Bob Siederer
21 October 2024
Hello again Science Fans!
I’m sure this has happened to most of you. The “algorithm” adds a video to your feed on YouTube or Instagram, you click on it, and, like Alice, go down the rabbit hole. There are, of course, many algorithms, with each platform having developed their own proprietary one.
In general, most of them annoy me. I looked online to buy a new pair of sneakers a few weeks ago, and I’ve been inundated with ads for sneakers ever since. Someone needs to tell the algorithm that I bought a pair already! I also searched for travel insurance back in mid-August. I’m still getting ads for those!
One of the few algorithms I actually find useful comes from Amazon who suggests authors I might like based on authors I’ve already read. More often than not, they have good recommendations, and they don’t fill my in box every day.
All my life I’ve had an interest in trains, and YouTube knows this. Last night, it added a video to my feed about the origin of passenger train timetables featuring Dr. Hannah Fry, a British mathematics professor. Using simple illustrations, she explained how early timetables were developed using simple graphs, and how the same logic is used today in software to prevent two (or more) trains from trying to be in the same place at the same time. She did this with humor, no jargon, didn’t make the listener feel stupid, nor bored, all with a delightful British accent! If you’ve ever tried to explain something complex, you know that isn’t an easy thing to do.
Science communication is one of the themes here at the Bay Area Science calendar, and I’ve written about it several times in past editions of this newsletter, with both good and bad examples of communication, so I was impressed with Dr. Fry’s ability to explain somewhat complicated math as well. Of course, the algorithm being what it is, another video of hers popped up, this one showing how an ancient named Abu Arrayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni calculated the radius of the Earth over 1,000 years ago. I highly recommend this one as it is funny, but uses triangles and angles to make a rough calculation. In this one, she and another math guy, Matt Parker (Stand-up Mathematician) attempt to re-enact this feat using more modern tools and the Shard in London. Hilarity ensues. Will they get close with their methods?
So I invite you to join me in this particular rabbit warren. Search for Hannah Fry in your favorite search engine and learn something new and fun. She covers a lot more than just math, including how to win at Monopoly which, apparently, is a big Christmas tradition for families in Britain (playing it, not winning at it!).
By the way, last year I included a picture in one of our newsletters of myself (my feet, actually) straddling the Prime Meridian in London, UK. So imagine my surprise when the algorithm presented me with a video from Matt showing that the Prime Meridian marker in Greenwich Park is actually not on the Prime Meridian, at least as indicated by GPS.
While you’re at it, take a look at 7 Days of Science, a look at the week in science news. Thanks to fellow Schmoozer David for passing this one along.
David also pointed out that Earth’s 6,027th birthday happens around noon on Tuesday, at least according to Bishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland back in the 17th century. He began his calculations by adding the ages of the 21 generations of people in the Old Testament of the Bible.
According to radiometric dating, the actual age of the earth is 4.543 billion years.
No matter how long astronomers look at things in space, advances in technology provide new discoveries for well studied objects. Gliese 229b, long thought to be a brown dwarf, has now been determined to be two brown dwarfs orbiting each other in very tight proximity. This is a first-of-its-kind discovery of binary brown dwarfs.
One of these new pieces of technology is the Euclid “dark universe” telescope. It is tasked with building a cosmic atlas and earlier this week the first “page” of that atlas was made public. The region charted is about as wide as 500 times the width of the full moon as it appears over earth. It includes our own Milky Way galaxy, and about 14 million other galaxies. And this is just 1% of the total survey! Astronomers will discover all sorts of new things as they sift through this data, all 208 gigapixels of it. That’s 208,000,000,000 pixels
Another piece of new technology is the Europa Clipper spacecraft. Last week I wrote that its launch had been delayed by the hurricane and was scheduled for Monday. It took off as planned and is now starting its journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa, thought by many to be the object in the solar system most likely to have life, other than Earth, of course.
Observations from telescopes such as the James Webb and Hubble continue to challenge theories of cosmic evolution. REBELS-25 is now the most distant, earliest rotating disk galaxy every spotted, seen just 700 million years after the Big Bang. In this case, the observations were made by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile.
Two orbiters from the European Space Agency have captured images of the southern polar region of Mars as spring arrives there, offering curious landforms and cryptic features which may offer clues to whether or not life existed (or still exists) on the red planet. While taken last April, they were just released publicly earlier this month.
Researchers discover new things at old sites here on Earth too. In Jordan, at Petra, a team of researchers were given permission to use ground-penetrating radar (after years of trying) and discovered an untouched tomb containing 12 human skeletons and a wide collection of grave offerings.
Here in California, much of our rainfall comes via atmospheric rivers, patterns of wind that bring moisture to us from over the Pacific Ocean. It seems that global warming is shifting the tracks of these rivers towards the poles, in turn reshaping global weather patterns.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crises. This statement was made three years ago at a climate conference. A new book, “Threat Multiplier” details the Pentagon’s efforts to transform military operations in light of climate change.
Imagine what will happen to this effort if climate deniers take control of the government in the upcoming elections! It is worth looking at where the candidates stand on this, and other scientific issues. The differences in positions could not be more clear, nor can the consequences.
Your vote is important, perhaps never more so than this year. So please vote, and talk to friends and relatives who remain undecided about why it is so important to vote for science.
Have a great week in Science!
Bob
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