Science Discussions - exploration, research, design - the choice is yours!

[cindybc]

Here are a couple of dictionary versions of the subtle diference between theory and theorem.

Theorem; a proposition that has been or is to be proved on the bassis of explicit asumptions.

Theorem; a theoretical proposition statemnet or formula embodying something to be proved from other propostitions or formulas also a rule or law especially one expressed by and equation or formula

Theory; A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Theory:The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice:  fine musician who had never studied theory.

Just an illustration.  My teeny light bulb in the attic came on. .

One sees a phenomenon that would not be possible to observe if it weren't for the fact that there be many different types of as yet unseen vibrant energies coming together to spontaneously light-up an area that was, prior to this illumination, just total empty darkness. Then one can begin the analysis of this detectable energetic activity. These energies can be detected by active spectrum analysis. The different energies can then can be analyzed and classified, but how many other types of elements or energies that were present but still remain undetectable or unobservable? 

Cindy 


Posted on: October 25, 2007, 07:53:03 PMHi Cindi
I just found out that you were trained into the physical sciences as a government contractor, Does that mean the Spooks are going to come looking for me, I hope they put me on as test pilot for the most recent confiscated UFO. "Hee, hee, hee."

Well thank you so very much for the cerebral gymnastic

Cindy

Posted on: October 25, 2007, 08:14:30 PMI made a search and came up with some info on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

And here is a reconstruction of what may have happened Tunguska.

http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html

Cindy

[cindianna_jones]

Cindy

Posted on: October 25, 2007, 08:14:30 PMI made a search and came up with some info on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

And here is a reconstruction of what may have happened Tunguska.

http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html

Cindy

It took decades to figure out what happened out there in Siberia.  They looked for years for the impact crater and never found one.  But the simplest answer turned out to be the most plausible.  The blast in the atmosphere.... go figure

Yes, I did do some research and engineering on systems for military applications.  I don't talk about it more than that.  I eventually became fed up and left to pursue other interests.  That was long ago and I'm sure that so many things have changed since then, except for the reasons that I left

Cindi

[cindybc]

Hi Cindi
I didn't really mean to dig up any old bones, I was just intrigued in knowing there is another intellect around here. I believe it's kind of invigorating to air out the cobwebs once in a while in the cerebral cortex. I may be just a Social Worker but I am quite interested anything that pertains to the many different fields of science.

How about nanotechnology?

Cindy.

[cindianna_jones]

Nanotechnology..  It's mostly pipe dreams right now.  There is some work that I know of but most if it is fiction.

I think that the most practical approach is to take a virus and modify it to do something interesting.... like kill cancer cells.

But I just don't see any of it happening.  It's more probable than traveling to other star systems.  But not by much.

Cindi

[cindybc]

Hi Cindi, speaking of nanotechnology, this is not exactly nanotechnology, but is certainly a close second in a revolutionary concept.

Superfast Laser Turns Virus Into Rubble
By Alexis Madrigal Email 11.01.07 | 12:00 AM
Researchers are using this ultrashort-pulse laser to destroy the protein shell of viruses. They say the laser frequency will not harm human cells.

A physicist and his biologist son destroyed a common virus using a superfast pulsing laser, without harming healthy cells. The discovery could lead to new treatments for viruses like HIV that have no cure.

"We have demonstrated a technique of using a laser to excite vibrations on the shield of a virus and damage it, so that it's no longer functional," said Kong-Thon Tsen, a professor of physics at Arizona State University. "We're testing it on HIV and hepatitis right now."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/11/laser_virus

Cindy

[cindianna_jones]

That is very cool Cindy.

Cindi

[cindybc]

Hi, I thought this  might be interesting, I first heard about this experiment with light about five years ago.

Harvard Physicist Plays Magician With the Speed of Light
By Erin Biba Email 10.23.07 | 12:00 AM



Lene Vestergaard Hau can stop a pulse of light in midflight, start it up again at 0.13 miles per hour, and then make it appear in a completely different location. "It's like a little magic trick," says Hau, a Harvard physicist. "Of course, in all magic tricks there's a secret." And her secret is a 0.1-mm lump of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate, cooled nearly to absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) in a steel container with tiny windows. Normally — well, in a vacuum — light goes 186,282 miles per second. But things are different inside a BEC, a strange place where millions of atoms move — barely — in quantum lockstep.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-11/st_alphageek/

Cindy

Posted on: November 23, 2007, 02:54:45 AMA huge void in the universe.

