StarFest in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow NYC

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This was my first star party with the NY Amateur Astronomy Association where I was a telescope operator, showing the public what can be seen through my Questar telescope. I used for the first time my new Hyperion 24 mm eyepiece; it made quite a difference from the ‘stock’ 24 mm that I use with this telescope, almost doubling the field of view; and the contrast and crispness was noticeably better.

The weather was not very much on our side, as a long cloud formation made its way up the east coast. Luckily, Manhattan was on the edge of it. I learned twenty-five years ago to be patient. I was taking a class with the late George Lovi at the Hayden Planetarium. He was using the same type of telescope as I use today. George led us outside to view the planet Jupiter. The weather was not so good, but he told us that there are always holes in the clouds and that with a little patience we will see the planet. Sure enough, it did appear and we all got to see it.

So last night, that adage proved to be the same- after what seemed to be a long time, the sky cleared out just enough so I could share the view of Saturn, Mars and the Moon, to enchanted, interested people; not the least of which an eager group of Central Park rangers, who were visibly excited by the opportunity. We all had a great time!

At some point in the evening when the sky would not cooperate, I started taking pictures of the event; here is a selection:

 

Picture with clouds Building and telescopes at night

A wide view of Sheep’s Meadow highlighting the cloudy sky

telescopes lined up at the Star Party

Telescopes are lined up under the ever changing skyline on Manhattan

people watch a screen sitting in the grass

While the clouds passed by, a crowd watched a talk and presentation about SETI

Peoples sitting in the crowd with Manhattan skyline behind them

Behind the crowd, Mars makes an appearance (small dot at 2 o’clock from the tall building)

Park ranger looking into the telescope

As I re-located my scope to the back after the talk, some park rangers took an interest

four ranger pose in in the back of my telescope

I took this picture of a happy ranger family

Science and Music Quotes

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I recently received requests to publish the series of quotes that are on view for the audience prior to Galileo’s Daughters’ Perpetual Motion: Galileo and His Revolutions performances. These quotes are part of some research for a larger project I am working on about Science and Music and the interaction with the science of sound and the effect of music on human psychology and physiology. They are in no particular order, and simply aim to stimulate interest in the close relationship that the sciences and music share.

Quotes:

Wherever we are what we hear is noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. John Cage

When a vibrating motion is produced by a sound source, the air molecules start whirling, this whirling produces airwaves… which is not ‘sound’ per se… but is the state of air when it transmits sound. Ernest Anseermet “Les Fondement de la Musique

Don’t fight forces. Use them. Buckminster Fuller

Hydrologists tell us that all the waterfalls of the world, whatever their size, sound a low F which is easily audible, above which comes a perfect C major triad. What a beautiful resource! What a beautiful contribution to outdoor festivals. Erik Satie

I write my book to be read, either by present-day or future readers; what does it matter? It may wait a hundred years for its reader, since God Himself has been waiting 6,000 years for one who will penetrate His work. Johannes Kepler “Harmonice Mundi”

The embedding of words, skills or sequences in melody and meter is uniquely human. The usefulness of such an activity to recall large amounts of information, especially in a preliterate culture, is surely one reason why musical abilities have flourished in our species. Oliver Sacks “Musicophilia”

Apart from the prime fundamental tone, the octave is the interval with the lowest degree of energetic resistance. All other tones vibrate with it and thus it displays a significant role in relationship to all other intervals, a fact which is not only applicable to music but to other fields as well. The more mutual intersections occur in such a system, the less energy is needed to keep such a system going. Hans Cousto “The Cosmic Octave”

Time seems to be the radical dimension in music. John Cage “For the Birds”

Philosophy is written in that great book – I mean the universe – that forever stands open before our eyes. But you cannot read it until you have first learned to understand the language and recognize the symbols in which it is written. Galileo Galilei “The Assayer”

…I understand why the octave is the principal harmony- so like unison as often to be mistaken for it, and yet having a place with the harmonies. It resembles unison because in unison all the pulsations occur together. Galileo Galilei “Two New Sciences”

