Tracking, Calculus and Mozart...

Image Source: Amazon.com, 1990 edition

Topics: Calculus, Cosmos, History, Humor, Research, Science, Scientific Method

Note: Post title derived from the paper by the author as it appeared in Skeptic Magazine (link below).

Louis Liebenberg does a really good job in his work "The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science." The book actually came out three years ago on Amazon, and apparently an earlier version with not much fanfare (and surprisingly, FREE e-book versions at Cyber Tracker, 2nd link below). His premise - and experience learning tracking skills from native foragers - that it was the habits of hunter-gatherers, then and now that caused our brains to reason and develop what we now call science and The Scientific Method. I recall reading in Carl Sagan's Cosmos a similar observation of trackers.

Liebenberg goes a bit deeper into the differentiation between inductive-deductive reasoning and hypothetical-deductive reasoning. The first has to do with direct observations and conclusions from those observations. An example given is "the sun appears to rise in the east, so it must always rise in the east." It is a bit conservative and non-questioning. The hypothetical-deductive poses: "perhaps the Earth is rotating and not the sun moving, and if I were to travel to say, the North Pole, the sun wouldn't appear to move at all." Both are paraphrased quotes from an article I read by the author that appeared on Skeptic Magazine.

It takes nothing away from Ibn al-Haytham and his mighty contribution to The Scientific Method (or Monty Python). It takes nothing from the designers of pyramids in Egypt and the Americas (they just weren't "ancient astronauts" as the fuzzy-haired guy on H2 insists). It's a little expanded from the Ionian settlement (modern day Turkey) originating philosophy that led to debate; logic and the hypothesis of the atom as the smallest division of matter. Also, the author does an excellent job of the interrelation between inductive-deductive and hypothetico-deductive reasoning: one sticks with conventional wisdom and knowledge; the other asks questions and opens itself to debate. It's probably the origins of the combative art of peer review. It may be the reason we feel impelled to explore electronics, music; atoms, quarks and quasars.

All links below are from or relate to the author Louis Liebenberg:

Amazon.com: The Art of Tracking - The Origin of Science
Cyber Tracker: The Origin of Science
Skeptic Magazine:
Tracking Science: The Origin of Scientific Thinking in Our Paleolithic Ancestors

Hypatia Revisited...

Topics: Cosmos, Diversity in Science, History, Hypatia, Women in Science

This is Women's History Month and a re-post year-to-day with some edits and updated commentary. Hypatia also appears on the link 17 Game Changers (you'd have to click the link at the bottom, and scroll down).

I dedicate this to all the young women, in math, martial arts and physics I've had the honor of teaching...hold fast to your dreams!

Source: http://wizewomon.blogspot.com/2011/12/hypatia-womon-of-note.html

Hypatia (pronounced "hi-pay-see-a"): I read her name in the book Cosmos that I downloaded to my Kindle. I looked at the "old school" Cosmos show where Carl Sagan mentions her (starts at 3:25), and her sad fate. She's described as mathematician, astronomer, physicist, philosopher, quite lovely apparently and driver of her own chariot! She was a beloved teacher and by social practice a celibate, no doubt frustrating potential suitors of her day.

Interestingly as I had predicted to some casually offline at the time, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey had its detractors of the "young Earth" - humans with dinosaurs (think "The Flintstones") - faux debate between Evolution and so-called Intelligent Design variety. The odd and breathtaking display of hypocrisy in most of the trolls taking to the Internet - notably in 140 misspelled characters or less - created by the very science and modern physics they rail against; supporting pseudoscience in their destructive wake. As constituents, they are played by opportunistic politicians preying on their fears (science, climate change) for votes; the same who apparently have no inkling of how diplomacy is accomplished in the modern era. The backlash to their latest stunt comes from a usually friendly source. Through now quite obvious, overt bigotry, we are a living cartoon; a byword, a caricature of a former democratic republic: a reliable punchline on The Daily Show.

A certain part of the regressive reptilian portion of our minds attacks instinctively that which we think challenges our belief systems - and thus "us". Time and again, we've seen the razing of cities, the flaying of martyrs, the murder of not only the person, but new ideas that would take the species forward. This of course, all for adherence to a dogma. Supposedly through evangelism, it is meant as a "sell," and thus adherence is voluntary - zealotry and fanaticism turns it involuntary; totalitarian. Authoritarianism becomes our governance and its dogmatic ruling class the thought police. Sadly, I can't help but think if part of the mob that set upon Hypatia and ended her life so tragically were peopled by members of her own gender, suffering from what would in the 20th century gain the name "Stockholm Syndrome."

