Tag: Science

Solving a Great Mystery

Posted on by jabittan
As a teenager in high school, Amanda Gefter was relatively disengaged from classes and studying. It was not that she wasn’t smart, was not interested in the world around her, or did not want to learn, but that teachers and her school did not manage to grab her attention and excite her with the subjects they taught. In her book Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn, Gefter explains the interest she took in physics and science outside the classroom, and discusses how interesting science is, yet how little of the mystery of our world was actually conveyed in her classes.

 

She writes, “Einstein said, ‘This huge world stands before us like a great eternal riddle.’ Why couldn’t any of my teachers have told me that? ‘Listen,’ they could have said, ‘no one has any idea what the hell is going on. We wake up in this world and we don’t know why we’re here or how anything works. I mean, look around. Look how bizarre it all is! What the hell is all this stuff? Reality is a huge mystery, and you have a choice to make. You can run from it, you can placate yourself with fairy tales, you can just pretend everything’s normal, or  you can stare that mystery in the eye and try to solve it. If you are one of the brave ones to choose the latter, welcome to science.”

 

We present science in school in a way that allows us to test student knowledge. The knowledge we test is usually just basic facts and information that can be evaluated with multiple choice questions. Science in the real world, however, is not multiple choice. We don’t actually know all the answers and the quest to find them involves creative thinking to design experiments, evaluate the world, observe complex phenomena, and crowdsource knowledge to establish accepted theories of what is taking place. When we reduce this complex web that we call science to basic multiple choice questions, we create an illusion that science is well understood and that we have all the answers figured out. Students become disengaged because we lose the mystery and fail to connect the challenging science to the important developments of the world.

 

To inspire kids with science we need to first obliterate the idea that math is hard. Math is not hard, it is just a different frame for understanding the interactions of the universe. If we tell our kids that math is a secrete code to the universe that they have the power to understand, then they can approach the subject with less apprehension and more intrigue, and they can be more successful. From there we must explain the mysteries of the universe that we are working to better understand, and we must demonstrate to kids the interesting work and knowledge being undertaken and discovered every day. We must create new ways of transmitting knowledge and testing knowledge that don’t involve multiple choice questions and textbooks that present information without connections to real world applications.

What is the Ultimate “Thing” of the Universe?

Posted on by jabittan
Amanda Gefter’s book Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn is about her journey into the world of physics with her father. Throughout the book she and her father search for the ultimate building block of the universe. What is the smallest particle that forms the basis of all other particles? What aspect of the universe is constant among all scales and all perspectives? What constitutes reality in our universe?

 

From our perspective here on Earth, these questions seem like they should be strait-forward and easy to answer. However, once we start looking into the universe and observing more than what we can simply experience here on Earth, we begin to see that what we understand as reality is not as clear as it appears. The deeper we peer through space, the more we see strange phenomenon such as the curving of spacetime, and the more energy we put forward in the search of smaller and smaller particles, the more we find that matter seem to come and go and not behave as we expected.

 

Throughout their search, Gefter and her father look into the physics of various candidates for the ultimate building block of reality and meet many interesting scientists and physicists.  From the beginning, one of Gefter’s favorite physicists was John Wheeler, and early on in his research he took down the idea that spacetime itself was the most basic unit of the universe. “Wheeler emphasized that spacetime couldn’t be reality’s ultimate ingredient, because at its highest resolution quantum mechanics and general relativity conspire to destroy it, warping its geometry until it isn’t geometry anymore.”

 

Over the last two years a principle predicted by Albert Einstein has been proven correct as we have discovered gravitational waves. These are ripples through spacetime caused by events of massive energy. The empty space of space, according to the theory of Einstein is not actually empty but is composed of what we have confusingly named spacetime. Our planets and everything in the universe permeates across and through this spacetime according to physics that Einstein helped describe. In her book, Gefter turns back to Wheeler to describe this concept, “As wheeler put it, ‘Matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move.” Our planet, our sun, our galaxy, and everything in the universe is interacting with spacetime which is everywhere and all around us. As matter interacts with what appears to be empty space it actually distorts that space, because that space is more than emptiness. Light, energy, and matter are all influenced by spacetime which itself is simultaneously shaped by the matter and energy flowing through it. Even more bizarre, across spacetime, particles seem to pop in and out of existence continuously, with particles and antiparticles appearing from nothing and then colliding on a sub-microscopic level to vanish back into nothingness.

