Preeminent biologist PZ Myers reports today that a biologist has crafted an organism completely artificially with no DNA not synthesized by his laboratory. (Okay, so the pattern was that of an existing organism, but he sequenced it himself and did not take any part of any existing organism to do it.)
The implications of this blow my mind. We could, based on this, develop life to do almost literally anything. If we can work out a protein to see in the dark, we could then make a baby (for an infertile couple interested in adoption) who has night-vision. We could make plants that crank out billions of nutricious seeds or berries. We could make animals that serve our every need, and protein is the limit. And protein has made some pretty interesting animals in nature. Sharks have electrical vision. Snakes can sense heat. Lizards can regrow lost limbs. And all these powers could be ours.
My head asplode with possibilities.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Time
Physics has very little knowledge about time. There definitely is time -- otherwise everything would happen at once. Time also clearly has direction. More entropy, less useful energy, is always later. But there's no clear rules about why time goes the way it does. In fact, there's no obvious rule disallowing time travel to the past, other than it blows all our ideas about causality to hell. Also, because of time and entropy, aging is inevitable.
We also know that time is sort of limited in that more than about 13.7 billion years ago, there were no possible differences between one moment and another, and therefore no time. (Although time also theoretically existed even back then in the extent that if you could somehow import something to back then, that thing would have changes and hence time.)
Time is also blocky. Physicist Max Planck determined that there's a very small interval of time and any intervals smaller than that make no physical sense. Hence, this period of time is called Planck time after him. The same exists for space, with a smallest possible unit and any lower makes no physical sense, and this is called Planck distance. Curiously enough, 1 planck distance divided by 1 planck time equals exactly c, the constant of the speed of light in a vacuum and the maximum possible speed in the universe. (I can imagine faster, with something somehow traveling 2 planck distance units in 1 planck time, but it has all kinds of insane implications, including using more energy than exists in the universe, weighing more than the universe, and being so compressed in time that time goes backwards. So...not happening.)
So physicists describe time as a unit of change, essentially. Change with direction, from orderly to disorderly, from useful energy to useless energy. Time is relative, as we are aware from experiments in special relativity, which verified it, and yet going backwards somehow never happens. So time is not exactly a dimension.
The big problem with time travel is the immense paradox. Let's say I go back to the 1800s, and save a man's life. He ends up having a daughter, who proves more attractive to my great-grandfather than my historical great-grandmother was, and so he marries this lady instead. As a result, my grandfather and his entire line, down to me, never existed in the first place, which undoes the entire change. (And yet if I don't exist to save the man's life in the first place, then the man died and the daughter was never born and so I end up existing.) This is the "grandfather paradox." Similar paradoxes can be imagined, where a rolling ball on a desk is struck by its future self, thereby causing it to not travel back in time, which undoes the entire chain of events. Take that, causality. Another paradox is the information origin paradox. I bring Shakespeare his famous plays, which means that he plagiarized them, which means that no one ever wrote them, which is unspeakably insane. (Or, in the technology field, I bring Charles Babbage my desktop computer, he "invents" it despite it relying on technologial principles that only exist because of researched piled on research that Mr. Babbage has now never done.) Faced with So the usual resolution is to proclaim the entire thing impossible in the first place, full stop.
So...how do we best investigate the nature of time? And what kind of bizarre truth waits for us when we do investigate?
We also know that time is sort of limited in that more than about 13.7 billion years ago, there were no possible differences between one moment and another, and therefore no time. (Although time also theoretically existed even back then in the extent that if you could somehow import something to back then, that thing would have changes and hence time.)
Time is also blocky. Physicist Max Planck determined that there's a very small interval of time and any intervals smaller than that make no physical sense. Hence, this period of time is called Planck time after him. The same exists for space, with a smallest possible unit and any lower makes no physical sense, and this is called Planck distance. Curiously enough, 1 planck distance divided by 1 planck time equals exactly c, the constant of the speed of light in a vacuum and the maximum possible speed in the universe. (I can imagine faster, with something somehow traveling 2 planck distance units in 1 planck time, but it has all kinds of insane implications, including using more energy than exists in the universe, weighing more than the universe, and being so compressed in time that time goes backwards. So...not happening.)
So physicists describe time as a unit of change, essentially. Change with direction, from orderly to disorderly, from useful energy to useless energy. Time is relative, as we are aware from experiments in special relativity, which verified it, and yet going backwards somehow never happens. So time is not exactly a dimension.
