone else that feels weird about his work: yeah, he's smarter than we are. Get over it. Move on with your life, and be glad there's people like Mike that can do the things we can't, because they just make it easier on the rest of us. But don't act like it's an intellectual miracle that he responded well to an intensely mind-developing regimen. He was not raised in a typical environment, and he was not given a typical education. His development is a reflection of that. Maybe he's sacrificed something, possibly social skills like any other nerd, in order to gain what he has.

I think that's pretty likely, since he was surprised that he won. Apparently, he thinks everyone else is as smart as he is; hence his surprise.

If he only knew the truth.

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*I won't pretend to be able to explain it. I had trouble remembering that 19th century meant sometime in the 1800s.
**For the sake of argument, however you feel about testing on laboratory animals, that's how I feel too. Since we're in agreement, let's not debate it.
***He wasn't.

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Fly
Topic: Science
I've been told that aviator Charles Lindbergh discovered, while on his historic trans-Atlantic flight, a housefly in his aircraft. Fuel was a major consideration on this flight. He supposedly spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not the weight of the fly would adversely affect the fuel consumption, and would it matter if the fly were at rest, or in flight?
Keep in mind that the fly would be supporting itself on the air inside the cockpit during the flight. And that air would, in turn, be supported by the air underneath it, only distributed in a larger area, spreading out underneath the fly in a conical pattern. So, the question is this: at what point does the weight of the fly become wholly supported by the air, and will it ever need to be supported by the aircraft if the fly is in flight?

He couldn't just kill it, because he'd have to find some way to chuck it out of the plane, or it'd definitely be supported by the plane. Opening a port would cause air drag, which might be worse than the loss of lift caused by the fly over the entire distance of the flight. He might be better off just encouraging it to fly... but would it make a difference? Maybe he wouldn't lose much fuel to drag if he opened a port after all. But he might still be better off letting it live... but... but...

Whether or not the story is true, it's an interesting thought problem. I think I'd have waited until I landed. That way, if I made it, I'd be able to release the fly and say "Welcome to France, little guy! We made it!"

And if I didn't, I'd squash the damned thing, while screaming "You're going first, you little bastard! See you in Hell!"

Because Scientific Method Demands It
Topic: Science
Einstein could have been wrong.

It's not likely, but according to the scientific method, any theory has to be tested and those test results are not valid unless they can be reproduced.

So when Einstein predicted that gravity wells can not just attract, but actually bend space around them, it seemed pretty weird, but he had the math to back it up. The problem with math is that it's not really observable. Even basing matter's behaviour on a graphics display from a computer program is just a model. And it doesn't even have true gravity; just a model based on what little is understood of it. Scientific method demands true observation, not a best guess based on a model of a best guess.

So to that end, scientists are launching gravity probes to test this theory. Essentially, these extremely delicate and sensitive instruments will obtain positions 400 miles above the north and south poles, enabling them to be a near perfect space/time reference.

The point here is to examine how a gravity well affects reality, and to what degree. It's not just to prove Einstein was right (or wrong). The real knowledge gained from this will give insight to how the universe works on a quantum level, and on a planetary level.

So many concepts of space-time depend on these theories. No matter what the probes read, the waterfall of data will be very far-reaching. Every theory that depends upon the space-time predictions of Einstein will be affected.

If you're interested in this sort of thing at all, I urge you to read the web site linked up there. If you're not, I'm shocked. True, it won't change your paycheck, your job, or get you a date. But it will help science learn how our universe works, and help mankind understand reality itself. That's pretty exciting to me.

I'm Beside Myself
Topic: Science
Okay. I'll say it.

Human cloning is good.