 

Early on what Gefter demonstrated with the help of Einstein, Wheeler, and spacetime, is that our concrete understanding and experience of reality is not as concrete as it appears. We can only see, measure, and experience so much, and there is far more in the universe than what we currently know and understand. The ultimate reality of the universe is beyond our current comprehension, and what this reminds us is that we should not be too sure of our own knowledge, for we are always limited by what we can experience and observe from our perspective. The universe is more than the stories we tell ourselves about it.

The Big Bang Was Everywhere

Posted on by jabittan
Space and time are big and complicated. Like, really big, and really complicated. The enormous sizes that we use when talking about space and the incomprehensible timescales of the universe truly boggle my mind. It is hard to understand just what it means for a star to be 150 light years away from earth, or for the earth to be about 4.5 billion years old, and for the universe itself to be almost 14 billion years old. But even more challenging to understand than the incredible time and size proportions that go so far beyond what human experience can comprehend is our current understanding of how it all started.

 

In her book Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn, Amanda Gefter walks us through her journey to try to understand the Universe and the Big Bang. At the start of the Universe, 13.75 billion years ago, everything in the universe existed as nothing. Everything was everywhere around us, as Gefter and her father would come to call and undifferentiated homogenous state. And  then something changed, and the Universe as we can see and measure it today began to take shape. That event has been called the Big Bang, and since that event the universe has been expanding and changing. The origin of the Big Bang is called a singularity in physics, and Gefter explains a little about that starting point of the universe:

 

“It was tempting to think of a singularity as small, but, as my father and I quickly learned, that’s a rookie mistake. It only seems small because you picture it as a point in space, as if you’re looking at it from the outside. But the singularity has no outside. It’s not a point in space because it is space. It’s the universe, it’s everything. We’re in the point. Besides, a point isn’t small—it’s sizeless. I had learned that in geometry class, in spite of my protests. You can just as well think of a point as infinitely big. The Big Bang happened everywhere, I scribbled in my notebook. Even in the suburbs.”

 

Thinking about space, time, and universe requires that we change what we understand nature and reality to be. The way that physics and nature work on planet Earth appear to be different from the way reality and physics operate in other parts of the universe, but the reality is that the physics is working the same and we are observing the same reality, just at different scales and with different things experiencing different forces. If we force everything to be understood as we experience reality with our limited set of senses and limited time scales here on Earth, we won’t fully understand what is happening throughout space and time. What Gefter explains throughout her book, and what must be accepted for all the physics of the universe to work, is that there is no gods-eye-view of the universe. You cannot take a viewpoint from outside the universe, because everything is within the universe. Whether the universe is a single dense point of all matter, or an ever expanding infinite expanse of galaxies, planets, and dust, every view point is within the universe. The Big Bang happened everywhere because it was everything. We cannot be a god and stand outside the Big Bang and watch it happen. We are inside the universe, and must look at the Big Bang from the inside.

A Father-Daughter Science Connection

Posted on by jabittan
Amanda Gefter’s book Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn is about her journey with her father through the world of physics and how she crash landed in a career as a science journalist. Early on in the book she describes how she and her father connected through science, with a quick passage that I think many of us can relate to. “As a dogmatically skeptical teenager, I had my own Zen-like practice of zoning out when adults offered me advice, but when it came to my father I listened—maybe because when he spoke it sounded less like an authoritarian command and more like the confession of a secret. It is all an illusion. Now here he was speaking in the same quietly intense tone, leaning in so as not to let the other diners overhear, asking me how I’d define nothing.”

