newscientist.com— Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us.Here are thirteen of the most perplexing. Cracking any one of them could yield profound truths.
Sep 2, 2009View in Crawl 4
I wish they would include real references in their articles. The seasquirt hybrid idea is pretty out there but sounds really cool if true. I've tried to look up the real papers behind it and I found this: <a class="user" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Charles-Darwin-and-Evolution-Genetic-Science-uproots-the-Tree-of-Life" rel="nofollow">http://hubpages.com/hub/Charles-Darwin-and-Evoluti ...</a>This says that it is work done by Michael Syvanen, who hasn't published anything on this topic, that I can find. His apparent proof is that when he tried to create a tree with 2000 genes from 6 animals, including urchin, sea squirt and various vertebrates, he found that half of the sea squirt genes grouped with urchin while the others grouped with the vertebrates. This seems like pretty flimsy evidence, if thats all he has. Sea squirt is very very basal for vertebrates, and considering its life history its not surprising that some of its genes may have evolved in different directions than the rest of chordata. Personally, I'd be looking for some synteny data to back up that claim. Are the genes that group with sea urchin clustered in specific chromosomes?Anyway, I'll believe it when I see the full story and not before. Anyone have a link to a paper talking about this?
I don't know why you were dug down you're absolutely correct. You expect a website such as New Scientist to get their figures correct.Edit: Just to add, it came up as -1 diggs to me a minute ago and now is saying +1/-0 even after I dugg you up wtf?
I agree. I'm not saying the theory is entirely correct, or that we've even scratched the surface of the ultimate conclusion. In fact, I'm pretty sure we'll wind up with a very similar situation to Ptolemy, and the legion of other close-but-wrong theories. I'm just saying that science is not pulling s**t out of thin air and calling it fact.
"big bang is a simplification of how the universe works."Very much so, but the big bang as we understand it barely scratches the surface of the actual data. Don't confuse an oversimplification used to explain an extraordinarily complex system to the average layman for the theory itself."Words like "nothing" and "everything" and "infinite" are just not words used by serious physicists. Using such words is submission to the problem, which always has a quantifiable solution."You're right. Those words suck. But they allow non-scientists (like me) to understand a concept that is virtually impossible for our minds to grasp."My analogy, though simple, could be extrapolated to an exponential scale and Hubble's observations would not negate it."Your analogy fails at a fundamental level because it assumes a single data point. Hubble's discovery and the theory of the expanding universe uses immense amounts of data spread out."The article asked the right question. If the big bang went down how we think it went down, then matter and antimatter would have been created in equal parts, thus negating each other, thus never creating an expanding universe."That's not theory-damning. It's a difficult question with many possible complex answers. In fact, one such possibility is illustrated right in the article itself."How can you create a rubber band from nothing?"The analogy completely breaks down when you get beyond the simple idea of universal expansion and contraction. Fortunately, my only goal was to illustrate the concept, and not the surrounding systems. You're absolutely right that it falls apart if taken on more than a very basic level."If everything did begin at one single point with all of that gravity, what the hell forced that gravity apart?"Simple answer: we don't know. Nobody knows yet. That may not even be true. It's just the best answer we have given the data we've accumulated. Remember also that certain laws of physics begin to break down at the quantum level. For example, the idea that you can't get something from nothing is a basic tenet of physics, yet we know for a fact that at the quantum level it's untrue. It is entirely possible that given the amount of potential energy existing within a singularity may do some very wacky things. Maybe not."I prefer the idea..."That's not really a mainstream theory, but there's nothing technically keeping that from being true. It does seem to go against some of the data we have. For example, if there are multiple universes that can collide, it means that at one point those universes were separated. What were they separated by? If the universes collided, why do we such uniformity in energy, and why does that energy seem to originate from a single point in the universe? I'm not saying there aren't perfectly reasonable answers to those questions, but answering them requires a leap in logic that goes far beyond the speculation you are here denouncing."...the more physicists are straying away from big bang...."Straying away from? I don't really see that. I see it more as a refinement of the theory. A theory, by the way, that may very well be proven wrong. I'm not calling it fact. I just think it's the best answer we have, given the available data."Name another theory that we accept without knowing the whats, whens, whys, and hows."That's easy: Gravity. We still don't completely understand how it scales from the tiniest particles to the whole of the cosmos, and there are many phenomena at the quantum and cosmic level that seem to defy the law gravity. Of course, that just means the theory that describes the law is not yet complete, but there are an awful lot of unknowns.
