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time to loot the liquor stores have fun! |
sayin'
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such a waste of good eatin'.
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Jest makes 'em keep longer's all.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/sc...ml?ref=science
Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets. “It looks like a scale model of our solar system,” said Scott Gaudi, an assistant professor of astronomy at Ohio State University. Dr. Gaudi led an international team of 69 professional and amateur astronomers who announced the discovery in a news conference with reporters. Their results are being published Friday in the journal Science. The discovery, they said, means that our solar system may be more typical of planetary systems across the universe than had been thought. In the newly discovered system, a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun. The star is about half the mass of the Sun. Neither of the two giant planets is a likely abode for life as we know it. But, Dr. Gaudi said, warm rocky planets — suitable for life — could exist undetected in the inner parts of the system. “This could be a true solar system analogue,” he said. Sara Seager, a theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not part of the team, said that “right now in exoplanets we are on an inexorable path to finding other Earths.” Dr. Seager praised the discovery as “a big step in finding out if our planetary system is alone.” Since 1995, around 250 planets outside the solar system, or exoplanets, have been discovered. But few of them are in systems that even faintly resemble our own. In many cases, giant Jupiter-like planets are whizzing around in orbits smaller than that of Mercury. But are these typical of the universe? Almost all of those planets were discovered by the so-called wobble method, in which astronomers measure the gravitational tug of planets on their parent star as they whir around it. This technique is most sensitive to massive planets close to their stars. The new discovery was made by a different technique that favors planets more distant from their star. It is based on a trick of Einsteinian gravity called microlensing. If, in the ceaseless shifting of the stars, two of them should become almost perfectly aligned with Earth, the gravity of the nearer star can bend and magnify the light from the more distant one, causing it to get much brighter for a few days. If the alignment is perfect, any big planets attending the nearer star will get into the act, adding their own little boosts to the more distant starlight. That is exactly what started happening on March 28, 2006, when a star 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius began to pass in front of one 21,000 light-years more distant, causing it to flash. That was picked up by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or Ogle, a worldwide collaboration of observers who keep watch for such events. Ogle in turn immediately issued a worldwide call for continuous observations of what is now officially known as OGLE-2006-BLG-109. The next 10 days, as Andrew P. Gould, a professor of mathematical and physical sciences at Ohio State said, were “extremely frenetic.” Among those who provided crucial data and appeared as lead authors of the paper in Science were a pair of amateur astronomers from Auckland, New Zealand, Jennie McCormick and Grant Christie, both members of a group called the Microlensing Follow-Up Network, or MicroFUN. Somewhat to the experimenters’ surprise, by clever manipulation they were able to dig out of the data not just the masses of the interloper star and its two planets, but also rough approximations of their orbits, confirming the similarity to our own system. David P. Bennett, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame, said, “This event has taught us that we were able to learn more about these planets than we thought possible.” As a result, microlensing is poised to become a major new tool in the planet hunter’s arsenal, “a new flavor of the month,” Dr. Seager said. Only six planets, including the new ones, have been discovered by microlensing so far, and the Scorpius event being reported Friday is the first in which the alignment of the stars was close enough for astronomers to detect more than one planet at once. Their success at doing just that on their first try bodes well for the future, astronomers say. Alan Boss, a theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said, “The fact that these are hard to detect by microlensing means there must be a good number of them — solar system analogues are not rare.” |
Ultrasound nails location of the elusive G spot
20 February 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Linda Geddes FOR women, it is supposed to trigger one of the most intense orgasms imaginable, with waves of pleasure spreading out across the whole body. If the "G spot orgasm" seems semi-mythical, however, that's because there has been scant evidence of its existence. Now for the first time gynaecological scans have revealed clear anatomical differences between women who claim to experience vaginal orgasms involving a G spot and those who don't. It might mean that there is a G spot, after all. What's more, a simple test could tell you if it's time to give up the hunt, or if your partner just needs to try harder. "For the first time it is possible to determine by a simple, rapid and inexpensive method if a woman has a G spot or not," says Emmanuele Jannini at the University of L'Aquila in Italy, who carried out the research. Jannini had already found biochemical markers relating to heightened sexual function in tissue between the vagina and urethra, where the G spot is said to be located. The markers include PDES - an enzyme that processes the nitric oxide responsible for triggering male erections (see New Scientist, 6 July 2002, p 23). However, the team had been unable to link the presence of these markers to the ability to experience a vaginal orgasm - that is, an orgasm triggered by stimulation of the front vaginal wall without any simultaneous stimulation of the clitoris. So Jannini's team took a different approach, and used vaginal ultrasound to scan the entire urethrovaginal space - the area of tissue between the vagina and urethra thought to house the G spot (see Diagram). The team scanned nine women who said they had vaginal orgasms and 11 who said they didn't. They found that tissue in the urethrovaginal space was thicker in the first group of women (Journal of Sexual Medicine, DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2007.00739.x). This means, says Jannini, that "women without any visible evidence of