We find that the lowest frequency that our ear accepts as a tone is 20 oscillations per second and that the highest audible frequency is nearly 20,000 oscillations per second. By remembering that sounds propagate at the rate of 330 meters per second, we can calculate the wave length of audible sound and find them to range from about 1.5 cm to about 15 meters. George Gamow “Matter, Earth, and Sky”

When whirlwinds are formed by the wind streaming past an obstacle of any kind, the formation of each little whirlwind gives a slight shock, both to the obstacle and to the air in its neighborhood. If the wind blows in a continuous steady stream, these shocks are given to the air at perfectly regular intervals. We may hear a musical note -it is often described as the “whistling of the wind”. Sir James Joyce “Science and Music”

We know that all the other sciences, art and disciplines need mathematics; not only the liberal arts, but all the mechanical arts as well… And it is also certain that these mathematical sciences or disciplines are the nurses and mothers of the musical sciences…. Niccolò Tartaglia “preface to Euclid”

“Music is the greatest of all the sciences.” Johann Sebastian Bach

See another very clever tempering of this sort by Vincenzo Galilei…so that in instruments we can enjoy almost the same freedom as can the human voice. However for theorizing, and even more for investigating the nature of melody, I consider it ruinous. Johannes Kepler “Mysterium Cosmographicum”

Thus the effect of the fifth is to produce a tickling of the eardrum so that its gentleness is modified by sprightliness, giving the impression simultaneously of a gentle kiss and of a bite. Galileo Galilei “Two New Sciences”

Take three pendulum one of length 16, the next 9, the last 4. They will interplay in such a manner that the completion of of every fourth vibration of the longest pendulum, all three arrive simultaneously at the same terminus Galileo Galilei “Two New Sciences”

Ptolemy invented the “Helicon” which is merely a geometrical diagram indicating certain ratios which were thought to correspond to relations between tones of the musical scale, between colored, and colors and tones, and to represent absolute harmonic relations which permeate all nature, the proportion of the human body, of insects, of the planets in their orbits, and the entire universe. Dayton Clarence Miller “Anecdotal History of the Science of Sounds”

“Sound takes place when body strike the air, not by the air having a form impressed upon it, as some think. Aristotle (about 350 B.C.)

Air pressure is measured in “Pascals”(Pa). The air pressure at sea level is over 100,000 Pa If the pressure increases by 2 Pa (2/1000%), we hear it -not as a whisper, but as the deafening sound of a jackhammer. The sound of the lute alters air pressure by as little as 0,0005 Pa (5/10,000,000%) David Blatner “Spectrum”

Ptolemy invented the “Heicon” which is merely a geometrical diagram indicating certain ratios which were thought to correspond to relation between tones of the musical scale, between colored, and colors and tones, and to represent absolute harmonic relations which permeate all nature, the proportion of the human body, of insects, of the planets in their orbits, and the entire universe. Dayton Clarence Miller “Anecdotal History of the Science of Sounds”

Sound requires time to fill the sphere of its activity, the duration of which time is in the proportion to the distance of the sonorous body from the ear. Marin Mersenne (1588 – 1648)

It is known that if two pendulums beat close to each others. the ear can distinguish up to 1/200 of a second whether their beat coincide or not. they would fail by 1/24 of a second, or even much greater of a fraction of a second, if it had to decide if whether two flashes of light coincide or not. ”Herman von Helmholtz”

”If we succeed in an entirely exact and complete explanation of music, namely, to repeat in language what music says, we would have a sufficient explanation of the world.”Arthur Shopenhauer”

Newton’s law of motion unlocked the secrets of vibration and resonance from which, through the Fourier idea, we can understand the and construct complex waveforms from simple ones. Stephon Alexander “The Jazz of Physics”

Is the universe noise, that question is not as strange as it sounds. Noise is an unwanted signal. Signal is anything that conveys information or ultimately anything that has energy. The universe consists of a great deal of energy. Indeed a working definition of the universe is all energy anywhere ever. Bart Kosko “Noise”

In a flute, standing sound wave can vibrate at only certain special frequencies, so could something analogous de determinate the frequencies with which electron could orbit in atoms? Max Tegmark “Our Mathematical Universe”

Yes, There Have Been Aliens

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This last Sunday a really interesting article was published in the New York Times. It is about the likelihood of the existence of alien civilizations. This study about the Drake Equation (which was the subject of one of my recent posts), updates its relevance in light of the current discoveries of a large number of exo-solar planets. If you are interested in the subject as I am, I’m sure you will find it a very interesting read.

