Das lied von das Universum

I just read “The life of Galileo”, by Bertolt Brecht. Brecht, a man of his time, was worried about the ethics of the scientific work. My personal opinion is that it is not science itself that has to be under scrutiny, but its uses. Science has improved our lives in general, when used properly. And knowledge is a treasure for us all. Only us can save us from ourselves, and knowledge is the way to go. 

A sentence was highlighted by somebody else in the version I have been reading: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes!”. Galileo´s recantation has been cried. However, I would stick to another one, by Galileo later on in the play, which is not highlighted: “Unhappy the land where heroes are needed”.

1616: The Copernican theory is censored by the church. But, 400 years later, we “hear” the music of the Universe. When Galileo oriented the newly invented telescope to Jupiter, he started a journey, the scientific journey, that led us up to the historical moment we are living now. Much has been said and explained everywhere about gravitational waves. I am only echoing what has been on the news since last February 11^th 2016. As all good music, the timing is perfect: 100 years after they were predicted by Einstein, another science´s giant. And, of course, everybody in the planet can have a ringtone with the “music” of two black holes dancing in space. 

Since Galileo, astronomers started to see a silent movie, in black and white. Then there came the colours, with all sorts of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, we can hear the sound, the soundtrack of the Universe. And now, all humanity can participate in the celebration of this gigantic step towards our understanding of the Universe. 

 We are happy, and we have our heroes.

Mind the gap

An international team of researchers have demonstrated that the spectral gap problem is algorithmically undecidable. The spectral gap, or the difference between the energy of the ground state and the first excited state, is fundamental to understanding the properties of a quantum many-body system. The question posed in their paper is: given a quantum many-body system, is it gapped or gapless? And they find out that that question is undecidable in the same form encountered in Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.

An important consequence of this study is that it has been demonstrated that there exists a physical problem where the reductionist approach is not possible, that is, the macroscopic properties of a system cannot be derived from its detailed microscopic description.  Even if we can perfectly describe all the parts, the properties of the whole cannot be predicted. Nature seems to dodge our immature science.

Emergent properties belong to the realm of complex systems. As Anderson puts it, “More is different”. There seems to exist a hierarchy in the description of nature, and that there is not straightforward way of going from one to the other.

This hierarchic structure has been recently found in our brains when we process language. Apparently, we keep track of different abstract linguistic structures (words, phrases and sentences) at different timescales. The authors of the research found thus a basis for Chomsky’s ideas about how we have a grammar in our head, which underlies our processing of language.

A similar idea permeates the Schenkerian analysis of a passage of music. This analysis shows the hierarchical relationships among its pitches, drawing conclusions about the structure of the analysed passage. Music is another kind of language, with different compositional time scales. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar kind of analysis for music would led to finding a musical grammar in our heads.

Music, the ultimate abstract language, the one that Kandinsky tried to translate into visual art. To completely disembody lines and colours from their figurative meaning. Just a feast to the eyes.

A complex work of art, created by a complex system, the painter, apprehended by a complex system, us humans. How could ever the beauty of a piece of art be deduced from something so simple as an equation?

Bullshitfulness

This recently published article has pointed out how our XXI century world if full of bullshit, and how a lot of people accept bullshit without a second thought. It is very funny, indeed, to see how randomly generated sentences (here or here) are accepted as profound and deep, and how people is so ready to believe in them. Well, it is funny, but not funny at all, on second thoughts. 

As they point out here, we should follow the rules of “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” to differentiate what is a sound statement from simple bullshit. It all boils down to the poor understanding of science in our society. Skepticism is the core of science, but I think skepticism is not well understood. For most of people, it strips out all the “magic” and wondrousness of the world. And people want to believe. That is the core of human nature, to believe there is a profound meaning in their lives, that everything makes sense, and that we are connected in a special way to the world. We want to feel special. 

I have many friends who believe in all sorts of this new age spiritualism. Even scientists, what I found surprising. I even agreed to perform an experiment on reiki. I did it because this friend was a scientist, and of course the scientist in me would never refuse to perform an experiment. In short, the experiment did not work. But he still believes in it. I think that is one of the things that confuses scientifically illiterate people, that even scientist believe in bullshit. Scientists should know better, right? 

As I said, it is into our human nature to yearn for a meaning, to belong to something much bigger than us. The official religions are so many centuries behind our modern society, that this yearning has created all sorts of new “religions” that aim directly to the spiritual part in us. So we are just cannon fodder for all sorts creators of bullshit. 