The big problem with time travel is the immense paradox. Let's say I go back to the 1800s, and save a man's life. He ends up having a daughter, who proves more attractive to my great-grandfather than my historical great-grandmother was, and so he marries this lady instead. As a result, my grandfather and his entire line, down to me, never existed in the first place, which undoes the entire change. (And yet if I don't exist to save the man's life in the first place, then the man died and the daughter was never born and so I end up existing.) This is the "grandfather paradox." Similar paradoxes can be imagined, where a rolling ball on a desk is struck by its future self, thereby causing it to not travel back in time, which undoes the entire chain of events. Take that, causality. Another paradox is the information origin paradox. I bring Shakespeare his famous plays, which means that he plagiarized them, which means that no one ever wrote them, which is unspeakably insane. (Or, in the technology field, I bring Charles Babbage my desktop computer, he "invents" it despite it relying on technologial principles that only exist because of researched piled on research that Mr. Babbage has now never done.) Faced with So the usual resolution is to proclaim the entire thing impossible in the first place, full stop.
So...how do we best investigate the nature of time? And what kind of bizarre truth waits for us when we do investigate?
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Fogbox
Water is a precious resource, as Discover News is aware. They now report that deserts have additional options for gathering water. A dutch inventor has a box to pull moisture from morning fogs, the rare rain, and occasional humidity condensed. A tree planted in the box in the middle of the Saraha desert survives 90% of the time, but a tree planted in the same place with no box survives only 10% of the time.
Apparently, this was inspired by a Peruvian practice of using a net to absorb water from morning fog. The net would absorb water from the fog, and drip it down during the day, thereby bringing water to environments that were normally quite dry.
I'd like to see this used to modify climates. Trees in the desert would provide shade and comfort to those who live there. And some climatologists think that enough trees could actually tip over the balance of climate and bring rain. (And others think that rain is a matter of wind and evaporation and the first bunch is a bunch of whack-jobs.)
The box is designed to provide an initial sealed environment, and ultimately gets pushed out of the ground, where it can be taken away to be reused. By the time the tree is strong enough to do this, it's typically reached down to the water line, and is no longer dependent on surface sources for water.
Apparently, this was inspired by a Peruvian practice of using a net to absorb water from morning fog. The net would absorb water from the fog, and drip it down during the day, thereby bringing water to environments that were normally quite dry.
I'd like to see this used to modify climates. Trees in the desert would provide shade and comfort to those who live there. And some climatologists think that enough trees could actually tip over the balance of climate and bring rain. (And others think that rain is a matter of wind and evaporation and the first bunch is a bunch of whack-jobs.)
The box is designed to provide an initial sealed environment, and ultimately gets pushed out of the ground, where it can be taken away to be reused. By the time the tree is strong enough to do this, it's typically reached down to the water line, and is no longer dependent on surface sources for water.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Mobile Animal Trap
We humans develop colonies of animals at the periphery of our civilization. Mice and Rats seek out our food stores for a free meal. Predators of mice and rats do the same for the same reason: easy food. Next thing you know, you have a very large, complex, and frankly annoying food web of animals that you constantly trip over. Also, the mice and rats have "fun" diseases that infect us. For our health, we have to nip this in the bud.
The best solution would be to quickly kill off the mice and rats, but we're squeamish. So most pest-control works by trapping. The animal is lured into one of many cages, which must be periodically checked for the presence of an animal. And when one is found, it should be removed from the cage, followed by removing it from the area. (Some animals, like skunks, are more useful elsewhere. Others, like the mice or rats, probably need to be killed off.)
I saw an episode of "Dirty Jobs," Mike Rowe's little show where he does many of the strange professions that people do for a day, and in this episode, he was a trapper, joining a professional trapper in checking all the cages. Some were empty, some had badgers, racoons, and skunks in them. The cages all had to be emptied by hand. As I was watching this, it struck me that this is fairly inefficient of the trapper's time. Therefore, it should be automated.
I have an idea of putting the cage on wheels. The cage has a small weight-trigger, and when the animal is inside it and inadvertently activates the trigger, the cage puts down the wheels and rolls itself over to a larger centralized holding area, which it would find by GPS signal. Once there, it would deposit the animal, run through a cleaning area to wash off anything the animal left behind, obtain a fresh bait, and roll over to its original location. Then the wheels would be taken back up, and the trap would be fully reset, ready for trapping a new animal.
The trapper's job would now consist of handling the animals in centralized holding, and deploying new traps. Much simpler. The decrease in workload should be offset by trapping way more areas, as the more pest control can be handled, the better.
The best solution would be to quickly kill off the mice and rats, but we're squeamish. So most pest-control works by trapping. The animal is lured into one of many cages, which must be periodically checked for the presence of an animal. And when one is found, it should be removed from the cage, followed by removing it from the area. (Some animals, like skunks, are more useful elsewhere. Others, like the mice or rats, probably need to be killed off.)
I saw an episode of "Dirty Jobs," Mike Rowe's little show where he does many of the strange professions that people do for a day, and in this episode, he was a trapper, joining a professional trapper in checking all the cages. Some were empty, some had badgers, racoons, and skunks in them. The cages all had to be emptied by hand. As I was watching this, it struck me that this is fairly inefficient of the trapper's time. Therefore, it should be automated.