Yes, There Have Been Aliens

Link to Article

Yes there have bee aliens

NOISE: Can’t do without it!

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This is a vastly subjective subject; I would say that it is a little bit like politics, as visceral reactions can be generated by noise. One’s listening pleasure can always be someone else’s irritating nuisance, yet we could hardly do without it. We actually need noise; noise makes all kinds of things possible. And fittingly, to my earlier comparison with politics to which Aristotle described as  “the art of the possible”, I would argue that this applies also to noise.

There is a great majority of people who would agree to the extremes: a jackhammer makes horrible sounds, and a cat’s purring is very soothing. One is really loud, the other really soft, but they do share a rhythmic pattern, which makes them hard to ignore. Loudness is not a factor when we listen to a large waterfall (very loud) or a refrigerator (pretty soft). Most would agree that the fridge is the more annoying one, but these two share a linearity that makes them easier to tune out. These are the types of sounds that we are aware of, which can be defined subjectively as ‘noise’. The type of noise that I’m interested in is the type which we are least aware. This type of noise has more general applications, and is not confined to the realm of sound; it is also visual and statistical. It is the true essence of noise, and there is nothing subjective about it.

The definition of this noise is scientifically quantified and qualified, giving it different ‘flavors’ named by colors: white, pink, brown and even black. These colors correspond to the type of randomness, amplitude and graininess of the noise pattern. For example, white noise is broad and dense, widely distributed over the spectrum like white light (white noise is an idealized absolute only used for theoretical purposes, and needs infinite energy); on the other hand, brown is more granular and more random, like the jiggling of individual molecules called “Brownian Motion” from which it takes its name, and is softer to the ear. Pink sits in between brown and white; it is what we hear as “white noise”. Black noise is close to silence.

White noise and Low, Medium and High pass filters

White noise, Low, Medium and High pass filters

So what is so important about noise? Why do we need it so much? I could go through a long list but one example that is close to our musical ear is the case of vinyl. Here are some interesting applications of noise that we don’t necessarily hear consciously:

Small amounts of noise can improve hearing by helping the inner ear detect frequency signals. This is the so-called stochastic resonance effect.

The pixels in a grayscale image can be too faint to cross the threshold of visibility; adding noise energy can sometimes boost the signal above the threshold. This stochastic resonance effect or noise benefit arises in numerous physical and biological systems where a small amount of noise can nudge the system into a new state.

Noise can benefit nervous systems because small amounts of it can improve how neurons process signals- or at least it does so in almost all known models of neurons.

These facts show that noise plays an important role in our perceptions. So how is it that a noisy medium (according to all measurements made with devices such as a spectrograph) such as vinyl L.Ps. has come roaring back so that its growth has outpaced compact discs, which are in a steady decline? I see several explanations:

  • It is a nicer object than CDs, and its size allows for great graphics and cover art, and it has an irresistible retro-chic.
  • It will outlast the CD and MP3’s life by far; after all, it is made of vinyl- a close relative to oil, which has already lasted tens of millions of years.
  • The analog source of the signals (grooves etched in the plastic need no “code” to decipher); in theory, you could hear the music with your finger nails.
  • But most importantly: people like the warm sound that it produces. That last quality is the more puzzling, because wouldn’t a cleaner, clearer sound be more pleasing to the ear than a noisier one?