I often fear intolerance will rear its ugly head again and plunge us all over the abyss with it, as it did Alexandria, Egypt (this time, we won't just lose a library). They executed Hypatia...for the "crime" of thinking critically and independently of the lordship of patriarchal society. The saying goes "teach a woman  and you teach a generation." The library, like Hypatia, soon expired after her forced passing. As Dr. Sagan states above, we "must not let it happen again."

For the sake of civilization's continuance, and the so-called "weaker sex" that nature favors to outlive men in a pompous, male-centered society: can we?

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, also known as George Santayana

Related Links:

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hypati1/a/hypatia.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/gm/a/100909Hypatia.htm

The Weather...

Source: International Business Times

Topics: Commentary, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, Cosmos, Weather

This winter has been quite amusing lately.

I've watched the armchair meteorologists inveigh that politicians have seen their "Napoleonic Waterloo" with regards to how they respond (or, don't respond) to storms predicted to be dangerous to the public.

Also dangerous to the public is the sensationalism storms have taken for the Neanderthal Nielsen Ratings - created when we only had ABC, CBS, NBC and a few UHF channels, not Amazon, Netflix and Hulu. We are all taking in information - some of it, vital to our survival - in myriad ways via the Internet and the aforementioned technologies it empowers, plus the thousand of distracting channels, many of which you can listen to music exclusively.

Case in point: last week's Blizzard Juno, that turned out thankfully to be a bust. Comparisons to Katrina were abundant prior to the nor'easter landfall. It was also amusing that the very pundits that suggested under-reaction to the storm would be disastrous were disappointed when the storm bypassed New York, but did considerable damage to Connecticut and Massachusetts. The streets across the state of New York were sufficiently empty enough for the snow plows to do their work, and we were back up and traveling fine in about a day. I for one, was very happy with the overreaction.  It's really bad when it comes down to this: http://on.msnbc.com/1Lj4zgy

Here's the career page of the American Meteorological Society as well as National Geographic's Education Page on Meteorology. That is related to, but completely different from climate science. It seems antithetical that you'd have devastating storms with a warming globe. The key to understanding is what would our weather be if this moisture was instead of being in the warming air, it was where it originated at the poles (Arctic and Antarctic in this case)?

Science is always trying to make itself accessible to the general public. Carl Sagan opined it is imperative to the whole enterprise of a democratic republic. The reboot of COSMOS was another modern attempt and many other popular shows attempt to "crack this nut." However, the US is increasingly hostile to all science, not just climate science, but the very kind that makes us a superpower in a global society that is dependent on quickly assessing information and acting on it accordingly, decisively and correctly. Our very futures could be balanced on this narrow precipice between prosperity and poverty.

We may sadly find ourselves behind in twenty to fifty years in a technological "race to the bottom" - back to the dark ages of authoritarianism, crack pots, pixie dust, rabbits' feet, snake oil salesmen,  voodoo and root workers.

"We The People": it was a good idea while it lasted.

Star Stuff...

Image Source: Brain Pickings

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Carl Sagan, Sociology, Urban Planning

"We are made by the atoms and the stars… our matter and our form are determined by the cosmos of which we are a part."

"We are made of star stuff." Carl Sagan

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Urban sociologists have long known that a set of remarkable laws govern the large-scale interaction between individuals such as the probability that one person will befriend another and the size of the cities they live in.

The latter is an example of the Zipf’s law. If cities are listed according to size, then the rank of a city is inversely proportional to the number of people who live in it. For example, if the biggest city in the US has a population of 8 million people, the second-biggest city will have a population of 8 million divided by 2, the third biggest will have a population of 8 million divided by 3 and so on.

This simple relationship is known as a scaling law and turns out to fit the observed distribution of city sizes extremely well.

Another interesting example is the probability that one person will be friends with another. This turns out to be inversely proportional to the number of people who live closer to the first person than the second.

What’s curious about these laws is that although they are widely accepted, nobody knows why they are true. There is no deeper theoretical model from which these laws emerge. Instead, they come simply from the measured properties of cities and friendships.

Today, all that changes thanks to the work of Henry Lin and Abraham Loeb at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge. These guys have discovered a single unifying principle that explains the origin of these laws.

And here’s the thing: their approach is mathematically equivalent to the way that cosmologists describe the growth of galaxies in space. In other words, cities form out of variations in population density in exactly the same way that galaxies formed from variations in matter density in the early universe.

Physics arXiv: A Unifying Theory for Scaling Laws of Human Populations
Henry W. Lin, Abraham Loeb

Cygnus, Michell and Uhuru...

Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

"A black hole is a volume of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. This astonishing idea was first announced in 1783 by John Michell, an English country parson. Although he was one of the most brilliant and original scientists of his time, Michell remains virtually unknown today, in part because he did little to develop and promote his own path-breaking ideas.

