The Science Thread

[Tigger]

Ugh, still haven't done the Derinkuyu post but this was pretty interesting, oldest known musical instruments...

The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens.

Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.

I've seen a replica of one being played that was dated around 35,000 bce, it had a complete pentatonic scale and the fellow played the Star Spangled Banner melody on it. ( from the movie 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' by Werner Herzog )

 

[Madferret]

Ugh, still haven't done the Derinkuyu post but this was pretty interesting, oldest known musical instruments...

The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens.

Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.

I've seen a replica of one being played that was dated around 35,000 bce, it had a complete pentatonic scale and the fellow played the Star Spangled Banner melody on it. ( from the movie 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' by Werner Herzog )

All flutes have 5 holes!

 

[Tigger]

Fun photo along the 'as above, so below' vein.

 

[Tigger]

Cappadocia is a historical region in one of Turkey's provinces, it is has a popular tourist trade due to many unique geological, cultural and historic features, not the least of which is a vast collection of underground cities. The one I've been reading about the most is located below the town and district of Derinkuyu, though it is connected to other underground cities as well, 36 of which have been located and many more are suspected to exist.

Derinkuyu, discovered in 1963, is a massive ancient marvel. So far 11 levels have been discovered though estimates of future excavation indicate that they may have only uncovered roughly 15% of the structure. 8 of the levels are open to the public.

I've read different estimates of the capacity of Derinkuyu, the one that seems the most likely so far is that it could house 20 - 30,000 people with enough food storage to survive 8 months but that number has been speculated to be much higher given the estimate of the potential size of the city.

There is a cruciform church, chapels, stables, wine/oil press, even a suspected brewery aside from domestic accommodations. So far the deepest people have gone is to the bottom of an 85 meter ventilation shaft. The city had an independent water supply as well as plenty of fresh air from dozens of deep ventilation shafts.

There is a tunnel connecting the city to another underground site 9km away at Kaymakli and it's suspected to connect with many others as well, perhaps all of them. So far, of the 36 known cities only 3 have been explored to a reasonable degree.

The age of the structure is up for debate, some linking it to the Hittites around 1400 bce which seems to be the most commonly accepted theory but it could be much older.

The city didn't have one entrance but rather many and it was discovered quite by accident. A resident broke through a wall at the back of his house and discovered a room he'd never seen before, then another and so on.

Below is an entrance to the city, you can see the large round rock that could be put in place to close it in case of unwanted visitors, every entrance has one.

A view of another entrance showing the refined work of the levels below.

Intricate support structures and clean, navigable corridors.

Precisely cut blocks in one of the kitchens.

One of the stables.

One of many ventilation shafts.

A truly remarkable place with a story that's yet to be fully understood.

 

[Tigger]

Turkey continues to be a hotbed of archaeology...

Dated to 7500 BC, the obsidian bracelet studied by the researchers is unique. It is the earliest evidence of obsidian working, which only reached its peak in the seventh and sixth millennia BC with the production of all kinds of ornamental objects, including mirrors and vessels.

...

This process has revealed that the bracelet was made using highly specialized manufacturing techniques. The analyses carried out showed that the bracelet was almost perfectly regular. The symmetry of the central annular ridge is extremely precise, to the nearest degree and nearest hundred micrometers. This suggests that the artisans of the time used models to control its shape when it was being made. The surface finish of the bracelet (which is very regular, resembling a mirror) required the use of complex polishing techniques capable of obtaining a nanometer-scale surface quality worthy of today's telescope lenses.

 

[hockeyfan1]

Wow!  Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) filmed by a Swedish photographer as it happened....

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/northern-lights-display-captured-film-180019407.html

 

[Tigger]

Evidence of cosmic impact supporting the Younger Dryas Boundary theory

An 18-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has discovered melt-glass material in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Syria. According to the researchers, the material -- which dates back nearly 13,000 years -- was formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,100 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit), and is the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth.

