Space

Maybe it’s Manos, the Hand of Fate?

Jason Thibeault, , 4 Comments

Humans have an uncanny ability to see shapes in random noise. We’ve evolved this ability over the millennia so as to avoid certain death when that random blob of different color in the nearby foliage turns out to be a predator intent on turning you into a snack. Those of us that were less able to do so, got eaten, and therefore over time we’ve gotten pretty incredible at it. I mean, in the random noise of a grilled cheese sandwich, a believer sees Jesus’ face, and in the random output of deadly x-rays in a false-color image of a pulsar, the same believer sees the hand of God.

Credit for this photo goes not to a church, where one might rightly expect God to be discovered and photographed, but rather to NASA/PA Wire.
Credit for this photo goes not to a church, where one might rightly expect God to be discovered and photographed, but rather to NASA/PA Wire.

That’s right, the hand of God apparently has three fingers, some kind of do-claw, and a compound fracture of the radius. Goes to show that you see what you want to see. I sooner see Homer Simpson reaching for a forbidden donut. Rarrgh…

For those of you that honestly, earnestly believe this nebula is a divine sign from a divine creator like some of the tear-inducing comments on this thread (never mind that if you were close enough, or waited long enough, or viewed it from another angle, it would look different), I want to remind you that space is really, really, REALLY, big. There’s a lot of stuff in it, a lot of it seems random-looking, and therefore there will be something out there that reminds you of some other thing. Like a horse’s head. Or a DNA helix. Or what God REALLY thinks of you.

Please don’t let that detract from the beauty of these scenes. Sure, they’re explicable, random, follow logical rules of physics and chemistry, and therefore not “special” in the sense of being designed, but they are undeniably beautiful. Those who ignore the natural world’s splendors, who prefer to credit a tiny and micromanaging God for a rainbow, reduce their God to a god of the gaps, where God only exists within those phenomena science has not yet explained.

Okay, that’s a tiny bit of a strawman — creationists stopped using that argument hundreds of years ago, since we figured out refraction. Every step in our march toward understanding this wholly understandable universe encroaches on the territory believers have staked out for God’s domain, so it’s no wonder they freak out and deny every scientific advancement from heliocentrism through evolution. To say that God didn’t create the animals on Earth presently, in their present form, and to say that they evolved naturally and became what we are out of pure chance and natural selection, reduces God’s domain significantly. To say that the initial spark that began the runaway chain reaction we call life, happened through the providence of chance, reduces it still further, almost to nothing. I almost feel bad for them.

Almost.

Go here for more beauty. I’ve saved probably half of this archive. And when you’re done, you can classify galaxies at Galaxy Zoo, or visit the Hubble’s archive. The universe’s untold splendors are ours to discover, if only we’d stop closing our eyes.

Maybe it’s Manos, the Hand of Fate?
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I see Martian people… ALL THE TIME.

Jason Thibeault, , 1 Comment

I don’t think I’ve ever fully elucidated my thoughts on the possible existence of extraterrestrial life, have I?  Well, I’ll put off my Python evolution project a little longer, and write about it now — no time like the present.

Assume first, as I do, that the abiogenesis (or “primordial ooze”) theory is correct.  For those of you not in the know, this theory suggests that life on Earth began when certain organic chemicals organized through known means into amino acids, which in turn self-organized into proteins, which in turn used lipids to form the first cell barriers, and gained the ability to pull the components necessary to catalyze RNA from their surroundings.  These became the first proto-cells, which populated the world (in the RNA-world theory at least), and competed with one another for these organic molecules and in self-replication naturally selected for structures that would be better equipped at obtaining these molecules before their competitors.

Continue reading “I see Martian people… ALL THE TIME.” →

I see Martian people… ALL THE TIME.

