Category: Uncategorized

The World’s Smartest Dinosaur

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 13 Comments

Fans of Jurassic Park already know how smart Velociraptors were.  Trekkies may remember an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where Voyager encountered a reptilian species that evolved from dinosaurs and fled Earth before the mass extinction.  If science fiction is any judge, it seems clear that dinosaurs had a lot of potential before they all died out.  So what does science fact say?

Allow me to introduce the Troodon (pronounced TRUE-o-don).  Scientists say this is the most intelligent dinosaur ever discovered.  Most dinosaur brains were tiny, like walnuts; Troodon’s was much bigger, though not nearly as big as a human brain.  As a predator, it spent much of its time and energy learning how to hunt and kill prey, putting that relatively big brain to good use.  It also had a feature we humans depend on: opposable thumbs (or at least “partially opposable” thumbs).

In 1982, a man named Dale Russell proposed a thought experiment, asking what would have happened if dinosaurs had not gone extinct and Troodon had continued to evolve.  Its big brain and partially opposable thumbs gave it the same tools our ape ancestors had.  He and others concluded it would have become a “dinosauroid” like the one pictured below.

Of course there is one big difference between our ancestors and those of the hypothetical dinosauroids: ours weren’t predators (at least not exclusively).  It would be interesting to speculate how an intelligent, predatory species would differ from us.  How would their society view violence, war, and death?  What would they think of us, if we had to share this planet?

Here are some links with more information on Troodon and how it could have evolved.

Start Your Own Space Program

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

Space travel was once something only governments could do.  Now private companies are getting into it, and soon private citizens as well.  I’m not talking about the super expensive space flights offered by companies like Virgin Galactic.  I mean everyday people building their own personal space programs.

In the last decade, CubeSats have become increasingly popular.  CubeSats are small, cubical satellites that can be bundled together and launched in small groups.  This allows anyone from major corporations to small universities to individuals tinkering in their garages to conduct science experiments in space at a relatively low cost.  Groups of CubeSats are sometimes launched along with other space missions, lowering the cost even more.  For more on CubeSats, click here.

A group in Germany, with the noble goal of providing censorship-free Internet to everyone, is planning to launch their own satellites into orbit.  If successful, the Hackerspace Global Grid (H.G.G.) would provide an Internet connection to everyone in the world, bypassing any restrictions imposed by terrestrial governments.  China has strict censorship rules about Internet access, and the United States is considering some strict rules or its own with the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act.  For more on H.G.G., click here.

One family in New York recently launched a video camera into space.  They built a “space capsule” with an HD camera, an iPhone (for its GPS function), and some hand warmers to keep the electronics from freezing.  They attached it to a weather balloon and let it fly into the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere.  Here is the video their camera brought back.

The most advanced technology of the 1960’s is obsolete now, but that technology was good enough to take a man to the Moon.  As the cost of technology continues to drop, space travel will become more and more affordable.  Of course it still isn’t what you’d call “cheap.”  A CubeSat could cost tens of thousands of dollars to build and launch, but that’s still less expensive than traditional space launches and makes space accessible to a wider range of people.

Earth’s Neighbor

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You may think of the Moon as old news.  It’s extremely close to Earth, and we’ve been studying it for centuries.  Human beings have landed there and brought back samples.  What more is there to learn?  A great deal, it turns out.

Image courtesy of wpclipart.com

First of all, where the heck did it come from?  Scientists developed a workable theory on that within the last few decades, but unlike evolution this theory is still open to debate (click here for the Giant Impact Theory).  Also, why does the far side look completely different from the side facing Earth?  A theory explaining that was first published only last year (click here for the Double Moon Theory).  Lastly, although we’ve studied the surface of the Moon in great detail, we have no idea what’s inside.

As planet Earth rang in the New Year, a pair of NASA spacecraft entered lunar orbit to begin finding some answers.  The probes, named Grail-A and Grail-B, will orbit the Moon, making detailed measurements of the Moon’s gravitational field.  From that data, researchers say they can map the Moon’s interior.

