Duck Goes Moo!

Famed Scientist Stephan Hawking has talked much lately of humanity’s need to escape the planet to ensure its survival, and now he has taken his first step in proving anyone can make the journey into space.

Hawking has recently taken a ride in a “vomit comet”, a plane designed to make high-altitude dives to facilitate short periods of weightlessness brought about by free fall. He said the experience was “amazing” and is it is assumed he is still planing on making a trip to space.

More Here

A mathematician at Pittsburgh University has proposed that there are six dimensions: 4 in space and two in time. To be more accurate, s2 = x2 + y2 + z2 – t2 – u2 – v2, where x, y, z and s are coordinates in space and t and u are coordinates in time, which are expressed as negative coordinates. This creates an ultra-hyperbolic universe, which is different than the normal concept of space-time which is merely hyperbolic. This is much different than string theory which has nine positive coordinates and only one negative coordinate.

My work has three six-dimensional spaces which at one level are on an equal footing and which are bound together by a new transform, which I call the Xi-transform, [...] Two of these spaces can be understood at the space-time level as twisters. Then the third space can be given a space-time interpretation, but only if we have two extra dimensions: so it is the requirement of symmetry between the spinor spaces and the space-time that dictates that the extra dimensions be there.

from physorg.com

Really interesting stuff, but it takes several reads to understand what is being expressed if you’re not heavy ready of physics and mathematics papers.

There’s a giant hexagon on Saturn four times the size of earth:

Check it out…

No, really. It’s an air-pressure powered car and it’s cost effective too!

Supposedly it can go travel around 150 miles on a full tank of air and reach top speeds of 68 mph.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/7000/

The verdict is in: You can’t travel backwards through time…

New York University researchers have spent a good deal of time and money studying what make people sexy, and the main conclusion is not just how one looks but how one walks.

They grabbed 700 people and showed them cartoons and movies of people walking, and they found that the women who move their hips more when they walk are more attractive than those who do not. The same goes for men who move their shoulders more as well.

I hope this study does not cause everyone in the world to start walking in an exaggerated cartoon-like fashion from now on.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6444851.stm

Copenhagen University scientists have made a conclusion that our nerves use sound to transmit information instead of electricity.

One of the reasonings given for this claim is that there is not enough heat being generated from our electrical impulses as there should be if electricity is the means of neurotic communication.

So when someone’s voice gets on someone’s nerves is that more than a figure of speech?

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/09/science-nervessound-20070309.html

Happy Love Day, y’all!

To celebrate, here is a wikipedia entry on love:

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

Recent studies have shown that cats and my mother have it right: Taking naps all throughout the day can help you live a longer and healthier life:

http://www.latimes.com/la-sci-naps13feb13,0,5266493.story?coll=la-home-headlines

I’ve recently come down with some kind of virus again, and it got me thinking: If there are bacteria that live in me that can be beneficial, as in aiding my digestion and the like, then are there viruses that can be beneficial as well?

It seems like a complete oxymoron, a “helpful virus”. I mean, they’re not even technically alive.

But it seems viral infection that in some cases can be useful, mostly interfering with other viruses.

The Type C GB Infection, which is non-pathogenic (non-harmful), has been shown to help to hamper the spread of the HIV virus. Precisely why does not seem to be known, at least in the online articles I’ve read, but the main theories seem to be that it either does something to cells to prevent the HIV virus from getting inside cells by altering the “locks” on the exterior of the cell, or the other possibility is the Type C GB hampers the growth of HIV by competition for living space.

Still, there a skeptics out there who say there is no evidence that Type C GB has any effect upon HIV and its effect on the immune system.

Here are some articles on the subject I have found:

http://www.uihealthcare.com/news/currents/vol5issue2/01viruses.html

http://www.thebody.com/pinf/nov04/gbv.html

http://www.hivandhepatitis.com/recent/statistics/031105_a.html

The New Year follows Jesus’ birth.
May Jesus Christ, who walks this earth,
Bless you this night,
This new month’s eve,
This New Year’s Eve,
And fill your hearts with joy,
And fill your hearts with joy.

– song Greek carolers sing on Saint Basil’s Eve

I’ve recently learned that one of the main traditions of celebrating the new year in Greek culture is something called a St. Basil’s Cake. It’s also known as basilopitta, or St. Basil’s bread. The idea is that a coin or charm is baked into the basilopitta, it is cut into pieces, and then whomever is served the piece with the coin will be more fortunate in the coming year.

Well, some mathematicians have taken it upon themselves to ask what the probability of getting the coin in your piece is:

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061223/mathtrek.asp

I wonder if it goes well with Ouzo…

In an ongoing argument with myself about what precisely humans are and how they are conscious I have been coming to some interesting ideas lately.

This whole argument goes back to the whole Mind/Body discussion. What parts of us denote our pure mechanical bodies and our true mindful selves? If we cut off a person’s arms and legs they will still maintain their minds and still be the same conscious identity. Put their brain in a jar and connect it up to a fake virtual world and they will still be themselves.

How much can you cut down a human being down to and still have a conscious, sentient entity?

