Science wonders... and nonsense...

We'll do a weekend science roundup with some interesting twists.  First...

Are black holes quantum computers?  Might the mega-sun black hole at the center of our galaxy be an uber quantum engine, actually operating on whatever information falls into it?  This physicist thinks that gravitons may thread across the event horizon, providing the ‘hair’ that John Wheeler claimed Black Holes cannot have.  They do this by forming a critical Bose-Einstein condensate… or so a new model suggests, and the insight may open up yet another approach to designing quantum computers.  Now the bigger question… is that where THIS simulation is currently being run?

Speaking of great computers… MacObserver runs an interesting podcast interesting interview podcast series.  This one with yours truly covers a wide range, from my education at Caltech and UCSD to how I got drawn over to the Dark Side -- arts like fiction. Also where some of us hard science fiction authors imagine "things" heading. And why the stars are our destination. (Oh also, some talk about Apple stuff!)

== Skewering BOTH left and right, in turn ==

Fans of the “Sokal Spoof” recall that episode when a post-modernist semiotics journal was fooled into publishing a deliberately nonsensical philosophical paper filled with dazzlingly meaningless jargon… similar to most of the serious articles in that region of “scholarship.” The desperation for relevance in the very-far-left in academia was exacerbated by both the collapse of communism and the ever-accelerating successes of western science. Jealousy toward the latter, especially.

But the thing they fear most deeply is the modern trend toward cross-disciplinary breadth – that many in the sciences and arts are now happily talking to each other, even collaborating, demolishing the old (C.P. Snow) notion of Two (mutually incomprehensible) academic Cultures. (See how we are doing this at UCSD's new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, where the sciences and arts come together to explore humanity's most unique gift.)

Since this undermines their whole premise of smug dismissal of scientists as narrowminded, specialized oppressor-boffins, the trend has led remaining postmodernists to double-down, ironically diving down a rabbit hole of fetishistic obscurantism and stylistically-despondent elitism, wherein the greatest fear is to be comprehensible (and thus criticized) by minds outside their own priestly curia.

Okay, take a breath after that paragraph!  Then hop over to see how this mania keeps exposing the cult to well-deserved ridicule as sokal-type hoaxes keep snaring the editors of obscurantist journals like “Badious Studies.”

Oh, but the weirdo campus left - while it contains some subjectivist bullies - does not compare to the madness on today's right, which now consists of lunacy. For example: here’s why you can no longer find scientists - or any other knowledge profession, from law or medicine to journalism to you-name-an-exception - affiliating with the GOP or allied parties around the world. In Australia, the openly stated goal is to slash the Oceans and Atmospheres division of the national research agency by 120 positions specifically so that there will be ‘no further study or monitoring of climate change.’  Moreover, this aim is specifically, baldly and proudly and openly stated. During an era of severe and growing drought, while most of Australia's population lives right by the coast, at sea level. And that level will rise.

 Truth is inconvenient to the coal barons who currently own Australia… and those who have for generations sought to own America. Scientific evidence has mounted far beyond reasonable proof. So what are the cult leaders to do? Get the cultist-drones to look away!  Look away.  Look away. Lookaway lookaway lookaway ….

As we fret about climate change, the good news is that despite near-treasonous obstruction, technologies for both vastly improved energy efficiency and non-carbon generation seem now to be unstoppable. Creative and scientific folks are winning that fight, irreversibly. Moreover the Paris accords seem headed toward a sign-on by almost every nation on Earth, showing some real potential for major policy action, if the U.S. can rouse itself from political mania and show real leadership.

But soon enough?  As atmospheric carbon continues to build, there remains a lurking possibility that the good  trends will be outraced by the momentum already built into global warming.  For example, if a tipping point is reached that triggers release of gigatons of methane now sealed in Clathrate Hydrate ices along the ocean floor.  That powerful greenhouse gas could send the atmosphere into a runaway.  (See descriptions of the “clathrate gun.”)

If a tipping point seems near, then we’ll have no choice but to attempt palliative measures… such as Geoengineering.  Yes, horrifically politically incorrect!  And some of the proposed methods are… well… unwise on the face of it, like spewing sulfurous gases into the Stratosphere.  I favor research into the method that I portrayed in EARTH (1989) -- (one of the early sci fi books partly about a warming crisis) -- a method that mimics the planet’s own recovery system, stirring ocean bottoms in strategic locales to replicate exactly the method Mother Nature uses to create the great fisheries off Chile and the Grand Banks.  What could go wrong? No, I mean that question seriously. You tell me what could go wrong. You got nothing.

Now to the new item I just learned about: “The Azolla event occurred in the middle Eocene epoch, around 49 million years ago, when blooms of the freshwater fern Azolla are thought to have happened in the Arctic Ocean. As they sank to the stagnant sea floor, they were incorporated into the sediment; the resulting draw-down of carbon dioxide has been speculated to have helped transform the planet from a "greenhouse Earth" state, hot enough for turtles and palm trees to prosper at the poles, to the cooler, more temperate period that followed..”  Huh! Ferns. To the rescue?

