Mapping light pollution

An astronomy post, for a change!

A majority of people now live in cities, so they have not seen all the wonders of the night sky from a truly dark environment. I live in the middle of nowhere, so it's less of a problem here, but there's still pollution from nearby streetlights and the town.

Well, now there's an effort underway to quantify how much light pollution is affecting stargazers around the world. The GLOBE project is asking for your help. It's pretty straightforward:

1) Find your latitude and longitude.

2) Find Orion by going outside an hour after sunset
(about 7-10pm local time).


3) Match your nighttime sky to one of their magnitude charts.

4) Report your observation.

5) Compare your observation to thousands around the world.

GLOBE will then be able to compare pollution levels to last year, when they had 8491 observations. They're hoping for more this year. It's a great excuse for you to go out and look at the stars - and, if you can, encourage others to do the same, especially kids. Generating an interest in Astronomy now will pay off down the road with more educated people in all aspects of science.

So, go out and enjoy the sky. They're accepting observations from now until March 8th.

Science Education in the US

While we're on the subject of ignorance (see the last post), The Washington Post had an editorial this week on the "Dumbing of America":

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

They posit a number of reasons for this (and to my mind, they focus a little too much on the internet killing newspapers, but they are a little biased!), but the bottom line is correct.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. (emphasis mine)

So what do we do about it? Well, the presidential campaign isn't helping - candidates are pandering to the lowest common denominator, as usual. We need to elevate the debate, focus on where we're losing out as a nation, where we're letting down today's kids - tomorrow's scientists who will drive the future of this country. Sciencedebate2008 is one place to start, but we also have to push at the grassroots level - at the local school board level, at the state government level to make sure that we're not left behind.

There was one glimmer of hope this week - Florida adopted new science standards that include the word "Evolution" for the first time, despite the pleas of the religious right who pushed to have creationism taught alongside science:


There's a story on the vote here.

We're behind again. Big Surprise.

This time, it's nanotechnology, which it seems is "morally unacceptable" to the majority of Americans, according to a University of Wisconsin study, reported in the Wall Street Journal.

In the study, just 29.5% of the 1,000 or so interviewed found nanotech research morally acceptable.

My guess is that 70% of the country don't know what nanotechnology is, due to the abysmal state of science education here. It's clear that there's an obvious anti-science, anti-reason movement in the US right now so anything equated with the "evil science" has to be against religion.

Interestingly, Europeans don't appear to have that problem, not surprisingly.

I swear, if we don't get our act together as a nation, we're going to be left behind in the race for the future.

Science debate 2008

Given all the inanity that has gone on around belief, the bible and evolution in the presidential debates recently, it seems the time has come for a debate on science policy. It is this that will enable us to look forward as a nation and not backward to the days of myth, fairy tales and legend, which is what most of the candidates seem to want to base national policy on.

With this end in mind, a group of key Americans, including scientists and congressmen have called for a debate on science.

Their mission:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.

I don't hold out much hope of the debate being held, since most of the candidates are ignorant of science, but you can add your voice to the crowd here.

I hope they're not using Windows.

Researchers at Oxford University have concluded, given a couple of reasonable assumptions, that we're all just a simulation. Philosopher Nick Bostrom has worked out the numbers, and it's pretty conclusive.

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.

Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.

There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.

So, it turns out that there may be a God - it's just that he's a nerd playing Second Life v20, a thousand years from now. Who knew?

Life, but not as we know it...

Life will find a way. That's the message from a new study in the New Journal of Physics that posits lifelike structures may form from inorganic substances in space. An international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organized into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and life itself.

Computer models were created to predict the behaviors of inorganic molecules in a plasma, a state of matter common in space where electrons are torn from atoms leaving behind charged particles. As the plasma becomes polarized as the charges separate, the molecules self-organize into corkscrew structures. These structures are also charged, and attract one another. But there's more:

...they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.

According to V.N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, working with colleagues in Germany and Australia:

"These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve".

