The Universe started with the Big Bang. There is a large amount of evidence for this. If the law of conservation of energy is correct and energy cannot be created or destroyed (it can only be transformed) then the Universe has always existed in one form or another.
It is said that in the beginning, the Universe was a very small, very dense and very hot "singularity". At this point, the laws of physics break down and the theory of relativity predicts infinities (infinite mass, infinite density, infinite temperature). The early Universe was governed by quantum physics, so we will probably know how the Universe started when there will be a quantum theory of everything.
A quantum fluctuation is the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs. Physicists believe that this is how the Universe started, a big quantum fluctuation in which matter and antimatter were created and they annihilated each other but some matter remained by some strange process.
It may be that quantum fluctuations exist everywhere and that some quantum fluctuations give birth to Universes. Maybe the creation of a Universe is a local event, in a much larger picture. Maybe there are other universes, nobody really knows. I've heard that if a quantum fluctuation in our Universe gave birth to another Universe, it would look like a black hole to us, so, inside a black hole there might be another Universe.
The Universe may be an oscillating one, expanding and then contracting again, the final moments of contraction giving birth to the next expansion. The problem with the oscillating Universe is that it violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (disorder) must increase in a closed system, and the oscillating Universe does not have any proof, in fact, the current understanding suggests that the Universe will continue to expand forever.
I cannot believe that the singularity which created the Universe existed like that forever and just "decided" at one point to explode. I cannot believe that something appeared out of nothing. I believe that something has always existed, not a god, not an intelligent being, but something, I don't know what. It seems that nothingness cannot exist, it would violate the uncertainty principle, so, there is something everywhere.
The Universe does not have a center, as odd as it may seem. It can be compared with the surface of a balloon. A balloon does have a center but the surface of the balloon does not. It's difficult to imagine 3D space as the 2D surface of the balloon. The Universe is strange.
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - J.B.S. Haldane
Before the formation of stars, the Universe was not very interesting, just scattered matter and energy. The first stars seem to have formed 400 million years after the Big Bang. Stars and galaxies exist because of irregularities in the distribution of matter. Where there was more matter, gravity caused it to collapse and form stars.
Those first stars were big and very hot and had short life spans, inside them fusion occurred, hydrogen fused into helium but, at the end of a star's life, helium fuses into heavier elements.
Stars attain an equilibrium between gravitational pull, which tends to compress the star and heat, which tends to expand the star. As a star compresses, it heats up, as it heats up, it expands. Most of the action happens in the core of the star, because there's the biggest pressure and the biggest temperature, atoms move very fast and they collide with each other and fuse into heavier atoms, releasing energy. As lighter atoms create heavier atoms, most heavier atoms remain in the core.
Of course, this process cannot go on forever and, at some point the core of the star cannot fuse anything anymore, so the heat stops abruptly, but heat was the only thing keeping gravity from compressing it. This is where the core collapses. The shock wave expels the outer layers into space and the core remains as an extremely dense body. The core can form a white dwarf, a neutron star or even a black hole if the star was massive enough. A teaspoon of material from a neutron star would weigh 10 million tons.
When a massive star explodes as a supernova, it ejects into space a lot of material, including heavy elements. These heavy elements can form planets like our own. Life is carbon based and this carbon was fused in the center of a star, we are made of stardust.
See this:
Supernova
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Peak everything
Some people are talking about peak oil, that point after which the production of oil decreases, but everything has a peak, there's peak gas and coal, peak minerals, peak agriculture, etc. We have an ever growing consumption of the Earth's resources, this, of course, cannot go on forever. Nothing can increase forever, not on this planet, at least.
This planet is finite and so are the resources. Peak oil is the most talked about peak because our entire economy is based on oil. The demand for oil constantly increases but the production of oil has not increased for years, we have hit the top of production, it will only go down. The International Energy Agency predicts that production will decline 6.7% per year. This is huge.
Some people say that since 1950, we have consumed 50% of the world's resources: oil, gas, coal, minerals, etc. Others are saying that 2/3 of the Earth's resources have been "used up" (source).
We have become so addicted to oil that we cultivate crops for biofuels, meanwhile a billion people are starving. It seems that we need to drive our cars more than we need to feed hungry people.
