The Science Thread

[Louanne Learning]

 

[Selluwud]

I subscribe to a newsletter by Professor Paul Knoepfler of UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Knoepfler is a voice of reason and depth in the field of stem cells. Sometimes his opinions are just that, opinions and not to be taken as gospel, but for the most part a light in the darkness of misunderstood science. Anyway, his latest newsletter contained a poem he directed an AI agent to write about anti aging in a satirical manner.

Savage AI poem on extreme longevity efforts - The Niche

Professor discusses the state of the longevity field, extreme efforts at anti-aging, and an AI poem that satirizes this arena.

ipscell.com

From the newsletter:

"The Immortal’s To-Do List​

I asked Google’s Gemini to write a satirical poem about anti-aging and out came the below, which knocked my socks off:

“I nibbled broccoli, green and grand, Felt youth surge through the promised land. A single floret, crisp and bold, Surely added years, I’m told!

Then gulped a supplement, neon bright, For collagen and youthful light. It promised skin of dewy sheen, Like I was barely seventeen. My gut then rumbled, quite confused, But surely health can be infused!

A weekly scan, a daily poke, To chase the aging, cruel joke. My telomeres, a constant dread, Are they still long inside my head? A dozen tests, from blood to brain, To prove I’m not in slow decline again. “Your levels look… peculiar, dear,” The doctor chirped, dispelling fear. “Just add more herbs, and less of fun, Your youthful race is far from done!”

I meditate, I purge, I cleanse, Avoid all joy that life extends. No cake, no wine, no hearty laugh, Just kale and quinoa, in my bath. For every wrinkle, every sigh, I ask, “What bogus thing can I Now buy or chew or meekly try, To cheat the clock and never die?”

So watch me glow, a verdant saint, My vibrancy a self-made paint. Though deeply bored and quite morose, At least I’m boosting my life’s dose!”

It’s a savage poem in many ways. I couldn’t have done a better job of highlighting some of the more extreme statements from longevity practices."

 

[Louanne Learning]

"no hearty laugh" - I have to disagree with this part. I think laughing extends life tremendously!

My personal opinion is that the thing that will keep you young the longest is regular exercise.

 

[Le gribouilleur]

 

[Louanne Learning]

I knew it! There is all kinds of life out there!

A new study says you don't need a planet to form complex organic molecules (COMs) - they form in space, too.

... astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected complex organic molecules in the protoplanetary disc around the protostar V883 Orionis.

These include detections of ethylene glycol and glycolonitrile, which are considered chemical precursors to the building blocks of life.

... this points to the idea that the “seeds of life” are assembled in space, and not only that, but that they also appear to have a wide distribution throughout the cosmos.

 

[Selluwud]

I knew it! There is all kinds of life out there!

A new sudy says you don't need a planet to form complex organic molecules (COMs) - they form in space, too.

I don't doubt it, but intelligent, maybe not so much. The odds of a planet being in the "Goldilocks" zone and having life develop as it is on earth are................astronomical! LOL! There is figure of the odds somewhere floating around, so many variables.

 

[Louanne Learning]

The odds of a planet being in the "Goldilocks" zone and having life develop as it is on earth are................astronomical!

Not really. It's estimated that there are hundreds of millions of planets that are habitable.

 

[Selluwud]

From not so reliable Wiki: "Only one in a million million has the right combination of chemicals, temperature, water, days and nights to support planetary life as we know it. This calculation arrives at the estimated figure of 100 million worlds where life has been forged by evolution."
1 in 1,000,000,000,000. I'm all for it, but personally think humans are so finitely unique that we are it.

 

[Louanne Learning]

so finitely unique that we are it.

I just can't buy it, in the immensity of existence.

 

[Homer Potvin]

From not so reliable Wiki: "Only one in a million million has the right combination of chemicals, temperature, water, days and nights to support planetary life as we know it. This calculation arrives at the estimated figure of 100 million worlds where life has been forged by evolution."
1 in 1,000,000,000,000. I'm all for it, but personally think humans are so finitely unique that we are it.

