Looking upward...and inward to your brain! Plus "the Bell Curve" is baaack. And science misc

A science potpourri today. 

== Looking in and looking up! ==

Overview: Stories in the Stratosphere is a collection of fiction, illustrations, and speculative timelines exploring the near future of near space. Very near space. It is available here to download, entirely free and available in EPUB and MOBI formats, and through the Apple iBooks store. (I collaborated on a little adventure story.)

Cosmic-ray muon radiography allows us to visualize the interiors of large, stony objects. Researchers report using it to study the known and potentially unknown voids in the Great Pyramid in a non-invasive way. They report the discovery of a large void (with a cross section similar to the Grand Gallery and a length of 30 m minimum) above the Grand Gallery, which constitutes the first major inner structure found in the Great Pyramid since the 19th century. 

At NASA NIAC we funded a study to use this method to map the interiors of asteroids. Wow. 

== The METI cult, at it again ==

Okay, until now, these “messaging to ET" stunts were mostly harmless. When Frank Drake sent the “Arecibo Message” in 1974 — a brief blip to the Hercules Cluster, decades ago, he chose an objective 24,000 light years away, in order not to commit humanity to a fait accompli it might regret.  But the “METI cult” has now declared open war upon us and on our children: “The San Francisco-based METI Institute sent its message toward the red dwarf star GJ 273 (also known as Luyten's Star), 12 light-years away from Earth. The message was sent in October from the Eiscat transmitter in Tromsø.”

Now to be clear, I like Doug Vakoch, the METI-I head.  A nice fellow… and now a cultist, who has declared his intention to perform sneak attacks like this one, avoiding all proper scientific vetting, discussion or process, gambling our future based on questionable assumptions and assertions. Some of these nostgrums he repeats, despite knowing them to be utterly disproved.

== This is your brain on the spotlight ==

The idea of “brain hacking,” or using technology to augment brain function and human intelligence, is controversial, but is taking off, nevertheless. In 2017, Tesla CEO and founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, launched a venture called Neuralink. 

Facebook has also said it is developing technology that can read brain waves. In November, Microsoft founder Bill Gates committed $100 million of his own money to boost research and fund start-ups working on Alzheimer’s R&D. 

Peter Diamandis’s recent  “Visioneers Summit” gave its highest honors this year to the team tackling Alzheimer’s disease.

And yet… as research advances, we keep finding ways in which the problem is larger than we ever imagined. Twenty years ago, some thought we might model mentation (and thus maybe create AI) when our computers matched the number of “processors” in a human brain – about 100 billion neurons.  Despite its recent decay, Moore’s Law has surpassed that goal now, and quite then some.  

Okay then, folks cried: “Aha! The processor analog isn’t cells, but the ten to a thousand flashy synapses for every neuron, that trigger and flash like elements of a computer!” There are perhaps 100 trillion of those. Until recently, the dogma was that a compact box containing that many silicon flip flops would just have to come aware.

Only now we are learning ever-more about intracellular and intercellular computation. It happens that each neuron appears to have a great many sub-components that work together or against each other in murky, nonlinear ways, determining whether and when each synapse will flash! (I was among those predicting this, 20 years ago.) For example, each neuronal dendrite seems to feed into a chain of support structures, each of which plays some complex and poorly understood part in this decision-making cascade. 

And it goes on! The surrounding glial and astrocyte cells are no longer seen as just support units, but appear to interact with the neurons in sophisticated ways. 

So, Moore’s law might require us to make compact boxes with quadrillions or circuit elements. Nor does it stop there. Because now we get to… quantum.

Yes, there are the incredible speculations of Roger Penrose and his colleagues, who suggest that the tiny microtubule organelles within neurons engage in some degree of quantum entanglement -- (we've already seen there's some entanglement in chloroplasts) -- that helps to create consciousness in ways that go beyond just computation. Woof!

