17 unanswered scientific questions

This article lists what it calls 17 ‘outstanding’ scientific mysteries that have currently eluded researchers’ ability to solve. Any such list is always subject to criticism about its choices and one could quibble with what is included and what has been left out. But it is useful as a discussion starter. I question the use of the word ‘mysteries’ for most of them because that implies questions that we have little or no idea how to address. These questions are what I would call ‘puzzles’, in that we do know how to tackle them even if we have not achieved success as yet.
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But the questions are undoubtedly interesting and of those, two in particular caught my attention because I wrote about them in my book The Great Paradox of Science. They are: What is the universe made of? Was there an advanced civilization on Earth before humans?

What is the universe made out of?

This one is about how the search for dark matter is proving to be so elusive. In chapter 17 of my book I suggested that we may be in the midst of a crisis that precedes a paradigm shift (using the model proposed by Thomas Kuhn), similar to what happened with the ether back at the dawn of the twentieth century. At that time, the existence of the ether was strongly believed even though it had not been directly detected. Various explanations were given to explain away the negative results but they became increasingly strained and it would be fair to call the situation a crisis. The time was ripe for a change and when Einstein proposes his special theory of relativity, although it did not disprove the existence of ether (something I argue cannot be done), it did make it redundant. Since it was no longer needed as an explanatory concept, and special relativity proved to be a fruitful source of new research it was possible to deem the ether to be non-existent and embrace relativity, which is what happened.

Something similar is happening with dark matter. In my book, I wrote:
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This royal photoshopping thing is getting ridiculous

After all the hyperventilating over the photoshopped photograph of Kate Middleton and her three children, the media have unearthed another photograph that she had purportedly taken earlier of the late Queen and her great grandchildren that apparently was also altered in 19 different places.

What I do not get is that, as far as I know, it is not being alleged that entire people were inserted into the photo or removed, so that the photograph is no longer a reasonably accurate historical record of an event. The changes are so tiny that I cannot see them even after they have been pointed out. Why would anyone bother to make such minute changes? Even though the changes are infinitesimally small, it would seem to me that it would take a lot of skill and effort to make them. I know that I would not have the ability to do it. So what would be the point of doing this?

It is possible , I suppose, that entire people were inserted into the photograph and these almost invisible discrepancies are evidence of that. But the discrepancies are all over the photo. So was the entire photograph a photoshopped construction? Again, why bother? It is only a family photograph, after all, not a photograph of a political gathering that analysts pore over to see who who is in or out as an indicator of their political fortunes.

Even for those like me who tend to give news about the British royal family a miss, this particular puzzle intrigues me. not so much because of who it is about (though that is undoubtedly why is has created such a media frenzy), but because of the sheer pointlessness of it. I just cannot fathom any plausible motive for the alterations.

Vitamin D and calcium supplements don’t help much

Over-the-counter dietary supplements are a huge business in the US, aggressively marketed. Many people take them even if they have not been diagnosed with any particular deficiency but because they have the vague belief that if something is good for you, then more must be better.

But the benefit of taking such supplements in the absence of a specific need is doubtful. The results of a new study adds to the list of dietary supplements that do not seem to provide any benefit, in this case vitamin D and calcium.
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Trump treats his followers as if they are stupid

In an essay, former labor secretary Robert Reich writes that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is mind-numbingly stupid and gives multiple examples to support his thesis.

But there is another aspect to this and that is that SSAT seem to think that his followers are mind-numbingly stupid as well. Take the following things that SSAT constantly rants about in his speeches and which his surrogates sometimes parrot.

  • The newer environmentally-friendly low-flow washing machines and dishwashers don’t get enough water to function properly, so that clothes and dishes do not get clean.
  • The low-flow shower heads only allow a trickle of water and prevent people from getting clean.
  • The newer low-flow toilets no longer flush properly and require multiple flushes to clear the waste,
  • The classified documents that he is charged with improperly removing were in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago and since bathrooms can be locked, they were secure.

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The power of metadata and the photo puzzle

I am not a very tech savvy person and so am constantly being surprised by what modern technology can do. Take for example, the current kerfuffle over the doctored photo released by the British royal family. I am amazed at what could be gleaned from the photo.

David McCoy, the imaging manager at the Guardian, said: “The first step in analysing this image is reading through the file’s embedded metadata to determine the photographic settings of the base camera image. In this case, we can see that a Canon 50mm f1.2 lens was used for this initial image, set to an aperture of f3.2, which will give moderately shallow depth of field.

That is pretty impressive, to me at least, but the article goes on to describe all the other things that were inferred.