"Michell was born in 1724 and studied at Cambridge University, where he later taught Hebrew, Greek, mathematics, and geology. No portrait of Michell exists, but he was described as “a little short man, of black complexion, and fat.” He became rector of Thornhill, near Leeds, where he did most of his important work. Michell had numerous scientific visitors at Leeds, including Benjamin Franklin, the chemist Joseph Priestley (who discovered oxygen), and the physicist Henry Cavendish (who discovered hydrogen).

"The range of his scientific achievements is impressive. In 1750, Michell showed that the magnetic force exerted by each pole of a magnet decreases with the square of the distance. After the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake of 1755, he wrote a book that helped establish seismology as a science. Michell suggested that earthquakes spread out as waves through the solid Earth and are related to the offsets in geological strata now called faults. This work earned him election in 1760 to the Royal Society, an organization of leading scientists.

"Michell conceived the experiment and built the apparatus to measure the force of gravity between two objects of known mass. Cavendish, who actually carried out the experiment after Michell’s death, gave him full credit for the idea. The measurement yielded a fundamental physical quantity called the gravitational constant, which calibrates the absolute strength of the force of gravity everywhere in the universe. Using the measured value of the constant, Cavendish was able for the first time to calculate the mass and the average density of the Earth.

"Michell was also the first to apply the new mathematics of statistics to astronomy. By studying how the stars are distributed on the sky, he showed that many more stars appear as pairs or groups than could be accounted for by random alignments. He argued that these were real systems of double or multiple stars bound together by their mutual gravity. This was the first evidence for the existence of physical associations of stars.

"But perhaps Michell’s most far-sighted accomplishment was to imagine the existence of black holes. The idea came to him in 1783 while considering a hypothetical method to determine the mass of a star. Michell accepted Newton’s theory that light consists of small material particles. He reasoned that such particles, emerging from the surface of a star, would have their speed reduced by the star’s gravitational pull, just like projectiles fired upward from the Earth. By measuring the reduction in the speed of the light from a given star, he thought it might be possible to calculate the star’s mass." 1

Description and excerpt from 1, see also 2 and 3

"The Earth's atmosphere is opaque to X-rays. To determine whether astronomical objects emit such short wavelengths of light, an X-ray telescope must be carried aloft. The first X-ray observatory was an admirably international effort, orbited by the United States from an Italian launch platform in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya and named Uhuru, the Swahili word for "freedom." In 1971, Uhuru discovered a remarkably bright X-ray source in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan, flickering on and off a thousand times a second. The source, called Cygnus X-1, must therefore be very small...Something the size of an asteroid is a brilliant, blinking source of X-rays, visible over interstellar distances. What could it possibly be?"

Carl Sagan, Cosmos (book excerpt): Chapter IX - The Lives of the Stars

1. American Museum of Natural History:
Case Study - John Michell and Black Holes
2. American Physical Society:
November 27, 1783: John Michell anticipates black holes
3. IO9: The forgotten genius who discovered black holes over 200 years ago

Fearing Fundamentalism...

Fundamentalism: 1. movement with strict view of doctrine: a religious or political movement based on a literal interpretation of and strict adherence to doctrine, especially as a return to former principles; 2. support for literal explanation: the belief that religious or political doctrine should be implemented literally, not interpreted or adapted

We've confused opinion with fact-based inquiry and reporting of the same; we've confused sensationalism with journalism. The arcane 50's barometer Nielsen ratings - not informing the citizenry - is the all-important arbiter of broadcast decisions; what news outlets put out on the web. Talk radio becomes the model of how we disseminate information. Seeing a television interview of The National Inquirer years ago - they admitted to making up stories after "a few joints and beers," yet they managed to sober up and discover John Edward's dalliances with Rielle Hunter scooping all other conventional outlets. I assume it was the same muse at the now defunct Weekly World News, hence the occasional "bat-boy" alien pieces.

Quoting historian Jarret Ruminski, PhD:

In her essential study of the modern right-wing Tea Party movement, historian Jill Lepore explains that “historical fundamentalism is marked by the belief that a particular and quite narrowly defined past — ‘the Founding’ — is ageless and sacred and to be worshipped; that certain historical texts — ‘the founding documents’ — are to be read in the same spirit with which religious fundamentalists read, for instance, the Ten Commandments,” and that “the Founding Fathers were divinely inspired.” A belief in historical fundamentalism, Lepore notes, means that “political arguments grounded in appeals to the founding documents, as sacred texts, and to the Founding Fathers, as prophets, are therefore incontrovertible.”* In other words, the Far Right, from the Tea Partiers to the militia and sovereign citizens all believe that the Founding past must be restored to reclaim the present from the tyrannical powers of big government and the globalized world order. [1]

