Quantum beaches

"Quantum mechanics describes what a system might do in the future, whereas classical mechanics describes what it has done in the past." This is a quote attributed to Freeman Dyson in an early 1990's lecture. [CC, p.272]

Right or wrong, every now & then you hear a line that brings ideas together in a provocative way. One of the central quirks of quantum mechanics is that things are undecided until an observation is made, but it's not really clear what constitutes an observation. Surely there isn't a list of "valid devices for observation."

What if the elusive observer is universal? What if it is simply the arrival of the present moment? In other words, all quantum waves collapse at the present moment, making the past a deterministic record of what has happened. The waves crash on the quantum beach.

There are one other big idea here. One is the illusion(?) of the flow of time in one direction. This is now solved ... once the quantum waves have crashed, they are irreversible, there's no going back to an unobserved state. Water doesn't form itself into waves and rush off into the distance.

Food for thought.

Reference:
CC. Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, "The Collapse of Chaos" (Viking Books, New York, 1994)

Food for thought: DNA is not the whole story

DNA is not the blueprint for life. Sorry. If you put a piece of DNA in a jar, it will do nothing. It's only part of the picture. In order to function, DNA needs to be in a compatible living cell where all the required chemicals are available. But if you take a fertile living cell and put it in a jar, under most conditions it will die. Each cell can only survive in a certain range of temperature, pH, gravity and pressure, and needs just the right nutrients to survive.

Does DNA contain the information to create its own optimum environment? No. It is only part of the blueprint of life, and it has a lot of dependencies. It is certainly where most of the information is stored, but there's a bigger picture to ponder.

DNA is badly misused in science fiction, especially in TV and movies where everything has to happen in a hurry. If we beamed a human genome to an alien civilization, would they be able to make human? No. But if we beamed them a complete scan of a cell, and how to nurture it, maybe (just maybe) there would be a chance of success.

Food for Thought: Sex and mutations

Sexual reproduction is a line of defense against mutations. If one parent has a damaged gene, the other parent (hopefully) has an undamaged gene. If all genes had equal weight, there would be a 50/50 chance of the offspring getting the undamaged gene. In reality, genes can be dominant or recessive, and other factors are probably at work.

The natural next question is how creatures started shooting genetic material at each other in the first place.

There are many events in the ocean of massive releases of genetic material. That some creatures found ways to get up close and make a more personal delivery does not surprise me.

I have seen pine trees release clouds of pollen at the touch of the wind. It boggles my mind that some of those spores might land on a receptive cone and start the long process that makes a seed. It seems like such a waste to have the rest of the cloud fall dead somewhere. It is also pretty wild that I can pick up seeds when I walk in the woods, and hold entire potential trees in my hand.

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Note: "Food for thought" is going to be an ongoing series of speculations and science commentary.

2009 resolved

Comically, after splitting up my blogs last year, trying to make more sense out of them, I ended up with no place to put my sci-fi/fantasy/weird clips and news. Sure, the dark stuff goes in Dark Windows (which has now posted over 70,000 words!), and the "weird news" goes into Unlikely Times. But there's this big gap. And I resolved to resolve it in 2009, so here it is ... while I may still add strange science notes here, I can put futuristic/odd story, dream and poem bits here as well.

I also decided to be bold and launch my blog of word lore ... WordFixx!

I hope this whole mash-up keeps you entertained.

Just a Cheezburger

Oh no, if there's one thing you don't want, it's to give me a tool where I can add smartass comments to photos ...


moar funny pictures

Just a light moment. More of my oddities can be found here.

Giant earthworms threatened?

I have to admit a love of stories about new species being developed, as well as being reminded of some of the rare oddities in the world around us. Here's one that's probably endangered, though it's sighted so rarely it's hard to know what's going on ... the Giant Oregon earthworm.

They grow up to 3 feet long and an inch thick, and smell like flowers. And they can dig up to 15 feet deep. They were discovered in 1937 but have rarely been seen since 1985.

LINKS:
Sierra Club article "Digging for Giants"

PacificBio

OregonState.edu (with small photo)

An odd worm fact: Charles Darwin was an avid worm collector and his last book focused on these humble creatures: "In The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits" (1881).

Oh, in case you think a 3-foot earthworm is big ... the largest worm currently known is the Gippsland giant earthworm of Australia. Check out these beauties ... they grow up to 13 feet long!

The poop about old poop

Archaeologists studying a cave in Oregon have found fossilized dung (probably human) dating to 14,300 years ago. If the human DNA detected was real, and not a result of contamination, this is evidence for people in North America 1,000 years before current scholarship says they arrived.

LINK: Seattle Times, 3 Apr 2008

Global Wobbling?

As if global warming by greenhouse gases (human or volcanic) isn't enough, throw in some not-quite-periodic ice ages, a slightly variable sun, and now ... global wobbling. You just can't trust the climate anymore.

The Earth doesn't spin with perfect precision. The pole is known to wobble in a variety of ways. Most of these changes are a few meters or less, but we now have the tools to measure them precisely. As for the exact cause, well ...

A Mystery Of Earth's Wobble Solved: It's The Ocean (LINK - ScienceDaily, 18 Jul 2000)

Changes In The Earth's Rotation Are In The Wind (LINK - ScienceDaily, 6 Mar 2003)

To be fair, the first article says it's 2/3 ocean and 1/3 atmosphere, and is talking specifically about the Chandler wobble which has a period of 433 days. The second is not clear which wobble it's talking about. Here's a fascinating piece ... the Chandler wobble and an annual wobble cancel out every 6.4 years, allowing a team to track and even smaller wobble at the centimeter scale:

Tracking Earth's Wobbles Down To The Size Of A Cell Phone (LINK - ScienceDaily, 26 Jun 2006)

Some scientists are seriously studying whether there is a larger wobble on a scale of hundreds of miles (a few degrees), which might affect the global climate.

Study Links Extinction Cycles to Changes in Earth’s Orbit and Tilt (LINK - NYTimes, 12 Oct 2006)

And here's a parody that's good for a grin:

Global Wobbling: An Inconvenient Truth (LINK - ConservativeVoice, 15 Oct 2006)

Onwards & outwards

This blog was going in a few directions, and while I still like the title, I have spun off a few more focused projects.

One is The Unlikely Times -- "A journal of the hard-to-believe and the not quite believable."

Another is Dark Windows -- an email newsletter of dark fiction, poetry and odd clips from old factual and fictional sources. Plus some dreams, to completely muddy the line between reality and the imagination.

I'm working on another project, dealing with short clips on the history of words. But, ssh ... it's secret.

This blog, as it goes forward, will focus on unusual science news. Think of it as things that sound like sci-fi but are actually happening. It's not the future, it's the UnFuture.

Enjoy.