This silly system does not stop. You will not hear politicians saying that we should stop buying cars, because we have passed peak oil. Actually, we are encouraged to continue to buy cars, to keep the economy from crashing but gasoline is becoming more and more expensive and people don't have the money to buy it.
The solution, of course, is to stop using our cars and stop buying cars. You may say: "oh, this is crazy, we cannot live without our cars". People have lived for thousands of years without cars and they were fine. We have a pretty good public transportation network and we can improve it, we can go anywhere we want without owning a car. In the current situation, I believe that buying a new car is stupid, as gasoline prices will continue to rise. Electric cars are not a solution either, not yet, because electricity is still produced mostly from fossil fuels.
Minerals are also exploited mindlessly and they will run out. We produce all kinds of gadgets using rare minerals and we should recycle as much as possible. Everything should be designed to be recyclable and durable. We are creating so much trash that the future presented in the movie Wall-E, where the planet is covered in trash, may not be impossible.
Also, agriculture will decline as topsoil erosion increases. Maybe we will find solutions in hydroponics and aeroponics. We will also have problems with fresh water.
The fishing industry has also declined since the 1980's and will continue to decline, industrial fishing is just not sustainable, over fishing is a big problem.
Some of these peaks have already happened, the others will happen very soon. The future will be very dark if we continue like this. One thing is clear, we cannot continue to do things as we are currently doing. We must change the way we interact with the planet, we must take care of our precious resources.
See this:
Peak everything
8 things we are running out of
This planet is finite and so are the resources. Peak oil is the most talked about peak because our entire economy is based on oil. The demand for oil constantly increases but the production of oil has not increased for years, we have hit the top of production, it will only go down. The International Energy Agency predicts that production will decline 6.7% per year. This is huge.
Some people say that since 1950, we have consumed 50% of the world's resources: oil, gas, coal, minerals, etc. Others are saying that 2/3 of the Earth's resources have been "used up" (source).
We have become so addicted to oil that we cultivate crops for biofuels, meanwhile a billion people are starving. It seems that we need to drive our cars more than we need to feed hungry people.
This silly system does not stop. You will not hear politicians saying that we should stop buying cars, because we have passed peak oil. Actually, we are encouraged to continue to buy cars, to keep the economy from crashing but gasoline is becoming more and more expensive and people don't have the money to buy it.
The solution, of course, is to stop using our cars and stop buying cars. You may say: "oh, this is crazy, we cannot live without our cars". People have lived for thousands of years without cars and they were fine. We have a pretty good public transportation network and we can improve it, we can go anywhere we want without owning a car. In the current situation, I believe that buying a new car is stupid, as gasoline prices will continue to rise. Electric cars are not a solution either, not yet, because electricity is still produced mostly from fossil fuels.
Minerals are also exploited mindlessly and they will run out. We produce all kinds of gadgets using rare minerals and we should recycle as much as possible. Everything should be designed to be recyclable and durable. We are creating so much trash that the future presented in the movie Wall-E, where the planet is covered in trash, may not be impossible.
Also, agriculture will decline as topsoil erosion increases. Maybe we will find solutions in hydroponics and aeroponics. We will also have problems with fresh water.
The fishing industry has also declined since the 1980's and will continue to decline, industrial fishing is just not sustainable, over fishing is a big problem.
Some of these peaks have already happened, the others will happen very soon. The future will be very dark if we continue like this. One thing is clear, we cannot continue to do things as we are currently doing. We must change the way we interact with the planet, we must take care of our precious resources.
See this:
Peak everything
8 things we are running out of
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Uniting the world
People are different from each other but the differences are insignificant in comparison to the similarities. People are being separated by labels. We have created walls and fences instead of bridges.
Groups of people have started wars because of imagined differences, like religion, ethnicity, skin colour, etc. A genocide occurred in Rwanda because of two imaginary ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutu. There was little difference between the two groups, both had the same language, the same religion, the same skin colour, the same traditions. A mother from one ethnic group could have a child belonging to the other ethnic group, so small were the differences, and yet people committed genocide for this imagined difference, 1 million people were killed.
When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they were amazed to find that the native people did not know anything about Jesus or the Bible, they even wondered if these people had souls. Of course, these imagined differences helped them rationalize the genocide that followed.