The whole thing is a minor puzzle. I am not sure why the photo needed to be doctored at all and why, given their resources, they could not have hired a professional to do a better job that would not have aroused suspicions in the first place.

Michael Kosta of The Daily Show joked that he knew at once, even without any forensic analyses, that the photo had been doctored because you can never get three children to all smile at the same time for a photo.

Why do people choose to sit outdoors in the freezing cold?

I was horrified to read this story about some football fans who had fingers and toes amputated because they got frostbite while watching an NFL playoff game in Kansas City in the bitter cold.

Research Medical Center didn’t provide exact numbers but said in a statement that it treated dozens of people who had experienced frostbite during an 11-day cold snap in January. Twelve of those people – including some who were at the 13 January game – had to undergo amputations involving mostly fingers and toes. And the hospital said more surgeries are expected over the next two to four weeks as “injuries evolve”.
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The temperature for the Dolphins-Chiefs wildcard playoff game was minus-4F (minus-20C), and wind gusts made for a windchill of minus-27F (minus-33C). That shattered the record for the coldest game in Arrowhead Stadium history, which had been 1F (minus-17C), set in a 1983 game against Denver and matched in 2016 against Tennessee.
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The GOP gets crazier and crazier

In an earlier post, I wrote about how the GOP is on a slippery slope when it comes to some issues, where in pandering to their base by accepting certain premises like that life begins at conception, they found themselves quickly dragged to the logical end point that embryos produced in the IVF process are children and thus cannot be destroyed. Now they fond themselves struggling to extricate themselves from the mess they put themselves into without disavowing the ‘life begins at conception’ premise because doing so would infuriate their base.

But that is not the only slippery slope that the GOP find itself on. It is as if the floodgates of oil have opened on the slopes and there is no way to halt the descent.
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The GOP ties itself up in knots over Alabama IVF ruling

After the Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are children and deserve all the protections that children are entitled to, IVF clinics in the state began to stop providing IVF services because of fears that if any embryo were to be destroyed (which is done routinely with embryos that are no longer needed), they could be culpable.

The ruling has caused an uproar because IVF treatments have broad support. So the state legislature rushed to pass a law to protect IVF doctors and parents from any legal repercussions. But apparently the law is pretty tortured in its reasoning.

The enacted legislation doesn’t define or clarify whether under state law frozen embryos created via IVF have the same rights as children. Rather, the narrowly tailored bill is designed to protect doctors, clinics and other health care personnel who provide IVF treatment and services by offering such workers civil and criminal “immunity.”

The new law will “provide civil and criminal immunity for death or damage to an embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

It says that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

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The GOP is on a very slippery slope

The GOP is discovering that there is a real danger in pandering to the extreme right wing religious faction within their party because those people are insatiable in seeking to carry out their fanatical beliefs to their logical conclusions. The strategy works as long as their followers do not take things too far.

Take the case of abortion. For many on the right, the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision, that said that women had a right to terminate their pregnancies before a certain period, became a rallying cry and when the US Supreme Court did just that, they were ecstatic. But among those calling for the overthrow were those who believed that life begins at conception and that anything that prevents a fertilized egg from further growth is tantamount to murder. These people were energized and proceeded to pass state laws that prevented abortion under any circumstances, even in the case of danger to the life and health of the mother and even if the fetus had such problems that it did not have a viable chance of survival, or would suffer from all manner of serious abnormalities.

But while these people are a significant force in the GOP , they are minority nationwide. There is a whole spectrum of people on this issue. It was always the case that there was a majority of people who felt that abortion should be allowed under certain circumstances, although they were not unanimous on where the line should be drawn. But it is clear that that line is not that far from what Roe drew. But rather than negotiating about the line, the extremists took their position that life begins at conception to its logical conclusion and demanded the outright. banning of abortion This has caused a serious backlash as popular movements to restore abortion rights kept winning referenda quite easily even in so-called red states, and anti-choice extremist candidates fared poorly at the polls.
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Converting text into realistic video

When I was watching the documentary series Life On Our Planet, I was struck by how realistic the CGI was. The prehistoric animals wandering through nature seemed as if they were being actually filmed, with both them and background details finely portrayed. I wondered how much time and effort had gone into getting it to look like that.

Life on Our Planet takes advantage of modern CGI and photography techniques that mean film shot in natural habitats, footage of animals that are real but have been transferred to a studio and sequences conjured from scratch on a computer are nearly indistinguishable. Some of the extinct land-based animals digitally brought back to life look a little like they’re hovering across the ground as they walk, and there are a few scenes where implausible numbers of dinosaurs have gathered on the same landscape for a nice photo, but we largely move smoothly between then and now.

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