If you listen to podcasts, check out the four-part Charles Darwin special on Melvyn Bragg’s BBC show In Our Time. There will be plenty more fun to be had across the blogosphere to mark Darwin’s bicentennial and the 150th anniversary of his best known book. Tom Levenson will be a great place to start. Also check out the diverse crew at Scienceblogs, especially PZ Meyers.
In other science news, North American archaeologists found what might be a neolithic stone circle…40 feet under Lake Michigan.
Treat this as a scientific open thread. You can talk about anything, but falsifiable statements only.
mgordon
Did Jesus have a pet dinosaur?
robertdsc
Can a process be designed to convert nuclear radioactivity to some form of usable energy?
Notorious P.A.T.
So was the neolithic stone circle put there by God to test our faith, or by the devil to lead us astray?
Brick Oven Bill
There is a way to convert radioactivity to fuel. There is also a way to convert spent uranium, which is something completely different, to fuel. Radioactivity comes off of the spent uranium. It is like the pile from the dog, and the scent. Two different things. Two different processes.
Xenos
Glaciers push rocks around in all manner of interesting ways.
I doubt lake Michigan ever had dry land since the melting of the glaciers. Our neolithic megalith movers would have needed aqualungs. Not the Jethro Tull variety, either.
Andre
Obviously, the existence of said neolithic stone circle can only point to one thing:
FISH PEOPLE.
redbeardjim
You did that on purpose, yes?
MikeJ
Lucy is going to be at the Pacific Science Center. I will finally be able to kick that football.
phobos
Still waiting for that "rock carved with the image of a mastodon" evidence, but the pictures are cute.
They remind me of the tilt-shift photo bumpers on Adult Swim.
HyperIon
I clicked through but am still puzzled.
there is mention of sonar images but the big orange circles i have seen look like photographs. they have shadows.
and what’s with the concentric circles?
also, this is supposed to be just 40 feet below the surface; the boat shapes that are shown look too small. if it’s down 40 feet, why doesn’t somebody swim to it and take an up-close pic instead of having to interpret a view "looking down"?
update: the mastodon pic is unrelated IMO and a figment of the imagination perhaps. i’ve seen more convincing jesus tortillas.
Comrade Stuck
@HyperIon:
Aquatic space men made those, or smartalick fish pranksters.
gnomedad
This statement is false.
Brick Oven Bill
Science is much more interesting than politics to me. In many ways science, economics, and politics seem to be merging into one big fascinating Century.
Radiation is alphas (helium w/o the electrons), betas (those lost electrons), neutrons (neutrons), and electromagnetic energy. I have learned not to explain the fact that nuclear power is based upon friction. This can get you banished from enjoyable forums by some guy named ‘phil’, after you make fun of the name he admittedly calls himself in another forum, in response to phil’s viscous personal attacks. I really think that that was all about me telling Hilzoy that I support stripping her voting rights because of her gender. This used to be a rationally debated subject only 89 years ago. Sigh.
But, anyway, here we are and this friction can be used to generate heat. This heat can be used to induce pyrolysis in kerogen. Voila! Fuel. This much is commonly known. Although fossil fuels or electricity would probably be more efficient, and definitely cleaner in this application. Microwaves are radiation, and are an efficient method to transfer heat to do this. But these microwaves are not waste microwaves, they are specially generated. So I don’t think they count.
ppcli
Gnomedad’s statement is true.
Comrade Stuck
@ppcli:
Falsifiable is the coin of this realm!
Xenos
Abnormal psychology was not one of the suggested topics for this thread.
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh crap, I live in Michigan. They’ve got us surrounded! ! ! !
gnomedad
Whatever B. O. Bill took a couple of weeks back is some powerful shit.
TenguPhule
If you put a wingnut in a completely sealed compartment where no information can escape from, is it alive or dead? Or both?
Brick Oven Bill
Back in the day I had argued that the heating mechanism of the microwaves, and the electromagnetic radiation released by a fission event was not friction. These radiations warm up the media through which they pass by making atoms excited, atoms wiggle when they become excited. But, upon reflection, I was completely right and should not have caved. The electromagnetic heat is generated by friction and wiggling atoms.
When electromagnetic radiation passes through outer space, it does not generate heat because there is no mass, and thus no friction. Duh.
gnomedad
Back lit Saturn. With Earth visible, no less.
JGabriel
@TenguPhule:
Unfair! No one has ever, ever, resolved the paradox of Schroedinger’s Wingnut.
.
Comrade Stuck
The Universe is full of the little fuckers.
Tim Fuller
PZ rocks. And so does Banksy:
http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/banksy2.jpg
Enjoy.
demimondian
@Comrade Stuck: And….Oh my God! It’s full of stars.
phobos
Wiggling atoms. Back in the day when pizza ovens meant something.
dmsilev
@Brick Oven Bill:
Define friction. Because "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
For extra credit, discuss the nature of dissipative mediums, and how they relate to quantum mechanics and band theory.