Seeing the inside of the Moon should give us a much clearer idea of how the Moon formed and changed over it’s history.  It will answer a lot of questions.  It will probably raise a lot of new questions too when we find things we weren’t expecting.  Click here for more on the Grail mission.

P.S.: Students at participating schools get to take part in the Grail Mission.  For more on that, click here.

Science in 2012

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2011 has been a good year.  We’ve discovered lots of new planets, including a few that could be able to support life, found out neutrinos might travel faster than light, and learned that quantum mechanics, the science of atoms and subatomic partials, sometimes works on much larger scales.  As exciting as all that was, next year promises to be even better.

In February, SpaceX will become the first private company to send a spaceship to the International Space Station.  Following NASA’s deep budget cuts in 2010, the private space industry has expanded rapidly.  Privately owned spacecraft are no longer just for tourists; they will also become a taxi service for NASA astronauts.  If all goes well, February’s SpaceX mission will be the first of many.

In August, the largest robotic probe ever sent to another planet will land safely (crosses fingers) on Mars.  The Curiosity rover will search for signs of Martian life, either living or extinct.  Resent studies have shown that Mars is not as barren as we once thought and that it has many of the chemicals and conditions needed for life to develop.  There’s even circumstantial evidence that microscopic life exists there right now.

Lastly, scientists say they will either discover the Higgs Boson by the end of 2012 or prove that it doesn’t exist.  The Higgs Boson is predicted by the standard model of particle physics, but no one has been able to find it.  Soon, they will run out of places to look.  If it turns out the Higgs doesn’t exist than there is something wrong with the standard model, and physicists will have to develop a whole new theory to explain how subatomic particles work.

These are just some of the stories we already know about.  Imagine all the surprises 2012 will bring in addition to the things we’ve scheduled and are able to predict!

Tomorrow: Science Fiction in 2012.

Are Animals Smarter Than You?

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Fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy already know that humans are only the third most intelligent species on Earth.  Dolphins are the second, and white mice are the first, for obvious reasons.  But what animal is the fourth most intelligent, or the fifth?  Scientists are making progress finding out.

Biologists in Scotland have been studying the songs of sperm whales and believe whales have names, just like we do.  Before they sing, each whale tends to start with a series of tones unique to that whale, as though they’re announcing themselves before they speak.  A possible translation could be something like, “This is Bob.  I noticed some fish over there.  Let’s go get them.”  For more on whale names, click here.

Researchers at the University of Michigan say they’ve found evidence that wasps have the ability to recognize each other’s faces.  If you ask me, all wasps look the same, but apparently individual paper wasps have subtle differences of facial structure and can recognize each other the same way humans do.  This is the first time anyone has discovered human-like behavior in an insect.  For more on wasp facial recognition, click here.

Since we already know humans and chimpanzees are related through evolution, it shouldn’t surprise us too much to learn that they display human-like behavior.  Yet recent research, again in Scotland, has found that they even share some of our feelings about death.  Scientists are a Safari Park observed chimps gathering around the deathbed of a fellow chimp, mourning for it, holding vigils, and caring for the remains after death.  For more on chimpanzee death rituals, click here.

These are not the only examples.  Squid and cuttlefish change colors and may have their own language (click here).  Dolphins, which the Hitchhiker’s Guide already told us are smarter than us, have been observed inventing new tools to help them fish (click here).  Crows make tools and communicate as well, and scientists have also observed them playing practical jokes on each other (click here).

By studying animals and finding similarities between their behavior and ours, we are also learning about human intelligence and how it developed.  Our ancestors surely began in a similar way.  Given time, maybe sperm whales or paper wasps or one of the other species listed here could evolve to our level.  Maybe, on some other planet, they already have.

Dear Higgs Boson

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 3 Comments

Dear Higgs Boson,

We know you’re there.  We’re very close to finding you.  The standard model of particle physics has predicted your existence for decades, and in every other experiment the standard model’s predictions have been correct.  It’s only a matter of time—less than a year, they say—before your existence is proven as well.