The conclusion, it can be argued, is stochastic resonance effect. Our ears like noise, which enhances the auditory experience; and more precisely, the noise is a conveyer that carries the waves which create the warmth that makes us feel good. The process of digital sampling by quantizing the data source needed to put music in binary form creates small steps from one sample to the next, resulting in a harsher sound, in particular CDs, which are at a 44 Kilohertz sampling rate (this quantizing effect is much less of a problem at 88 or even better, 196 khz). This resulting sound needs to be ‘smoothed over’ to reclaim the original warmth to please our ears; and what is needed to do this? You guessed it: noise. This process has a name, called ‘dithering’, and it plays a big part in digital sound processing.

LPs are a noisy medium; they generate noise and this is the nature of the medium, and it pleases our ears. So obviously, when we get the ‘original’ unbroken analog path, we notice it. The fact is, we are dwelling more and more in a digital environment, since mainly all of our information and entertainment is digitally served to us through the overwhelming influence that the internet has in our lives. We are feeling the difference when sounds are served to us through an analog medium, and whatever noise may be added back in the process is just icing on the cake.

There is a lot more to explore, and I surely will revisit this topic in the near future.

This blog post does borrow freely from the book Noise by Bratt Kosko, edited by Sarah Pillow

The Drake equation

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As anyone can tell by reading my previous posts, the subject of alien civilization has been on my mind lately. So it was an interesting coincidence that I met Frank Drake recently at the University of Santa Cruz in California. He was the narrator for the Perpetual Motion show about Galileo, created by my wife’s group Galileo’s Daughters, for which I mix the visuals, using video and animation.

Frank was very nice to indulge me with my probing questions after the show. His steadfast and educated opinion about the existence of alien civilization is intriguing. Over fifty years ago (1961) Frank wrote the now famous equation that bears his name:

This equation allowed him to make an educated estimate of the number (N) of civilizations out in our galaxy, by using facts such as the number of stars in the Milkyway, the typical life of a civilization in years, and the life time of a typical star. He then adds a couple of  variables: stars with habitable planets, with a fraction of them where sentient civilization arises. Following these you can get to a number that is based in rational thinking. It became the base of the SETI research (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).

All these variables are subject to discussion and arguments, but at the time, Frank Drake estimated that a worst-to-best case scenario would be 1000 to 100,000,000 civilizations. This estimate was made in the early 1960’s, long before the current treasure trove astronomers now utilize to detect planets by using the two following methods: telescopes using the “Doppler” effect, which is the influence that planets have on their star by gravitationally pulling on them; and the even more prolific method using the Kepler space telescope, which detects  light dimming created by a planet’s obscuring the light of their star as they pass in front of it (a minuscule dip, but the sensitivity of these instruments detecting this event is phenomenal).

So, if anything, the pendulum has swung towards the larger number, and ideas about how to detect these civilizations are growing. There is one possible way that was suggested recently, which had to do with the propulsion of spacecrafts using lasers and light sails. And that idea has just become a lot more real! Read this:

The Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner, who I mentioned in an earlier post, has just pledged $100,000,000 of seed money to develop a flotilla (1000) of micro probes, propelled by laser pulses applying light pressure on the sail of each of the probes to accelerate to one-fifth of the speed of light (taking 2 minutes to accelerate from 0 to 37,000 miles per minute). This would be enough speed to reach the next closest star “Proxima Centauri” in twenty years. It is a double star and appears to have at least one planet in the habitable “Goldilocks” zone, (where water is in its liquid form).

One of the sponsors of this expedition is Freeman Dyson, the one with the concept of the Dyson Sphere. Freeman, a true original forward-thinker, had devised a few decades earlier the idea of the “Cosmic Egg“, a miniature spacecraft filled with nanobots that would hop from world to world, find what it needs to replicate itself (indeed, a little ‘cosmic egg’ factory) and then move on to the next. There is no way anything bigger than an iPhone can get to the next star in a reasonable time frame.