Last August, astronomers working on the analysis of data being acquired by NASA's WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite announced that they found a huge void in the universe. A void is a region of space that has much less material (stars, nebulae, dust and other material) than the average. Since our universe is relatively heterogeneous, empty spaces are not rare, but in this case the enormous magnitude of the hole is way outside the expected range. The hole found in the constellation of Eridanus is about a billion light years across, which is roughly 10,000 times as large as our galaxy or 400 times the distance to Andromeda, the closest "large" galaxy.




Evidence for a parallel universeThe dimension of the hole is so big that at first glance, it results impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories, although scientists put forward some explanations based on certain theoretical models that might predict the existence of "giant knots" in space known as topological defects.

However, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physics Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton made a staggering claim. She says, "Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole" and goes further with the ground-breaking hypothesis that the huge void is "... the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own".

The idea of alternative, or parallel universes has been around for quite a while and has provided considerable inspiration for Sci-Fi literature and sparked endless philosophical debate, but although begin seriously considered within the scientific realm it never crossed the limits of speculative of purely theoretical grounds. Perhaps until now. If Mersini-Houghton is right, Eridanus' giant hole would be the first experimental evidence for the existence of another universe. The implications of this possibility are obviously of huge importance for everybody, but it also has further relevance for the astrophysics community as it would bring support for the hotly debated string theory and other central debates.

But Mersini-Houghton and colleagues' theory of entangled universes make testable predictions, providing the opportunity to confirm or refute the claim as more data arrive to the astronomers' computers. Her model predicts the existence of two voids rather than one, one in each hemisphere of our universe. The one that has been found by WMAP's data lies in the Northern hemisphere. They expect new data will show a second similar void in the Southern side. This and other cutting-edge experimental projects testing Mersini-Houghton's ideas will tell us whether a new era in cosmological thinking has indeed arrived.

Sources and further information:

Cindy

Posted on: November 26, 2007, 03:58:10 PMSigns of Lightning on Venus




By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
28 November 2007
Given that lightning on Earth isn't shy about attracting attention, it might come as a surprise that the phenomenon has been hard to detect on Venus, especially because spacecraft have visited our sister planet more than 30 times. So scientists seemed almost relieved today to report that the orbiting Venus Express spacecraft has returned "the first definitive evidence of abundant lightning on Venus," according to a team member. Chances for lightning seem dimmer on Saturn's moon Titan, however, where new observations by the Cassini spacecraft have failed to detect the phenomenon.

Lightning can change the chemistry of an atmosphere and give researchers clues to the storm activity of a planet. It's common enough in planets with thick atmospheres. Bolts 100 times more powerful than terrestrial ones crackle on Jupiter, and it has been detected on Saturn, on Uranus, and probably on Neptune. After its 1979 arrival at Venus, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter recorded electrical impulses leaking out of the atmosphere that some researchers took to be a signature of lightning. Later, Galileo swept by and detected noise bursts at much higher frequencies, encouraging more faith in venusian lightning (Science, 27 September 1991, p. 1492). But expectations dimmed with Cassini's failure to detect lightning's distinctive radio static during its two flybys.

With the European Space Agency's Venus Express in the neighborhood, space physicist Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues were looking for the magnetic signals that should accompany the electrical signals observed by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter. In the 29 November issue of Nature, they report that Venus Express detected bursts of 100-hertz magnetic radiation lasting 0.25 to 0.5 seconds and occurring at least half as often as lightning on Earth. "They were pretty much as we'd predicted," says Russell. "Lightning is occurring beneath the spacecraft about 25% of the time."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1128/2

Posted on: November 29, 2007, 03:41:36 PMVenus Cloud Wave Structure



   
   30-Nov-2007 04:29:11 UT
Venus Cloud Wave Structure

Date: 13 Nov 2006
Satellite: Venus Express
Depicts: VIRTIS image of south polar region in infrared
Copyright: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA

This night-side image of the southern hemisphere of Venus was taken by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board Venus Express on 29 July 2006, from a distance of about 64 000 kilometres over the surface. At the time, Venus Express was around the orbit apocentre.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=40370

[Teri Anne]

Hi Cindy,

Thanx for the cosmos stuff -- interesting!  I've enjoyed various PBS and Discovery shows about the planets recently.  I still find the formation stuff and facts of each of the planets fascinating.

