Category: Science

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Evolution Vs. Intelligent Design

The Washington Post on the proof behind evolution and the Evolution / Intelligent Design (ID) case in Harriburg, Pa.

“When scientists announced they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome.”

The chimpanzee genetic information let scientists put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests and the predictions made under the theory passed.

Today a Federal judge in Harrisburg, Pa. USA, will begin to hear a case that asks whether Intelligent Design or other non-scientific explanations should be compulsory teaching material in a biology class.

But the plaintiffs, who are parents opposed to teaching ID as science, will do more than merely argue that those alternatives are weaker than the theory of evolution.

They will make the case — plain to most scientists but poorly understood by many others — that these alternatives are not scientific theories at all.

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An Actual, Real Life Liger

Here is an actual liger!

“It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed… bred for its skills in magic.”
-Napoleon Dynamite

The cub is a cross between the female Bengalese tiger and an African lion. The animal resembled a lion cub except that it had stripes, and has been dubbed a “liger”, the Russian Information Agency Novosti reported.

“This was not the result of a scientific experiment,” Novosti quoted zoo director Rostislav Shilo as saying. “It’s just that the lion and the tiger live in neighboring caves in the Novosibirsk zoo, and got used to each other. It’s practically impossible in the wild.”

Here is another liger image.

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Stairway to Heaven Subliminal Messages

Some time ago I received an email from a professor at York University. He asked if he could use part of my Stairway to Heaven backwards site / idea for a class. Here is the conclusion of his experiment.

Jeff-

I have now given my lecture on perception, and the Stairway to Heaven was a real hit. Before I played it backwards, (and after they had listened forwards a few times), I distributed sheets of paper with the “words”. Half the class got the Satan stuff, and the other half got my own words, which have nothing to do with Satan or religion. I realized at the outset that my words did not fit quite as well as the Satan ones, but some lines fit very well. The demo went perfectly – those who had the Satan words could “hear” the backwards lines very well, and those who got my words, could hear at least some of my lines well. Interestingly, those who “heard” my words had a very difficult time hearing the Satanic words later on when I played it again.

Thanks again so much for your [help]. It has really helped me make a very important point about the nature of perception and how we actually construct our percepts.

Cheers
Jim

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And on the sixth day God created Man…

Life from inorganic mixture? It’s a science project you can do in a high school chemistry lab. Speculation suggests that maybe “God” used clay after all.

“Graham Cairns-Smith, a chemist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, has speculated for many years that life on our planet may not have started with organic (carbon-based) molecules. He suggests life may have begun with inorganic ingredients, such as clay minerals that can carry heritable information in the stacking sequence of their sheets of atoms. Such ‘clay organisms’ might be able to replicate, Cairns-Smith argues.”

For the serious science geek find out more about “Spontaneous Formation of Cellular Chemical System that Sustains Itself far from Thermodynamic Equilibrium“.

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Medicine Hat Easter Weekend

I’m in Medicine Hat for the Easter weekend. I took along Stephen Hawkings book, “The Universe in a Nutshell”, which Anna-Maria gave me for my birthday, to read in the car. This morning I was explaining The Twins Paradox to Tracie, my brother’s wife — they are also here visiting. The Twins Paradox goes something like this:

In the theory of relativity each observer has his own measure of time… One of a pair of twins (a) leaves on a space journey during which he travels close to the speed of light, while his brother (b) remains on Earth.

Because of (a)’s motion, time runs more slowly in the spacecraft as seen by the earthbound twin. So on his return the space traveler (a2) will find that his brother (b2) has aged more than himself.

Although it seems against common sense, a number of experiments have implied that in this scenario the traveling twin would indeed be younger.

Tracie responded, “So if you fall in love with someone 30 years younger than you, you can use this to come back and be the same age.” I told her I was impressed that she so quickly picked up on the most obviously practical application that this concept enables us to do.

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Aerogel Photos

Aerogel will be used on the STARDUST spacecraft to capture comet particles from Comet Wild 2. The pics are amazing. They look fake, but they come from the NASA web site.

To collect particles without damaging them, Stardust uses an extraordinary substance called aerogel. This is a silicon-based solid with a porous, sponge-like structure in which 99.8 percent of the volume is empty space. By comparison, aerogel is 1,000 times less dense than glass, which is another silicon-based solid. When a particle hits the aerogel, it buries itself in the material, creating a carrot-shaped track up to 200 times its own length. This slows it down and brings the sample to a relatively gradual stop. Since aerogel is mostly transparent – with a distinctive smoky blue cast – scientists will use these tracks to find the tiny particles.

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Are 2D:4D Finger-Length Ratios Related to Sexual Orientation or Sexual Inclination?

I had heard what I considered to be an urban legend that the ratio of a woman’s index to ring finger indicates whether women are likely to engage in casual sex and the sexual orientation of men. Turns out the research has been done and maybe it’s not an urban legend after all. Oh and for those of you wondering, my ring finger is about 10mm longer than my index finger — could possibly explains why I’m such a fast sprinter.

Further reading:

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Nano Techonology Update

I came across a story in Wired this evening about the World’s Best Preforming Microscope. “The SuperSTEM microscope at Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, England, is so sensitive that it requires a special building capable of protecting it from the vibrations caused by raindrops. Its resolution is so sharp that researchers can count atoms on its images.”