 

Gefter’s quote about her dad really resonates with me. We all want to be included in important discussions and we all want to feel that we are on the inside of a secret. A way to connect with people and spark their interest in science and challenging subjects, is to pose challenging and almost paradoxical questions in a way that encourages wild answers and gives the other person a chance to be part of the secret inside team trying to find the best possible answer. I listen to a lot of science podcasts, and many of the best engage with their audience in this way. They may not be in the same room washing dishes with me or in the car driving down the freeway with me, but they still manage to pose a question which sounds simple, but requires deep and complex thought. Personally I think the public in general needs to be more engaged with science and scientific thinking, but in particular, this is something we need to instill in our children from a young age. Gefter, as an teenage outsider, was inspired by her father’s questions about science in a way that she was not inspired by her actual classes at school.

 

The way we speak with kids and teenagers is important. I do not have kids, but I did coach cross country and track and field as I worked through my undergraduate degree, and I hope to find a way to get back to working with high school students in the future. Gefter’s quote shows us the importance of how we craft messages to teenagers. The content alone is not enough to inspire teenagers and if we have a lesson or a message that we think is crucial for them, we must find a way to brand that message so that it is not an authoritarian command driving them to zone out and ignore us. We must take our important messages and lessons and communicate them in a way that is interesting and in a way that allows teenagers to investigate for themselves and begin to build their own abilities to reason with the world. Gefter’s father was a radiologist, and as a medically trained scientist he had the authority to speak on various science topics, but he did not just throw answers at his daughter like knives shooting through her doubt to tear her faulty reasoning apart, he invited her to offer answers and theories, and then invited her to work through her thoughts with him.

 

Whether we speak with teenagers, toddlers, or grown adults, I think the message holds. Invite curiosity and place your ego in the back seat. Do not challenge your audience with difficult scientific questions just to demonstrate your superior knowledge of a subject, but rather use challenging questions to show the complexity and vast beauty of unknown science. Invite your listener to be part of the secret team trying to think through the challenges of our time.

What is in Crude Oil?

Posted on by jabittan
When we think of crude oil we probably don’t think of much unless we are somehow connected to a science or oil career.  Our image of pumping oil from the ground or from the ocean floor probably involves some sort of pipe with black sludge flowing out of it.  What Joel Achenbach explains in his book A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea is that the oil, and the process of pumping that oil, is far more complex than what we imagine.  To help us understand what happened during the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, he spends time detailing what exactly comes out of the ground when pumping oil, and what must be sent back into the ground to replace what comes up.  We don’t just pull up oil as we drill, but we get gas, water, sand, and more, and the men and women working on the oil rigs must account for everything that comes through the pipe.

 

When it comes to the crude oil itself, Achenbach writes about what actually composes the sludge. “There is no single hydrocarbon molecule named “oil.” There is, however, benzene, toluene, m-Xylene, n-heptylbenzene, indene, indan, naphthalene, tetralin, biphenyl, acenaphthylene, flourene, pyrene, chrysene, benzopyrene, pentacene – these just being a partial list of typical aromatic hydrocarbons found in crude oil. There are also hydrocarbon cases: predominantly methane, but also ethane, propane, butane, pentane, hexane, and heptane, and there are other gases mixed in with the hydrocarbons—gases that have more than just hydrogen sulfide, and helium. One also finds traces of phosphorus, iron, nickel, and vanadium.”

 

He details the contents of the crude oil to show that what we pump from the ground is incredibly varied, and hard to predict because of the wide array of compounds often contained.  When BP and scientists around the world raced to close the well in the Gulf of Mexico gushing oil into the ocean, they had to consider the nature of the oil.  Understanding what is in the substance helps us know how it will react to specific situations and how it will behave under different conditions. It also helped us to better understand what the oil would do when it diffused into the ocean.

 

I like the quote above about the oil because it serves to show how large of a disconnect exists in our world between insiders and outsiders when it comes to things like science, technology, and industry.  Achenbach’s book is full of examples of the complex process and nature of drilling for oil that the general population is not aware of.  I spend a lot of time consuming science podcast and blogs, but even then I have only a superficial understanding of any scientific field. Our experts know increasingly more about how our world operates, but that knowledge is increasingly hidden from the general public who is too busy, too stressed, and too preoccupied to learn and engage in scientific studies that use complex language and focus on seemingly obscure subjects. What we must demand as a population is better science communication to help us understand how our engineered world operates.  We must find time to focus on understanding at least part of the complex world around us, if for no reason other than to appreciate the work of science. It may never help me to know that there are so many varieties of contents in crude oil, but it may help me better understand the science that goes into refining oil, and it may help me accept the prices that I pay when I  fuel up my car.