It is the same market fundamentalism that fuels the "stock exchange as deity" worship; it is the same fundamentalism that fuels science and climate change denial to our existential peril; it is the same fundamentalism that needs the Earth and the rest of the universe to be only 6,000 years old despite the evidence contrary to that assertion and fuels ill-labeled "creation science/intelligent design"; it is the same fundamentalism that against the changes technology fosters in social interactions, minority rights, women's rights, LGBT rights that publishes digital mountainous screeds of a "return to traditional values" (using the technology responsible for that change) at sovereign, white supremacists, right-wing sites on the Internet...let that irony sink in for a moment as you look for Ozzie and Harriet's URL.

It is why there's common cause between sovereign citizens movements, The Tea Neanderthals, Answers in Genesis (vs. COSMOS); White Supremacists, States Rights Advocates, and Conspiracy Theorists: the changing demographics in America spells [for some] a social and genetic holocaust, yet not a peep about dark money in politics and how that is not democratic nor republic. These are those who think they are at the top of the pecking order by virtue of magical thinking/manifest destiny: more like a set-up unfair structure based solely (or mostly) on a lack of Melanin, and a lot lately on financial clout. That "once-upon-a-time," a particular side of town had all the good books and libraries; everyone else had hand-me-downs and rags; "separate but equal" was the boondoggle that assured a place at the apex of the polyhedron and crush of the weight of its base on the 99%.  Information back then intentionally wasn't democratized, and it sure couldn't be downloaded on a Smart Phone. When one didn't have to think about competing with global workers for the same job; that if one wasn't "college material," you could get a job at the local plant and make a decent living for yourself and any dependents, even promote over college-prepared women and minorities. Unions only could benefit the group that you belonged to, and not strive for some egalitarian utopia. That was how some thought it was, until some nefarious "other": African Americans; black-guy-in-the-White House; black helicopters; Beelzebub; coming-to-take-your-guns; Hispanics; Illuminati; immigrants; jack-booted-thugs; Latinos; LGBT; Martians; New World Order Conspiracy and Women's Rights all conspired and decided to ship this "American dream" and its goods, services and jobs overseas.

It's always something mysterious without an address (ghosts after all, are easy to typecast and harder to fight), yet NAFTA "was signed by President George H.W. Bush, Mexican President Salinas, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1992" and "signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993." [2] These are easily researched points, and involve participation in the governance of a democratic republic by informing oneself; engaging in public debate and voting. In two italic emphases, I showed both parties are equally at fault. Missing from the discussion of the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexican border is how this trade agreement contributed to the demise of Central America's middle class; the rise of the drug cartels; how it, Citizen's United and the McCutcheon decision are contributing to the demise of this country's.

democratic republic: (n) a form of government embodying democratic principles and where a monarch is not the head of state; democracy: (n) free and equal representation of people: the free and equal right of every person to participate in a system of government, often practiced by electing representatives of the people by the majority of the people; republic: (n) political system with elected representatives: a political system or form of government in which people elect representatives to exercise power for them

Politicians are more than happy to fuel this willful ignorance of basic civics as long as it benefits their serial terms in office and plush retirement benefits. Local governors are more than willing to disenfranchise a part of the electorate not likely to vote for their policies anyway, and call it "protecting the integrity of the voting process" for a chimera made up whole cloth resurrecting Jim Crow 2.0. They will memorize the talking points and manage a speech into a three-point sermon with a call-and-response whooping conclusion, thumping a holy writ covered in dust and lint neglected on their own coffee tables. They will play up the fear of "blaming the other-than-your-group" and do nothing, absolutely NOTHING substantive legislatively, other than annual pay raises and continued tax cuts for themselves.

I fear an authoritarian fundamentalism, no different than the "Creation Science" Charlatans, the Tea Party and Open Carry Neanderthals here, and the political party that plays footsies with these groups, lighting a tinderbox that will eventually ignite us into a pyre of quick global irrelevance; the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda stemming from the Arabian Peninsula are kindred spirits. A reaction to a changing globe and technology doubling capacity as it follows Moore's Law [3, 4]: the unanticipated consequence of scientific efficiency, fought vigorously by dogma, pseudoscience and superstition. "Knowledge IS power": the ability to reason, question and hold accountable the powerful, the feared Achilles heel of all authoritarian fundamentalists the world over. It reduces their potency to flaccid impotence. They need the mob, the bewildered herd, for power and relevance.