Just recently, some scientists at CERN detected tantalizing new evidence of your existence.  They didn’t observe you, but they did notice the high-energy particles you turned into when you decayed.  They’ll have to repeat the experiment, because those particles might have decayed from something else, but their fancy mathematics is telling them they’ve almost got you.

For scientists, this is all very exciting, but I’m not a scientist.  I’m a science fiction writer, and as a science fiction writer I’m asking you, Higgs Boson, as a personal favor to stay hidden just a little bit longer.  Science fiction depends on the things we don’t know about the universe.  The gaps in our scientific knowledge allow us writers to make stuff up.  Once you’re discovered, analyzed, and understood, we won’t be able to make stuff up about you any more.

It would be even more helpful if it turned out you don’t exist at all.  That would mean the whole standard model is wrong, and we Sci-Fi writers could make up all kinds of crazy, new things.

So come on, Higgs Boson.  Keep being a mystery.

P.S.: Could you please stop calling yourself the “God Particle”?  It’s really pretentious.

Moving to Planet KOI-70.04

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Last week, NASA scientists announced the discovery of a new planet capable of supporting life (click here to read more about the so-called Christmas Planet).  The planet was found using the Kepler Space Telescope, a telescope specifically built to find planets orbiting other stars.  But this planet was not NASA’s only Christmas gift to astronomers.

The Kepler Space Telescope is also monitoring a planet candidate that could be slightly smaller than Earth.  Up until now, every new planet discovered outside our Solar System has been larger—usually much larger—than Earth.  Even the Christmas Planet is over twice Earth’s size.

While planet KOI-70.04 is unconfirmed, it still shows that we are getting better at finding new planets, even the small ones.  In the very near future, NASA should be able to confirm the existence of truly Earth equivalent planets, with the right size, the right temperature, and the right chemical composition to make life comfortable for us.

For more information on KOI-70.04, click here.  You can also visit the Kepler Space Telescope’s webpage by clicking here.

P.S. In case you were wondering, KOI stands for Kepler Object of Interest, and the numbers presumably represent the 70th star Kepler is watching and the 4th planet candidate discovered in orbit of that star.  Three other planets have already been confirmed in this star system, and the Kepler team is monitoring a fifth planet candidate by the name of KOI-70.05.

P.P.S. If you decide to move to Planet KOI-70.04, bring an air conditioner or lots of fans.  Experts estimate the surface temperature is 600 °C.

Are Plants Smarter Than You?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

Everybody’s heard of photosynthesis.  We all learned about it in middle school science, and most of us promptly forgot about it during summer break.  It’s the process where plants use sunlight as an energy source.  Now scientists have discovered photosynthesis is even more complicated than originally thought.

Image courtesy of WP Clipart.

According to an article from Wired News (click here), researchers have discovered that plants use quantum mechanics to maximize the amount of energy they collect from the sun.  Quantum mechanics is the really weird part of physics.  It tells us, among other things, that subatomic particles can exist in more than one place at the same time so long as no one observes them.

When sunlight enters the leaf of a plant, the individual photons exist in more than one place at the same time, traveling in multiple directions through the leaf, letting the plant choose the pathway that suits it best.  Once the plant chooses, it has made an observation in the quantum mechanical sense and the other versions of that photon cease to exist.  The plant consumes the photon, and the process begins again.

In other words, plants use quantum mechanics like an eating utensil.  What a knife and fork are to us, the strangest, most complicated branch of physics is to a plant.  Keeping this in mind, the killer plant from Little Shop of Horrors seems a lot more dangerous.

They say that anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics is lying.  Humans have been struggling with it for almost a century, and it still doesn’t make any sense.  But plants get it, and they use it.  They probably worked it out millions of years ago.  So what else do they know that we don’t?

Sci Friday

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Why is it that some people like Sci-Fi movies but won’t read science fiction books?  And how much does NASA really cost US taxpayers?  The first two links this week focus on these two questions.