Saving the Country

Posted on by jabittan
In Joel Achenbach’s book, A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher, we are presented with a reality that is very concerning about the designed, engineered, and increasingly complex world that we live in. Our systems today are so well connected and include so many different moving parts that it can be nearly impossible for any single individual to fully understand how everything functions together.  When one, or multiple, parts of a system fail it can have catastrophic and unpredictable results that challenge even those who built the system. Achenbach however, does not look at our world with fear because it is not just our systems that are increasingly interconnected, but also our smart people. Toward the beginning of his book he writes, “You never know when someone’s fantastically esoteric expertise may be called upon to help save the country.”

 

As our problems have become more complex we have developed higher education and research opportunities for individuals  to specialize in increasingly narrow fields. A common refrain heard on college campuses is that as one advances through multiple degrees they know more and more about less and less. Their focus shifts from a broad knowledge base to an increasingly narrow, specific, and complete understanding of a single subject. What this means is that we have many experts in single areas who understand the problems and science related to their field in truly profound ways.

 

When disasters arise and systems fail, which Achenbach believes may happen with increasing frequency in the future, we don’t simply need to rely on the on the ground and local experts, designers, and engineers who built the system that is failing.  Those who may be able to help save our system could be spread across the world and their fields may seem to distinct and far apart to be useful, but Achenbach believes that everyone can combine their individual expertise in novel ways to solve the most complex problems that arise.  As our research grows so do our social networks and our opportunities to combine research in new ways. We may not think that any single piece of research is too critical for our planet, but each scientific view that can be combined increases our perspective of a problem and increase the creativity which can be brought toward our solution.  In his book Achenbach shows the way that scientists from different fields were able to pool their knowledge and perspective to find a solution to a problem that threatened the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Material Science

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Stuff Matters Mark Miodownik explores the world of every day materials that shape our lives and understandings of the world.  He looks at steel, concrete, foam, and more to show us how complex our seemingly simple world is.  He continually reveals the misconceptions people have about the materials in our daily world by telling the backstory of materials and presenting them in an almost lifelike manner.  Miodownik writes, “materials are not static things: they respond to their environment, and especially to temperature.”

 

I think Miodownik’s quote is a great one for people outside of the general science or material science community because it begins to reveal and explain the complex nature of the built world.  We often are appalled when systems fail (think of a train wreck, the BP oil spill, or crumbling concrete infrastructure) but few of us understand just how those systems operate and what forces limit or strain our engineering.  It is easy to criticize a company or government when materials are not holding up to our demands, but simple criticism ignores the fact that our products face factors and variables that are sometimes impossible to know or predict.  Through science and testing we can develop systems that are more secure and sound, but we will never be able to account for 100% of the anomalies that any given bridge, airplane, or coffee table will face.

 

I recently read Joel Achenbach’s recount of the BP Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, and throughout his book he highlights the fact that our engineered planet has become so complex that it is nearly impossible for the average citizen (or even the President of the United States) to truly understand how everything is organized. What I have taken away from these two books is that we need to be more patient with the world around us. We can hold engineers, car companies, and manufacturers to very high standards, but we should also expect and be prepared for systems to fail.  Oftentimes a failure in our built world is not the result of a single overlooked, poorly built, or sloppily assembled unit, but rather the result of anomalous strains and individually inconsequential shortfalls.  Developing a better understanding of the built world around us will help us react and respond better to our materials and their potential failures.  The more we know about science and the current state of science the more likely we are to support development, and when things go wrong, the less likely we are to point fingers as opposed to aid the development of novel solutions.

Life in the Ocean

Posted on by jabittan
James Nestor wrote the book, Deep: Free Diving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves, after traveling to the Mediterranean to watch a free diving competition.  Prior to the competition he was a certified scuba diver, but it was not until he learned about how the human body reacts to the depths of the ocean without scuba gear that Nestor really began to understand the importance of the ocean.  He did not just study free diving and human physiology in the water, but he worked to understand all aspects of life in the ocean. Nestor writes, “The ocean occupies 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and is home to about 50 percent of its known creatures — the largest inhabited area found anywhere in the universe so far.”