I shoulda said POSSIBLE life on Mars

Jason Thibeault5 Comments

But not necessarily “probable”, or “strongly implied”, as my previous headline “HOLY SHIT, LIFE ON MARS?!” indicated, regardless of the fact that my blog entry itself stated it was only a possibility.  I write this because, in having titled my post as I did, I’m now tangentally related to asshats who declare “life on Mars” like it’s absolute canon truth in 72-point font.  And I should rightly be chastised for my use of the prophylactic question-mark, a tactic made famous most recently by Fox News.  The media has cocked this one up but good, as is the norm when it comes to anything scientific.   And the blogosphere, as always, ranges from the near-perfect, in their coverage of this event as with every other event that’s come before it, through to actually managing to get it more wrong than The Sun.

I really do hope it turns out to be life, however I will not, under any circumstances, apply my world view to the hypothesis.  A real scientist detachedly observes the results of an experiment and learns the truth from them, rather than shoehorning the results into his or her belief system.  Science only works if you’re objective enough to leave your damn belief systems at the door.

Incidentally, it’s why religious folks hate science so much — because they demand that you turn off the credulity for a few minutes, which is obviously a few minutes too long.  I will be better than that, at least.

I shoulda said POSSIBLE life on Mars

HOLY SHIT, LIFE ON MARS!?

Jason Thibeault, , 2 Comments

no srsly guyz

I don’t care that it’s going to be difficult to dig deep enough to verify if this is the case, given Mars’ harsh climate.  We NEED to verify or falsify this.  We can’t go around for the next twenty years saying “well, there’s MAYBE life on Mars”, we need to know for sure, ASAP, because it changes everything.  If life evolved (or was germinated, for those of you who believe in panspermia) right in our backyard, then that’s proof positive it’s gotta be out in the rest of the galaxy, and the rest of the universe as well, because there’s a shitload of stars out there, and chances are a shitload of them can support life.  We may well be one amongst thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of sentient life-forms in this galaxy — remember, there are two hundred billion stars in our own galaxy alone, and we’re finding exoplanets daily.

Recent experiments in creating chemicals that self-replicate, compete for resources, and are subject to natural selection, have proven that a critical step in the evolutionary abiogenesis theory (or the “primordial ooze” theory for laymen, and that theory that people mistake for the Theory of Evolution all too often) is quite possible.  Proof that pre-biotic life even managed to form on Mars, if verified, would suggest that this universe may well be teeming with instances of life having grown from “nothing” (by which I mean, having grown from chemicals with the potential to become self-replicating if arranged correctly by chance — not really “nothing” as the creationists suggest), and the only thing that makes this planet unique amongst our neighbors is not only that we had the right chemical soup to start the endless chain reaction that is biology, but that we’ve also had long enough for life to fester on this planet to get to the point where we’re sentient and curious about the nature of the universe.

For those who say science strips away all the wonder of the universe, by removing magical sky-men who made us in his evidently flawed image, they’re missing the bigger picture.  And that bigger picture is the universe itself, in all its splendour.  There’s only one way to find the truth behind this universe — and that’s empirically.

HOLY SHIT, LIFE ON MARS!?

If you think the Earth is flat, you fail at life!

Jason Thibeault, 9 Comments

If you’re a Flat Earther, then you’re an idiot beyond comprehension.  Explain Antarctica being one land mass that you can see the entirety of by flying a plane high enough over, explain the sun not shining on all parts of the disc at once, explain the eccentric orbits of the planets and stars (which in the 4th century BCE, scientists had already figured out, in the context of a round earth!).    Honestly, you can’t, you’re wrong, and should shut the hell up.  That the BBC published this with only a very slight modicum of criticism is galling.

Why is it the media today has devolved to the point where being “fair and objective” means reporting both sides to the argument without pointing out how batshit crazy one side is?  “Conservatives say the noon sky is a yet unnamed variety of plaid which is quite similar to the MacGregor tartan.  Liberals disagree, pointing out that the picture they referenced shows a solid blue sky.”  All you have to do is keep repeating the crazy stuff until one day it comes up in a debate framed as, “Some people say that your inability to describe the sky as plaid shows your liberal bias.  What do you say to that?”

But of course we all know reality, like the media, has a well-known liberal bias.  Some days I’m tempted to give up in the face of such a daunting task as to fend off the sheer stupidity that exists today.

If you think the Earth is flat, you fail at life!

Angry Astronomer on Stellar Formation, and arguing with a creationist.