I have an idea of putting the cage on wheels. The cage has a small weight-trigger, and when the animal is inside it and inadvertently activates the trigger, the cage puts down the wheels and rolls itself over to a larger centralized holding area, which it would find by GPS signal. Once there, it would deposit the animal, run through a cleaning area to wash off anything the animal left behind, obtain a fresh bait, and roll over to its original location. Then the wheels would be taken back up, and the trap would be fully reset, ready for trapping a new animal.
The trapper's job would now consist of handling the animals in centralized holding, and deploying new traps. Much simpler. The decrease in workload should be offset by trapping way more areas, as the more pest control can be handled, the better.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Coffee Efficiency
There's a drug that you can take, legally, to make you more efficient at your job: Caffeine. It comes in all kinds of foods and drinks, and makes you more alert than napping.
Of course, like any stimulant, your body habituates to its presence. The more you take, the more you need to get the same effect. And more eerily: you only habituate to the alertness that people consume it for. The increasingly unpleasant side effects like jitteriness, insomnia, skipped heartbeats, and irritability, are directly proportional to use.
Caffeine addiction is also fairly easy to gauge: On a day when you don't have to go to work, skip your morning coffee, soda, or chocolate. If you have a massive headache and an incessant urge to go have one anyway, congratulations, you're addicted. (If it's important to you to quit, you can switch to decafs for a while. Same ritual, less psychoactive.) Although, a caffeine addiction isn't a problem unless you have trouble sleeping at night as well. We need sleep: being awake slowly gives us brain damage that only sleeping can repair.
Plants that make caffeine do so to discourage insects and other animals from eating them. We humans survive it mostly by being very large, and keeping our consumption down. (There are web programs that can determine the lethal dose of your favorite beverage of choice. For most people, it's very high but technically possible to consume in one day.)
Caffeine is also highly present. Huge numbers of people start their day with a cup of coffee, or tea, or a huge bottle of soda. Chug chug.
And yet for maximum efficiency, humans work best alternating between periods of high activity and periods of rest. We're not robots or computers, and we don't work like them. The most effective workplace would be one with periodic 20-minute naptimes. That mostly doesn't happen because it's a hard sell to the average manager.
Of course, like any stimulant, your body habituates to its presence. The more you take, the more you need to get the same effect. And more eerily: you only habituate to the alertness that people consume it for. The increasingly unpleasant side effects like jitteriness, insomnia, skipped heartbeats, and irritability, are directly proportional to use.
Caffeine addiction is also fairly easy to gauge: On a day when you don't have to go to work, skip your morning coffee, soda, or chocolate. If you have a massive headache and an incessant urge to go have one anyway, congratulations, you're addicted. (If it's important to you to quit, you can switch to decafs for a while. Same ritual, less psychoactive.) Although, a caffeine addiction isn't a problem unless you have trouble sleeping at night as well. We need sleep: being awake slowly gives us brain damage that only sleeping can repair.
Plants that make caffeine do so to discourage insects and other animals from eating them. We humans survive it mostly by being very large, and keeping our consumption down. (There are web programs that can determine the lethal dose of your favorite beverage of choice. For most people, it's very high but technically possible to consume in one day.)
Caffeine is also highly present. Huge numbers of people start their day with a cup of coffee, or tea, or a huge bottle of soda. Chug chug.
And yet for maximum efficiency, humans work best alternating between periods of high activity and periods of rest. We're not robots or computers, and we don't work like them. The most effective workplace would be one with periodic 20-minute naptimes. That mostly doesn't happen because it's a hard sell to the average manager.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Net Neutrality
Net Neutrality is a political Internet structuring idea that requires Internet service providers to handle all bandwidth equally. Internet service would be a dumb pipe, like your water main. (Not quite like the telephone. Your telephone company knows what numbers you've been calling and how long you've talked. They are, however, prohibited from listening in. That's typically done by the government, with a court order.)
The ISPs generally dislike this, as they want to promote some traffic over others. They'd rather favor email and WWW over, say, Bittorrent. They complain that Bittorrent sucks up all their bandwidth, costing them money. (When the bandwidth runs out, you need to buy more capacity, or it'll slow down for everyone and your customers complain.)
Internet companies, like this blog's host, Google, fear that a lack of Net Neutrality will mean that they will be extorted by every ISP in the land. That every month a representative will come by and demand money, and if not granted it, will throttle all traffic to unacceptably slow speeds without quite cutting it off (because cutting it off entirely will be seen by the customer as censorship of the company, while slow access will suggest problems on their end.)
