Just in case you thought I couldn't get any more strange, here I am to tell you that you are wrong.
A few months ago, at a Valentines Day Party, one of my friends told us about a dream she had. She dreamed that a group of people had been taken down to a secret underground base for a company and the company had used sound to mind control them into them doing whatever the company wanted. They did this with lots of teenagers, and at the end of the dream my friend saved the day, everyone went free, happily ever after, etc.
It seemed like kind of a strange thing to tell us, especially at a Valentines Day Party, until she explained her reasoning for telling us: she wanted to write a book about it.
Now I know and love my friends, but I knew that a few weeks after their excited cheers of 'yeah!' and 'that's a great idea!' everyone would completely forget about the novel idea and move on to something more exciting and immediately rewarding.
Except for me. So I took matters into my own hands and decided to think about the idea on my own. I pondered her dream for a while, doodling plot ideas in the backs of notebooks when I was supposed to be taking notes in Geography (I like a lot of things, but geography is not one of them), imagining characters, acting out scenes in my head, until I realized something. I needed to write a book.
Why not? I've written things before. I have been working on this blog for ages, just writing for myself, I've written stories for my parents for Christmas every year since I could work a computer. Why not write a book? I already have a plot, my friend's dream, characters, my friends, and a main character, myself. It seems a little proud, I know, but that's not why I did it. I did it because, as all you authors out there know, it's pretty hard, especially for your first novel, to write from someone else's point of view.
So, I started. I sat down and just started writing. I kept writing, the words coming to me, almost as if they were prewritten. One thing I learned about writing that I'll never forget: I love it. I wrote and wrote, carrying my "big-black-notebook-that-no-one-is-allowed-to-look-in" everywhere with me. I would carry it and scribble sloppy words as I walked through the grocery store (only occasionally bumping into people). I would sit and write between taking notes for class (the teacher never suspects you're goofing off if you're writing passionately into a notebook). I would write at lunch when the conversation got boring--I carried it everywhere.
I'm not, of course, telling you this to brag about my amazing writing skills (mostly). I want to bring up something I was writing about. Like I said earlier, I was writing mainly about mind control. But one difference between me and other writers, is I can never leave a question unanswered. So your first question would probably be the same one mine was: how on earth do you mind-control a bunch of teenagers in an underground facility?
The first thing I did was research the brain. How could the brain be tricked into thinking it's following its own orders when it's really following someone else's? The thing everyone thinks about when you think of your "brain" is the frontal cortex. It is the one that gives you thoughts, emotions, ideas, it's your consciousness, pretty much. Well, for someone who wanted to take control of the mind, having it all in one place seems pretty fantastic.
When I first wrote all the details down, it seemed almost entirely made-up. I created a chemical that can get between the neurons inside your brain. It could disperse the neurotransmitters before they even get to the other neuron to transfer the message. It was disabled over time by electricity (they had to have a way to get the poison out, of course) and would clear out and give the brain independent thoughts.
The way it worked was it made the one under mind control...more susceptible to suggestion, I suppose is a better term for it. It didn't make the person a complete slave to your will, just more willing to follow orders, and less willing to try to think of things for themselves.
I'll admit: I made this up without doing any research. I just thought it off the top of my head, thinking it was 100% unreal and impossible. But, if you've read any of my other articles, you know that I wouldn't be writing this unless there was something more exciting than "and I was right!"
A few weeks ago (happy New Year's everyone!) I was warned about the dangers of driving on the roads at night on New Year's. It is one of the most dangerous times to drive because of all the drunk driving around then (random fact: there is 34% more fatalities during the "Christmas/ New Year" time). When considering this, I stumbled across the question: what is alcohol doing to your brain?
Everyone always says "alcohol impairs your judgement!" "alcohol slows your reaction time!" "alcohol kills brain cells!" etc. But no one ever says what exactly alcohol is doing.
I guess most people don't care, but I certainly do. So I texted the smartest person I know, and asked him. Dad replied within minutes. He told me all about how the molecules of alcohol get between the neurons in your brain and dispel the neurotransmitters before they can get to the other neuron, making it harder for you to think and slowing your reaction time, impairing judgement, etc.
As soon as I heard this I was immediately thinking about my mind control book. If alcohol can do it, why not a specific drug? Drunk people are definitely more susceptible to suggestion. If something like that could be centralized in the frontal cortex of the brain and made to slow your thoughts, feelings, etc., then you could most definitely convince someone to do what you wanted! They wouldn't really be able to think of a better idea, if their judgement was so impaired.