The timing of coexisting civilizations is also a major factor. Humans have had radio technology capable of reaching space for about 100 years against 20 some billion years of universal age. There could have been a million advanced civilizations that just never timed themselves properly.

The building blocks of life however, animo acids and nucleotides, may be inevitable given the right chemical composition, they say. Have the right shit laying around, and life is guaranteed, if that's true. Might just be some bacteria, but we all started somewhere.

 

[Zatamon]

Lately, I have become more and more disillusioned with modern Physics. It has become a highly mathematical guessing game without experimental data to verify the more and more outlandish theories. I envy the physicists of the last century who had their feet on solid reality, every step rigorously verified or rejected by experiments. Now physicists are twisting themselves in mathematical pretzels to come up with something new that no experiment could ever prove or disprove.

I have a confession to make: Even though I have repeatedly expressed doubts about the more esoteric theories of modern physics, I have to admit that any or all of them could prove to be descriptions of reality. My problem is not with the conclusions that physicists have reached but with the method they used to arrive at them.

And it is not even about the speculative nature of their reasoning. The history of physics is full of speculations that later turned out to be proven correct. My problem is threefold:

1./ Most of the time there is no experimental data to suggest that the speculation was a reasonable one.

2./ By the very nature of the speculation, according to current estimates of present and foreseeable future technology, the theory will remain both unprovable and unfalsifiable.

Even if both 1. And 2. could be overcome in time, the speculations are totally irrelevant to humanity’s self-interest because no conceivable application can be imagined for any of these theories. It feels more and more like speculation about the number of angels that are able to dance on the head of a pin.

When we review the heroic age of Physics – what now is called “Classical Physics”- we can’t help seeing how our lives were enriched both materially and spiritually by discovering basic laws of our physical world. Once we got into modern physics, the benefits of this science started receding farther and farther. While Atomic Physics and Quantum Mechanics produced beneficial discoveries, especially in medicine, it also had a sinister side effect in the development of nuclear weapons. Once we arrived at cosmology, the theories and the experimental data could only tickle the curiosity in people who wanted to understand what the universe is made of and what rules it obeys. Nothing wrong with curiosity, of course, but I am troubled by the unbelievable contortions that physicists performed to come up with answers where no natural answer presented itself.

As theoretical physicist Alexander Unzicker wrote in his book: Bankrupting Physics – How Today’s Scientist are Gambling Away Their Credibility: “Today, the major part of theoretical physics has instead gotten lost in bizarre constructs that are completely disconnected from reality, in a mockery of the methods that grounded the success of physics for 400 years”.

Or, as a founding member of the Perimeter Institute Lee Smolin wrote in his book The Trouble with Physics – The Rise of String Theory and the Fall of Science “The current crisis in particle physics springs from the fact that the theories have gone beyond the standard model in the last thirty years fall into two categories. Some were falsifiable and they were falsified. The rest are untested - either because they make no clean predictions or because the predictions they make are not testable with current technology”.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

the speculations are totally irrelevant to humanity’s self-interest because no conceivable application can be imagined for any of these theories.

Ya never know might might prove to be relevant.

 

[Louanne Learning]

It has become a highly mathematical

Well, I'm not sure that the use of mathematics makes an advance in physics worth less. Physicists have been using math since Newton used Calculus to formulate the laws of motion and gravitation.

Now physicists are twisting themselves in mathematical pretzels to come up with something new that no experiment could ever prove or disprove.

Can you outline an example for us laypersons?

the speculations are totally irrelevant to humanity’s self-interest because no conceivable application can be imagined for any of these theories.

But is the accumulation of knowledge an end in itself? Is science without application irrelevant?

 

[Selluwud]

I just can't buy it, in the immensity of existence.

I admire your optimism, but I don't think there are other forms of life that can rub two sticks together and make fire; anywhere else in the expanse of the universe. So far my thinking hasn't been disproven.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I admire your optimism

Thank you! But I don't think it's about optimism, but making a rational conclusion. If the principles and laws of science - physics, etc. - are consistent throughout the universe, and there are billions of Earth-like planets out there, how can I reasonably conclude intelligent life only evolved here?