Religious wars have been constant. Even now religious wars are being fought. Religion has been the greatest creator of conflict in history, its divisive power is unequaled by anything else.
We are being taught as children that there are divisions, like, we are Christians, they are Muslims, although children are no more capable of having a religion than having political or philosophical orientations. This, of course, maintains the groups and these divisions often create conflicts.
People are conditioned to feel that they are a part of the society they live in and to feel separated from the rest of the world. This is nationalism and it is another divisive force and it has also created conflicts. A lot of people really feel that their country is their home. Of course, this is helped by the fact that different countries usually have different languages or accents, different customs and traditions.
This tendency of classifying things and finding differences rather than similarities may be something natural to us, as Richard Dawkins called it: "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind".
I believe that we need to feel as a part of the global community in order to have peace on this planet. We need to communicate more, to travel more, to mix people. This way, they can see that people outside their group are not so bad.
Will we ever give up our divisions and embrace the global community? I don't know, but I sure hope so. This has already begun, it's called globalization, but will we be able to live in peace and harmony or will we keep creating imaginary divisions? The future will tell.
"My country is the world and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine
Groups of people have started wars because of imagined differences, like religion, ethnicity, skin colour, etc. A genocide occurred in Rwanda because of two imaginary ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutu. There was little difference between the two groups, both had the same language, the same religion, the same skin colour, the same traditions. A mother from one ethnic group could have a child belonging to the other ethnic group, so small were the differences, and yet people committed genocide for this imagined difference, 1 million people were killed.
When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they were amazed to find that the native people did not know anything about Jesus or the Bible, they even wondered if these people had souls. Of course, these imagined differences helped them rationalize the genocide that followed.
Religious wars have been constant. Even now religious wars are being fought. Religion has been the greatest creator of conflict in history, its divisive power is unequaled by anything else.
We are being taught as children that there are divisions, like, we are Christians, they are Muslims, although children are no more capable of having a religion than having political or philosophical orientations. This, of course, maintains the groups and these divisions often create conflicts.
People are conditioned to feel that they are a part of the society they live in and to feel separated from the rest of the world. This is nationalism and it is another divisive force and it has also created conflicts. A lot of people really feel that their country is their home. Of course, this is helped by the fact that different countries usually have different languages or accents, different customs and traditions.
This tendency of classifying things and finding differences rather than similarities may be something natural to us, as Richard Dawkins called it: "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind".
I believe that we need to feel as a part of the global community in order to have peace on this planet. We need to communicate more, to travel more, to mix people. This way, they can see that people outside their group are not so bad.
Will we ever give up our divisions and embrace the global community? I don't know, but I sure hope so. This has already begun, it's called globalization, but will we be able to live in peace and harmony or will we keep creating imaginary divisions? The future will tell.
"My country is the world and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Evolution
In school, nobody told me about evolution. I find it odd that a lot of people learn biology without studying the theory of evolution.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." - Theodosius Dobzhansky
I like to know how things work and why they are the way they are. So, asking why do trees exist, most people would answer: "because God created them". If I asked: "why did God create trees as they are?", the answer would be: "misterious are the ways of our Lord". Or, maybe, their answer would be: "trees exist to climb them" or "trees exist to have wood for fire, or to build houses". Of course, all this is childish, but I think there is no such thing as stupid questions.
The evolutionary reason why trees exist is that plants compete for sunlight, so being tall gives you an advantage over other plants.
I've read a lot of books about evolution and they always amaze me. Of course, I still can't explain everything about life, but I understand it much better. I still have questions about things but I never try to explain them by supernatural means, because supernatural answers are no answers at all.
A few days ago I was wondering how could evolution create hollow teeth in venomous snakes, which are similar to hypodermic needles, so they can inject the victim with venom. As anyone knows, evolution is gradual, but a half hallow tooth would not help at all, as far as I can tell. I did encounter a solution to this problem. A fossil was discovered which had teeth with grooves. Evolution made the groove deeper and closed it to form hollow teeth. So I did find an answer to this rather difficult problem. If you search hard enough, a lot of questions can be answered.
The way eyes or wings evolved is amazing. You might think that half an eye is no good, but half an eye is better than no eye at all. You might think that half a wing is no good, but there are gliding animals and that seems to be better than no wings. Bats have evolved from creatures similar to gliding squirrels.