Of course you'd have to find a good chemical, find a way to centralize it, etc. But it is definitely possible, and that is really awesome. Though mostly scary.
So now you know, if you ever need it (which I pray you don't) that mind control is possible! Pretty cool!
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Friday, March 13, 2015
Aliens and Math
I am a debater. A born and bred debater--in case you couldn't tell by the way I argue something in all of my posts. But this year for region all off he debate spots were filled up, so I got (or had, whichever way you look at it) to go in Oratory. At first I was kind of reluctant--what could I talk about for 10 minutes that I was passionate? Then, of course, it came to me. Science!! And my favorite kind, of course. Astronomy. So, astronomy it is. But what about astronomy? There's so many things I could talk about. Black holes, stars, nebulas, Jupiter, destroying black holes (yes you can do that), there's SO MUCH AMAZINGNESS. It took me something a little closer to home to help me decide my topic. So here's roughly what I came up with.
Aliens and math.
So one thing that has to do with aliens (and math) a lot is the Drake Equation. If you'd like to look it up on Wikipedia, there is a lot of great information there about it. But I will try to sum it up right here.
The Drake Equation is:
N = R* times fp times ne times fl times fi times fc times L.
Okay: that's a lot of letters and not very numbers for a math equation, which it in fact is. This equation was created in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake. It is, or N is equal to the likeliness that we will find intelligent, communicating life in the Milky Way Galaxy. So I'll go through and explain all of the variables and kind of explain how on Earth we could write an equation for something as amazing as that.
R* is the number of stars that are created in the milky way galaxy per year. It's roughly 7. SEVEN. That's an enormous number, when you think of the billions of years that it takes to create stars!!! It takes so long I would have been surprised if roughly one star was created per year!! A year is a very short time and that means that billions of stars are getting close to be created right now!! Now, of course, everything is relative. Seven is a very big number when thinking about the time it takes to create stars, but with most things in the universe, seven is not very large. 95 million miles (1 AU) is not a very large number when comparing it to the hundreds of thousands of light years across the galaxy, but it's much bigger than seven. So just remember, it's all in perspective.
fp is the fraction of these stars that are going to have planets. (It's pronounced F sub P, just in case you want to go and talk to all your friends about this) So this number is going to be close to one--which means that it is close to 100% just in case you were confused--because it seems to be more of the rule rather than the exception to have planets. Which honestly makes sense, when a star is born there's a lot of excess dust around it and it doesn't take a lot to get that to form into planets. So the number for N so far is still around seven. Which, in case you don't know, is more than 100%. So our search for aliens is going pretty well so far.
Ne is where we start to go down. Ne is the number of these planets that are going to be able to support life. One of the main things that this means is to be in the "Goldilocks Zone", or if you prefer to be more scientific, the "Habitable Zone". This is the distance from a star where a planet can have solid, liquid, and gas water.
Aliens and math.
So one thing that has to do with aliens (and math) a lot is the Drake Equation. If you'd like to look it up on Wikipedia, there is a lot of great information there about it. But I will try to sum it up right here.
The Drake Equation is:
N = R* times fp times ne times fl times fi times fc times L.
Okay: that's a lot of letters and not very numbers for a math equation, which it in fact is. This equation was created in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake. It is, or N is equal to the likeliness that we will find intelligent, communicating life in the Milky Way Galaxy. So I'll go through and explain all of the variables and kind of explain how on Earth we could write an equation for something as amazing as that.
R* is the number of stars that are created in the milky way galaxy per year. It's roughly 7. SEVEN. That's an enormous number, when you think of the billions of years that it takes to create stars!!! It takes so long I would have been surprised if roughly one star was created per year!! A year is a very short time and that means that billions of stars are getting close to be created right now!! Now, of course, everything is relative. Seven is a very big number when thinking about the time it takes to create stars, but with most things in the universe, seven is not very large. 95 million miles (1 AU) is not a very large number when comparing it to the hundreds of thousands of light years across the galaxy, but it's much bigger than seven. So just remember, it's all in perspective.
fp is the fraction of these stars that are going to have planets. (It's pronounced F sub P, just in case you want to go and talk to all your friends about this) So this number is going to be close to one--which means that it is close to 100% just in case you were confused--because it seems to be more of the rule rather than the exception to have planets. Which honestly makes sense, when a star is born there's a lot of excess dust around it and it doesn't take a lot to get that to form into planets. So the number for N so far is still around seven. Which, in case you don't know, is more than 100%. So our search for aliens is going pretty well so far.