== Biosciences and Biotech ==

Consuming fructose, a sugar that's common in the Western diet, alters hundreds of genes that may be linked to many diseases, life scientists report. However, they discovered good news as well: an important omega-3 fatty acid known as DHA seems to reverse the harmful changes produced by fructose.  

Scientists are making some progress in learning how to manipulate the microbiome, a realm that I predict will bring the 21^st Century’s first truly major medical transformations – because the array of bacteria living within us, while large and complex, is inherently linear and ought to be well-correlated, soon, with genes, body types, diet and lifestyle. Already there are pushes to alter many longstanding practices, as described in Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, by Martin J. Blaser, M.D.

See also “Why Are Your Gut Microbes Different From Mine?”  from The Atlantic.

Add another biometric that will give you away, no matter how cleverly encrypto-techie you are about masking your identity: Binghamton University scientist Sarah Laszlo talks in another interview about an experiment which suggests that biometric "brainprints" could replace fingerprints in the future. Her new study shows that people can be identified "with 100 percent accuracy" using only brain waves.  “Brainprints may carry some potential advantages over fingerprints in identifying people. For instance, if a person’s fingerprint is stolen, there’s virtually nothing that can be done because fingerprints are “non-cancellable,” Laszlo said.   “Brainprints, on the other hand, are potentially cancellable,” she said. “So, in the unlikely event that attackers were actually able to steal a brainprint from an authorized user, the authorized user could then ‘reset’ their brainprint.””  

How did humanity pay the energy costs of our giant brains?  Well, there were some newly discovered efficiencies – our two legged gait is slow and difficult to master, but also extremely efficient. But now researchers know that our solution was simply to pay the difference.  They found that “that after adjusting for size, the humans were burning 400 more calories every day than the chimps and bonobos, 635 more than the gorillas, and 820 more than the orangutans.” And hence many of our innovations involved ways to get the extra food. Sharing food resources and divided roles for hunting and gathering, for example, as well as cooking to free up more calories for less digestive work. Then putting that massive brain to work in other ways. 

A fascinating talk on the Long Now site describes how much more energy and water efficient “C4” plants like corn are compared to C3 crops like rice, the staple food for half the world. If rice can be converted to C₄ photosynthesis, its yield would increase by 50% while using half the water. It would also be drought-resistant and need far less fertilizer. This plant biologist is part of an effort to refine perhaps as few as a dozen genes that might accomplish such a wonder in perhaps 20 years.  

Wow… so cool rotating depictions of viral shapes and surfaces in Virus Trading Cards.

== Sci  & Tech Potpourri! ==

Quantum Water?  “No, not some sort of New Age stuff that Deepak Chopra would drink," but quantum tunneling of individual water molecules in 5Å channels of beryl crystals. "This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are 'delocalized' and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time. It's one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience."

Myths about earthquakes abound. For example that “big-ones” offer the biggest danger. Only one earthquake larger than magnitude 8.0 is on the list of the 16 deadliest earthquakes; about one-third had magnitudes of less than 7.5. Each year, on average, there are one or two quakes bigger than magnitude 8; 15 bigger than 7; about 150 bigger than 6; and so on.

Sperm whales. Among the most fascinating creatures ever, on this planet.  This article (accompanied by an amazing photo) describes researchers who free dive with these titans, correlating sonar expressions with behaviors:

“When their clicks are viewed on a spectrogram, a visual representation of an audio signal, each reveals a remarkably complex pattern. Inside these clicks are a series of shorter clicks, each lasting a few thousandths of a second, and so on.Mr. Schnöller and Mr. Buyle believe that sonar artifacts (like images) might be embedded in these vocalizations — that because these animals are already viewing their world through echoes, they may also be able to send these echoed images to one another. They’ll test the theory by capturing these clicks, sending them back to the animals.”  (Might I add that this notion of communicating via sound-sculpted imagery was in both Sundiver and Startide Rising?)

The Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System - or CRACUNS - is a submersible UAV that can be launched from a fixed position underwater, or from an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). It can stay on station beneath the water, then launch into the air to perform a variety of missions.

Metal foams can be reshaped to make wings that reconfigure in action or allow a submersible to change into an aircraft? Oh, and they offer armor and anti-radiation protection, too.  

From Cape Town, filmmaker Sven Harding looks at how the city's forgotten underground tunnels could help it tackle its drought problem.

Finally, a bit of fun...

Suppose you could bring historic figures forward in time? Could they adapt? Ben Franklin certainly! He'd never drive a car but would soon host a talk-show. Adam Smith? He's already up and running the Evonomics site, filled with weekly insights about how we can save creative market enterprise from its age-old enemy, that Smith despised - oligarchy. 

The time-snatch notion -grabbing histoical figures - is one I played with in a draft novel, long before Sundiver, and the ideas are still cool. But to see it done with some low brow humor, see the podcast show “Great Minds with Dan Harmon.”  See them snatch up Sigmund Freud and Idi Amin. And of course, then, there was Bill & Ted.  Anybody else miss 'em?