I had several opportunities, lately, to ask Sir Roger about these concepts and many others. Then lunch a couple of weeks ago with Freeman Dyson. And I hang with Larry Smarr and Vint Cerf. What, me brag and name drop? No. Not me.

== The “Bell Curve” rears its ugly head ==

Some members of our blog comment community raised the issue of “The Bell Curve” or whether there might be some systematic differences between races, genders etc. that it would be dishonest to suppress. Here's the assertion:

1. Population studies of various distinct social groups clearly do show there are differences in intelligence, and research shows that a significant fraction is nature.

2. If social policies are based on the assumption that differences in achievements between groups is all nurture, no nature, then these social policies are likely to be sub optimal.

Logically, true, so far. Alas, though, Bell Curve defenders utterly miss the point.

1. The “differences in averages” (DIA) that might be found in comparisons of bell curves have always diminished over time, with the application social resources to eliminate disadvantages, prejudices and discouragements.  Given that blatant history, the only useful policy application of comparison of bell curves is to call attention to a likely need for investment! 

(Yes, the rate of narrowing of DIAs may diminish, over time, settling on some “natural” DIA. So? Read on.)

2. It is clear that the top motive behind “The Bell Curve” and its zealots is racism, sexism and desperate need for confederate-style solace in symbolic superiority. Yes, let us admit that some are attracted to the topic out of intellectual orneriness. The latter group should make strenuous efforts to distinguish themselves from the racists… as I describe legitimate climate skeptics distinguishing themselves from members of the insane denialist cult.

3. What if there truly are some systematic differences in width or center of bell curves among groups? There's a clear example: while ending stupid assumptions shifted the distribution of women capable of military service -- and the military is ecstatic over the quality of its female service members -- it did not change the inherent difference in average physical height from the average for men. 

But even such residual, systematic differences do not mean what the racists and sexists think it means. Which brings us to our most important rebuttal point.

4. The blatant fact of human individual diversity - plus 250 years of the American Experiment - show that it is both immoral and impractical to apply group stereotypes upon individuals in ways that restrict any individual’s right or ability to say “I am different from that average.”

It is #4 that proves the despicable core of the Bell Curve zealots.  Even if some remnant of observed differences in averages (DIA) did not decline with the application of resources and justice, there would be no justification for the racist-sexist-bigoted application of DIA upon any individual who is seeking to prove herself or himself.

Even if a person cannot parse the intellectual arguments I have made here, there is a basic conclusion: if that person seeks to restrict another person’s individual ambition, based upon membership in an involuntary classification like race or gender, then that bigot is a nasty, degraded person who did voluntarily join a classification group! One we should all treat with great contempt.

== Surprises of science ==

This Alaskan city is warming so fast, algorithms removed the data because it seemed unreal. And yes, freakishly strong snow in the U.S. southeast is a symptom of warming! Attend a community college science class.

Amazing. Greenland sharks reach maturity at about 150 years of age and some have been measured (by pulsing Carbon 14 in their eye lenses) at 400+ years old.

And while we’re in the Arctic: Want cognitive dissonance?  Trump's newly signed National Defense Authorization Act includes a significant discussion of the effects of climate change -- going so far as to call it a “direct threat to the national security of the United States.”

We’ve know this for years. The U.S. military is a fact-centered profession, and thus unable to screech denialist incantations, while the Russians build 12 new major naval and marine bases on the Arctic Ocean. Of course, this is one reason why the War on Science and All Fact-using Professions has now expanded to include the FBI, Intel Agencies and the US military officer corpse… now denounced by confederate loonies as “deep state” traitors.

Oh, BTW... we'll be in the Arctic in one month.... brrrr....

== Miscellaneous items ==

There’s serious talk of wild polio (not caused by the Sabin vaccine itself) being wiped out by June. Wow.

Ford employees are using exoskeletons, and they may change manual labor forever. Ford’s exoskeletons protect employees from repetitive motion injuries and decrease fatigue. Watch the video!

Ten unsolved science mysteries.

Under the category of Things We Should Be Doing Anyway – or TWODA. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.”