"The Old Double Slit and Quantum Uncertainty Experiment Done Right at Home Trick!" Although a bit hard to follow at times, this video presentation will give you an idea of how you can set up the reality-warping experiment right at home. C...
Date: September 25, 2014
Excerpt from the journal Naturenature.comTransmission spectroscopy has so far detected atomic and molecular absorption in Jupiter-sized exoplanets, but intense efforts to measure molecular absorption in the atmospheres of smaller (Neptune-sized) pla...
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| Human brains are about three times as large as those of our early australopithecines ancestors that lived 4 million to 2 million years ago, and for years, scientists have wondered how our brains got so big. A new study suggests social competition could be behind the increase in brain size. Credit NIH, NADA |
livescience.com
There are many ways to try to explain why human brains today are so big compared to those of early humans, but the major cause may be social competition, new research suggests.But with several competing ideas, the issue remains a matter of debate.
Compared to almost all other animals, human brains are larger as a percentage of body weight. And since the emergence of the first species in our Homo genus (Homo habilis) about 2 million years ago, the human brain has doubled in size. And when compared to earlier ancestors, such as australopithecines that lived 4 million to 2 million years ago, our brains are three times as large. For years, scientists have wondered what could account for this increase.
Behind the hypotheses
The climate idea proposes that dealing with unpredictable weather and major climate shifts may have increased the ability of our ancestors to think ahead and prepare for these environmental changes, which in turn led to a larger, more cognitively adept brain.
The ecology hypothesis states that, as our ancestors migrated away from the equator, they encountered environmental changes, such as less food and other resources. "So you have to be a little bit more clever to figure it out," said David Geary, a professor from the University of Missouri. Also, less parasite exposure could have played a role in the makings of a bigger brain. When your body combats parasites, it cranks up its immune system, which uses up calories that could have gone to boost brain development. Since there are fewer parasites farther away from the equator, migrating north or south could have meant that our predecessors had more opportunity to grow a larger brain because their bodies were not fighting off as many pathogens.
Finally, other researchers think that social competition for scarce resources influenced brain size. As populations grow, more people are contesting for the same number of resources, the thinking goes. Those with a higher social status, who are "a little bit smarter than other folks" will have more access to food and other goods, and their offspring will have a higher chance of survival, Geary said.
Those who are not as socially adept will die off, pushing up the average social "fitness" of the group. "It's that type of process, that competition within a species, for status, for control of resources, that cycles over and over again through multiple generations, that is a process that could easily explain a very, very rapid increase in brain size," Geary said.
Weighing the options
To examine which hypothesis is more likely, Geary and graduate student Drew Bailey analyzed data from 175 skull fossils — from humans and our ancestors — that date back to sometime between 10,000 ago and 2 million years ago.
The team looked at multiple factors, including how old the fossils were, where they were found, what the temperature was and how much the temperature varied at the time the Homo species lived, and the level of parasites in the area. They also looked at the population density of the region in order to measure social competition, "assuming that the more fossils you find in a particular area at a particular time, the more likely the population was larger," Geary said.
They then used a statistical analysis to test all of the variables at once to see how well they predicted brain size. "By far the best predictor was population density," Geary said. "And in fact, it seemed that there was very little change in brain size across our sample of fossil skulls until we hit a certain population size. Once that population density was hit, there was a very quick increase in brain size," he said.
Looking at all the variables together allowed the researchers to "separate out which variables are really important and which variables may be correlated for other reasons," added Geary. While the climate variables were still significant, their importance was much lower than that of population density, he said. The results were published in the March 2009 issue of the journal Human Nature.
Questions linger
The social competition hypothesis "sounds good," said Ralph Holloway, an anthropologist at Columbia University, who studies human brain evolution. But, he adds: "How would you ever go about really testing that with hard data?"