Stop slobbering about religion and creating life and playing God. All that is bullshit. Every last bit of it. If God didn't want us to reproduce in any manner other than sexual reproduction, he'd have struck us down for in-vitro fertilization long ago. Any Christian that has had children as a result of fertility research is (by their definitions) a sinner, and (by my definitions) a hypocrite, if they screech about cloning. And whether or not you know it, fertility research is everywhere in the medical community; from proper diet to washing your hands, it all affects fertility. If a child is born in a hospital, if their mother saw a doctor concerning their pregnancy, if she used a simple home-pregnancy test, she and the child have benefited from fertility research. Cloning is the ultimate realization of successful fertility research: that is, reproducing offspring known in advance to be viable. And yet ever since Dolly was born (the sheep, not the country singer), proving that cloning was possible (although very difficult), people have been screaming out against it.

The main difference between in-vitro and cloning is that in cloning, the genetic structure has been proven to produce a living being, and the doctors will know what kind of medical strengths and weaknesses to expect from the person as they grow. In other words, it's not leaving the genetic result to chance.

Human cloning is not splitting the soul any more than normal procreation splits the soul. It's a separate life, with identical genetic structure. That's it. They're like twins born from separate mothers.

Yet there's so many potential benefits to human cloning. I'd list them, but this article has already done it. It's a long list. Get some coffee first.

So why do people resist cloning? I think it's because it scares them. They aren't sure God hates it or not, so they assume he does, and claim it's an abomination because The Bible doesn't definitively say "Oh, by the way, God doesn't mind cloning." Omission is sufficient for them to consider it wrong. The only way it would be worse is if the eleventh commandment were "Thou shalt not clone."

They're also scared because they don't understand it. The media has spent so much time messing with our minds in B-movies and bad science fiction that many people have come to believe that a clone would be an identical copy of the genetic donor's spirituality and intellect, and that clone would have all the original's memories, skills, and personality. Or perhaps, an exact opposite, where a 'good' person would make an 'evil' clone, exactly opposite, but with power equal to that of the donor. Or it would be intelligent, but look like The Blob. These concepts are false. Bunk. Booshwah.

If you're going to sell a story, it has to be good enough to buy. And fewer people will buy a story about someone giving birth to a child that is perfectly normal in every way, and has the exact same genetic structure as one of the parents. That's roughly equal to, say, a story of a perfectly normal child who brushes their hair just like one of their parents. Or who snores the same way. Or has the same handwriting. Boring.

However, a story of a child that grows to adulthood in a matter of hours, thinks they're the original when they're just a clone, and wants to kill the original and every person that gets in their way in order to 'resume' their 'rightful' place in society, and has the uncanny ability to read the original's mind... well, now you're gonna sell some pulp. Many of you already want to know how that little scenario ends. (I'll help... the donor can read the clone's mind too, and they finally meet in a show-down. When they contact each other, a bolt of lightning strikes them, atomizing them both, proving, somehow, that man should not play in God's domain. Now that's good B-movie material!)

It's not really the media's fault, though, because people want to read horror stories. The media provides them. Distinguishing between pulp fiction and stark reality is up to the reader. This can be accomplished with just a little bit of thought.

The fear commonly held for cloning is matched only by the common distaste for the source of stem-cell research. The alternative to this research, by the way, is throwing away or incinerating the stem cells and their host. I suppose opponents of the research feel that's preferable, but personally, it bothers the Hell out of me that a potential source of cures of everything from cancer to diabetes is just thrown away because people are squeamish.

The alternative to cloning research is that more people will die. The alternative to stem cell research is that more people will die. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm all for saving lives, so long as none are lost in the process. Neither cloning nor stem cell research will kill anyone.

So of course our highly enlightened society and government have outlawed them, because these enlightened people believe that this research will ultimately destroy life and society as we know it, in exactly the same way, apparently, that two people of the same gender getting married and affirming their love for each other will destroy life and society. They're not really clear on how this destruction will take place, but they are certain that God doesn't like it, and that's good enough for them. Apparently, they also believe God doesn't like people who can think, so they let the church think for them.

Something that these people should consider: amoebas reproduce by what amounts to cloning, and they have no gender. There's all sorts of critters out there that reproduce offspring that are genetically identical to the parent. And according to The Book of Genesis, God made all of them first. (Or they evolved first, if you're not a Creationist.) They can't all be evil.

Reasons For Human Cloning