thermalgibbonSep 3, 2009
I wish they would include real references in their articles. The seasquirt hybrid idea is pretty out there but sounds really cool if true. I've tried to look up the real papers behind it and I found this: <a class="user" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Charles-Darwin-and-Evolution-Genetic-Science-uproots-the-Tree-of-Life" rel="nofollow">http://hubpages.com/hub/Charles-Darwin-and-Evoluti ...</a>This says that it is work done by Michael Syvanen, who hasn't published anything on this topic, that I can find. His apparent proof is that when he tried to create a tree with 2000 genes from 6 animals, including urchin, sea squirt and various vertebrates, he found that half of the sea squirt genes grouped with urchin while the others grouped with the vertebrates. This seems like pretty flimsy evidence, if thats all he has. Sea squirt is very very basal for vertebrates, and considering its life history its not surprising that some of its genes may have evolved in different directions than the rest of chordata. Personally, I'd be looking for some synteny data to back up that claim. Are the genes that group with sea urchin clustered in specific chromosomes?Anyway, I'll believe it when I see the full story and not before. Anyone have a link to a paper talking about this?
nishnabotnaSep 3, 2009
To see if the sammich tastes good.
kewickviperSep 3, 2009
I don't know why you were dug down you're absolutely correct. You expect a website such as New Scientist to get their figures correct.Edit: Just to add, it came up as -1 diggs to me a minute ago and now is saying +1/-0 even after I dugg you up wtf?
paidhimaSep 3, 2009
I agree. I'm not saying the theory is entirely correct, or that we've even scratched the surface of the ultimate conclusion. In fact, I'm pretty sure we'll wind up with a very similar situation to Ptolemy, and the legion of other close-but-wrong theories. I'm just saying that science is not pulling s**t out of thin air and calling it fact.
paidhimaSep 4, 2009
"big bang is a simplification of how the universe works."Very much so, but the big bang as we understand it barely scratches the surface of the actual data. Don't confuse an oversimplification used to explain an extraordinarily complex system to the average layman for the theory itself."Words like "nothing" and "everything" and "infinite" are just not words used by serious physicists. Using such words is submission to the problem, which always has a quantifiable solution."You're right. Those words suck. But they allow non-scientists (like me) to understand a concept that is virtually impossible for our minds to grasp."My analogy, though simple, could be extrapolated to an exponential scale and Hubble's observations would not negate it."Your analogy fails at a fundamental level because it assumes a single data point. Hubble's discovery and the theory of the expanding universe uses immense amounts of data spread out."The article asked the right question. If the big bang went down how we think it went down, then matter and antimatter would have been created in equal parts, thus negating each other, thus never creating an expanding universe."That's not theory-damning. It's a difficult question with many possible complex answers. In fact, one such possibility is illustrated right in the article itself."How can you create a rubber band from nothing?"The analogy completely breaks down when you get beyond the simple idea of universal expansion and contraction. Fortunately, my only goal was to illustrate the concept, and not the surrounding systems. You're absolutely right that it falls apart if taken on more than a very basic level."If everything did begin at one single point with all of that gravity, what the hell forced that gravity apart?"Simple answer: we don't know. Nobody knows yet. That may not even be true. It's just the best answer we have given the data we've accumulated. Remember also that certain laws of physics begin to break down at the quantum level. For example, the idea that you can't get something from nothing is a basic tenet of physics, yet we know for a fact that at the quantum level it's untrue. It is entirely possible that given the amount of potential energy existing within a singularity may do some very wacky things. Maybe not."I prefer the idea..."That's not really a mainstream theory, but there's nothing technically keeping that from being true. It does seem to go against some of the data we have. For example, if there are multiple universes that can collide, it means that at one point those universes were separated. What were they separated by? If the universes collided, why do we such uniformity in energy, and why does that energy seem to originate from a single point in the universe? I'm not saying there aren't perfectly reasonable answers to those questions, but answering them requires a leap in logic that goes far beyond the speculation you are here denouncing."...the more physicists are straying away from big bang...."Straying away from? I don't really see that. I see it more as a refinement of the theory. A theory, by the way, that may very well be proven wrong. I'm not calling it fact. I just think it's the best answer we have, given the available data."Name another theory that we accept without knowing the whats, whens, whys, and hows."That's easy: Gravity. We still don't completely understand how it scales from the tiniest particles to the whole of the cosmos, and there are many phenomena at the quantum and cosmic level that seem to defy the law gravity. Of course, that just means the theory that describes the law is not yet complete, but there are an awful lot of unknowns.
modred189Sep 4, 2009
It's not being driven by a small Asian woman on her cell phone however...
Closed AccountSep 4, 2009
Deep Thoughts, by Jack Iwantawii.
meddelemSep 5, 2009
(question 14)