My fear is founded on the observed, steady, evidence-based erosion of our faculties at critical thinking, reasoning and problem-solving. My fear is the embracing of demagogues in high places that will legislate our futures into a new dark ages. The Dystopian novels from Margaret Atwood [5] and Octavia Butler [6] are instructive. As I said yesterday, I'd rather "life [not imitate] art."

1. That Devil History: "Gun Nuts, Militias, and American Extremism  in a Globalized World."
2. About.com: "History of NAFTA."
3. Intel: Excerpts from A Conversation With Gordon Moore - Moore's Law (PDF)
4. MIT News - Topic: Moore's Law
5. "The Handmaid's Tale," Margaret Atwood
6. "Parable of the Sower"; "Parable of the Talents," Octavia Butler

Cognitive Dissonance...

okami.buzznet.com

Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.

This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance etc.

For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition).

Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and beliefs in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance).

The season finale of COSMOS airs tonight.

Dr. Tyson interviewed Steven Soter on his Internet Star Talk Radio show, who along with Anne Druyan (and Carl), was one of the original writers of COSMOS:

I have a naive hope that with the right information, human beings tend to respond to it and make logical decisions. Even in the fictional Star Trek timeline, it took a while before the humans actually "got it," and started behaving in a civilized manner towards one another (it only took several millennium of ignorance and cruelty, after all).

Like Big Bang/climate change/science denial; like mythologized faked-moon-landing-conspiracies; like fraud creation science versus actual, I have been sadly mistaken. Similar to the debate on evolution at the creation museum between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, it did little more than fill the airwaves and social media posts with something novel to view. In Ham's case, he was literally "preaching to the choir" of the sternly-resistant-to-new-information-congregation. From the link heading the first paragraph:

Leon Festinger (1957) proposed cognitive dissonance theory, which states that a powerful motive to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational and sometimes maladaptive behavior.

According to Festinger, we hold many cognitions about the world and ourselves; when they clash, a discrepancy is evoked, resulting in a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance. As the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, we are motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve consonance (i.e. agreement).

"Boldly going where no one has gone before" sounds like almost a daily/weekly inoculation against dissonance. You must record the new findings in your captain's log, dismiss what you previously believed, and move on.

Cognitive dissonance inoculates one from taking in new information and forming new modes of thinking from it, the equivalent of placing index fingers in ears to sing-song "la-la" nauseatingly. It's been heartbreaking to see some of the comments on Facebook or Twitter from trolls that have a loud opinion and memorized talking points from bamboozle artists, but no actual experience in science or facts. [Thankfully, to the benefit of my blood pressure] I've learned to read and not engage: dissonance tends toward excited, incoherent, twisted-logic responses. Inevitably when I did engage previously, my goal would be sharing knowledge; their goal is authoritarian compliance to a quite twisted worldview. It's as if the criteria for winning a debate is how loudly one group or another can howl at the moon.

For better or worse (hint: I lean towards better), the 13 disk DVD will go on sale Tuesday. I'll likely buy it to support the show and its advocacy of science.

Just as likely as - despite the evidence before them - some will continue, at self-disillusioned disadvantage, to howl at the moon.

Related link: Logical fallacy poster
National Center for Science Education: "Scientific" Creationism

Carl...

This 1961 photograph shows a young Carl Sagan shortly after he received in PhD. in astronomy and astrophysics.
© Bettmann/CORBIS

Before Neil deGrasse Tyson, there was Carl Sagan. Handsome, articulate and witty, Sagan wasn't a man about town. He was a man about the cosmos. A tireless proponent of the universe, he was a pioneer in bridging the gap between science and nonscientists.

He was a giant among his peers, too. Sagan received 22 honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the U.S., published more than 600 scientific papers and articles, authored best-selling books and hosted a record-breaking public television series, "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage." He discovered how Venus was heated -- through the greenhouse effect (something scientists later learned also happened on Earth) and that the red color of Mars came from windstorm dust rather than vegetation. NASA explorations eventually proved he was right [source: Kiger].

Sagan was born in 1934 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1960 with a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics, then taught at Harvard and Cornell, where he became the director of Cornell's Laboratory for Planetary Studies and the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Some of Sagan's most memorable contributions occurred outside the classroom. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was NASA's astronaut whisperer. He offered advice to the Apollo crew before their journeys to the moon and conceived experiments for other planetary expeditions, including an interstellar record designed to greet the unknown inhabitants of deep space [source: Center for Inquiry]. And that's just one cool thing on our list.

How Stuff Works: 10 Coolest Things About Carl Sagan

Golden Anniversary...

Atlas Experiment Blog

If you’re over 50, you probably remember the Big Bang—indeed, it would be hard to forget it. One moment you’re part of an infinitely tiny, infinitely dense point that contains the entirety of the universe, and the next moment you’re accelerating outward faster than the speed of light, expanding along with space-time itself. That’s a remember-when day if ever there was one.