We could say it is the brain, but what parts? A person can have a whole half of their brain removed and then still live, in some cases the remaining half adapting and taking up functions of the lost half.

I’ve been reading “Kinds of Minds” by Daniel Dennett and it goes on to describe “popperian creatures”:

Popperian creatures can preselect from possible behaviours / actions weeding out the truly stupid options before risking them in the harsh world. Dennett calls them Popperian because Popper said this design enhancement “permits our hypotheses to die in our stead”. This is Dennett’s enhancement of behaviourism. Popperian creatures have an inner environment that can preview and select amongst possible actions. For this to work the inner environment must contain lots of information about the outer environment and its regularities. Not only humans can do this. Mammals, birds, reptiles and fish can all presort behavioural options before acting.

– from Bill Kerr’s Blog

It’s got me thinking… we aren’t even our brains, we’re a simulation within our own brains.

The idea here is that intelligent entities try to come to good decisions by creating imagined versions of the world they see and imagining themselves within that simulated world. Here the imagined self can suffer all the slings and arrows of poor decisions before the real self does… but what if that imagined self living in these imagined worlds is the actual conscious entity?

In this light, we are like computer programs running in the hardware of the brain. It makes the concept of artificial intelligence and sentience more of a possibility.

Does this mean we can never really ever see the world as it really is? Perhaps we cannot, but remember that the imagined world we live in is based off of real events taking place outside and inside the body, and therefore these “imagined” stimuli are not any more “fake” than the “gas empty” light in your car. It is all based off of something genuinly happening in the real world.

This all makes the concept that simulated life and intelligence on a computer is real life and real intelligence… or at least as justifiably real as we are.

There is a wikipedia entry on what a mattress is… no, really:

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

It seems the mattress was invented in the neolithic period, AKA the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic. Yabba-Dabba-Snooze!

I found a really fascinating video on MySpace. I don’t think you have to be a member to see it. I’ve been trying to find it on YouTube but no luck so far.

Anyhoo, Check this out!

Okay, this may sound like a very simple question, but I get the feeling it is not.

Any of us who have taken high school physics knows that when molecules are heated they begin to vibrate and move about, colliding with other molecules and making the material more fluid and/or gaseous. Just the same, when you touch a less jittery grouping of molecules to a more jittery group of molecules they will pull away this jittery-ness, and thus heat is conducted from one object to another.

I understand that this is a transference of potential energy to kinetic energy and you can compare it all to a game of billiards. I also know that it is the electromagnetic force that holds atoms and molecules together and it is the negative charge of the electrons that keep atoms apart.

What I want to know is how heat makes the molecules and atoms “vibrate and move”, as every online source I have looked at says. They all stop short of explaining how this occurs, or what “vibrate and move” really means.

Why do atoms shimmy and shake more when they “receive” more energy via radiation, convection, or conduction? Do the elections gain a more powerful charge and then they repulse each other more powerfully? Does that mean that when heat conducts that the charge from one set of electrons circling an atoms give up much of their charge to another atom’s electrons?

What I am getting at is, where in the atom is the energy stored and how is it used to make the atom boogie when it’s hot, and I don’t want another “billiard game” anology or just a unexplanitory “kinetic and potential energy” description.

Even further, what are the properties about an atom or molecule that defines its specific heat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wootz_steel&oldid=87356449

Land of Fools

A Sufi teaching tells of a traveler who was crossing a strange land known as the Land of Fools. While walking down a rural road he observed farmers fleeing in terror. “There’s a monster in that field,” said a man as he ran past.

The traveler looked out into the field and saw a watermelon. So he called the farmers together and offered to kill the monster for them. He then walked into the field, took out a knife and cut the melon in half and started to eat it.

The farmers were horrified and feared the traveler more than they had the watermelon. They drove him out of their world with pitchforks, screaming “He’ll kill us next if we don’t get rid of him.”

The following season another traveler found himself journeying thought the same world, and the same thing happened to him. But instead of offering to kill the monster, he agreed with them that it was dangerous, and by tiptoeing away from it with them he gained their confidence.

He spent time in their homes until he could teach them, a little at a time, the facts that would allow them to rise above their fear of watermelons and cultivate the melons themselves. The truth alone does not make people free. Facts do not change attitudes.

- Land of Fools, Indries Shah, The Way of the Sufi

Three species are known to exhibit self-aware behaviors on this planet: Humans, Chimpanzees, and Dolphins.

Now a new mammal can be added to the list: the elephant!

The test for awareness is based around how an entity reacts to a mirror. Most animals will either ignore a mirror or consider the reflected image to be another creature besides itself. One of the more specific tests is to put a mark on an animal and see if it goes to the mirror to examine the mark. Three elephants in the Bronx Zoo did just that, which even further puts elephants into the “maybe” pile for possessing sentience.

Read more here:

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-10-31T181545Z_01_N31200173_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-SCIENCE-ELEPHANTS-DC.XML&WTmodLoc=SciHealth-C1-Headline-5

I wonder if this will effect midterm elections?