Finding life that evolved in a completely different way from life here on earth would be a huge step forward, and further refutes the arguments of creationists. It opens doors to contemplating myriad forms of life in the universe, in many different environments, and makes the discovery of life more probable outside of a narrow range of conditions on earth-like planets. Stay tuned!

I know! I know! God did it!.......

Saw this on the 'net last week. You know it's going to be used by creationists as proof of the flood. A paper published in Nature last week proposes that:

...a significant flood event eroded a network of large ancient valleys on the floor of the English Channel.

Of course, the creationists will only read that part, and not the following sections of the abstract (or, let's face it, the whole paper). Reading further:

...we analyse a new regional bathymetric map of part of the English Channel derived from high-resolution sonar data, which shows the morphology of the valley in unprecedented detail. We observe a large bedrock-floored valley that contains a distinct assemblage of landforms, including streamlined islands and longitudinal erosional grooves, which are indicative of large-scale subaerial erosion by high-magnitude water discharges. Our observations support the megaflood model, in which breaching of a rock dam at the Dover Strait instigated catastrophic drainage of a large pro-glacial lake in the southern North Sea basin.

Apparently there were two separate flood events. During glacial periods, the North Sea's connection to the Atlantic would be blocked by ice, resulting in a glacial lake fed by melting ice and many of the rivers of Western Europe. Once that lake filled to the point where it ran over the top of any barriers between it and the Channel, rapid erosion would force a catastrophic failure. The image below shows evidence for the two events - the features suggest that an initial flood carved a broad valley about 45 km across into the bedrock of the channel, and the second carved a number of deeper and narrower channels into the floor of this valley.
It's interesting to speculate that flood events like these are probably responsible for the flood myths we see in many religions - as stories passed down from generation to generation recount memories of local floods, some (as here) clearly catastrophic. No magic sky fairy required.

God of the Gaps

I was browsing physorg.com yesterday, and one thing really stood out for me. Yesterday was just a random day, but many of the stories dealt with areas where science is understanding more and more aspects of how the brain works - the last refuge of God in the form of the "soul". Here's a couple of stories:

• Brain's inertial navigation system pinpointed - Researchers have discovered a sophisticated neural computer, buried deep in the cerebellum, that performs inertial navigation calculations to figure out a person’s movement through space.
  
• Zeroing in on the brain's speech receiver - A particular resonance pattern in the brain’s auditory processing region appears to be key to its ability to discriminate speech, researchers have found. They found that the inherent rhythm of neural activity called “theta band” specifically reacts to spoken sentences by changing its phase. The researchers also noted that the natural oscillation of this frequency provides further evidence that the brain samples speech segments about the length of a syllable.
  

My point here is that science progresses, and as more research is done, and more understanding is gained, there are fewer and fewer places for religion to hide. There's no need for God in creation anymore, and now there's no need for God in the brain or soul either. The gaps are getting smaller all the time. Speaking of evolution - new discoveries there too yesterday:

• Dinos' demise spurred rise of the mammals, new fossil suggests - A fossil discovered in the Gobi Desert has unlocked the most emphatic evidence to date that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs helped placental mammals -- of which Homo sapiens is a member -- become masters of the planet.
  
• Surprising origin of cell's internal highways - Scientists have long thought that microtubules, part of the microscopic scaffolding that the cell uses to move things around in order to hold its shape and divide, originated from a tiny structure near the nucleus, called the centrosome.
  

And this is just a couple of stories for one day, on one website. Multiply this by all the peer-reviewed science journals, and extrapolate to a year or more, and the weight of evidence becomes overwhelming. There's no need for God.