He points out that the sparse cranium data "doesn’t tell you anything about the differences in populations for Homo erectus, or the differences in populations of Neanderthals." For example, the number of Homo erectus crania that have been found in Africa, Asia, Indonesia and parts of Europe is fewer than 25, and represent the population over hundreds of thousands of years, he said.
"You can't even know the variation within a group let alone be certain of differences between groups," Holloway said. Larger skulls would be considered successful, but "how would you be able to show that these were in competition?"
However, Holloway is supportive of the research. "I think these are great ideas that really should be pursued a little bit more," he said.
Alternative hypotheses
Holloway has another hypothesis for how our brains got so big. He thinks that perhaps increased gestation time in the womb or increased dependency time of children on adults could have a played role. The longer gestation or dependency time "would have required more social cooperation and cognitive sophistication on the part of the parents," he said. Males and females would have needed to differentiate their social roles in a complementary way to help nurture the child. The higher level of cognition needed to perform these tasks could have led to an increase in brain size.
Still other hypotheses look at diet as a factor. Some researchers think that diets high in fish and shellfish could have provided our ancestors with the proper nutrients they needed to grow a big brain.
And another idea is that a decreased rate of cell death may have allowed more brain neurons to be synthesized, leading to bigger noggins.
Ultimately, no theory can be absolutely proven, and the scant fossil record makes it hard to test hypotheses. "If you calculate a generation as, let's say, 20 years, and you know that any group has to have a minimal breeding size, then the number of fossils that we have that demonstrates hominid evolution is something like 0.000001 percent," Holloway said. "So frankly, I mean, all hypotheses look good."
Valerie Tarico, AlterNetReligious labels help shore up identity. So what are some of the things non-believers can call themselves?Catholic, born-again, Reformed, Jew, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist…religions give people labels. The downside can be tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity and generosity or even that violence toward “infidels” is acceptable. But the upside is that religious o [...]
Elena Serova of Russia, a member of the International Space Station crew, gestures as she boards the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft at t...
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| India's first Mars orbiter Mangalyaan captured this photo of the Martian atmosphere just after arriving at Mars on Sept. 24, 2014 Indian Standard Time. The Indian Space Research Organisation released the image on Sept. 25. Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation |
scientificamerican.com
The India Space Research Organization unveils its first pictures of the red planet.
India's first Mars probe has captured its first photos, revealing an early glimpse of the surface and atmosphere of the Red Planet.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) unveiled the first photos of Mars from its Mangalyaan spacecraft via Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday and Thursday (Sept. 24-25), just a day or so after the probe made it to the Red Planet.
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| Mars surface |
"The view is nice up here," ISRO officials tweeted about one of the images, which shows a heavily cratered portion of the Red Planet's surface.
Another photo depicts the curving, orange-brown limb of Mars against the blackness of space.
"A shot of Martian atmosphere. I'm getting better at it. No pressure," ISRO officials tweeted about that one.
Mangalyaan, whose name means "Mars craft" in Sanskrit, arrived at the Red Planet on Tuesday night (Sept. 23), making India's space agency just the fourth entity — after the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency — to successfully place a probe in orbit around Mars.
Mangalyaan is the centerpiece of India's $74 million Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), which ISRO officials have described as primarily a technology demonstration. The spacecraft carries a camera and four scientific instruments that it will use to study the Martian surface and atmosphere during the course of a mission expected to last six to 10 months.
MOM reached Mars close on the heels of NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) probe, which was captured by the Red Planet's gravity on Sunday (Sept. 21). The $671 million MAVEN mission aims to help scientists determine what happened to Mars' atmosphere, which was once relatively thick but is now just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth.
MAVEN has also taken its first images of Mars from orbit; NASA released a few false-color views of the planet's atmosphere on Wednesday.
