Reality Crowd

I enjoy this discovery because it reminds me of a concept I learned while studying music. Playing very high notes or very low notes (especially on wind instruments) is difficult. Players spend years trying to stretch that one half-step further or gain the ability to play just a little louder or keep control at the very softest tone. Stretching your ability that far, though, has more value than just being able to finally hit that high C. The benefit also lies in the fact that all the notes you play in between—the notes you have played for years—become stronger as you expand your total range.

This gamma ray burst is like that high C, and understanding it will bring the benefit of better understanding all the galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects in between that we have been “playing” for years. Our understanding of physics will become more refined as scientists may now have a glimpse into the very first generation of stars (with undoubtedly different properties from stars we commonly study today). For a more detailed description of this event and its implications, view the NewScience article here.

Please comment what this discovery means to you (even if you don’t see why a little yellow smudge could get people so excited)!

University of Sydney scientists have discovered that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is twice as wide as previously thought. It seems very strange that this could be the case, doesn’t it? Scientists have peered billions of light years into the cosmos. They have made observations and calculations of mass and distance of a multitude of celestial objects and even of the universe itself. But right here at home, our own galaxy we calculated to be about 6,000 light-years thick, and these scientists now claim that in reality, it is 12,000 light-years thick. It is fascinating to learn that these scientists did not even make any new observations; they simply used data already collected that was available on the Internet! This surprising result has elicited mixed emotions from the scientific community. From the University of Sidney article:

“Some colleagues have come up to me and have said ‘That wrecks everything!’” says Professor Gaensler. “And others have said ‘Ah! Now everything fits together!’”

Here at RealityCrowd, we often cite ways in which science and religion are opposed. This event is a beautiful example of how in the scientific community, new evidence can change even a long-held belief. If assertions are supported by evidence, then those assertions must be taken seriously. However, religion, as many readers realize, does not change in the light of new evidence, and this is why we incessantly hear unsupported claims from many Christians such as the age of the universe being only about 6,000 years. Not even the mountain of evidence to the contrary will convince a true Bible believer. This unwavering stance may be comfortable for those who need the universe to be predictable and simple, but those of us with open and inquisitive minds will celebrate these times that we can say, “Hey, we were wrong!”

Read the entire University of Sydney article here.

“…it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.”

“It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.”

-Charles Darwin

For more than four decades Moore’s Law has been consistently correct, and since 1965 scientists have made silicon chips twice as efficient about every 18 months. We all experience this exponential increase in processing power directly: by the changing tools we use, the increasing capabilities of software and computer hardware, changing physical and social systems, and especially by the way change keeps coming faster. Think about how much technology has changed over your lifetime.

This speeding-up process has become an important part of the way our society functions. As noted by Michael Foster, division director of computing and communication foundations at the National Science Foundation, human and economic progress in the U.S. over the past 20 years has depended on the predictability of this growth.

Silicon chips, however, do have limitations--physical limitations on how small a scale you can actually place transistors on an integrated circuit. When you get down to the atomic scale, there’s not much further you can go, and quantum effects will start to pose serious problems. Moore’s Law will reach an end, predicted to be within the next 10 to 20 years. Will we find new innovations to leave Moore’s Law in the dust? Many hope so.

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Biblical “science” or creation “science” or “intelligent” design all attempt to put forth the same idea. That somehow despite total lack of evidence for their claims and complete disregard for the scientific method that they are somehow more scientific than science itself. We at Reality Crowd intend to examine this issue extensively as it is at the heart of what we are discussing here. Creationists, not content to have everyone accept their claims “on faith” (a rather dubious proposal) have now turned to the language of science to try to promote their ideas. The only problem is they occasionally run into real scientists:

For those who don’t recognize the voice, that is creationist Kent Hovind. The main point that we can get from this exchange is that creationists seem to have no concrete examples of what their “science” is for. It doesn’t make any reliable predictions about anything, nor does it describe in a useful way the way the physical systems of the universe work. Creationist’s version of science is merely attempting to shoehorn biblical passages into compatibility with what we know about the physical universe (but mostly the other way around).

One tactic that has been increasingly used by the religious in debates (both online and out in the “real” world) is to attempt to show that their claims are in fact backed up by science and reason. This has been the tactic of the “Intelligent” design movement and is often used by one of it’s leading proponents Kent Hovind. Essentially, their arguments are stated in a manor that makes them sound scientific. If I as a listener wanted to believe what these people are saying I would come away with the sense that they had somehow proven something to me, through reason and science.

However, when people that make arguments like these come across actual scientists, or even just people who are listening closely, their arguments are usually demonstrated to be much less solid then they would have you believe. Take Shawn (aka VenomFangX) on Youtube. Shawn has posted many videos that try to prove the existence of god, or jesus, or that dinosaurs and people were around at the same time 6000 years ago. If you don’t listen closely you might think that he makes some good points…but luckily for us a lot of people listen closely!