Science and Religion in America

I found an interesting post over at Marginal Utility last week, dissecting data from the General Social Survey about belief in science among Americans. In the post, scientific knowledge is broken down by religion, on a range of "controversial" (in the sense that deniers don't want to believe the evidence) scientific subjects. For example, here's the one on evolution:What it clearly shows is that as religious belief become less fundamentalist, scientific understanding grows. Much of this may be due to the lower schooling standards in the parts of the country where fundamentalist protestantism is ascendant, and it points up the growing divide in the U.S. regarding science and reason on one hand, and religion on the other.
As an aside, I recently saw a review of an interesting new book "Deer Hunting with Jesus" by Joe Bageant:

From the Amazon review:

After thirty years spent scratching together a middle-class life out of a “dirt-poor” childhood, Joe Bageant moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, where he realized that his family and neighbors were the very people who carried George W. Bush to victory. That was ironic, because Winchester, like countless American small towns, is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas. Nearly everyone over fifty has serious health problems, and many have no health care. Credit ratings are low or nonexistent, and alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape.

I think that description applies here - poor families with no education and no future are the backbone of the fundamentalist faith, so it's no surprise to see results like these.

Even more astounding, only 40% of fundamentalist protestants believe the Earth orbits the sun in one year. That's less than half. Frankly, I think this may invalidate most of the rest of the data, because even for those with no religious affiliation, the numbers are only around 60%, which clearly indicates to me that most Americans are unqualified to answer questions on any scientific topic. It does however seem to me that on the whole, those people categorized as having no religious affiliation, or those who are jewish or catholic, are more highly educated and open to scientific reason than fundamentalist protestants.

MESSENGER at Venus

NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) mission to Mercury flies by Venus late this afternoon.

MESSENGER will fly within about 210 miles of the surface of the Venus, and get a gravity kick toward its ultimate destination, Mercury. As it flies past, the probe will begin a carefully planned sequence of science observations that are designed to practice activities planned seven months later at the first flyby of Mercury.

MESSENGER has been on a long flight to Mercury. One of NASA's low cost missions to the planets, the probe was launched in 2004, and after an Earth flyby, 2 Venus flybys and 2 Mercury flybys, will eventually end up in orbit around Mercury in 2011.

Let's wait to see what happens at Venus today - should be some good data coming back.

iTunes U

Apple has updated it's iTunes store to version 7.2. One of the updates is access to iTunes U, which includes free lectures, speeches, sports clips and more from top universities like Stanford and MIT. I've been perusing the offerings, and it includes such courses as:

• Modern Theoretical Physics from Stanford
• Introductory Astronomy from UC Berkeley
• Electricity and Magnetism from MIT

and many more, including courses on Biology and evolution from a variety of high profile schools. I wonder if we should pass this information on to the Discovery Institute or Ken Ham at the Creation Museum. They could use some grounding in basic science.

Religion in Schools

Look, I have no problem with people believing whatever they want to believe, however wrong they may be. Just don't proselytize, and don't teach my kids fairy stories in science class. If you want to promote your particular version of an ancient myth as science, then that's what Sunday school is for.

Creationism isn't science. It isn't verifiable, it doesn't make predictions that can be tested, and it relies on the intervention of a sky fairy to explain everything. It shouldn't be taught as science in schools. Period.

Science Books

I posted this over at Pharyngula yesterday, in response to a post about science and creationist books:

In my local Waldenbooks, I had to ASK where the science section was. The answer: "You'll find the science books under 'Nature and Pets'". Sure enough, there they were, two measly shelves and maybe 30 random books. You couldn't miss the floor to ceiling "New Age" section, or the several shelves packed full of several flavors of bibles. It's no wonder the state of education on science is where it is.

I'm an Atheist

I'm an atheist.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” - Stephen F Roberts

I'm fortunate to have grown up in a country (England) which is pretty secular. My parents are largely non-religious, and this gave me the benefit of being able to objectively assess whether religion in general (and christianity in particular) has anything beneficial to say about, in the words of Douglas Adams, "Life, the Universe and Everything". The answer? No. Ascribing things you don't understand to a giant sky fairy is not a rational belief. You may as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Pastafarians unite!).

Does Science have all the answers? Of course not. But, there's a verifiable methodology that lends itself to objective understanding of natural phenomena, and there's no reason to assume we won't be able to fill in our current gaps in understanding. Remember, once upon a time, rainbows were magic too.