Jason Thibeault, , , 23 Comments

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy linked to this discussion on Angry Astronomer recently, and boy howdy, is it worth a read.  I haven’t even finished the thread, but I’m sure it’ll provide with much-needed distractions and chuckles throughout the day tomorrow.

And possibly into sometime next week.  What a wall of text!

The length and breadth of the discussion kind of reminds me of the discussions I have on occasion with “Bob”, only minus any sense of logic or rational thought.  If you can make it through the entirety of the thread and discussion on one sitting, and without caffeine or other recreational pharmaceuticals, you’re a better man than I.  Or woman.  Though it’s not hard to be a better woman than I, I just can’t fill out a negligee all that well with my manly physique.

Update: I made it through the entire thread and still don’t understand “Anonymous'” problem with science.  And, being prompted by Clifton throwing his two cents in, I broke down and posted, as well.  To wit:

I have a friend with whom I occasionally argue about evolution. Once in a while, the conversation devolves to the point where I’m accused of relying on faith in science. This is true to an extent. I am no polymath. I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I depend heavily upon others to have made discoveries that I cannot independently verify. I have faith that the scientists that have set down what they believe to be the rules by which the universe works, know their stuff, didn’t fudge the math, and are open to accept evidence against their own hypotheses, otherwise their theories and rules and laws would not have gained the publicity that they have — e.g., someone out there would have cried foul and presented evidence to the contrary, at some point or another.

As science is much like the open-source software model, wherein individual changes are contributed to the body of existing work and incremental improvements eventually lead to a larger oeuvre that can stand alone, I trust that science operates in a meritocratous fashion. Likewise, religion is akin to the closed-source software model, wherein one authority creates the entire body of work, and anything that falls outside the body of work is either heretical or evil. This monolithic authority system is likely what provides comfort to those that have faith in their religious dogma — it is comforting to know that even if you don’t know everything about the universe, you can simply say “God did it” and congratulate yourself for a job well done.

This implies that religious folks are incurious. This doesn’t seem to be the case in all cases, sadly, or we wouldn’t get trolls on science blogs of the ilk of our illustrious Anonymous poster in this thread. (Either they aren’t incurious, or they’re out amongst the heathen looking to convert. Not terribly palatable, and something like tilting at windmills around here, I’d wager.)

I just don’t understand what it is about the pursuit of science that raises the hackles of these types. Why is it that you cannot reconcile the idea that the universe works a certain way, with the idea that “God did it”? And has anyone ever suggested to you (as I saw in a Youtube video recently) that perhaps the Bible was actually created by God specifically to test humankind’s ability to believe in “his creation”, as opposed to creating the universe in an incredibly deceiving manner where 99% of it is a lie intended to fool you into believing the universe is a certain way, to test your faith in the book?

Bah. I don’t usually post my rants on other people’s blogs. I usually save them for my own. Apologies for my compatriot’s earlier cheap plug, by the way.

Dude.  I said “oeuvre”.  I guess I automatically fail.

Angry Astronomer on Stellar Formation, and arguing with a creationist.

Tunguska, 100 years later

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

On June 30th, 1908, witnesses described a fireball in the sky over Siberia, resulting in a column of fire moments later that split the sky and threw some observers to the ground.  The area impacted, near the Podkammenaya Tungus river in an unpopulated, swampy part of northern Siberia, was levelled for hundreds of kilometers around, with all the trees flattened, but no crater in its epicenter.  This was thereafter known as the Tunguska Event, and its circumstances remain shrouded in mystery and have since become a staple of fictional conjecture.

I can’t adequately convey the grandeur of the damage done, at least not in comparison with some other, more eloquent astral observers.  I just thought it was noteworthy enough to merit a blog post and a number of links where you can read more about the event and the speculation that scientists may have recently proven that a nearby lake is the actual impact point, where the remains of the meteor may be at its bottom.

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a brilliant write-up on the event, as does the BBC News service.

Edit: Holy crap, sorry Mr. Plait.  My error in your site name is unforgivable, especially given that it created a pingback in the comments thread.  My shame knows no bounds.

Tunguska, 100 years later