Just last night, a friend and me were assaulted by one of these believers, and tried to introduce us into mindfulness and all that nonsense. He was making up words on the way. So, I decided to make up another word: bullshitfulness, or the awareness of our own bullshit and the bullshit around us. 

So, from now on, I will try to perfect the art of bullshitfulness. I know I bullshit too, but I always try to warn beforehand. That is why I created the tag “ramblings”. We all should be aware of our own bullshit, and warn other people about it. We should also try to spot bullshit, and not be ashamed of pointing it out. Even if they are friends. Specially, when they are friends. 

The world is full of wonders. I do not think we need to invent it, just to discover it. Is that bullshit?

Greetings from Earth

NASA recently released the content of the Golden Discs that are being emitted by the Voyagers. Here you can hear the greetings from Earth in 55 different languages.





Greetings :)

Inge Lehmann

Today Google remembers the birth of Inge Lehmann with their doodle. Inge Lehmann is the most well-known female seismologist in history. Thanks to her interpretation of seismograms, we now know that the Earth’s core has an inner core and an outer core. 

People are so interested in looking at the stars, that most of the time we do not realise how little we know about our own Earth. I do not mean that Astronomy and related sciences are not interesting. But sometimes we forget about our own surroundings. 

Seismology is still not a very well-known science. Surely due to the difficulties of dealing with a lab that is the size of our Earth, and geological time scales, but we keep trying. 

In any case, I am glad that this woman was honoured with a doodle today. 

Happy birthday, Inge Lehmann!

I'm going to Mars!

My mom will probably kill me :)

Anyways, here you have the link to send your name to Mars. Would you like to go with me?

I’m going to dress up as a flamenco dancer…

So yes, another year and I haven’t been nominated yet. My career is not in the right path. So, with nothing to show to the world from my own, I will comment this year’s Ig Nobel prizes.

PHYSICS PRIZE [JAPAN]: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor. 

So yes, lots of laughs experimenting. They will probably be shown in You've Been Framed!.

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA]: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, and Kang Lee, for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.

Perhaps they could write a joint proposal with Ig Nobel laureate Robert Matthews to see if the toast will fall with the face of Jesus down or up. What about adding a cat to the whole study? Will see… 

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

Of course, I go to bed very early… the problem is that I also get up late… does it mean that I’m lazy? I will think about it and perhaps write a paper on that. As long as is short and I don‘t have to work much on it…

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, JAPAN, USA, INDIA]: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček and Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, and to David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.

I was bitten by a cat once… and I can tell you that yes, it’s mentally draining. It was a very long day, with very unlikely and (now that I think about it) funny events. In one of them, I was so unlucky that in the hospital they gave me the phone number of the tomb engraver by accident. I was completely shocked. I still have nightmares about it. And no, I didn’t do anything to the cat. I actually saved its life… ok, let’s go for the next one. I don’t like this one…

BIOLOGY PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY, ZAMBIA]: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.

I don’t know… what happens if they have a high voltage electricity line very close? Or if they have a computer nearby? Do they align with the resultant magnetic field? In any case, you can always substitute your compass for a dog when you go to the jungle. They also can help you hunting…

ART PRIZE [ITALY]: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.

I even sometimes experiment pain looking at some paintings… and I don’t need any laser beam…

ECONOMICS PRIZE [ITALY]: ISTAT — the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

Because of course all the illegal money should be taxed… and use it for fighting prostitution, drugs, smuggling, and all unlawful behaviour…

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, INDIA]: Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.

You could use also tampons… I saw it in a movie…

ARCTIC SCIENCE PRIZE [NORWAY, GERMANY]: Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.

I would dress up as a flamenco dancer… I don’t know… perhaps they would like to go to the feria :)

NUTRITION PRIZE [SPAIN]: Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, and Margarita Garriga, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages."

You know, we are a food oriented culture. With this one and the study about the science of tapped beer I’m very proud of my country!

Why we should trust scientists

I found this talk very interesting. Why should scientists be trusted? Why should we take their word for what happens in the world? Check it out :) 

Let’s talk about climate change

A few days ago they presented some shocking images about the irreversible melting of the ice sheet in Western Antarctica. Here you have a video about it:

  

 As it happens, experts say that it is officially irreversible. The time range is very low, in particular if we compare it with geological times. Numbers are around 100 years. Perhaps not now, but one or two generations after us will have the problem of the change in the coastlines due to the rise of the sea level. 