So far my thinking hasn't been disproven.

You're advancing a negative (or null) hypothesis - There is no intelligent life anywhere in the universe, except on Earth.

It would require gathering observations from every little nook and cranny in the universe to reject this hypothesis!

The positive hypothesis is this - There exists in the universe intelligent life outside of Earth.

It would only require one piece of information/observation to be able to support this hypothesis.

 

[Zatamon]

Well, I'm not sure that the use of mathematics makes an advance in physics worth less. Physicists have been using math since Newton used Calculus to formulate the laws of motion and gravitation.

I never said it did.

Can you outline an example for us laypersons?

Easy. Take string theory for example. It was a little bit like behaviorism was in psychology. Depicting human beings as mindless automatons who only reacted to stimuly. If you did not pay lip service to behaviorism then you could forget about grants.

I have a problem with explaining string theory to non-physicists, because it is totally non-intuitive and, frankly, it uses too many wild assumptions. What does it mean in laymen’s terms that space has 25 (or even 9) dimensions? We know 3-dimensional space – we have lived in it all our lives. We can even understand space-time as a four-dimensional arena for the events we observe, but 25 (or 9) dimensions mean nothing to me or my readers. I can accept that physicists had to make these assumptions in order that the mathematical deductions would result in the desired configurations. But how much can we trust this sleight-of-hand science that smacks of cheating? How many epicycles did Ptolemy need in order to explain the movement of the planets? Thirty-four altogether if I remember well.

Most popular books on Physics use colorful analogies and suggestive diagrams to ‘explain’ inexplicable concepts (like elastic rubber bands), but I throw my lot in with Richard Feynman when he wrote: “No, you are not going to be able to understand it…You see, my physics students don’t understand it either. That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does..the essential question. … is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment.” As far as string theory is concerned, such predictions and experiments are hopeless now and foreseeable future.

However, some physicists are so enamored by the ‘beauty’ of their mathematics that they find it, by itself, the proof they need to validate their theory. Remember Clerk Maxwell who, without a shred of experimental data, constructed an elaborate mechanical clock-work model with invisible spinning cells and rotating, moving wheels that permeated all space? Yet, when he developed his mathematical equations, they described the magnetic Coulomb Law, the magnetic induction effect of an electric current, and the induction of an electric current by a changing magnetic flux. He made sure it was understood that his model was arbitrary, a result of his imagination, and not necessarily describing nature. I often wish that modern physicists had the same honesty and commitment to truth.

A founding member of the Perimeter Institute Lee Smolin wrote in his book The Trouble with Physics – The Rise of String Theory and the Fall of Science “The current crisis in particle physics springs from the fact that the theories have gone beyond the standard model in the last thirty years fall into two categories. Some were falsifiable and they were falsified. The rest are untested - either because they make no clean predictions or because the predictions they make are not testable with current technology”.

For more examples, google "is the universe a hologram?"

But is the accumulation of knowledge an end in itself? Is science without application irrelevant?

I never said that either.

 

[Selluwud]

I'm about as a rational person as you'd ever encounter. We're at a stalemate, neither statement about whether intelligent life exist beyond earth can be proven or disproven. Po-tato, Pa-tata

 

[Louanne Learning]

I have a problem with explaining string theory to non-physicists

I found a helpful video (8 minutes) - and while it turns out String Theory may not be "The Theory of Everything" it is still useful.

 

[Louanne Learning]

The Drake Equation has been called "the second most important equation in science." (Can you guess the first?)

A step toward answering this question: How many alien societies exist and are detectable?

 

[Zatamon]

I found a helpful video (8 minutes) - and while it turns out String Theory may not be "The Theory of Everything" it is still useful.

I rest my case. I wrote my Physics book for advanced high school students, university freshemen and intelligent adults who want to understand. I told them that it is possible to understand without childish analogies and colourful diagrams. We don't need to babytalk to adults. However, it is an effort to focus and concentrate and read what the texts extually said. Physics is easy and beautiful, why turn it into childish videos?