On the other side of that “cosmic coin”, the laser pulses (moving at the speed of light) used to propel these probes would be detectable five times sooner than the probes themselves in reaching Proxima Centauri. These pulses being emitted into the universe is a mode of transportation. It has recently been suggested that we could look for these pulses in other solar systems, as they are detectable. The fact that we are planning such a system makes it even more likely that others would be as well.

Alternatively, the same laser technology could be used to hide a civilization from being detected. If any civilization is choosing to do this, it would mean that they know something we only suspect: that there are others to hide from…

imageRonn MacFarlane, Marc Wagnon, Frank Drake, Sarah Pillow and Mary Anne Ballard

Meeting someone like Frank Drake, who has taken this eventuality to such a level is inspiring. Hopefully this civilization, ours, will live long and prosper.

 

 

Waste or not to waste (follow-up)

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Csiro Parkes Observatory, Australia

Csiro Parkes Observatory, Australia

Since my last post, I came across a couple of articles that put the significance of human reaction to finding alien civilizations more into focus.
It was a ‘tongue in cheek’ comment, but this topic is probably here to stay, or should I say we’re not about to put the ‘genie’ back in the bottle. In the previous posting I was mainly thinking of the consequences of our civilization entering into contact with an alien one. But we have to consider the consequences of what just the knowledge of the discovery of an existing alien civilization would have on ours, regardless of contact. That will translate into a major re-alignment of priorities, and would affect the lives of Earthlings in unexpected and dramatic ways.
What might go through the mind of the average person when confronted with the piece of information that we are not alone – and which in turn will spread like wild fire through the info sphere? As highly social animals, no one is immune. These information nuggets have a name: “memes”, a term coined by Richard Dawkins, that describe something that spreads within a culture, from a catchy phrase to an entire belief system (like a virus). Due to our thirst for information, we are particularly vulnerable to memes, and some could be highly destructive to our civilization, potentially wrecking it as effectively as any physical weapon. One of the ways to protect us from these memes is to build another kind of sphere or cage (see Dyson Sphere from my previous blog); this one is called a Faraday Cage  which would filter information in and out. Read more about this in Nautilus Magazine.

Green Gank observatory W. Virginia, U.S.

Well, now that everyone is potentially pretty “freaked out”, here’s a nugget of information that will positively allow you to surrender to the fear of the aliens: Yuri Milner, a Russian entrepreneur, has pledged to give $100 million in the next ten years to SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). This gift will allow SETI to develop new instruments, hire new astronomers/observers and allow for substantial observing time at major radio observatories (Green Bank in the U.S. and CSIRO Parkes* in Australia). And in the near future, the upcoming James Webb (successor to the Hubble) and the next-generation 30-meter telescope possess the ability to measure the atmospheric chemical composition of the nearest potential planets.
In a world divided by cultural and religious war and threatened by environmental issues, these potential “memes” and discoveries could play out in a variety of ways: they could make us reflect on the state of a world that would like to reach to the stars, but is anchored in conflict. Or it can trigger a panicked free-for-all, where every construct of our civilization is made futile and meaningless.
Either way, it will be transformational.
* This dish is the stage for a cool movie aptly named “The Dish”; it retraces the role that the CSIRO Parkes Observatory played during the flight of Apollo 11 in a smart comedy.

“Drum Talk” is out!

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I am very happy to be able to announce the release of my method for music teachers and music therapists, which gives them an introduction to percussion ensembles.

It is available on iTunes for $14.99 since it is made for iBook which can be read on any Mac iPad or even iPhone. I am eager to hear from you with your thoughts and comments, I plan to update the book as necessary. Here is a short description of the book:

“Drum Talk” is a teaching method created by musician and educator Marc Wagnon, combining multi-cultural rhythms (Africa, Middle East, Brazil & Cuba) and does not require students to have any previous knowledge of music technique. This system allows the group to attain a level of complexity that would normally demand longer preparation. Its goal is to give an experience in group music making, and ranges from simple concepts to complex polyrhythms. The book of 10 lessons contains 58 video clips and 86 musical examples.