a G spot cannot have a vaginal orgasm". Other researchers question whether what Jannini says is the G spot is a distinct structure or the internal part of the clitoris. The urethrovaginal space is rich in blood vessels, glands, muscle fibres, nerves, and - in some women - a remnant of the embryological prostate called the Skene's glands. Some researchers have suggested that the Skene's glands are involved in triggering vaginal orgasms and, more controversially, enable a small number of women to ejaculate (see "Can women ejaculate or not?"). "The authors found a thicker vaginal wall near the urethra and hypothesise this may be related to the presence of the controversial G spot," says Tim Spector at St Thomas' Hospital in London. "However, many other explanations are possible - such as the actual size of the clitoris, which, although not measured in this study - appears highly variable." Others challenge the notion that the G spot is missing in women who don't experience orgasm. "It is an intriguing study, but it doesn't necessarily mean that women who don't experience orgasm don't have any tissue there," says Beverly Whipple at Rutger's University School of Nursing in Newark, New Jersey, whose team coined the term "G spot" in 1981. Whipple's studies suggest that all women describe some degree of sensitivity in the area where the G spot should be. She says the next step is to ask women to stimulate themselves and then repeat the ultrasounds, as the area is believed to swell in response to physical pressure. This might reveal that all women have G spots.  Another possibility is that the women who experienced vaginal orgasms had learned to do so through practice, which has altered their anatomy, much like exercising a muscle makes it grow, says Leonore Tiefer, a psychiatrist at New York University School of Medicine. "The research would be much stronger if women without vaginal orgasm were taught how to have this experience and then repeated measurements were taken of the urethral-vaginal area," she says. "Of course this would involve teaching their partners a great deal." She would also have liked to see more extensive questioning of the women to fully understand their sexual practices. Jannini accepts that there are limitations to his study. In particular, the small number of women he studied doesn't allow him to say what proportion of all women have G spot - although it would seem that a large number do not. This tentative conclusion is supported by previous questionnaire-based studies such as The Hite Report, which found that 70 per cent of women do not have orgasms through intercourse, but are able to experience orgasm easily by direct clitoral stimulation. Studies of identical and non-identical twins also support the idea that there may be physiological differences between women who do and don't experience vaginal orgasms. In 2005, Spector found that up to 45 per cent of the differences between women in their ability to reach orgasm could be explained by their genes (see New Scientist, 11 June 2005, p 6). "We know that genes are partly responsible for the variation in women's responses and this study raises the possibility that local genital differences rather than purely genetic differences in brain responses or personality may be important," says Spector. Elisabeth Lloyd of Indiana University in Bloomington, and author of The Case of the Female Orgasm, agrees. "If Jannini's correlation does hold true, it would help explain the fact that most women do not reliably have orgasm with intercourse," she says. Jannini is now planning larger studies to confirm his findings, and measure how many women have a G spot - if that is indeed what he has been measuring. Eventually, he says, ultrasound could be used to test whether a woman has a G spot or not. If she does, it may even be possible to increase its size using testosterone, which both the clitoris and Skene's glands can respond to. This could increase sexual responsiveness, but could be dangerous in women with normal testosterone levels. Jannini is running a trial in post-menopausal women and those who have experienced early menopause to see if testosterone treatment can increase the size of the G spot as measured by vaginal ultrasound. Lloyd thinks Jannini's findings could make it harder to promote the idea that women who find it difficult to orgasm are suffering from some kind of sexual dysfunction, as it suggests there are physiological differences between women. "The wide variability among women in their patterns of sexual response has made the pharmaceutical industry's challenge all the greater," she says. "If this research holds up, they would need to be very clear in marketing any product they eventually come up with." Those women who suspect they may not have a G spot need not despair. "They can still have a normal orgasm through stimulation of the clitoris," Jannini says. In fact, Jannini thinks his study should reassure women who have never experienced a vaginal orgasm that this is completely normal. "One clear finding is that each woman is different. This is one reason why women are so interesting." |
shouldnt we just ask atsonicpark about the g spot?
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i'm afraid the prostate have already been located many years ago.
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3D Virus Image Taken At Highest Resolution Ever
 Shown is an image of bacteriophage Epsilon15 studied by Wen Jiang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Purdue. The bacteriophage is shown at a resolution of 4.5 angstrom - the highest resolution achieved for a living organism of this size. (Credit: Graphic/Wen Jiang lab) ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2008) — A team led by a Purdue University researcher has achieved images of a virus in detail two times greater than had previously been achieved. Wen Jiang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Purdue, led a research team that used the emerging technique of single-particle electron cryomicroscopy to capture a three-dimensional image of a virus at a resolution of 4.5 angstroms. Approximately 1 million angstroms would equal the diameter of a human hair. "This is one of the first projects to refine the technique to the point of near atomic-level resolution," said Jiang, who also is a member of Purdue's structural biology group. "This breaks a threshold and allows us to now see a whole new level of detail in the structure. This is the highest resolution ever achieved for a living organism of this size." Details of the structure of a virus provide valuable information for development of disease treatments, he said. |
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An empty space, in outer space?
