ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 748
May 30, 2015
Top 10 Insane Unexplained Scientific Discoveries
Photo credit:
andrey_l, Shutterstock
Science and technology may be achieving increasingly incredible innovations and discoveries, but there are still things out there that just can't be explained by todays knowledge or understanding. Discoveries like cold fusion, the placebo effect, or the potential disproving one of Einstein’s famous theories, which could have 'universal' implications.
Check out sciences top 10 unexplained scientific discoveries by Hybrid Liberian
Awesome Time-Lapse Of Hyenas Devouring A Buffalo Carcass
Photo credit:
gualtiero boffi / Shutterstock
Hyenas can chomp down on the flesh and bone of a buffalo carcass with almost 1,000 psi of force. By comparison, medium-sized dogs have an average bite force of around 325 psi. Although hyenas may look dog-like in appearance, they are actually more closely related to cats.
Why Don’t Scavengers Get Sick?
Photo credit:
Nick Fox / Shutterstock
Vultures can devour diseased, rotten meat and take to the skies perfectly fine; carrion beetles can chomp at a decaying carcass by coating it in antimicrobial slime; and nearly 48 million Americans get food poisoning each year. You’ve got wonder, how do these creatures do it? And can we scavenge any tricks from these scavengers?
Flight Takes Off Across the Pacific Powered Only By Sunshine
How much do you trust the weather forecast? Is it enough to attempt to fly an unwieldy solar-powered airplane for five days and five nights across the Pacific Ocean, when even a single stray storm could be enough to destroy the craft? There is no alternative airport, so any mishap means ditching the electric airplane in the sea.
Andre Borschberg and Betrand Piccard, the two pilots of the Solar Impulse 2, think forecasts are good enough for Borschberg to take off from Nanjing in China to Honolulu on May 31. Borschberg will take this first leg to Hawaii and then, assuming all goes well, Piccard will take over for the final Pacific crossing from Honolulu to Phoenix in coming weeks.
"Once in the air, you're stuck," Piccard explains. "I had this vision 16 years ago of an airplane flying around the world without fuel. Now it's the moment of truth to see if this vision is realistic or completely impossible."
.@solarimpulse is an adventure you do with the forces of nature pic.twitter.com/gRJVtverma
— Bertrand PICCARD (@bertrandpiccard) May 26, 2015
The primary challenge will be energy. The airplane has to generate enough electricity from sunlight to recharge the batteries during the day to permit another flight through the long night. The two pilots are energy-challenged as well. They each have to get enough rest—in 20-minute spurts—while the autopilot takes over as many as 12 times on a good night, but perhaps much less. "Sustainability is what matters," Borschberg says. "If I am exhausted on the third day I will not be able to cope. Every day, every cycle I must make sure I get my energy, the airplane gets its energy and so together we go forward."
The point of this flight is not just to prove that that a five-day solar flight over water can be done. It is to raise awareness for the "Future Is Clean" initiative to push clean energy alternatives and energy efficiency, like the solar panels that power Solar Impulse 2 and the efficiency of its electric systems that allows it to achieve powered flight. "The world needs these clean technologies," Piccard says. "It will protect the environment but will also create jobs, make profits and stimulate the growth of industry and economic growth for countries."
Solar Impulse 2 is complicated to fly, given its inability to bank, low power and the lack of a pressurized, climate-controlled or even oxygenated cockpit. The pilots have to wear oxygen masks whenever flying above 3,600 meters. But one thing the solar plane does have in abundance is backup safety systems to go with back-up batteries and even four sets of oxygen masks in case of failure. On the flight from Mandalay in Myanmar to Chongqing in China over the Tibetan Plateau, known colloquially as "the roof of the world," alarms started blaring because the original oxygen mask was improperly assembled. Fortunately, there were those backups.
The only preparation for this epic endurance flight has been previous experiences, like Piccard's past balloon flights around the world and Borschberg's 40-years of flying—as well as 72 hours in a flight simulator. "That was completely different," Borschberg says. After all, the pilots were being watched by at least 40 people during that experiment, and they were on the ground.
The pilots will enjoy a precisely apportioned 2.4-kilograms of food per day—Piccard's favorite meal is a breakfast at dawn of flakes, powdered milk and water plus scenery while Borschberg avoids eating pasta because it tires him out. But the meal plan does not include caffeine or other stimulants, except a small supply in case the landing comes in the middle of a cat-nap cycle. Their comfort is total, according to both. "I feel completely at home," Piccard says. "You tame the cockpit."
The unheated, unpressurized cockpit of just 3.8 cubic meters may be home, but it is a tiny one, akin to living in something a bit larger than a Japanese-style coffin hotel room while alternately freezing and boiling and reaching altitudes of 8,500 meters.
Borschberg's plan to cope is yoga, aided by the cockpit seat that allows a pilot to recline to postures akin to sitting or lying down such as "shoulder bridge," "spinal twist," and "knees to chest." "Yoga [is] to keep the body fit but also to keep the mind alive and in the right mindset," he says. "I can do all the breathing techniques, which is helpful to re-energize, to cool down, to calm down, to get to sleep or to wake up if necessary." He also plans to listen to classical music, citing plans to play Vivaldi during moments of joy. "I will enjoy or appreciate every minute of the flight," he adds. "You don't have this opportunity more than once, once in a lifetime."
There is also the particularly delicate matter of the toilet, which is built into the cockpit's single seat. "Until now I am the first person in the world to have used the toilet in the solar powered airplane," Piccard notes, though Borschberg will no doubt employ it during the estimated 5-day flight over the western Pacific Ocean. "The team is always teasing me with this, yeah, it's a big first." Up until now such waste has been kept onboard but during the Pacific crossing it will be jettisoned over the ocean in biodegradable bags.