Mars orbit now hosts five operational spacecraft; NASA's Mars Odyssey probe and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as Europe's Mars Express craft, share space with MAVEN and Mangalyaan. And two rovers (NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity) are actively exploriong the planet's surface.
dailymail.co.uk
By Jonathan O’Callaghan
- Scientist claims she has mathematical proof black holes cannot exist
- She said it is impossible for stars to collapse and form a singularity
- Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton said she is still in 'shock' from the find
- Previously, scientists thought stars much larger than the sun collapsed under their own gravity and formed black holes when they died
- During this process they release a type of radiation called Hawking radiation
- But new research claims the star would lose too much mass and wouldn't be able to form a black hole
- If true, the theory that the universe began as a singularity, followed by the Big Bang, could also be wrong
- When a huge star many times the mass of the sun comes to the end of its life it collapses in on itself and forms a singularity – creating a black hole where gravity is so strong that not even light itself can escape.At least, that’s what we thought.A scientist has sensationally said that it is impossible for black holes to exist – and she even has mathematical proof to back up her claims.If true, her research could force physicists to scrap their theories of how the universe began.
A scientist from University of North Carolina states she has mathematical proof that black holes (illustrated) can’t exist. She said it is impossible for stars to collapse and form a singularity. Previously, scientists thought stars larger than the sun collapsed under their own gravity and formed black holes as they diedThe research was conducted by Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the College of Arts and Scientists.She claims that as a star dies, it releases a type of radiation known as Hawking radiation – predicted by Professor Stephen Hawking.THE BLACK HOLE INFORMATION PARADOX
One of the biggest unanswered questions about black holes is the so-called information paradox.Under current theories for black holes it is thought that nothing can escape from the event horizon around a black hole – not even light itself.Inside the black hole is thought to be a singularity where matter is crushed to an infinitesimally small point as predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity.However, a fundamental law of quantum theory states that no information from the universe can ever disappear.This creates a paradox; how can a black hole make matter and information ‘disappear’?Professor Mersini-Houghton’s new theory manages to explain why this might be so – namely because black holes as we know them cannot exist.However in this process, Professor Mersini-Houghton believes the star also sheds mass, so much so that it no longer has the density to become a black hole.Before the black hole can form, she said, the dying star swells and explodes.The singularity as predicted never forms, and neither does the event horizon – the boundary of the black hole where not even light can escape.‘I’m still not over the shock,’ said Professor Mersini-Houghton.‘We’ve been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about.’Experimental evidence may one day provide physical proof as to whether or not black holes exist in the universe.But for now, Mersini-Houghton says the mathematics are conclusive.What’s more, the research could apparently even call into question the veracity of the Big Bang theory.Most physicists think the universe originated from a singularity that began expanding with the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago.If it is impossible for singularities to exist, however, as partially predicted by Professor Mersini-Houghton, then that theory would also be brought into question.
During the collapse process stars release a type of radiation called Hawking radiation (shown). But Professor Mersini-Houghton claims this process means the star loses too much mass and can’t form a black hole. And this also apparently means the Big Bang theory, that the universe began as a singularity, may not be correctTHERE ARE NO BLACK HOLES, ONLY GREY HOLES, CLAIMS HAWKING
Earlier this year Professor Stephen Hawking shocked physicists by saying ‘there are no black holes’.In a paper published online, Professor Hawking instead argues there are ‘grey holes’‘The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes – in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity,’ he says in the paper, called Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting For Black Holes.He says that the idea of an event horizon, from which light cannot escape, is flawed.He suggests that instead light rays attempting to rush away from the black hole’s core will be held as though stuck on a treadmill and that they can slowly shrink by spewing out radiation.One of the reasons black holes are so bizarre is that they pit two fundamental theories of the universe against each other.Namely, Einstein’s theory of gravity predicts the formation of black holes. But a fundamental law of quantum theory states that no information from the universe can ever disappear.Efforts to combine these two theories proved problematic, and has become known as the black hole information paradox – how can matter permanently disappear in a black hole as predicted?Professor Mersini-Houghton’s new theory does manage to mathematically combine the two fundamental theories, but with unwanted effects for people expecting black holes to exist.‘Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories – Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics – for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony,’ said Professor Mersini-Houghton.‘And that’s a big deal.’