What always made me laugh is "unintelligent design", like birds with wings which cannot fly or eyes that cannot see in the case of cave dwelling animals. Even our eyes, which are extraordinary complex organs, are pretty badly made. No smart designer would put the cables between the sensors and light source, yet this is exactly how eyes are, the nerves cross the surface of the retina and gather in the blind spot. We are not aware of our blind spot because the brain does a good job of cleaning the image.
A funny example of "unintelligent design" is the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which makes a detour before arriving at the destination, in the case of the giraffe, that detour is 20 meters. It should go from the brain to the larynx, but the detour is near the heart.
With evolution you can understand why the repartition of animals on continents is the way it is, why there are no frogs on islands (they can't survive in salt water, so they can't travel through the ocean). We can understand why the fossils show increasing complexity in organisms over millions of years, we can understand why diseases exist. To think that God created diseases because two people ate a fruit is silly.
We have many examples of evolution in our own yard. The apples you buy are very different from wild apples. Dogs are different from wolves and when you see a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard side by side and you know they have a common ancestor, how can you still doubt evolution? All domestic animals and plants have evolved (by artificial selection) from wild varieties and they have been drastically modified.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." - Theodosius Dobzhansky
I like to know how things work and why they are the way they are. So, asking why do trees exist, most people would answer: "because God created them". If I asked: "why did God create trees as they are?", the answer would be: "misterious are the ways of our Lord". Or, maybe, their answer would be: "trees exist to climb them" or "trees exist to have wood for fire, or to build houses". Of course, all this is childish, but I think there is no such thing as stupid questions.
The evolutionary reason why trees exist is that plants compete for sunlight, so being tall gives you an advantage over other plants.
I've read a lot of books about evolution and they always amaze me. Of course, I still can't explain everything about life, but I understand it much better. I still have questions about things but I never try to explain them by supernatural means, because supernatural answers are no answers at all.
A few days ago I was wondering how could evolution create hollow teeth in venomous snakes, which are similar to hypodermic needles, so they can inject the victim with venom. As anyone knows, evolution is gradual, but a half hallow tooth would not help at all, as far as I can tell. I did encounter a solution to this problem. A fossil was discovered which had teeth with grooves. Evolution made the groove deeper and closed it to form hollow teeth. So I did find an answer to this rather difficult problem. If you search hard enough, a lot of questions can be answered.
The way eyes or wings evolved is amazing. You might think that half an eye is no good, but half an eye is better than no eye at all. You might think that half a wing is no good, but there are gliding animals and that seems to be better than no wings. Bats have evolved from creatures similar to gliding squirrels.
What always made me laugh is "unintelligent design", like birds with wings which cannot fly or eyes that cannot see in the case of cave dwelling animals. Even our eyes, which are extraordinary complex organs, are pretty badly made. No smart designer would put the cables between the sensors and light source, yet this is exactly how eyes are, the nerves cross the surface of the retina and gather in the blind spot. We are not aware of our blind spot because the brain does a good job of cleaning the image.
A funny example of "unintelligent design" is the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which makes a detour before arriving at the destination, in the case of the giraffe, that detour is 20 meters. It should go from the brain to the larynx, but the detour is near the heart.
With evolution you can understand why the repartition of animals on continents is the way it is, why there are no frogs on islands (they can't survive in salt water, so they can't travel through the ocean). We can understand why the fossils show increasing complexity in organisms over millions of years, we can understand why diseases exist. To think that God created diseases because two people ate a fruit is silly.
We have many examples of evolution in our own yard. The apples you buy are very different from wild apples. Dogs are different from wolves and when you see a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard side by side and you know they have a common ancestor, how can you still doubt evolution? All domestic animals and plants have evolved (by artificial selection) from wild varieties and they have been drastically modified.
Destroying ourselves
We are destroying ourselves. A lot of us already know this. Every natural system is in decline. We are polluting the air, water, soil, everything. Scientists are talking about the hole in the ozone layer, about global warming, about the oil spill catastrophes and peak oil, about top soil erosion, about the mass extinction we are currently causing, and they are suggesting ways in which to combat these problems.