You might argue that the Big Bang occurred a bit earlier than 50 years ago—13.8 billion years earlier, in fact—and most people might agree with you. What actually happened 50 years ago was that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs made measurements of the cosmic background radiation that provided the first solid evidence of the Big Bang’s existence. Still, that didn’t stop Bell Labs itself from noting the event with a recent e-mail blast inviting recipients to “Celebrate the 50th Anniv. of the Big Bang.” In light of a just-released AP poll showing that a stunning 51% of Americans say they are “not at all confident” or “not too confident” that the Big Bang even occurred, the last thing we need is more confusion on the point. 1

It was 50 years ago May 20 that two scientists in the famous Bell Labs in New Jersey, while experimenting with an antenna, discovered the first evidence of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

The discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation eventually brought Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson the Nobel Prize for Physics and gave more credence to Bell Labs as a premiere research institution in the United States. 2

1. Time: The Big Bang Did NOT Occur 50 Years Ago, Jeffrey Kluger
2. E Week: Bell Labs Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Big Bang Discovery, Jeffrey Burt

Thinking Science...

So, you won't think it's just me...

On the blog "Physics and Physicists," Zapper Z writes the following:

A while back, I started a series of blog entry titled "You Can Teach Yourself To Think Like A Scientist". In Part 3 of this series, I mentioned about the general principal that one might be able to draw when reading the statements made by a US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. To refresh your memory, in a GQ Magazine interview, the senator was asked on how old he thinks the Earth is. He evaded answering the question by claiming that he's not a scientist, and that the issue has nothing to do with the economy of the US, which one would gather is the more important issue on his plate at that time.

Based on that interview, I tried to illustrate trying to extract the principals that Senator Rubio was using, which presumably are the principals that guide him in his decisions. His refusal to answer this question and based on his responses, one can conclude that he would rather defer such questions to experts. There's nothing wrong with that, and certainly, being put in a position like that, deferring to the experts is a rather smart way to respond to such a question.

However, such a principal no longer applies anymore, it seems. In the latest news report, it seems that Senator Rubio thinks that he's a climate expert.

"I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it," Rubio said.

The dear senator is picking himself up from a personal debacle with tea party constituents, i.e. actually trying to solve problems with immigration reform, an effort he now absolves himself of.

The title of his blog entry is "US Senator Marco Rubio Shifts Position And Thinks He's A Climate Expert." A long title/URL I'll admit.

The point he's making is the convenience of duplicity; clearly demonstrable Orwellian doublespeak. The senator is obviously making a political calculation, not reporting facts, or new data that would make him reconsider the science.

Governor Romney was for climate change in Massachusetts, working to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions until he was against it to win his party's presidential nomination, and gaff about it at the GOP convention (kind of like his flip-flop on the public mandate regarding healthcare reform). Unfortunately, we cannot ignore it, nor couch the group into a witty comedic punchline.

Tomorrow: Magical Thinking

Tyranny of Authoritarians...

Image Source: The Graveyard Site

This was inspired by my read of the old COSMOS on my kindle. I happened upon this letter excerpt from Galileo to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615. Given the unbelievable, relentless assaults on the new show by Young Earth/Universe Creationists, Galileo might as well have been writing this letter in the 21st Century:

To the Most Serene Grand Duchess Mother:

Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.

.

.

.

Now as to the false aspersions which they so unjustly seek to cast upon me, I have thought it necessary to justify myself in the eyes of all men, whose judgment in matters of` religion and of reputation I must hold in great esteem. I shall therefore discourse of the particulars which these men produce to make this opinion detested and to have it condemned not merely as false but as heretical. To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even m purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.

That's aspersions...without asparagus!

Fordham University
 Galileo Galilei: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615

Ibn al-Haytham...

Ibn al-Haytham. (Image by Guérin nicolas, GFDL)

Post inspired by COSMOS episode this past Sunday (full episode at link).

al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham

The Arabian physicist, astronomer, and mathematician al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca. 966-1039), or Alhazen, established the theory of vision that prevailed till the 17th century. He also defended a theory of the physical reality of Ptolemy's planetary models.

Al-Hasan was born at Basra in southern Iraq, where he must have received all his education. He gained sufficient fame for his knowledge of physics in his youth that he was called to Egypt by the Fatimid ruler al-Hakim to attempt to regulate the flow of the Nile. Failing in this effort, he was disgraced and established himself as a copyist of mathematical manuscripts; there still exists in Istanbul a manuscript of the Banu Musa's version of Apollonius's Conics copied by him in 1024. He continued to practice the scribal art in Cairo for the remainder of his life.