Read more about it and view some video clips at marcwagnon.com

or on the iTunes store

Drum Talk book cover

Drum Talk: An Introduction to Percussion Ensemble

Waste or not to Waste

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Provocative ideas need to be tested with the gusto to match.

Freeman Dyson is a 91 year-old physicist, and has no fear of exploring iconoclastic ideas. Many I find appealing, but some, in particular his acceptance of global warming being a good thing, is not one of them. Of course, the Sahara becoming green again could be a good thing, but is it worth the cost to other now temperate regions of the globe? For more about him read the article in the New York Times Magazine.

Dyson is also a big supporter of the analog (have you listen to an LP lately?), imagining that if his “self” was to be transferred in a different platform at the end of the universe, he would much rather be stored in an analog cloud of particles rather than in a digitized version in a networked universe. He also devised what he calls a “Cosmic Egg” which would be a nano spaceship full of minuscule nano bots, that would be able to travel fast due to their low mass, and for a long time until they found a suitable planet, and set up a nano civilization, start reproducing, build and send more eggs to explore other destinations…on and on.

The idea of his that resulted in the latest study of exploration of infra red spectrum of distant galaxies, is his vision of what became to be called a “Dyson Sphere”. There is nothing nano about this one – it goes like this: when a civilization has used all the energy available on its home planet, it would construct a sphere around its star (that would be the Sun for us), and collect all of its energy output. Even this would soon become insufficient (according to Carl Sagan), and more and more stars would be needed until most of the galaxy energy output would be collected. This activity would be easily detectable from afar since it would leak infra red emissions, while dimming the light emitted by the galaxy. It turns out that due to the laws of physics, energy use is impossible to hide.

That is what this latest effort at detecting alien civilizations has been directed towards, by analyzing the part of the infra red spectrum in which such waste energy would surface in hundreds of galaxies. We should be able to recognize the telltale signs of such a civilization. The study came up empty handed, as no out-of-balance emissions have been detected.

But this result allows us to reflect on the consequence of this failure:

“Such an expensive and greedy civilization would have no place for a more gentle and welcoming one like ours. It’s the trait of rapacious users who either have a big reason or a big insatiability”, says David Brin, an astrophysicist. Surely trying to enter in contact with such an empire would not bode well for us, as Stephen Hawkins has said. When two civilizations come into contact, it does not end well for the less technologically developed of the two.

So these kinds of ‘gas guzzling’ galactic empires probably do not exist, and this is why we do not detect them. SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is basically looking for waste energy. An advanced civilization must have found ways to reduce or even eliminate waste, so as to be invisible.

I think that this is extremely relevant to our small world problem, as it shows us the obvious path, which is to lower waste instead of increase consumption. In the past few years, what was an educated guess (the possibility of extraterrestrial life) has, thanks to the Kepler Observatory (another space telescope like the Hubble), become a more and more unavoidable outcome. Among the 3500 celestial bodies discovered by Kepler, more than a thousand (confirmed by other observatories) have been substantiated as alien planets. This allows us to extrapolate that every star in the Milky Way has more than one subject orbiting it.

In the meantime, our light emissions have obscured viewing the Milky Way for more than half of the human population. It seems to me that it will soon be the subject of myth and lore told under a canopy of artificial light. All the while we are broadcasting louder and louder…knock knock…who’s there?

To know more about this read this excellent article from Scientific American

Galaxy_alien_blog

THE OLDEST ANALOG RECORDING…by far

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When the exact longitude differences between Europe and United States was to be measured, the only possible way was to put down electrical telegraph cable underwater. So far these measurements were made with chronometers, but at best with about a four second inaccuracy. So beginning in August 1857, this mission had to struggle against the north Atlantic to lay a telegraph line under water. Cable broke again and again. One ship sank, and civil war interrupted the process. Finally on December 11, 1867, the message got through, and finally at the two extremes of the continents: the island of Valencia on the western coast of Ireland and at the other end on the island of Hearth’s Content of Newfoundland, the weather, known to be mostly rain and gale, cleared just long enough on both sides to allow for a simultaneous celestial measurement. Thanks to the light speed of the electromagnetic signal through the wire, the exact distance between the two continents could be accurately measured: an analog signal, I might add.