These new data are the latest to strongly support the controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis, which proposes that a cosmic impact occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. This episode occurred at or close to the time of major extinction of the North American megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths; and the disappearance of the prehistoric and widely distributed Clovis culture. The researchers' findings appear June 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These scientists have identified three contemporaneous levels more than 12,000 years ago, on two continents yielding siliceous scoria-like objects (SLO's)," said H. Richard Lane, program director of National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. "SLO's are indicative of high-energy cosmic airbursts/impacts, bolstering the contention that these events induced the beginning of the Younger Dryas. That time was a major departure in biotic, human and climate history."

Morphological and geochemical evidence of the melt-glass confirms that the material is not cosmic, volcanic, or of human-made origin. "The very high temperature melt-glass appears identical to that produced in known cosmic impact events such as Meteor Crater in Arizona, and the Australasian tektite field," said Kennett.
"The melt material also matches melt-glass produced by the Trinity nuclear airburst of 1945 in Socorro, New Mexico," he continued. "The extreme temperatures required are equal to those of an atomic bomb blast, high enough to make sand melt and boil."

To me this is fairly significant given the time frame of both the Younger Drays itself ( a sudden deep freeze that dropped temperatures 15 C at higher latitudes and evidence of a mean annual of 5 C in the UK, thought to have occurred between roughly 12,800 and 11,500 years BP and lasted for roughly 1200 years ) and the period of it's onset and decline. If that period was much shorter than thought, say a week instead of a decade, that would be one heck of a ride in terms of changes in global weather and geological conditions.

The outside number of that date roughly coincides with carbon dating found at Gobekli Tepe.

Before this new evidence ( presuming it withstands scrutiny ) I thought it was still a pretty nasty turn of events here on Earth even if it only took a decade to fall into a thousand year freeze, we're pretty tough creatures.

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

So it appears that they have found the Higgs Boson particle at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

So it appears that they have found the Higgs Boson particle at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Yet Burke can't find a #1 goalie LOL AMIRITE

 

[Tigger]

So it appears that they have found the Higgs Boson particle at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

That's just bananas. Discovering this particle is one of the main reasons the collider was built in the first place, what a huge moment.

The official announcement is tomorrow morning.

 

[Tigger]

Leonard Susskind explains the universe as hologram ( the 'holographic principle' )

Susskind is a pioneer in string theory and is known for winning the 'Black Hole' wars against chief rival Stephen Hawking. An interesting notion at the heart of the discussion relates to the oddity of the states of a black hole being proportional to the area of the event horizon, not the volume of the interior.

The holographic principle suggests this is true for all matter.

Susskind presents the idea using very basic drawings to illustrate the concept, it's pretty easy to follow but the conclusion is a bit mind bendy. Voxels are your friend...

 

[maplesyrup]

So, in layman's terms, this particle is (or can be) the blueprint? 

 

[Tigger]

So, in layman's terms, this particle is (or can be) the blueprint?

The term 'God Particle' is the genuine laymen term for it. I don't know about 'blueprint', that suggests some kind of organization which is an unknown ( actually it's noted as 'spontaneous symmetry breaking' ), what it's been proposed to do ( as it's only existed in math before ) is to give elementary particles like electrons mass or is a byproduct of the process.

The Higgs field is proposed to exist in all of space and give rise to everything in space in terms of mass, the Higgs boson ( a boson is one of the two essential classes of particles in physics, the other being fermions ) is created when the Higgs field becomes excited.

In the standard model, the Higgs boson was the last particle to be observed. If they get more than a footprint it goes a long way to validating that theory and focuses a new understanding of how and why we have mass to begin with.

I like the old school 'ether' myself...

 

[maplesyrup]

Thanks... I think 

 

[Tigger]

Thanks... I think 

Put it another way, without it nothing as we know it would exist, at least in the way we describe it on paper. Without the Hb particles would never gain mass, never form atoms and without atoms there's no you, no me etc., according to the theory at least, it had to be there or someone was getting a 10 billion dollar drawing board.

But of course everything does exist so really they're tightening up their theories and knocking down another wall towards understanding how things work, a fundamental one if this really is proof of how particles with mass suddenly come into existence. Apparently the group at cern is pretty confident with their results, I guess we'll know more tomorrow.