Success depends mostly on the weather, which will determine how long the flight takes, or even if it succeeds. "Sure, it's unreliable," Borschberg admits of the all-important weather forecast. "We try to identify a pattern which we know unfolds in such a way." The unofficial motto of the flight team is: "cogito ergo circumvolat," or "we think therefore he flies around."
That places the focus squarely on the reliability of the forecast. The two-man forecast team lead by Luc Trullemans must make a 5-day weather projection using the same data from the U.S. and E.U. employed by your local forecaster. Piccard says he needs a more personal touch. "I need to hear the voice," Piccard admits of even previous, much shorter flights. "I call them on the satellite phone and I say: 'I need to hear your voice and your degree of confidence in what you have written.'"
That's because after the plane passes the west coast of Japan at the end of the first day of this flight, there will be no airports—or even land—between it and its next destination. "You are committed," Borschberg explains. "You need to go to Hawaii. There is no other way or you end up in the water." And with a top speed of 45 kilometers per hour, the plane cannot escape unpredicted atmospheric disturbances.
On the bright side, turbulence is at a minimum over the ocean, thanks to the lack of mountains to fly over—and this airplane was not built to handle turbulence. On the other hand, clouds are a constant concern. "If you cannot recharge your battery then you cannot make it through the night to the next sunrise then you have to ditch and bail out," Piccard notes. The risks of a bailout range from parachute or life raft failure to something else unique to the Solar Impulse 2: electrocution if the pilot fails to get far enough clear of the entirely electric aircraft.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP9ZV...]
Flying over the ocean also means that sea and sky often appear to merge, and the lack of a sharp horizon forces pilots to navigate solely on instruments to tell up from down. Piccard, who flew over the Arabian Sea from Muscat in Oman to Ahmedabad in India, recalls: "I saw nothing outside. Where is the sky and where is the water?"
And if the flight takes much longer than expected, the pilots only have eight days worth of oxygen on board.
Despite these hardships, flying for days at a time is never boring, unlike spending nearly a month waiting for just the right weather conditions to finally take off. "We have the most beautiful scenery of the world, it's just the Earth below your ankles," Piccard says. "It's a pity we don't have two seats."
Believe It Or Not, This Isn’t A Snake. So What Is It?
Photo credit:
Andreas Kay via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Meet the snake-mimicking butterfly (Dynastor darius). While this slick master of disguise may show off impeccable imitation skills, prior to taking on this serpentine appearance it was simply a furry, nondescript caterpillar, and it looked pretty much how you would expect any old caterpillar to look.
Ancient Wolf DNA Could Solve Dog Origin Mystery
By Becky Oskin
Humans and dogs were constant companions well before our ancestors settled in villages and started growing crops 10,000 years ago, a new study suggests.
Genetic evidence from an ancient wolf bone discovered lying on the tundra in Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula reveals that wolves and dogs split from their common ancestor at least 27,000 years ago. “Although separation isn’t the same as domestication, this opens up the possibility that domestication occurred much earlier than we thought before,” said lead study author Pontus Skoglund, who studies ancient DNA at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute in Massachusetts. Previously, scientists had pegged the wolf-dog split at no earlier than 16,000 years ago.
Although the prehistoric wolf went extinct, its genetic legacy lives on in Arctic sled dogs, the team discovered. “Siberian huskies have a portion of their genome that traces back exclusively to this ancient Siberian wolf,” Skoglund told Live Science. “It’s pretty amazing that there is a special genetic connection to a wolf that roamed the tundra 35,000 years ago.”
Greenland dogs also carry some of this ancient wolf DNA, as do the Chinese Shar-Pei and the Finnish spitz, the study authors reported. The researchers plan to study what the genes do, as their role is not yet known, Skoglund said.
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
This Alloy Can Withstand 10 Million Transformations
Photo credit:
The bendy alloy cut into a dog-bone shape for testing via University of Kiel
Scientists have created an alloy with a long memory, but it won't help you in a spelling bee. Its long memory is solely for returning to its original shape, no matter how much you bend and twist it.
This new alloy, made from the metal elements nickel, titanium and copper, has a property known as "ultra-low fatigue." This means that the alloy can do millions of 'reps' without losing its original shape. The alloy, once bent, stays in that form until it is 'prompted' back to its initial form using heat.
New Horizons Sends Back New, Bigger Photos Of Pluto
Photo credit:
Latest image of pluto, without Charon, showing distinct regions of light and dark via NASA
If you're already tired of hearing about New Horizons, the NASA spacecraft on a one-way mission past Pluto, then brace yourself because it's going to be a long 46 or so days. New Horizons is set to flyby Pluto on July 14, 2015, so get your Pluto party banners ready for the big day.
Watch Japanese Volcano Mount Shindake Erupt
Photo credit:
APTN / NHK. The volcano moments before eruption.
Located in the center of the Japanese island of Kuchinoerabu, Mount Shindake erupted before 10am local time, reported the Japan Meteorological Agency. The volcano was seen emitting large plumes of smoke about 9,000 meters (29,527 feet) into the sky.
This Lamp Doesn’t Need Batteries, Fuel Or Even The Sun
Photo credit:
GravityLight's Indiegogo page
In the vast majority of developing countries without electricity, kerosene lamps are the go-to for seeing in the dark. But kerosene doesn’t burn cleanly and an accidentally knocked-over open flame can quickly set a house ablaze.
The GravityLight team have created something special—a lamp that only needs gravity to work. No harmful energy sources, and it's safe and reusable.
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