Kate Rauner's Blog, page 61

Gravity Fights Dark Energy, Expanding Space the Winner #physics #quantumphysics #science

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NASA’s detailed, all-sky picture of the infant universe reveals 13.77 billion year old temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) that grew into galaxies.

Where space holds no matter,

There vacuum is the void.

Where you’d expect there’s nothing,

Instead there’s quantum’s ploy.

Dark energy that causes

A strange propensity

Is driven by the vacuum

Decreasing density,

With vast immensity

It dissipates the energy,

But retains the mystery

Of quantum gravity –

The structure of space-time.

By Kate Rauner

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2nd edition now available! Expanded!

Thanks to livescience.com and a new study published in the May 15 issue of the journal Physical Review D. I don’t have the math to speak quantum physics, and it still boggles my mind. Gravity – the only one of the four basic forces I have an intuitive feel for – refuses to fit into theoretical physics. But if gravity is the shape of space-time, then it’s not a force at all? Is it?

Find new science-inspired poetry on my blog here, about every other post, or in one of my collections.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: cosmological constant Einstein's biggest blunder, fluctuations in energy carried by vacuum, Qingdi Wang, University of British Columbia

Weight Loss Surgery Works – Not Why You Think – This is What Happens When #weightloss #health #diet

Overweight and ready to take action?

Every year nearly 200,000 Americans opt for a more extreme, old-fashioned solution: surgery. Physically altering the size and shape of the stomach. wired.com

But it may be that drastically chopping up your gut makes the lasting change [image error] by rearranging your internal bacteria.

You, and every human being, are a zoo of microbes – on your skin and inside your body. I’ve seen estimates that four pounds of your body weight isn’t you at all – it’s your resident flora and fauna. One of the things they do is secret hormones that supplement what your human organs provide.

You can’t yet buy a supplement that would place weight-loss bacteria into your unaltered gut, and most of those “as seen on TV” products are hooey. But “the end goal is to come up with a probiotic that can be used to enhance weight loss instead of surgery,” and it may be possible.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Or, at least, interesting? Like Alice’s mushroom, if one side makes you smaller will you need another to make you bigger?

 

Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: Arizona State University, bacteria, bariatric surgery, dieting, gut microbes, heath, morbidly obese, National Institute of Health, overweight, weight loss

Fire Season #poem #poetry #firefighter

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Firefighter by Charles White

Sawmill, Arizona,

Was a target practice start.

At West Mims Fire in Georgia,

There lightning played a part.

All before the summer

Begins Memorial Day,

Before the weekend warriors

Come to the woods to play.

When living in a city

You look for weekend gigs.

Or if you’re in suburbia,

Fast food jobs are big.

But in the rural places,

In forests dry or desert low,

It’s during fire season

That you make extra dough.

By Kate Rauner

My spouse was barely home long enough to clean and repair his gear – now gone to the Baca Prescribed Burn – hoping to remove accumulated fuel so wildfires don’t turn deadly. You bloom where you’re planted! In you live on a shore, you fish and swim and maybe get a boat. In a city, I suppose there are clubs and entertainments. But in rural America you hunt, go 4-wheeling – and learn wildland firefighting.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: firefighter, poem, poetry, rural America, wildfire

Is Perception Reality? #psychology #science #education #WW2 #history

There’s a lot of discussion these days about how media influences people – both real and fake news. I ran across an interesting example that predates our current political mess by decades: Mad Gasser of Mattoon in 1944

ANESTHETIC PROWLER ON LOOSE[image error]

Mrs. Kearney and Daughter First Victims

Both Recover; Robber Fails to Get Into Home

Even for a newspaper, that’s a lot of assumptions: first, that these were only the “first” victims; second, that the prowler was using some sort of anesthetic; and third, that he was a robber. But it was enough. Within days, several more people called police saying that they too had been attacked by the prowler they read about in the newspaper. Their stories were published in the paper on September 5, owing to no publications on Sunday and the Labor Day holiday.

And that’s when the real melee began.