For some reason I'm reminded of Bill Hicks.

 

[maplesyrup]

Pretty hardcore creationalist talking my ear off on this since this morning... My head is spinning.

 

[hockeyfan1]

Thanks... I think 

Put it another way, without it nothing as we know it would exist, at least in the way we describe it on paper. Without the Hb particles would never gain mass, never form atoms and without atoms there's no you, no me etc., according to the theory at least, it had to be there or someone was getting a 10 billion dollar drawing board.

But of course everything does exist so really they're tightening up their theories and knocking down another wall towards understanding how things work, a fundamental one if this really is proof of how particles with mass suddenly come into existence. Apparently the group at cern is pretty confident with their results, I guess we'll know more tomorrow.

For some reason I'm reminded of Bill Hicks.

Personally speaking, I always believed that there is an intelligence out there responsible for the very essence of creation.  God does not sport a beard, but rather, as this recent research points to, one can also say that existence is part of the psychic realm of the universe, looking at it from a religious scope.

We are all made of molecular energy.  The theory of quantum physics, tachionic faster than light.

Everything is made of energy.  What is fascinating is how all this energy came into being, the how more than the why.  The research being done sheds new light on the mysteries of our existence, our universe, even our religious viewpoint on the issue of the commencement of creation in terms of everything else.

 

[Tigger]

To that end Strassman's work with DMT comes to mind, I don't doubt there's a higher order, personally I think humans are a little too distracted to really embrace it/perceive it right now, generally.

Build us a quantum computer then...

Using a pair of impurities in ultra-pure, laboratory-grown diamonds, the researchers announced earlier this week that preliminary results reveal the ability to create quantum bits and store information in them for nearly two seconds ? an increase of nearly six magnitudes, say the scientists. The work, described in the June 8 issue of Science, is a critical first step in the eventual construction of a functional quantum computer that could one day allow for advanced computations.

?What we?ve been able to achieve in terms of control is quite unprecedented,? Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin said. ?We have a qubit, at room temperature, that we can measure with very high efficiency and fidelity. We can encode data in it, and we can store it for a relatively long time. We believe this work is limited only by technical issues, so it looks feasible to increase the life span into the range of hours. At that point, a host of real-world applications become possible.?

The research is the latest step towards creating quantum computers. A  practical quantum computer with enough qubits available could complete in minutes calculations that would take ultrafast super-computers years, and your laptop perhaps millions of years to process. Such computers will harness the powers of atoms and sub-atomic particles (ions, photons, electrons) to perform memory and processing tasks, thanks to the strange sub-atomic properties of quantum mechanics, say scientists.

...

The most current computers are possibly able to understand is a bit. Much like a light that can be switched on or off, a bit can have only one of two values: ?1″ or ?0″. For qubits, they can hold a value of ?1? or ?0? as well as both values at the same time. Described as superposition, this is what allows quantum computers to perform millions of calculations at once.

 

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Speed of light corner cameras...

"Initially I was obsessed with the camera seeing around corners and then I realised that we could use the data for pure visualisations," he told the BBC.

He has discussed the idea with scientists from around the world, including those at Cern - the base for the Large Hadron Collider.

"They have various ultra-fast events at the sub-atomic level which this has potential to help with," he said.

Other possible uses for the femto-camera include health imaging to offers views from inside the body without using x-rays.

I'm not quite sure how to emote Dr. McCoy's diagnosis gadget, some kind of whistling sound...

 

[Tigger]

Oh boy...

Scientists have created the world's first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved.

The controversial feat, which has occupied 20 scientists for more than 10 years at an estimated cost of $40m, was described by one researcher as "a defining moment in biology".

Craig Venter, the pioneering US geneticist behind the experiment, said the achievement heralds the dawn of a new era in which new life is made to benefit humanity, starting with bacteria that churn out biofuels, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and even manufacture vaccines.

However critics, including some religious groups, condemned the work, with one organisation warning that artificial organisms could escape into the wild and cause environmental havoc or be turned into biological weapons. Others said Venter was playing God.