 

I love learning about how large, deep, and diversified our oceans are.  I live in Reno, NV, in one of the only places on Earth that does not have a river that eventually makes its way to the ocean.  Our high desert climate is about as far from the ocean as one can be, which perhaps is why I am so fascinated with the life in water.  Learning about the varied life in the ocean fascinates me because we have only studied the ocean to a very limited extent, and in many ways the deep ocean can be compared to outer space in terms of how difficult it is to reach and the extent to which it has been explored and understood.

 

In Nestor’s quote he writes that the ocean is home to about 50 percent of Earth’s species, and what I find interesting is that many marine biologists believe that we do not know all of the creatures and life forms living in the ocean.  We have truly only explored a small percent of the ocean, and there are many more living organisms to be discovered in the vast depths of the worlds oceans.

 

For me, thinking about the ocean in this way forces me to think about human relationships with the ocean.  Many of our relationships are not positive, through history we have not done a good job thinking about ocean health.  It is easy for our trash to accumulate in watersheds that drain into the oceans, and oil shipping and exploration have had many negative consequences for ocean life.  In addition, we have inhabited huge areas, typically bays and estuaries, along our coastlines and reduced the habitat for many marine species.  While human societies should not be constantly limited in order to save animal species, thinking about how we can live in a state of harmony with oceans and marine life is not just a nice thing to do, it is a necessary responsibility of all humans.

Magnetoreception

Posted on by jabittan
James Nestor talks about the incredible abilities of marine animals in his book Deep, and he compares humans, our evolutionary past, and our physical limits to those of marine mammals and other ocean life.  When speaking about diving to incredible depths and perceiving the world he refers to sharks, “Sharks, which can dive below six hundred and fifty feet, and much deeper, rely on senses beyond the ones we know.  Among them is magneto reception, an attunement to the magnetic impulses of the Earth’s molten core.  Research suggests that humans have this ability and likely used it to navigate across the oceans and trackless deserts for thousands of years.”  Nestor explains that at 600 feet below the surface the pressure exerted by the ocean is about twenty times grater than the atmospheric pressure at the surface.  This is the absolute limit of the human body, but other animals, whales and sharks for example, are able to survive these depths.

 

What this section speaks to me about is the incredible diversity in life on our planet. With conservation it is important that we do not force society into blocking projects and developments that may be crucial for societal advances on the basis of preserving natural harmony, but at the same time, seeing the incredible adaptations among all forms of life is inspiring and could unlock new potentials for humanity.  An adaption that leads sharks to be able to navigate by magnetic senses may not directly correlate to human advancement, but understanding that living organisms can adapt these senses may provide a spark of motivation for someone in the future. The possible breakthroughs in science, medicine, and technology are a strong base for expanding education and research of marine life, and that life must be protected through conservation in order for our continued research.  Unfortunately fun discoveries and potential discoveries that could help humanity cannot be considered always more important than a growing and improving society.  Individuals living along the coast rely on shipping, and forcing ports to close by changing shipping lanes so that we can better preserve and save a species of shark to study magnetorecption might not always be the best way to think of conservation.

 

Aside from conservation, what I am constantly reminded of when I read passages that deal with animal senses that seem alien when compared to human abilities, is that we truly do not know everything of our world.  I have come to understand that it is ok to not know everything about the world. It is difficult, but necessary for us to accept that we can not be 100 percent aware of everything around us or everything that influences us.  It is tempting after years of academic work to adopt the idea that one knows everything, can sense everything, and understands their perceptions of the world, but it is a fallacy.  We cannot perceive the world based on our perception of magnetic fields, and keeping that in mind helps us remember that we cannot sense and be aware of all the forces acting on our lives.  I have become comfortable with the idea that there are things that are hidden from me due to my lack of physical senses and mental perspectives.  That comfort helped me to understand that no matter how much I study something or think I know something, there are always different views and ideas that I cannot see which may hide information from me.  Knowing this allows me to listen to others and try to gain more perspectives.  I may not gain a new sense like magnetoreception, but knowing that it exists reminds me to be open.