Weekly Science Headlines

[AFK]

http://snipurl.com/3hdeq

Pluto Is Part of Hot Debate

from the Baltimore Sun

It was billed as a debate over the 2006 decision by the International Astronomical Union that kicked Pluto out of the family of planets, leaving just eight.

But in the end, after a jocular and noisy tussle before scientists and educators gathered at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, both debaters agreed that the IAU's definition only muddied the waters, and that more time is needed for science to sort out the increasingly complex range of objects circling our sun and other stars.

"Get the notion of counting things out of your system," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium. "The more we learn about anything, the more we have to tune the vocabulary we use to describe it."  The two debaters also expressed delight that a scientific debate has captured so much public attention.

"Yeah, that's right bitches! Bow down to my scientifical prowess!"
                                                        /

[Kai]

The problem is that there are many many objects circling the sun, from the Jovian planets being the largest, to the inner terrestrial planets, to the smaller Kuiper belt objects and other "dwarf planets" like Eris, to even smaller asteroids, comets, and then the countless meteors.

Theres no simple system to separate these out, but the easiest way, I think, would be by size, location and composition. There's also the issue of hydrostatic equilibrium, that is, the amount of mass needed to cause a planet or planetoid to have a spherical shape. Even some asteroids, such as Ceres, may qualify in that category.

If we really looked hard at this too, we could reclassify the moon as a planet, dwarf planet anyway, and the earth moon as a binary planet system. Both rotate around a center of gravity that is near the earths crust, and not at the center of the earth.

Interesting. Its all interesting.

[AFK]

It is interesting.  As our technology has advanced, allowing us to gather in more visual and scientific information about our Solar System, we discover more and more that we have to redefine our models.  It was easy with just the handheld telescopes of yesteryear, when you could just make out the planets. 

Kind of a nice BIP corrolary really.  The more information you allow to come into focus, the more you realize you didn't know as much as you thought you did before. 

[Kai]

It is interesting.  As our technology has advanced, allowing us to gather in more visual and scientific information about our Solar System, we discover more and more that we have to redefine our models.  It was easy with just the handheld telescopes of yesteryear, when you could just make out the planets. 

Kind of a nice BIP corrolary really.  The more information you allow to come into focus, the more you realize you didn't know as much as you thought you did before. 

And that ties into a nice law of fives corrolary: the more you focus on this information, the more examples and discoveries become apparent to you.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

It is interesting.  As our technology has advanced, allowing us to gather in more visual and scientific information about our Solar System, we discover more and more that we have to redefine our models.  It was easy with just the handheld telescopes of yesteryear, when you could just make out the planets. 

Kind of a nice BIP corrolary really.  The more information you allow to come into focus, the more you realize you didn't know as much as you thought you did before. 

And I think it is that corrolary that many of the New Atheists seem to miss... those ones that think Dawkins and Darwin solved all of life's mysteries....

At Pennsic I had a conversation with a couple hardcore Atheists... both seemed to think that we'd already discovered pretty much everything we needed to understand Life, The Universe and Everything. One, a younger kid just preparing for college, actually said  that he was getting into astrophysics because it was the only area of science left with mysteries. Biology and the other fields, in his mind, had already been figured out.

*headdesk*

[AFK]

It is interesting.  As our technology has advanced, allowing us to gather in more visual and scientific information about our Solar System, we discover more and more that we have to redefine our models.  It was easy with just the handheld telescopes of yesteryear, when you could just make out the planets. 

Kind of a nice BIP corrolary really.  The more information you allow to come into focus, the more you realize you didn't know as much as you thought you did before. 

And I think it is that corrolary that many of the New Atheists seem to miss... those ones that think Dawkins and Darwin solved all of life's mysteries....

At Pennsic I had a conversation with a couple hardcore Atheists... both seemed to think that we'd already discovered pretty much everything we needed to understand Life, The Universe and Everything. One, a younger kid just preparing for college, actually said  that he was getting into astrophysics because it was the only area of science left with mysteries. Biology and the other fields, in his mind, had already been figured out.

*headdesk*

Gah!  It's because he's got this nutty idea in his head that because Space is inifinite (maybe?), that means there are limitless possibilities.  A very macrocosm perspective.  Shit, we still haven't fully explained how the very thing we think with works.  Hopefully he'll figure it out sooner, rather then later. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

It is interesting.  As our technology has advanced, allowing us to gather in more visual and scientific information about our Solar System, we discover more and more that we have to redefine our models.  It was easy with just the handheld telescopes of yesteryear, when you could just make out the planets. 

Kind of a nice BIP corrolary really.  The more information you allow to come into focus, the more you realize you didn't know as much as you thought you did before. 