-dms
Litlebritdifrnt
Are Dolphins smarter than we are? Sorry that’s all I got.
demimondian
On topic, for once — and even falsifiable! _The Sunday Times_ published a report in which they quote Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross’ as saying that "performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea."
Problem is, it’s not true — or, at least, it’s not true that he said what they say he said:
Janet Strange
Thanks, Tim. As a podcast lover and a biology teacher, I’m very interested in the Darwin podcasts. But I can only seem to download programs 3 & 4. I can listen to them all, but for downloading . . . only 3 & 4. Same when I subscribed in iTunes. Didn’t see them in the archives either. Have they fallen into a too new to be archives but too old to be current hole, or am I just to dumb to find 1 & 2?
(edit: I’m thinking this is one of those shows that can only be downloaded as podcasts for a limited time . . .}
Litlebritdifrnt
O/T (hmmmm maybe not) just watch Missippi Burning with DH. Damn people you allowed that kind of shit to go on in this country? Fuck. (Remember I am English I was never exposed to any of this utterly insane crap). I think Darwin never knew about some parts of the USA.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
This post adds no useful information to the thread, and is notable as being the first to admit to that.
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill: What the f***ing f*** was that?
Dulcie
@Litlebritdifrnt: Whatever you do, don’t watch Rosewood.
Xenos
Darwin knew all about some parts of the country. Species that overspecialize gain a short term advantage yet are unable to adapt to changing conditions. They might hang on for a bit, but will not thrive and eventually face extinction.
El Cid
Brick Oven Bill: Do you have an opinion on the evolutionary relationships between yeasts and morel mushrooms? By chance?
Jon H
Also, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute 2008 Holiday Lectures are up at http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/neuroscience/index.html
The 2008 Holiday Lectures on Science
What is mind?
Can molecular biology help us understand mental function?
Eric R. Kandel, M.D. and Thomas M. Jessell, Ph.D.of Columbia University will help us understand how the nervous system turns an idea into action—from the complex processing that takes place in the brain to the direct marching orders the spinal cord gives to the muscles. Modern neuroscience equates mind with the organ we call the brain, an astounding network more than 100 billion neurons connected in a vast complicated web. The presenters will help us puzzle out how the brain is organized and identify the seat of human memory. The question of understanding how the brain functions is rivaled by the question of how such a complex network of cells develops in the first place.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Dulcie:
I just read the synopsis. WTF? My only comfort in this is that these type of people (if there are any of them left) will suffer a collective head explosion on Jan 20, 2009 and we will be rid of them at last.
demimondian
@Litlebritdifrnt: There are lots of them left — and they won’t be much affected by their heads exploding.
Think "Sarah Palin versus Sam Wurzelbacher".
Brick Oven Bill
Dmsilev. Fair enough. I understand friction to be the following:
1. Physically, friction is the force that resists relative motion between two objects in contact.
2. Thermodynamically, friction is that mechanism that converts kinetic energy (fission products and radiation) to heat.
…
This is the heat which boils water and spins turbines. I do not know much about morel mushrooms except that an old girlfriend’s mom used to collect and sell them.
Comrade Kevin
@Brick Oven Bill:
What are "viscous personal attacks"? Do they involve spraying motor oil on someone?
pbfishtaco
I love ‘In Our Time’. It’s like being a fly on the wall… at Cambridge University.
I don’t always understand everything that’s discussed, but I definitely FEEL smarter when I’m done.
Brick Oven Bill
It was pretty bad Comrade. In all kinds of ways, it basically boiled down to this with swear words.
Comrade Kevin
@Brick Oven Bill: That website’s pretty strange, BOB.
bcwbcw
@JGabriel:
This is false: a wingnut and information can not occupy the same point in space.
Brick Oven Bill
Sometimes I believe we really are living it Comrade.
pseudonymous in nc
@Janet Strange: The BBC’s podcasts are only up for seven days, which is annoying. (They don’t vanish once you’ve downloaded them, but they aren’t available any more from the site.) Email [my nym, no spaces]@gmail.com and I’ll hook you up.
Gravenstone
face/palm
One of these days I’ll learn to stop reading BOB. I swear I lose IQ points each time I inflict his ramblings upon myself. Maybe I’m just indulging a latent masochistic tendency…
Lee
Fighting against the autism crazies
I cannot agree more with this paragraph
I would also include the creationists (and regularly do when talking about them).
Jon H
@pseudonymous in nc: " (They don’t vanish once you’ve downloaded them, but they aren’t available any more from the site.) "
In Our Time’s website does have an archive of old episodes that can be streamed, but not downloaded. I imagine there are programs that would let you record the stream as an MP3 you could store on your computer.