What scientists don't see is that all these problems are caused by this system, the consumerist society we have created, where we exploit finite resources in an insane way. We are not thinking about the future. We are brainwashing each other to consume more to keep this system going, even if we don't need most of these things. We are blinded by material goods so we don't really think about the world, about nature. We have created huge trash piles, just for the sake of consumerism, it is extremely wasteful.
If we are stupid enough to destroy ourselves, we deserve our fate. I'm ashamed to be a human. There is more poverty now than there has ever been. More people are starving than there ever have. This system is killing more people than Hitler or Stalin ever did, it's killing more people than the Second World War did, even if this system caused it (indirectly) by the Great Depression. People in poor countries are poor because they don't have money, not because there are not enough resources on this Earth for them to live decently. Money, this coloured paper, this religion we have created, is destroying so much, so many lives. Why can't we see this?
We will all die eventually, one by one or all at once. Does it matter how it happens? I believe it does. If there is only a slight chance to destroy ourselves, we should change the system. We should live in a world where nuclear war is impossible, where terrorism and murder and violence don't exist. We can create that world, we really can, but we don't seem to want it enough to do something about it.
We can't really destroy the world, we can only destroy ourselves. We don't have the technology to disintegrate the whole planet. We might get it to the point where it's not suitable for most life, but life will find a way, some bacteria and some insects will thrive even on a world that's toxic for us and most life, and even radioactive. Some people jokingly say the cockroaches will inherit the world in the eventuality of nuclear war. They might be right in a way. There are lots of life forms that are very resistant to radiation. So, we may console ourselves with the thought that life will survive.
Some people are eagerly awaiting the end of the world because they have some religious notions about this. They have been brainwashed by religion to believe that paradise awaits them after death. A religious ruler of a technologically developed country can try to provoke the end of the world because of religious reasons.
The end will come, sooner or later, but it matters if it will be caused by us or by natural phenomena. There is a difference between destroying ourselves out of ignorance or stupidity and being destroyed by a natural event. This is our choice.
I am amused by movies in which aliens come to destroy us or robots destroy us. We don't need such things, we are doing a good job ourselves.
What scientists don't see is that all these problems are caused by this system, the consumerist society we have created, where we exploit finite resources in an insane way. We are not thinking about the future. We are brainwashing each other to consume more to keep this system going, even if we don't need most of these things. We are blinded by material goods so we don't really think about the world, about nature. We have created huge trash piles, just for the sake of consumerism, it is extremely wasteful.
If we are stupid enough to destroy ourselves, we deserve our fate. I'm ashamed to be a human. There is more poverty now than there has ever been. More people are starving than there ever have. This system is killing more people than Hitler or Stalin ever did, it's killing more people than the Second World War did, even if this system caused it (indirectly) by the Great Depression. People in poor countries are poor because they don't have money, not because there are not enough resources on this Earth for them to live decently. Money, this coloured paper, this religion we have created, is destroying so much, so many lives. Why can't we see this?
We will all die eventually, one by one or all at once. Does it matter how it happens? I believe it does. If there is only a slight chance to destroy ourselves, we should change the system. We should live in a world where nuclear war is impossible, where terrorism and murder and violence don't exist. We can create that world, we really can, but we don't seem to want it enough to do something about it.
We can't really destroy the world, we can only destroy ourselves. We don't have the technology to disintegrate the whole planet. We might get it to the point where it's not suitable for most life, but life will find a way, some bacteria and some insects will thrive even on a world that's toxic for us and most life, and even radioactive. Some people jokingly say the cockroaches will inherit the world in the eventuality of nuclear war. They might be right in a way. There are lots of life forms that are very resistant to radiation. So, we may console ourselves with the thought that life will survive.
Some people are eagerly awaiting the end of the world because they have some religious notions about this. They have been brainwashed by religion to believe that paradise awaits them after death. A religious ruler of a technologically developed country can try to provoke the end of the world because of religious reasons.
The end will come, sooner or later, but it matters if it will be caused by us or by natural phenomena. There is a difference between destroying ourselves out of ignorance or stupidity and being destroyed by a natural event. This is our choice.
I am amused by movies in which aliens come to destroy us or robots destroy us. We don't need such things, we are doing a good job ourselves.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)