And I think it is that corrolary that many of the New Atheists seem to miss... those ones that think Dawkins and Darwin solved all of life's mysteries....

At Pennsic I had a conversation with a couple hardcore Atheists... both seemed to think that we'd already discovered pretty much everything we needed to understand Life, The Universe and Everything. One, a younger kid just preparing for college, actually said  that he was getting into astrophysics because it was the only area of science left with mysteries. Biology and the other fields, in his mind, had already been figured out.

*headdesk*

Gah!  It's because he's got this nutty idea in his head that because Space is inifinite (maybe?), that means there are limitless possibilities.  A very macrocosm perspective.  Shit, we still haven't fully explained how the very thing we think with works.  Hopefully he'll figure it out sooner, rather then later. 

Oh no, he was pretty sure we'd discovered everything, including the edge of the Universe... but we just hadn't explained everything like what's inside a black hole. After some discussion he admitted that maybe neurology also had some mysteries left, but nothing else. He was a great kid, but if his view reflects what they're teaching in school, the next generation is gonna be pretty bored.

[Kai]

I wonder where these kids get this idea that everything has been discovered and understood? Maybe their science focuses too much on the things that the scientific communities understand and very little on the massive amount of things that we still lack information of.

Yesterday I was attending a lecture by a rather renowned entomologist. He just recently finished a count of all the known described names of species that were still valid, species of insects I mean. The count came just over 1 million. However, he said, the number of insect species still undescribed is likely 20-50 times what we know now. Even in my own field of study, Trichopterology, we have just over 11,000 described species but the estimate is somewhere around 5 times that.

And thats just species unknowns. That doesn't quantify all the lack of information we have about physiology or ecology, or evolutionary biology, or genetic, etc.

[LMNO]

Haven't most humans almost always thought that their generation reached the end of knowledge?

It seems almost an inborn trait.

[AFK]

Again I think an issue of perspective.  It seems humans have a hard time zooming out to see the larger picture.  Of course with some religion is a confounding variable.  (Like those who think the universe has only existed for a few thousand years)  When you map out the history of the world on a timeline and see how much of a blip humanity is, and then see how much of a blip the average lifespan is, it seems kind of like a no-brainer that we've only scratched the surface.

But when looking at it from a perspective on the ground, within the lifespan, not seeing beyond one's own mortality, yeah, I can see why many would fall into that trap of perceived limitations. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

GODDESSDAMNIT, WHEN WILL HUMANS LEARN TO SAY

"I Don't Know?"

(and if you respond with "I don't know..." I will unleash a storm of chaoacorns on your head...)

[AFK]

Je ne sais pas.


Ha!  Owned by a Frenchmen!   

[Vene]

One, a younger kid just preparing for college, actually said  that he was getting into astrophysics because it was the only area of science left with mysteries. Biology and the other fields, in his mind, had already been figured out.

*headdesk*

Wait, what?  I'm going into biotechnology and there is plenty of unknown.  Hell, there is this neat little thing called recombinant DNA (genetic engineering) that is just begging for work to be done, not to mention stem cells.  There are also oodles of genetic disorders that may be treatable or even curable.  The human genome project may be done, but not epigenetics.  Plus, many non-human species haven't had their genome analyzed.  There is the huge possibility of finding new medicine based on human genes.  Oh, and cancer research, can't forget about cancer.  There is plenty of work to do.

This isn't to say there hasn't been a lot of work done, there has been.  It's also been very impressive.  But, with every answered question, we have a new question.  Not that there is anything wrong with astrophysics, but it's not like the other fields have everything figured out.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

One, a younger kid just preparing for college, actually said  that he was getting into astrophysics because it was the only area of science left with mysteries. Biology and the other fields, in his mind, had already been figured out.

*headdesk*

Wait, what?  I'm going into biotechnology and there is plenty of unknown.  Hell, there is this neat little thing called recombinant DNA (genetic engineering) that is just begging for work to be done, not to mention stem cells.  There are also oodles of genetic disorders that may be treatable or even curable.  The human genome project may be done, but not epigenetics.  Plus, many non-human species haven't had their genome analyzed.  There is the huge possibility of finding new medicine based on human genes.  Oh, and cancer research, can't forget about cancer.  There is plenty of work to do.

This isn't to say there hasn't been a lot of work done, there has been.  It's also been very impressive.  But, with every answered question, we have a new question.  Not that there is anything wrong with astrophysics, but it's not like the other fields have everything figured out.

Precisely... I think I stunned him when I told him that if we had discovered 'everything' there was to know on any subject... then it was just because we were too egotistical, lazy or ignorant to ask the next question.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Je ne sais pas.


Ha!  Owned by a Frenchmen!   

bâtard