He did not cease to pursue his scientific studies, however, and published a large number of highly original works. He produced two catalogs of his own work, which are preserved by Ibn abi Usaybia. The first of these, compiled in 1027, comprises 25 books on mathematics and 44 on physics and metaphysics, including On the Structure of the World. The second, supplementary catalog was complied in 1028.

Al-Hasan's greatest scientific achievements were in the field of optics. In the discussion of the nature of vision at the beginning of Optics, he argues that light physically affects the eye, citing the pain experienced by looking directly at the Sun and the afterimage experienced by staring at fire and then looking into a weakly illuminated place. From this he argues that the assumption of emission of visual rays from the eye utilized by mathematical opticians, though convenient for their geometric analysis, must be physically wrong. Light rays rather proceed from the visible object to the eye and are always accompanied by color.

"al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Apr. 2014<http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Islam Wikia: Ibn al-Haytham
Wikipedia: History of the Scientific Method/Ibin al-Haytham

RGDX...

A little something to do while vegging on the couch (nothing on the "boob tube" except COSMOS, really).

Controlling a lab from home

The Remote Control Glow Discharge (RGDX) is a plasma that you can control from the comfort of your browser. YOU have control of the entire experiment including the gas pressure inside the tube, the voltage produced by the power supply that makes the plasma, and the strength of an electromagnet surrounding the plasma. You can perform experiments from any computer anywhere in the world!

In 2002, we began developing plasma sources for educational purposes and one of our devices won 2nd place in the National Apparatus Competition sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 2003, we began controlling our plasma sources by computer for a plasma exhibit in a science museum. The progression of this has led to remote control of a plasma from any location by anyone with an internet connection. This type of control could serve as an experimental component of an online physics class or for a school that typically does not have plasma physics equipment.

As with all other Science Education Department labs, the RGDX has been developed in large part by high school and undergraduate interns.

The Remote Glow Discharge Experiment was officially released to the public on 3/12/2014. The story can be found here.

PPPL: Remote Glow Discharge Experiment (RGDX)

Children's Home....

Established in 1847, the Children's Home provides a range of services and programs giving hope and healing to abused and neglected children in the Hudson River Region. The Children's Home served 397 children and their family members last year. The Home provides a full range of residential services including campus-based care, community-based group homes and boarding homes, and independent living apartments. It also provides regular foster care and intensive therapeutic foster homes.

Throughout our 167 year history, the underlying mission of the Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie has remained the same: The Home is dedicated to providing a safe and nurturing environment that improves lives and empowers at-risk children and families in the Hudson Valley and surrounding communities.

I did this presentation on Saturday, 22 March at the behest of the local Alpha Kappa Alpha alumni chapter. I have done such presentations before. I was more than happy to do it.

It was a focused audience of three young women and five young men. They participated well, and at least a few of them said they were going to purchase electronics snap kits from "The Shack." I came away encouraged and inspired by the curiosity of these young people in spite of their challenging circumstances. Especially in an era of error and pseudoscience propagated as alternate "truth" more outreach like this is needed: these are the "meek who will inherit the earth" and will need the tools to manage it.

Physics teachers: all the links in the embed are active, including those in the pictures of slides 8 and 12. If you want the Power Point version with all the "bells and whistles" of this embed, email: physics4thecool@gmail.com. Please attribute the source. My reference to Korea on slide 4 was a quote from "The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way," by Amanda Ripley and not meant to be derisive: the Korean children spend 16 hours a day in school M-F and 8 hours on Saturday. They are brilliant via focus and immersion.

I used parts from Electronics 101 and Electronics 303 kits purchased from Radio Shack. Apparently, Radio Shack only carries the Electronics 101 snap kit. I'd try their service number for the more advanced Electronics 303. However, Amazon carries comparable manipulatives: SC-100,  SC-300 and SC-750. Good luck.

STEM Presentation by Reginald L. Goodwin

Living Well...

When I was in elementary school in the public schools of New York City, I distinctly remember that it was important for me to be athletic — in particular, to be able to run fast. I was encouraged by all around me. My reward was the respect and admiration of classmates and especially my streetmates.

In junior high school it was important for me, now that I was certified the “fastest on the block,” to slam-dunk a basketball. To do this you have to jump high and palm the basketball. On April 17, 1973, I was the first in my grade to slam-dunk a basketball. I then asked myself, “Is this all there is to it?” The answer is basically yes, yet one can imagine creative variations such as a 360-degree pirouette in midair preceding the dunk, but you still score only two points.

About the same time, I learned that light, traveling at 186,282 miles per second, moves too slowly to escape from the event horizon of a black hole. This was more astonishing to me than a 360-degree slam-dunk. I soon became scientifically curious and read everything I could find about the universe. I began to see myself as a future scientist — in particular, an astrophysicist. It became a deeply seated dream.