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...656529,00.html i want to find some updates on this story |
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Physicists create millimeter sized BOHR ATOM
 Using laser beams and electric fields, Rice physicists coaxed a point-like, "localized" electron to orbit far from the nucleus of a potassium atom. Niels Bohr, pre-emminent physicist, offered the first successful theoretical model of the atom in 1913, suggesting that electrons traveled in orbits around the atom's nucleus like planets orbiting a star. This led to a much deeper understanding of the atom and it's properties and Niels Bohr was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1922 for blowing everyone's minds. However, his notion of electrons traveling in discrete orbits was eventually displaced by quantum mechanics, which revealed that electrons don't have precise positions but are instead distributed in wave-like probability patterns. In any large enough systm though, the quantum variables are "smoothed out" and the quantum effects can transition to a "classical mechanics model" "Using highly excited Rydberg atoms and a series of pulsed electric fields, we were able to manipulate the electron motion and create circular, planet-like states." the atoms are true atomic giants, with diameters approaching one millimeter. "Our measurements show that the electrons remain localized for several orbits and behave much as classical particles," I just thought this was cool. It shows how both the quantum theory and the classical newtonian/einstenian theory describe the universe equally well, just from two different vantage points. |
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fucking sweet. thanks for this post. |
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i cant believe these fucking scientists are so clueless they need ultrasound for what can easily be located with a finger. |
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and to think there are still religious fundamentalist idiots who claim there is no such thing as atoms, or that quantum mechanics is "just a theory" fucking braindead morons. These were one millimeter! HUmans can SEE one millimeter!!! |
Yeah, pretty cool Rob. Someone uploaded Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives onto youtube a few days ago, it's in 6 parts. Really good documentary with mr E on an adventure for the BBC, finding out about his father Hugh Everett and his fathers theory on parallel universes.
Here is the first part, the other five are easy to find, any Eel fans? http://youtube.com/watch?v=XBiNzzYoBpA |
Cool thoughts and illustrations from Freeman Dyson, physicist/mathematician.
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun...-freeman-dyson |
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I like Dyson, one of the last positive mathematicians left in the world, from the same vein as Newton. |
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how many mathematicians do you know? and what do you mean by "positive"? |
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quite a few, and by positive I mean not trying to use his math to disprove the unprovable, that is divinity. Dyson is like Newton, he uses math in a more positive direction rather then to simply prop atheism, which is the fashionable use of science these days. Dyson interview |
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0701083522.htm
Spiritual Effects Of Hallucinogens Persist, Researchers Report ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008) — In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year. |
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what mathematician wastes time tying to "prop atheism"? math doesn't prove or disprove that. do you understand math? here's a quote from dyson himself: Quote:
dyson understands science, but you don't. you sound like a jihadist. jihad for jesus! |
he's a witch!!!!!!
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dude, do you even know me? |
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no, but i read what you write. science is not about proving or disproving the supernatural. science is and has been from its origins a natural philosophy-- it deals with nature. the development of the scientific method reduced the speculative side of this philosophia naturalis and emphasized experimentation. so, more than ever, questions of religion may be parallel to science, but not directly related to it. for example, the big bang theory has been used by some religious people to say "aha! that's the moment when god created the universe!", but the theory neither proves nor disproves this. the theory is concerned with physics, that is all, and is proven or disproven within physics. now, the reason why there is an opposition of science vs. religion in the minds of the masses, is because they misunderstand both science and religion. it is true that science has demonstrated the natural causes of what once were deemed "miracles", and removed the mystic veil from many natural phenomena, but again, science deals with the physical realm, not the spirit realm where the deities supposedly exist. in other words, science is not concerned with spiritual phenomena, only with physical ones. so science has provided us with an alternative explanation to the world other than "kukumatz made the people from corn", but it does not concern itself with kukumatz. that's why freeman says that what he knows of the universe is consistent with his theology, but it neither proves nor disproves it. even if the mind of the universe were to be a natural phenomenon, we can only speculate, but we cannot conduct experiments nor make measurements nor make mathematical extrapolations of it. when you artificially oppose science vs. religion, then you are thinking like an ayatollah or a medieval pope who says that this or that scientific theory must not be true because it is inconsistent with the scriptures. and when you value mathematicians not for their mathematical work but for their religious tendencies, you're missing the point of mathematics by a million metaphorical light-years. |
Atheism and Science