MAD ANESTHETIST STRIKES AGAIN

STATE HUNTS GAS MADMAN

[Then] the character of the newspaper reports changed dramatically. The headlines became: THE MANHUNT FOR MR. NOBODY

And as soon as that became the tone, suddenly there were zero more police reports. skeptoid.com

No residue of gas or lasting symptoms were observed, no gas is known to cause all the symptoms reported, and no prowler was ever caught – though there is an anecdotal suggestion that the initial attack could have been real.

In 1945 the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology published one research article on the Mad Gasser.

Comparing newspaper space in square inches to the number of reports showed a very apparent causal effect. If the morning newspapers dedicated more space to the Gasser, more reports came in that day. And the Mad Gasser was as silent as the newspapers during that initial 2-day Labor Day publishing break.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon became one of the most famous case studies in mass hysteria. skeptoid.com

A tense and fearful public was primed during wartime to believe with little evidence.

Consider Americans today, reading and viewing stories over and over, day after day. Maybe a single story gets repeated a dozen times – it feels as if it happened a dozen times.

As individuals zero in on fewer outlets, they get caught in the echo chamber of their own fears, hopes, and biases. Depending on which rabbit hole each of us chooses to fall down, we end up in living in different worlds. With so much media available, one outlet abandoning a debunked story has little affect.

No one can save us from ourselves.

Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: mad gasser of Mattoon, mass hysteria, mass media, psychology, real news fake news

Podcast of Berserk, a Norse Fantasy #podcast #scifi #fantasy #shortstories

[image error]A short read from my new collection is coming to audio! Listen to the June 14th podcast of 600 Second Saga – episodes go live at 6pm CST US.

Eirik takes his first voyage with a Norse raiding party. He admires and fears the berserker warriors who lead them into battle, but the magic that makes them invincible is not what he expected.

Can’t wait? Read Eirik’s story and more – short stories, flash and microfiction, and excerpts from my Mars colony series. Available now on Amazon

There are plenty of short science fiction and fantasy pieces on 600 Second Saga, so visit today. Perfect for a break during your day, or anytime.

Go to 600 Second Saga
How to listen to podcasts

And watch this blog for a reminder when Berserk goes live.

Filed under: Kate's Books, Science Fiction Tagged: audio book, audio story, berserkers, Fantasy, hamremmi fit, Norse raiding party, podcast, science fiction, SciFi, short stories

Sometimes Astronomy is Jaw Dropping – maybe all the time #astronomy #space #exoplanet #astrophysics #spacetelescope #NASA

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That’s the star – dead center. Looks a lot like any other star in visible light.

Astronomers have spotted water vapor and evidence of exotic clouds in the atmosphere of an alien planet [HAT-P-26b]… about 430 light-years away from Earth. space.com

How’d they do that!?

Sing, Wakeford and their colleagues analyzed observations made by NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes when HAT-P-26b crossed its parent star’s face from the telescopes’ perspectives. The planet’s atmosphere filtered out certain wavelengths of starlight during these “transits,” allowing the study team to identify some of the molecules swirling in HAT-P-26b’s air.

I have to wonder how many photons that passed through HAT-P-26b’s atmosphere made it to Earth – to capture and analyze that tiny amount of data is awesome. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, but it’s the trace elements that are most fascinating. The planet doesn’t fit the pattern we see in our own solar system regarding planet size, distance for the star, and composition.

There’s so much to learn, and our tiny sample size of one solar system isn’t nearly enough to figure it all out. If you’re wondering what difference it makes – well, it won’t change what I eat for breakfast tomorrow. I’ve never regretted learning something, even if it didn’t put a penny in my pocket. If we don’t look up at the stars how will we ever get out of the mud?

Here’s one description based on HAT-P-26b’s atmospheric composition to marvel at as you look up.

This would be a very alien sky… you’d see a kind of scattery, washed-out, gray sky.

Of course, when working on the edge of detection it’s easy to get things wrong. But a staggering amount of data is rolling in, many researchers are busy, and even more amazing telescopes are in the works – hypotheses will turn into theories.

It’s only getting better.

PS: Oddly enough, I had trouble finding an easy source to tell me where in Earth’s sky HAT-P-26b’s star is located – not that I expect to see it with my eyes, but it seems like a fun thing to know. I think I found the coordinates: RA = 14:12:37.5, DE = +04:03:36. Those are the coordinates I used to get the image above. And according to my trusty W. Tirion Sky Atlas 2000.0, that puts it in the constellation of Virgo. But I’m a bit rusty – can anyone confirm or correct me?

Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: astronomy, astrophysics, David Sing, exoplanet, Hannah Wakeford, Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Science Magazine, University of Exeter in England, warm Neptune exoplanet

Controversial Bubbles Challenge Origins of Life #poem #poetry #evolution #originoflife

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Bubbling Yellowstone mud pot

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,

Over three billion years ago,

Volcanic heat met water

And something started to grow.

Perhaps deep in the ocean

Or perhaps in springs on land,

Bubbles found in rocks today

Are clues to understand.

by Kate Rauner

Searching for traces of Earth’s earliest life is hard and there are plenty of skeptics, because the signs aren’t bones or shells, but “blobs and knobs and something that they interpret as filaments.” People keep trying because “it would be incredibly exciting to find some sign of something that was living 3.8 billion years ago.”

For more on what that “spongy kind of gloopy soup” may have been, see NPR tiny fossils and

NPR Australian fossils

My apologies for mangling The Bard, but I needed the bubbles. Here’s Macbeth:

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: Australian fossils, earliest life on Earth, Fossils, poem, poetry, what is the origin of life

Does Swearing Make You Powerful? #citizenscientist #scienceiscool

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I suppose I should post a picture of Dr. Richard Stephens, but this fair use image was easier to find

Copernicus had a Simple Answer to Brightest Star #astronomy #Venus #poem #poetry

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Venus over the Pacific – the other bright “star” above and to the left is Jupiter

Brightest star first shining

As the sun goes down

In the orange twilight

To horizon bound.

Lower every evening,

Following the sun,

Abandons us to darkness

When its reign is done

Reborn in the morning

Leading dawn to day,

A star that is a wanderer

Within the solar sway.

By Kate Rauner

Ancients figured out that Venus was the same object in the evening and morning sky – but its motion didn’t really make sense until Copernicus. Through observation, before the invention of the telescope, he realized that

The rotation of the Earth accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars
The apparent annual cycle of movements of the Sun is caused by the Earth revolving around it, and
The apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the motion of the Earth we observe from.

Watch Venus’ movements for yourself – the planet is bright enough to observe even under city lights.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: astronomy, Copernicus and heliocentric solar system, night sky, planets called wandering stars, poem, poetry inspired by science, sky at dawn and twilight dusk sunset

Artificial Womb is Coming – Are We Ready? #science #biology

A problem on the verge of being solved:

Extreme prematurity is the leading cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity due to a combination

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Concept from 1955 – this problem’s been studied for a long time

of organ immaturity and iatrogenic injury. Until now, efforts to extend gestation using extracorporeal systems have achieved limited success.

Here we report the development of a system that incorporates a pumpless oxygenator circuit connected to the fetus of a lamb via an umbilical cord interface that is maintained within a closed ‘amniotic fluid’ circuit that closely reproduces the environment of the womb. [my emphasis] nature.com

There have been several articles about this study – I’ve quoted the researchers’ abstract. Don’t you love science-y phrases? Extracorporeal systems – so specific. Take a look at the pictures on the link – both creepy and fascinating.

This version of an artificial womb isn’t ready for use on humans – yet. But if these researchers don’t make it, someone else will. Premature babies will live healthy lives and parents will be spared tremendous grief – for them it would be utopia.

But there’s no Yin without Yang. We have some big decisions coming up. If every embryo could be raised to a healthy child, is there ever a reason to discard unused embryos from fertility treatments? Should abortions become fetus transfers? If so, who should pay for the baby – not only for birthing it, but for raising the child? Our current foster care system has a lot of problems already – I don’t see it absorbing more children.

And yet – birth rates are dropping in industrialized nations. Some governments are offering tax incentives to women to have more babies. Maybe governments would want to raise all the unwanted babies. Don’t just think of Dickensian orphanages – remember the “lying down rooms of baby houses” in the old Soviet Union. It’s the beginning of a lot of science fiction dystopias.

Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: artificial womb, Dickens, dropping birth rates, dystopia, fertility, premature babies, utopia