These underwater cables had a tendency to sever themselves in the middle of the length of the ocean; somehow the assumed smoothness of the ocean floor was broken in the middle. It was found that the cable had to traverse a range of underwater mountains that rose 2000 meters above the sea bed.

The next development comes during the world wars, when the fear of U-boats resulted in the English and Americans developing Sonar technology. This technology works by continuously timing the reflection of high-frequency sound waves from the seafloor: since the speed at which the sound waves travel in water is known, the distance to the seabed or object can be calculated. (Sound waves travel faster as the density of the medium they are going through increases; I have an earlier blog musing on the subject.)

So in the 1950’s, a detailed picture of the ocean floors was emerging from sonar surveys. It was discovered that the mid-Atlantic Ridge, traversed by the first telegraph cable, was just part of a 40,000 km-long chain of underwater mountains running around the globe. When drill cores were retrieved from the ocean floor, the whole of the sea floor was found to be geologically very young. Much more so than the continents. Furthermore, the rocks were getting older as they were further away from the Mid-Atlantic ridge (as the mountains at the center became to be called).

The conclusion was that new ocean floor was being created continuously, leading in the 1960’s to the acceptance of the theory of Continental drift (so much for those that thought that the 60’s was only about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll). This reveals the transitory nature of the kind of measurements I described at the beginning of this post – of course at a geological, not a human scale.

This finally leads me to the point of this post: it turns out that the length of these thousands of miles of new ground was recording the many switches of the Earth’s magnetic poles (the magnetic poles switch from time to time, not the geographical ones). The seafloor would, therefore, be acting like a double tape recorder, advancing in both directions from the ridge, producing strips of rock magnetized alternatively in normal and reversed direction, and symmetrically arranged about the ridge, the width of each strip would be determined by the length of the polarity interval and the rate of seafloor spreading.

There you go – the oldest analog magnetic recording on Earth, as old as the last time the East coast of the United States was joined to West Africa, a good oh, give or take 300,000 million years ago. But since it is all in motion, all this good recording will be recycled when it subsides under the continents, to make room for the new hits of the next eons.

this picture shows the successive switch of the Earth magnetic pole, as recorded on the sea floor, spreading from the ocean ridge.

This picture shows the successive switch of the Earth magnetic pole, as recorded on the sea floor, spreading from the ocean ridge.

Facts and Fiction

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I just heard this statement on NPR:

“There are more and more studies that show that giving people information does not change their mind.”

And although that is somehow not new in itself, and has been particularly obvious in the news business and the political world, it did put it quite starkly into focus. Fact-based reality is indeed a very fragile thing. The times in world history when facts did have bearing on human affairs are far and few apart, but what was achieved during these periods had a lasting influence.

Western civilization still resonates from the Greek philosophers’ insight into the physical world. Most of the stars in the sky have Arabic names, reflecting the intense interest in the calendar and orientation of the early Muslim scholars a thousand years later than the Greeks. On the other hand, these ideas reached a very small number of people.

The philosophers and mathematicians of the Renaissance looked back 1500 years to seek logic and reason from those who came before to guide their thinking process, which led to an evolving view of our world. These facts-based success stories were not widely understood by many until the 20th century, coinciding with a rise of the middle class in the western world. This was probably due in part to a more equitable education and success of the technology issued by the fact-based science behind it all. Unfortunately, the mismanagement and corruption of knowledge acquired was partly funneled into armament (the atomic bomb is a good example), and environmental abuse, which opened a wedge for doubt to fester.

Of course this is simplistic, but these drawbacks were enough for other forces to gain momentum, and utilize this breach of trust to declare full war on the factual philosophy that we still need so urgently. We cannot solve these problems by burying our heads in the sand. It is worthy to note that this development coincides with a widening of the gap between rich and poor.

There is a lot more to be said, but the main concern I have is: what can we do about it? Can we make facts sexy? Any other suggestions?