I shortly came to the shattering awareness that few parts of society were prepared to accept my dreams. I wanted to do with my life what people of my skin color were not supposed to do. As an athlete, I did not violate society’s expectations since there was adequate precedent for dark-skinned competitors in the Olympics and in professional sports. To be an astrophysicist, however, became a “path of most resistance.” I began to wonder whether I originally wanted to be an athlete more from society’s interest rather than my own. My brother, Stephen, today a professional artist, could run faster and jump higher than I could. He, too, felt these forces of society.

In high school, nobody probed further about how I became captain of the wrestling team. But when I became editor-in-chief of my school’s annual Physical Science Journal, my qualifications were constantly queried. And when I was accepted to the college of my choice, I was continually asked for my SAT scores and grade point average. Indeed, one fellow student, who worked in the office of the guidance counselor, threatened to find the file in the school records to read my scores himself, if I didn’t tell.

When I first entered graduate school, before transferring to Columbia, I was eager to pursue my dreams of research astrophysics. But the first comment directed to me in the first minute of the first day, by a faculty member whom I had just met was, “You must join our department basketball team.” As the months and years passed, faculty and fellow students, thinking that they were doing me a favor, would suggest alternative careers for me.

“Why don’t you become a computer salesman?”

“Why don’t you teach at a community college?”

“Why don’t you leave astrophysics and academia? You can make much money in industry.”

At no time was I perceived as a future colleague, although this privilege was enjoyed by others in graduate school.

When combined with the dozens of times I have been stopped and questioned by the police for going to and from my office after hours, and the hundreds of times I am followed by security guards in department stores, and the countless times people cross the street upon seeing me approach them on the sidewalk, I can summarize my life’s path by noting the following: in the perception of society, my athletic talents are genetic; I am a likely mugger-rapist; my academic failures are expected; and my academic successes are attributed to others.

Book Excerpt: The Sky is Not the Limit, by Neil deGrasse Tyson on BillMoyers.com
Site: COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey
Mother Jones: Neil deGrasse Tyson on "Cosmos" (source of podcast below)

Hypatia...

Source: http://wizewomon.blogspot.com/2011/12/hypatia-womon-of-note.html

This is Women's History Month. As a blog that promotes diversity in the sciences, I'm well aware of it. However, I received my midterm exam from Stevens University on the 28th of February. Solid State Electronics II is no less the challenge than Part I was admittedly. I had two weeks to solve, thus my time was fairly focused. I turned in my test at the deadline. I can for a moment breath on this Ides of March.

Hypatia (pronounced "hi-pay-see-a"): I read her name in the book Cosmos that I downloaded to my Kindle. I looked at the "old school" Cosmos show where Carl Sagan mentions her (starts at 3:25), and her sad fate. She's described as mathematician, astronomer, physicist, philosopher, quite lovely apparently and driver of her own chariot! She was a beloved teacher and by social practice a celibate, no doubt frustrating potential suitors of her day.

Interestingly as I predicted to some casually offline, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey has already had its detractors of the "young Earth"/humans with dinosaurs/faux debate between Evolution and so-called Intelligent Design variety. The odd and breathtaking display of hypocrisy in most of the trolls taking to the Internet - notably in 140 misspelled characters or less - created by the very science and modern physics they rail against; supporting pseudoscience in their destructive wake.

A certain part of the reptilian portion of our minds attacks instinctively that which we think challenges our belief systems - and thus us. Time and again, we've seen the razing of cities, the flaying of martyrs, the murder of not only the person, but new ideas that would take the species forward. This of course, all for adherence to a dogma. Supposedly through evangelism, it is meant as a "sell," and thus adherence is voluntary - zealotry and fanaticism turns it involuntary; totalitarian. Authoritarianism becomes our governance and its dogmatic ruling class the thought police. Sadly, I can't help but think if part of the mob that set upon Hypatia and ended her life so tragically were peopled by members of her own gender, suffering from what would in the 20th century gain the name "Stockholm Syndrome."

I often fear intolerance will rear its ugly head again and plunge us all over the abyss with it, as it did Alexandria, Egypt. They executed Hypatia...for the "crime" of thinking critically and independently of the lordship of patriarchal society. The saying goes "teach a woman  and you teach a generation." The library, like Hypatia, soon expired after her forced passing.

For these and other reasons, I will support Dr. Tyson and the relaunch of Cosmos. As Dr. Sagan states above, we "must not let it happen again."

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known as George Santayana

Related Links:

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hypati1/a/hypatia.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/gm/a/100909Hypatia.htm