Here is an example of the type of argument Shawn tends to use, as well as some rational responses to it:

Sounds pretty good right? From the comments on YouTube you would think that Shawn had stumbled onto some ultimate line of reasoning that forever ended the Reality / Religion debate. After all, he even states at the end that there is no way to disprove him. I guess we can all go home and prepare for the apocalypse right? But wait:

That would seem to call into question Shawn’s rock solid “proof” of god’s existence. It also pretty much shoots down his (and all creation “scientists”) style of argument. By proclaiming that you are absolutely right without question you leave yourself wide open to being taken down, because if you are then wrong about one thing what does that indicate for everything else?

Or how about this response?

In fact, Youtube is FULL of videos of people debunking Shawn’s argument. Shawn is hiding all the negative comments on his videos (why the need if you are absolutely without question correct?). Read on for more videos addressing Shawn’s claims.

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When talking to someone about the validity of religion, out of body experiences usually come up at some point. When close to death many people have the experience of floating outside their own body and observing themselves from outside their own skin. Scientology was supposedly inspired from an out of body experience L. Ron Hubbard had while under the influence of Nitrous Oxide. These experiences would seem to lend credibility to the soul / body split that nearly all religions preach. It would seem to indicate that our “self” can be separated from our body. If I can float outside my own body, it must mean that I posses a soul…right?

Well, hold on a second. Now it seems that by using virtual reality equipment, two teams of researchers have been able to induce out of body experiences in healthy test subjects. Wearing virtual reality headsets, subjects were shown a live picture of their own back. Then, two plastic rods were used to stroke the back of the subject as well as their “virtual” back. It seems that the combination of visual and tactile input easily tricked the body into believing it was behind the actual body.

Link to the scientific American Article

Hit the jump for some videos about out of body experiences
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It turns out the coldest place in the universe is not somewhere in deep space. It’s not on the dark side of the moon or out at the far edge of the cosmos. It’s right here on earth in a lab at MIT. While it is impossible to ever reach absolute zero, scientists are excited to get as close as possible to it.

The current record holder is Wolfgang Ketterle’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. They have achieved a temperature of just 810 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. How did they do it? Here is an excerpt from the Smithsonian Magazine article about the achievement:

Ketterle’s achievement came out of his pursuit of an entirely new form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The condensates are not standard gases, liquids or even solids. They form when a cloud of atoms—sometimes millions or more—all enter the same quantum state and behave as one. Albert Einstein and the Indian physicist Satyendra Bose predicted in 1925 that scientists could generate such matter by subjecting atoms to temperatures approaching absolute zero. Seventy years later, Ketterle, working at M.I.T., and almost simultaneously, Carl Wieman, working at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Eric Cornell of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder created the first Bose-Einstein condensates. The three promptly won a Nobel Prize.

What happens when matter starts to approach absolute zero? All sorts of crazy stuff. Electrical resistance disappears in some elements causing superconductivity. Liquefied gases become “superfluids” that can move through barriers that hold any other type of fluid, and defy gravity in strange ways. Other researchers pointing lasers at Bose-Einstein condensates have found that they can slow down and even stop light waves.

You can learn more about the wacky world of absolute zero at:
Nova website on Absolute Zero (PBS)
Wikipedia entry on absolute zero
BBC Four’s absolute zero documentaries

Hit the jump for some great videos about absolute zero
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I don’t walk through walls or watch objects around me appear and disappear. I’d be labeled crazy if I thought that was the way the world behaved. Most people agree that the world around us obeys physical laws that are consistent and predictable. But when you look at the world of the very small--around the size of atoms or smaller--the seemingly impossible and delusional scenario is actually the truth, and our world appears an even greater mystery.

The three following videos show effects of quantum mechanics, all describing very different phenomena to hopefully give a broad view.

-Quantum Tunneling-
One of the strange things about quantum mechanics is that you can never be certain where a particle is in space. You can only tell where the particle is likely to be. I used to think that was because our measuring devices were faulty or something like that, however, small particles actually do appear and disappear and change location inexplicably. This video on quantum tunneling shows how we know that this is an accurate description of how particles really do behave.

-Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle-
Particles are elusive to measurement at the small scale. The more precisely you want to measure something, the more elusive it becomes.

-Superfluid Helium-
This stuff is really fascinating. Although the video doesn’t address the helium particles on the small scale, it is an excellent description of the quantum effects on helium when it is cooled to less than two degrees above absolute zero. As I understand it, when the helium is cooled to that temperature, the atoms are no longer like points but more like ribbons; the helium particles begin to stretch out and become long and overlap each other. This overlapping makes it impossible to distinguish any one particle from another so the liquid’s particles exist in all locations at the same time.

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