Atheists have appealed to science in defence of their atheism since the first avowedly atheistic manuscripts of the mid seventeenth century. However, as the German expert on atheism Winfried Schroeder has shown, the relationship between early modern atheism and science tended to embarrass rather than strengthen the fledgling atheism's case. This was partly due to the fact that the early atheist critiques of scientific theories which were recruited into the service of defending religious belief were often merely destructive and could not put anything in the place of the current scientific explanations which they attacked. In the field of cosmology, for example, the early clandestine atheists sought to prove that the model of creation from nothing was contradictory. However, despite much criticism they were poorly equipped to provide any scientifically serious counter-theories to the preferred theistic one. The atheist Meslier, for example, was cautious about arguing for the scientific superiority of atheism, and limited himself to the mere observation that both theism and atheism have a problem explaining the origin of the cosmos. With respect to atheism and science, theism is widely regarded by historians as having had the best scientific arguments on its side well into the eighteenth century. The renowned Denis Diderot, atheist and deist in turns, could still say in 1746 that science posed a greater threat to atheism than metaphysics.[3] Well into the eighteenth century it could be argued that it was atheism and not theism which required a sacrifice of the intellect. As Schroeder has pointed out, atheists were scientifically retrograde until at least the mid eighteenth century, and suffered from their reputation as scientifically unserious. Some modern atheists, including the New Atheists, while accepting the adequacy of this historical portrayal of the relationship between science and atheism until the late eighteenth century, still tend to insist that this all changed from the nineteenth century onwards. The determinism of classical physics which appeared to dispense with free will and the possibility of divine action, the fossil record in geology in the decades prior to Darwin's Origin of the Species which undermined the Genesis narrative of creation, and pre-eminently the publication of Darwin's Origin in 1859 and the establishment of evolutionary theory which dispensed with the traditional argument from design appeared thoroughly to undermine religion. Dawkins' himself commented that Darwin made it possible for the first time to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist (The Blind Watchmaker p. 6).[5] Furthermore, the nineteenth century saw the birth of the social sciences, which in their classical form at least would offer powerful reductionist explanations of religion in social and psychological terms. However, historians now broadly concur that any simple story of the supposed conflict between science and religion (and for that matter any simple story of their harmony) is problematic.[6] As John Hedley Brooke has pointed out, for every nineteenth century person considering these issues who followed figures such as Thomas Henry Huxley or Francis Galton in regarding evolution as devastating for religious belief, there were others, such as the Oxford theologian Aubrey Moore, who regarded Darwin's evolutionary theory as an opportunity for religion.[7] At the beginning of the twenty first century the situation remains very similar: for every atheistic scientist who supposes that science supports (or does not undermine) their atheism, there is a religiously inclined scientist who supposes that science supports (or does not undermine) their theism. Thus the atheist simplifies the very complicated and much contended question of the relationship between science and atheism/religion if they suppose that the evidence provided by the scientific study of the natural and social world unequivocally points to atheism. This is evident in each of the main branches of science, both natural and social, which have some relevance to the issue of the truth or falsity of atheism/religion. |
if someone asked me, do you believe in the christian god?
i'd say no. if someone asked me, do you believe in methaphysics? how can i say no (like atheists) or that is unknowable (like agnostics)? i believe in reality and scientific truth, atheism and agnosticism are scientific errors. |
^^ well copypasted, jesuit.
and that line about aubrey moore explains also why jesuits are not afraid of science-- because every and all scientific discovery can be easily subsumed under religious dogma for all practical purposes. that's what the jesuist started to do in the counterreformation-- they said, "let's not fear this shit, let's appropriate it". smart bastards. hence the XX century jesuits gave a medal to hawking for the big bang, and another jesuit, teilhard de chardin, was, of all things, a paleontologist digging up for primate bones, and who argued for god's hand in the evolutionary process. sort of like "the 7 days of creation are longass days, not human days". the pope opposed him, but such is the history of the jesuits-- too smart for the mainstream church. and that's why they have the best universities too-- well, sorta. anyway. etc. etc. |
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yeah idiot, i used italic just for fun. |
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i did not mean it in irony, titbrains, regardless of what your low self-esteem told you. it was a well chosen text to quote. but now-- bah! |
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I didn't say I value Dyson for his "religious tendencies" I said for his positive perspective. In this time, many scientists use their expertise in a negative, dogmatic and izm/schizm kind of way, and that is not science. That is politics, an entirely different ball game. I appreciate not that Dyson promotes any kind of deism/theism, rather, that he DOES NOT try to use all his good math skills to DISPROVE deism/theism. You sir, should brush up on your observation skills, or try to read my post with less obvious bias. |
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you are positing the existence of mathematicians who use their profession to attempt to disprove theism. show me where they are. show me one. show me. |
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 Right here. |
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ha ha ha ha damn those atheist equations! |
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