Why were we so lucky to be intelligent and alive on the lone planet in our system that supports obvious life?...scientists say that it's just a statistical thing...that, given a few billion years of evolution that it was bound to happen.  And man has religion to explain the unexplainable.  Neither explanation is truly satisfying to me.

I've had strange dreams from time to time.  As a kid, I remember dreaming that I was leveling out the earth's surface, making things better by making the mountains into plains.  It all seems bizarre to me today and that's probably why I remember it.  Why would anyone WANT to level out mountains?  I look at the glorious mountains rising up steeply from the Inside Passage north of me in Alaska and am stunned at the beauty.

One of my silly dreams that I occassionaly have these days is doing something like sending one of our solar systems moons a care package of all the DNA that makes up our planet.  Re-creating our world.  I think Jupiter has a moon that scientists feel has water.  But Jupiter is far away from the sun and thus, cold.  Though environmentalists would be aghast at my dream - Introducing life to another planet - I still daydream about it from time to time.

Might be nice if the wackos of the world mess up earth enough to make it unlivable that we, as people, would have a place to immigrate to -- if the Martians will let us, lol. 

Teri Anne

[cindybc]

Hi, Teri Ann,

I believe there is something very odd happening with Mars, like it was supposed to have made its closest approach three years ago to our planet since prehistory of the Earth.

But again, Mars made another approach to us a few weeks ago and again, it was claimed as having made its closest approach since prehistory. I saw it from here with the unaided eye.  It appeared like an orange orb about the size and brightness as Venus appears to us from here on Earth.

Now it is reported that in the past five years much of the C02 solidly frozen under the surface of Mars is sublimating into the thin Martian air. If that is so, will not this add to the density of the atmosphere?

You see, I have been observing this little orange orb along with its little idiosyncrasies. Every little change that has occurred since I was about 9 or years old I remember quite well and I have noticed and being paying special attention to these subtle changes that were happening. There have been many changes since then, as NASA built better and stronger observation platforms or probes.

NASA sent many probes to Mars in the past twenty years and found some peculiar things that I believe are artifacts and detected and recorded lots of useful information.  At first the differences climactic changes.  No matter how subtle these changes were, they were detected, classified, and recorded for later study. But it was the orbiting Martian probe named HIRISE, the technical marvel, that allowed them to visually record any object on the surface objects as small as a golf cart.  They have been receiving some pretty awesome data, too!  This was when NASA discovered anomalies that were taking place on the planet that were worth closer inspection. These observed phenomena were getting bigger and occuring more rapidly then any other time in the known history of Mars, at least since the earliest probes sent by NASA

Things have been shifting and changing, like channels on the banks of dunes and on the edge of impact crater cliffs that were not there the previous year. Some scientists have gone so far as  predicting a possible end to a billion-years-old-ice age.

"Wow!" Can you imagine that, to actually be an eye witnesses of the reawakening of a planet that has been dormant for millions of years?  If you like these kinds of optimistic insights on a very awesome little planet I am sure that I can accommodate you.
 
Cindy

Posted on: December 01, 2007, 03:45:24 PMMy Mars.



Cindy

Posted on: December 01, 2007, 03:57:41 PMFaster than T rex - the dinosaur 'mummy' that had to run for its life


    * James Randerson, science correspondent
    * The Guardian
    * Monday December 3 2007


· Skin and tissue preserved in rare fossil discovery
· Size of herbivore's rump 'shows it could do 28mph

Scientists claim to have discovered a dinosaur that could outrun a Tyranosaurus. Its story is told in Dino Autopsy on the National Geographic channel on Sunday (Photo: Sinead Taylor/BSkyB)

If you were unfortunate enough to share the planet with Tyrannosaurus rex there were two ways not to be eaten - either outrun the predator or hide from it. An exquisitely preserved fossil of one of T rex's plant-eating contemporaries shows that it did both.

Dakota, as the find has been nicknamed, was 10 miles an hour faster than its enemy and had a stripey pattern on its skin, possibly to break up its outline and make it less visible. The scientists who have analysed the specimen say its body was subjected to a natural but extremely unusual mummification process after it died, preserving not just bones but skin and soft tissues.

"When you get up close and look at the skin envelope it's beautiful. This is not a skin impression, it's fossilized skin. That's very, very different," said Dr Phil Manning, the palaeontologist at Manchester University who has led the investigation.

The exquisite detail allows researchers to find out how the animal moved - and preliminary investigations have suggested that the way museums put dinosaur fossils together for display is incorrect.