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| This image shows water through time in the formation of the solar system, as scientists have revealed that water filling the Earth's oceans pre-date the formation of the sun |
By Brooks Hays
upi.com
"Our findings show that a significant fraction of our Solar System’s water, the most-fundamental ingredient to fostering life, is older than the Sun," said Conel Alexander.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- If you took a dip at the beach this summer, chances are you bumped up against some truly ancient water molecules -- water older than the sun. In fact, there's probably interstellar water hanging out inside all of us -- we are 60 percent water, after all.
A new study suggests as much as a third of Earth's ocean water was likely formed prior to the birth of the sun and sourced from deep space ice.
Like all planets in our solar system, most of the Earth and much of its water was formed from the debris floating around our young sun -- a hot cloud of gas and other cosmic material known as the solar nebula. Included in this nebula were ices, but we know there are also ices floating in interstellar space -- as evidenced by meteorite samples.
What scientists haven't been sure of, however, is exactly how much of our water is made of interstellar ice, and how much was formed locally in the solar nebula. To solve that quandary, a team of scientists led by L. Ilsedore Cleeves from the University of Michigan built a model to predict the answer. The model was based on the scientists' understanding of the chemical circumstances that enable the formation of "heavy" water molecules -- a molecule with a deuterium atom instead of a hydrogen atom.
About 1 in every 3,000 water molecules has a deuterium atom. The scientists' model, part chemistry part mathematics, showed that the solar nebula wasn't capable of forming all of Earth's heavy water on its own, and thus suggested roughly a third of Earth's water is really alien water.
"Our findings show that a significant fraction of our Solar System's water, the most-fundamental ingredient to fostering life, is older than the Sun, which indicates that abundant, organic-rich interstellar ices should probably be found in all young planetary systems," said Conel Alexander, a researcher at Carnegie Science institute in Washington.
As Alexander explained, the revelation suggests the materials necessary for life are probably not as rare as scientists previously thought.
"If water in the early Solar System was primarily inherited as ice from interstellar space, then it is likely that similar ices, along with the prebiotic organic matter that they contain, are abundant in most or all protoplanetary disks around forming stars," Alexander added.
The study was published this week in the journal Science.
by Zen GardnerWe’re undergoing an amazing transformation. Absolutely diametrically opposed to the constant, gradual attempt by elitists to shut down humanity via eons of engineered subjugation, we’re being consciously and vibrationally liberated by the very nature of the Universe in spite of all their efforts.It’s not readily apparent to most, but it’s very clearly there.It’s subtle and yet obvious at the same time. Knowledge of this change or shift in conscio [...]
by Michelle Walling, CHLCWhat does it mean to go within? This question is on the mind of most people who are awakening to the multidimensionality of this reality. Many people have different experiences but there is one similar thread that all people need to know about. The meaning of going within The term “going within” is the method by which we discover who we truly are.To go within simply means to be with yourself, to listen to yourself and your higher self, and to feel yo [...]
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U.S. Creates Largest Protected Area in the World ~ 3X Larger than California
"We thought [the monument decision] was a good way to balance what the science was telling us was important to protect and the needs of those who use the area," Boots said.
The area being protected by the administration will expand the protected areas from 50 miles offshore to 200 miles offshore around three areas—Wake Island, Johnston Atoll, and Jarvis Island—the maximum reach of the United States’ exclusive economic zone. The current 50-mile offshore protections around the Howland and Baker islands, and Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll, will not change.
Kerry said one measure that could help deter illegal fishing in the region, as well as around the world, would be to implement the Port State Measures Agreement, an international treaty that requires member nations to prevent illegally caught fish from entering the market. Eleven nations or parties have ratified the agreement, but a total of 25 must sign before the treaty will take effect.
"Our goal is to get this done this year," Kerry said.