Science

Probably by luck more than judgement, I've got a PhD in Astronomy and have had a lifelong interest in Physics. Like most Physicist I know it is the king of sciences, Biology being mere stamp collecting and chemistry cooking. Don't get us started on the softer 'sciences' like geography (colouring in) and … Actually, I've got a bit of a soft-spot for the biosciences. I did an MSc in bioinformatics (using advanced IT methodologies to work with, mostly, genetic data) and really enjoyed the 'wet' labs we IT people did. What's not to like about splicing DNA information into a bacteria and seeing the result! Must write something on CRISPR.

Anyway, This section will be about interesting science I've done or read about - probably mostly Physics and Astronomy but also good stuff from the other, lesser, sciences (joke).

So what exactly is science? Well I see it as a bit of an iterative process based on curiosity and creative thinking. Someone makes an observation of something and wonders why or what caused the observed phenomena (the trick here is to be curious - how many of us look at the blue sky and think: why is it blue and not green or purple?). We need to explain things though (being mildly rational creatures) - and this is where creativity comes in.

OK, so let's give it a go. Ummm ... how about 'the sky is blue because each morning hobgoblins climb ladders and paint it with unicorn tears collected the previous night by little tiny elves whilst the unicorns sleep'. Pretty ingenious and creative ehh? - and it might be true! Or how about 'the small particles floating in the atmosphere selectively scatter short wavelength (blue) light into our eyes'? Not so much - but I suppose that just about could be true also.

Here's were the scientific method comes in. It goes something (forgive me Francis Bacon) something like this:

Observe a phenomenon.
Think up an explanation (hypothesis)
Use this to predict some further phenomenon.
Go and look for it.
If we don't see it then the explanation must be wrong - go back to 2.
If we do see it - great - use it to predict further phenomena and go an look for them. If we keep confirming the predictions then we might have hit on a pretty good explanation. Let's call this a theory.

This process has served us well and we have some pretty good explanations of how the Universe ticks. BUT NOTE - we can never prove a theory is right - only that it's wrong. And that's the problem with scientists - they'll never tell you that they're 100% sure of anything (other than a hypothesis must be wrong). But Quantum, Einstein's and Darwin's various theories' predictions have been tested so many times now without being disproved that we're pretty sure they're close to an accurate description of 'the truth'.

Let's give it a go with our competing blue sky theories.

What happens if we look towards the sun as it's setting - i.e. through a large 'path length' of atmosphere.

Hobgoblin hypothesis: Sky should still be blue - in fact perhaps a stronger blue because there is so much atmosphere.
Scattering hypothesis. By the time the light gets to us most of the blue should be scattered away so the sky will look reddish.

Let's see now, sunsets are orange/red/pink. Bugger, looks like the Unicorns can sleep unmolested. But the scattering idea rates a further look!

OK, pretty unfair and not really rigorous but I hope you get the point.

Scientific snippets

Life the Universe and everything

29.03.2018 Filed in: Physics history of the Universe

The Universe we see around us today is a wonderful thing, from the mind-boggling immensity of the observable Universe visible to us by looking outwards towards at the starts and surrounding galaxies to the unbelievable weirdness (the spelling of 'weird' is weird in itself) we see by looking inwards towards the Quantum domain.

I thought it would be worth while setting out the history of our home space and time from as close to it's inception as it's possible to guess up until the present day. Bear in mind this is the best guess we're able to make using everything we've gathered from observation and deduced from pure thought.

I'm always incredibly humbled by the fact we, a rather unprepossessing amalgam of chemicals confined to the surface layers of a lump of rock circling an unremarkable sun, itself orbiting two thirds of the way out along the disk of a mediocre galaxy of 100 billion stars, have been able to come up with a creditable theory for the evolution of our Universe from the first smallest fraction of a second through over 13 and a half billion years to the present.

Anyway, here is the entire history of our Universe in 11 scenes.

GreyMamba

Thinking Allowed … (under construction)

Thinking Allowed … (under construction)

Thinking Allowed … (under construction)

Science

Life the Universe and everything