The "dinosaur mummy" is a 3,600 kilogram hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, that died 65 to 67m years ago - shortly before all the other dinosaurs went extinct, probably because of a massive meteorite impact.

What makes this fossil unique though was what happened next. Skin and soft tissues are not usually present in fossils because they rot down quickly before fossilization takes place. But in this case, one of just a handful of such specimens ever found, something unusual about the chemistry of the mud the beast ended up in meant that didn't happen.

"You've got a chemical reaction going on where minerals are forming more rapidly than the microbes are decaying the soft tissues - so you are left with soft tissue structures preserved," said Manning.

Dakota was found in 1999 by a 16-year-old fossil hunter called Tyler Lyson. At the time he did not realise its significance so he merely mapped its location, recorded it in his field notebook and forgot about it. In 2004 he returned to the site with a team of excavators but when he saw fossilized skin he realised he needed professional help. That's when he brought in Manning. The story is told in Dino Autopsy, a programme on the National Geographic channel next Sunday.

The animal - which lived on a coastal floodplain and is probably an Edmontosaurus annectens - has already thrown up surprises. One is that the animal's rump was 25% larger than palaeontologists had previously assumed. That means more muscle power and greater acceleration.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/dec/03/dinosaurs.fossils

Cindy

Posted on: December 03, 2007, 02:29:36 PMCERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (13 pictures)



Peter Glassel, technical coordinator of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber, sits in the completed chamber (June 2006)
Photograph: Maximilien Brice; Claudia Marcelloni/CERN

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/0007/nov/20/cern?picture=330340644

Cindy

Mars Rising



Posted on: December 03, 2007, 02:41:30 PM

Shot in HD in over 90 locations, the documentary series "Mars Rising" explores how the challenges being grappled with today will lead to a manned mission to Mars in the next 20 years. Film crews captured interviews, training sessions and experiments in the United States, Russia, Chile, China, Europe and across Canada, including the Canadian Arctic. Over 300 scientists from diverse backgrounds and nationalities were consulted for the series and more than 60 space experts, including former and current astronauts, appear on camera. Among the critical subjects explored through the series include spaceship design, possible trajectories, rocket fuel, finding new life forms, new thoughts on astronaut selection and training, space suit engineering, medical training for deep space, blasting through the Mars atmosphere, life support systems and robotics.

Among the distinguished experts appearing in the series, three experts with very different backgrounds stand out: James Garvin, lead scientist for Mars and Lunar Exploration at NASA; Paul Delaney, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Toronto's York University; and Academy-Award winning filmmaker James Cameron ('Titanic') who is a member of NASA's special advisory committee. The astronauts interviewed on "Mars Rising" include Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian mission specialist and the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm in orbit; Canadian Dave Williams currently on board the Atlantis and expected to make three space walks on the Shuttle Endeavour in August 2007; retired NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger, who spent 132 days aboard the ISS Mir in 1997; and Jeffrey Hoffman who was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame earlier this year.

William Shatner narrates "Mars Rising" - and it's not the first time that the multiple-award-winning actor has worked with Discovery Channel Canada! Commissioned by Discovery Channel, the hit 2005 special 'How William Shatner Changed the World' was hosted and narrated by the Star Trek icon, and based on his book, I'm Working On That. The cheeky and irreverent doc showcased the brightest minds of Silicon Valley and their Trek-inspired inventions that have changed the world.

"Earth to Mars: The Great Space Debate"
Sun., Nov. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT on Discovery Channel
This one-hour special wraps up "Race to Mars" and "Mars Rising" and puts plans for a manned mission to Mars under the microscope with the ultimate litmus test. An esteemed panel of scientists and space experts dissect the risks, challenges and dangers of a mission that could last as long as three years. Moderated by "Daily Planet" co-host Jay Ingram, the "Earth To Mars: The Great Space Debate" panel features NASA Chief Scientist James Garvin; co-founder of The Mars Society Robert Zubrin; and Psychiatrist and former NASA flight surgeon Doctor Pat Santy. Featuring illustrative scenes from "Race to Mars" and "Mars Rising," the experts will tackle everything from the astronomical expense involved in mounting a human mission to the Red Planet, to crew selection and cabin fever, to the probability of life on Mars. In addition to the panel debate, this special will feature exclusive expert testimonials along with exclusive behind the scenes footage from the production of "Race to Mars."

Cindy