The ultimate in neutrality would be my earlier proposed grid Internet in which there is a massive array of underground routing boxes, all connected to their immediate neighbors. One could, for very little money, have a choice of connecting to one of four boxes, and connecting to several would make your own connection more robust. When connected to several, your connection would go through whichever was most available and least congested. ISPs would pretty much be obsolete. The main reason that this plan isn't being done is that it would require many many ditches dug, and land-management authority that only the government has. Also, the need for more and more routers would quickly rack up a budget in the high millions nationally. (I think connecting the entire world this way would cost in the trillions). The main advantage to it is a communication infrastructure that is for all intents and purposes indestructible.
Main arguments for opposing neutrality are to point to the Pareto principle, an economic principle that points out that many things are divided 80/20 instead of the 50/50 one would normally expect. 80% of the money is earned by the top 20 richest people. 80% of the sales are made by the top 20% of salespeople. 80% of the spending is done by 20% of the people. And so too, with bandwidth, which costs money, 80% of it is used by the top 20%. Since ISPs price their services per account rather than per gigabyte of traffic, ISPs would like to throttle down those top 20%. Or, alternatively, they could price by usage, but that doesn't sell very well.
The ISPs generally dislike this, as they want to promote some traffic over others. They'd rather favor email and WWW over, say, Bittorrent. They complain that Bittorrent sucks up all their bandwidth, costing them money. (When the bandwidth runs out, you need to buy more capacity, or it'll slow down for everyone and your customers complain.)
Internet companies, like this blog's host, Google, fear that a lack of Net Neutrality will mean that they will be extorted by every ISP in the land. That every month a representative will come by and demand money, and if not granted it, will throttle all traffic to unacceptably slow speeds without quite cutting it off (because cutting it off entirely will be seen by the customer as censorship of the company, while slow access will suggest problems on their end.)
The ultimate in neutrality would be my earlier proposed grid Internet in which there is a massive array of underground routing boxes, all connected to their immediate neighbors. One could, for very little money, have a choice of connecting to one of four boxes, and connecting to several would make your own connection more robust. When connected to several, your connection would go through whichever was most available and least congested. ISPs would pretty much be obsolete. The main reason that this plan isn't being done is that it would require many many ditches dug, and land-management authority that only the government has. Also, the need for more and more routers would quickly rack up a budget in the high millions nationally. (I think connecting the entire world this way would cost in the trillions). The main advantage to it is a communication infrastructure that is for all intents and purposes indestructible.
Main arguments for opposing neutrality are to point to the Pareto principle, an economic principle that points out that many things are divided 80/20 instead of the 50/50 one would normally expect. 80% of the money is earned by the top 20 richest people. 80% of the sales are made by the top 20% of salespeople. 80% of the spending is done by 20% of the people. And so too, with bandwidth, which costs money, 80% of it is used by the top 20%. Since ISPs price their services per account rather than per gigabyte of traffic, ISPs would like to throttle down those top 20%. Or, alternatively, they could price by usage, but that doesn't sell very well.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Oil Drilling Drama
Discovery News is reporting that the effort to repair the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's malfunctioning oil derreck has lead to all hell breaking loose.
Many many plans have been proposed, and most of them have apparently failed badly. Robots? They've jammed. Build a containment dome? Methane hydrates made that too unsafe. Repair the pipe? Ruptured again.
The last ditch step is building another well that drains out this one, and that will take several months. Several months of oil washing up on the Louisiana coast, with volunteer hippies washing birds and filming weepy commercials. The beaches are unusable, tourism plummets, and the public turns further against offshore drilling.
Clearly, there are two priorities. First, to stop the flow of oil. Second, to clean the oil that's already spilled. Stopping the flow is difficult because of the methane hydrates, a volatile solid form of methane that develops in high pressure, low temperature situations, like the deep ocean.
BP would, of course, like to recover as much oil as possible. They can sell oil. They cannot sell the oil-seawater mixture they have now.
I can't really help, unfortunately. I'm an amateur, and this situation requires the professionals.
Many many plans have been proposed, and most of them have apparently failed badly. Robots? They've jammed. Build a containment dome? Methane hydrates made that too unsafe. Repair the pipe? Ruptured again.
The last ditch step is building another well that drains out this one, and that will take several months. Several months of oil washing up on the Louisiana coast, with volunteer hippies washing birds and filming weepy commercials. The beaches are unusable, tourism plummets, and the public turns further against offshore drilling.
Clearly, there are two priorities. First, to stop the flow of oil. Second, to clean the oil that's already spilled. Stopping the flow is difficult because of the methane hydrates, a volatile solid form of methane that develops in high pressure, low temperature situations, like the deep ocean.
BP would, of course, like to recover as much oil as possible. They can sell oil. They cannot sell the oil-seawater mixture they have now.
I can't really help, unfortunately. I'm an amateur, and this situation requires the professionals.
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