Science Update 10 December 2015
It’s time to discuss science. There can never be enough scientific discussion. Do you have trouble with your skin, does it get itchy or do bumps or marks sometimes form on it. Rest assured you are not alone, 90 percent of skin viruses are completely unknown. Your skin is inhibited. Yes that is true, it is home to many different types of micro-organisms. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have a project and it is to investigate these microbes. Here is what a dermatology professor had to say on the subject, “There has been a real need for a better understanding of these viruses, given their potential effects on our skin cells as well as on our resident bacteria. Until now, relatively little work has been done in this area, in part because of the technical challenges involved. For example, a skin swab taken for analysis will contain mostly human and bacterial DNA, and only a tiny amount of viral genetic material — the proverbial needles in the haystack.”
Every week we are making better progress on developing useful fusion reactors. First Lockheed Skunk Works, the division of Lockheed which develops secret planes and weapons, announced they had developed a scalable fusion reactor and just recently Germany announced they had created a fusion reactor. Fusion reactors give us the promise of unlimited energy without the mass contamination which happens with fission reactors. While I believe we should use renewable sources for energy there will be times when this is not possible and fusion reactors can fill those bills nicely. It is turning out that one of the strange things about some or all fusion reactors, is the sound they make. The particles inside the reactor create temperatures hundreds of millions of degrees hotter than the sun. The noise this makes was described as the same as a child screaming bloody murder at the top of his or her lungs.
Spectrometers are very important to science since the can analyze the light from an object and tell you what it is composed of. One of their uses is in astronomy. They are used to give us the elements making up stars, planets and anything else. They are usually far too big to carry around, but they have been getting smaller. Now we have one that will indeed fit into a pocket and allow anyone to see the makeup of anything. The gadget has been named SCiO. It can be aimed at a drink for example and tell you how much alcohol is in it. It can even tell you how much sugar is in something you are about to eat. There seems to be no end to the uses of this gadget. Here is how it works. It is built with similar optics to a cell phone and measures the light reflected from an object. It then breaks down the spectrum and sends the information to the cloud where it is interpreted and sent to your cell phone all within about 5 seconds. Pretty cool!
We just keep finding out stranger things about life and some of these things point to types of life we cannot yet understand. Bacteria have been discovered which eat electricity. Scientists are saying if we put an electrode into the ground and pump electricity through it, these bacteria will come for a snack. They usually live off electrons which they get off of rocks and metals. Humans receive electrons when we eat sugars and we breathe them in with our oxygen. Knowing this type of life exists should alert us to the fact when we do find alien life, and we will, it could be very different from humanity. We might even find beings who live off electricity or some element.
The Large Hadron Collider, an atom smasher, was overhauled to produce much more energy with the hope of finding evidence of parallel universes and gaining the capability to create micro black holes. What has been found is that at higher energies when you smash protons you get far more particles. This has led to the idea there may be many more unknown particles yet to discover. The Chinese are going to build an atom smasher which they claim will be three times larger than the Large Hadron Collider. This is yet to be seen as it is believed just one of the giant magnets at the Large Hadron Collider is more powerful than the entire magnetic field of the earth and if not handled correctly could cause damage to the planet.
Dutch scientists say they have proved a theory of quantum physics which is if one watches an experiment it alters the result. Sounds incredible, but it seems to be true. Scientists wrote in the journal Nature how two electrons at separate locations, almost a kilometer apart, proved this conclusion. The experiment was said to clear up the loopholes in previous tests which had cast doubt on results like this. Einstein had discussed this idea which he called “spooky action at a distance” and said it had to be wrong and there had to be undiscovered properties of particles which would explain this. This is not the way you and I think of reactions in the world.
Scientists are making a new claim and it is not a welcomed one. They claim if they use magnetic energy to suppress human threat-response functions in the brain it dramatically changes the person’s attitude to immigration. An experiment was done when magnetic force completely shut down the threat-response region of a human’s brain. Before and after this happened the subjects who all volunteered gave answers to questions on what they believed. When magnetic force was applied to the posterior medial frontal cortex the people interviewed were less likely to have negative views. Are we going to be able to all be controlled soon by hitting us with magnetic waves? We wouldn’t even know it was happening.
Scientists have found that malaria proteins kill nine out of ten cancer cells in mice trials. If drug companies really want to cure cancer, which I doubt, they should be able to find out how to use this fact to kill most of the cancer in someone’s body. Perhaps treatment of some kind with this could keep people alive even if they aren’t completely cured.