The climate is changing irreversibly. The news about the irreversible melting of the ice in Antarctica is only an example of the latest discoveries about climate change in the world. And the only thing we can do now is to prepare for that change. We could try to slow down the process, but it is too late to think about stopping it. Not only we will have a rise in the sea level, but the Antarctic ice melted in the sea will probably change the current oceanic streams, thus changing the climate globally. 

In related news, for those who still don´t know, we should prepare for a strong El Niño this year. People from NGOs are already warning about the consequences of this fact, and it is in their highest priority to prepare for that. Consequences include wetter than normal season in East Africa, and drier than normal season in south-central Africa. The continuous warming of the Earth will probably cause stronger ENSO phases, causing extreme floods and famine. 

And while scientists are more or less agreeing about the fact that it is actually happening (although there are still some that deny it) and the point where they have more arguments is in the man´s influence in the change, we find that governments are still adamant about changing their politics to fight this imminent change in the climate.

I was surprised when I read that Canadian weather forecasters are forbidden from talk about climate change. It´s true that meteorological time and spatial scales are lower than climate scales, but I don´t see a reason why they are not allowed to discuss climate change in their channel. The Canadian government seems to be clearly against informing people about climate change. And I guess it´s not the only country where this topic is taboo. 

I think we should be allowed to freely discuss environmental issues, with well informed people and well intended politicians.

Pint of science

What a better way of engaging everyday people in science other than having pint while you explain it?

That is what they thought when they decided to organize Pint of Science. I didn´t know that venue existed until a very good friend told me about it. So, we went for a pint to listen to scientists talk about epigenetics. This word means that genes act depending on what they wear (naked genes vs and dressed genes).

Personally I found very interesting the experience. However, from the two talks, I think the first one was too detailed for the general public, even for me. And, since half of the audience had no scientific background, I thought perhaps it wasn´t what people expected. The second talk was easier to understand, and the speaker was able to engage the audience in an interactive talk.

In any case, I think the idea is great. I hope next year we could be involved in that event as scientists, and organize it in our university.

And, well, they had T-shirts, but they weren´t on sale. They were only for the speakers. I think they could raise funds by selling T-shirts. I wanted one!

The debate about creationism

I recently came across a debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye, via La ciencia y sus demonios. The question posed is "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era?" Here you have it. 

I found it very surprising, and somehow outrageous. The Earth was created 4500 years ago? Really? Adam and Eve were created only 4500 years ago? I don't know why Bill Nye didn't even point out that there are archaeological settlements much older than that. 

Ken Ham divides science between experimental and historical science to make the point of giving experimental science the credit for all our technology, but to "historical" science basically what the bible says. However, Bill Nye says that science is science. No distinction between them. 

As I said, I found it outrageous. While the honest answer from Bill Nye of not knowing everything (they asked him about the origin of the Universe), Ken Ham answers saying he "knows" what the origin is. That is the main contradiction in calling science to creationism. When they don't know how to explain something, they go to god. God is where they hide their ignorance. 

One stupid question I could ask is: why do they bother to go to the doctor when they are ill? That is science. They should pray and rely on god. That is what their religion says. They believe that the explanation of natural phenomena are better explained by the science of men that lived 4500 years ago. Of course that science was inspired by god, so no mistakes. That is not science. Science is about making an affirmation (an hypothesis), and test it against nature. It is about constantly questioning the natural world. That is how science builds itself. Of course there are many unknowns, but that doesn't mean the method is wrong. They don't question, they just believe. 

He keeps citing scientists that believe in god, some of them even believe in creationism. The question I ask: why don't they publish their believes in science journals? Perhaps because what they publish is not about their beliefs, but about real science? 

I find very unsettling that those people have an increasing power in our society. As a scientist, I am a little bit worried.

Conditional probability explained

Conditional probability was never so explicitly explained as in this visual application. Check this link. Via Microsiervos.

Curious things about infinity

This video reminded me of the book The Infinite Book, by John D. Barrow.

Yes, infinity is a very curious object. Aren´t you surprised?

New "Cosmos" with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Good news for science fans. Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to present "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", where the famous Cosmos by Carl Sagan is going to be revisited. New results and new stories will be shown. 

Here you have the trailer: 

 I hope it will be so inspiring as Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It starts on Sunday, March 9th at 9 PM. Don't forget it!