Ne is where we start to go down. Ne is the number of these planets that are going to be able to support life. One of the main things that this means is to be in the "Goldilocks Zone", or if you prefer to be more scientific, the "Habitable Zone". This is the distance from a star where a planet can have solid, liquid, and gas water.
 |
| Finding the Goldilocks Zone for Different Sized Stars |
"Habitable zone - HZ" by Habitable_zone-en.svg: Chewiederivative work: Ignacio javier igjav (talk) - Habitable_zone-en.svg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Habitable_zone_-_HZ.png#/media/File:Habitable_zone_-_HZ.png
That's my citing it. I don't know if it's correct, but I hope so.
Anyway, this is a good picture that describes the Goldilocks Zones of planets. Because it's not as if 1 AU (our distance from the sun) from the sun is always going to be exactly right. Different stars have different heats, and different sizes, and everything is all relative to everything, as I said earlier. So this picture is a good one for saying how far away it is.
Okay, now the Goldilocks Zone is a big part of seeing if the planet is suitable for life, but there is so much more than that. There's a lot of things that Earth has that we just never really think is necessary because it's just...there. The moon, for example. The moon's gravity has stabilized the planet's rotation a lot. We would still be spinning quite wildly if not for the moon. Also, gases like Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Carbon, and of course Oxygen. There must be a ground. It can't be a gas planet, like Jupiter or Neptune. There are so many variables and factors that this will be an infinitesimal number. Yeah. So, there goes our 700%.
fl is the fraction of these planets that are going to go on to actually develop any life at all. This number, like the rest of them I'll admit, is very controversial. So I'm just going to give you my opinion, mostly because that's the one I understand the best. So I believe this fraction is going to, again, be pretty close to one. Here's why:
4.5 billion years ago our planet stabilized. The molten rock on the top started to cool and harden and our planet started to collect water and hold an atmosphere. It took 700 million years for life to start!! Only .7 billion years!! That's practically nothing on the grand 13.8 billion years the universe has been around. And if it was that short on our planet, it leads me to believe that it is not as unlikely to happen. Maybe the right particles float together all the time and life is constantly being created. So I personally believe that there is undoubtedly other life out there just waiting for us to find it or them to find us.
fi is the fraction of planets that develop life that go on to develop intelligent life. I understand both sides to this argument, so I will explain both of them briefly.
Some point out that out of all the hundreds of species on the planet Earth, only one of them has gone on to develop intelligence. No dogs have created computers, no bears have built houses, no horses have harnessed the power of fire, relative to most animals, we are quite genius. No offense to animal lovers--I love animals too, I just know that we are quite a bit smarter than trees.
Other people, of which I am one, say that all animals are slowly developing through natural selection the intelligence that we have gained over time. Though monkeys are not at our level of comprehension, they are slowly gaining genius through trial, error, and natural selection. So, whichever side of this argument you are on determines what number you choose to use for this variable.
fc is the fraction of planets that develop intelligent life that is willing and able to communicate across interstellar space. For instance, not all planets may want to communicate. Maybe they are very peaceful and don't want the wars that other intelligent life may cause. (Let's admit it; we fight a lot as homo sapiens.) This number, however, is nearly impossible to even comprehend. Look up tonight before you go to bed. you can see billions of stars. And you can only see a tiny, tiny fraction of the stars that are out there shedding light on you. Light is bent by other stars, black holes, blocked by asteroids, space is an obstacle course for light. And then there's the fact that one's eyes can only see so well. And then there's the entire other half of the Earth. I mean, come on. There are so many stars out there. The numbers are inconceivable to the human brain. (And come on, we all thought of Princess Bride when we saw that word.) For this reason, looking for other, communicating life is like looking for a needle. In a haystack. In a tower of hay. On a planet of hay. I mean, really. This number is going to be SO FREAKIN SMALL. Yeah.
L. The simplest variable, mostly because I don't have to make a big deal about making it a subscript. Those are hard to type, believe it or not. So, L. it's pretty simple to explain as well, I believe. L is the length of time that this intelligent, communicating life is going to be living and sending out signals. I personally (I have a lot of opinions) agree with the scientists that say it's likely infinity. Mainly because when a life form gets intelligent enough, it can overcome all threats to its survival and live indefinitely. Cool. We are obviously not there yet.
So this, to sum it up in two words, is the Drake Equation. It's the best math equation (besides E=mc squared) that I've found so far. I love it when I feel like I can actually use the algebra I've learned in science. Because they're both so amazing, they should be used together more than people often assume they are. And, now you know something that is completely and one hundred percent amazing. The Drake Equation is quite fascinating and I would highly suggest looking it up and researching it! (Unless of course I explained it so well you are an expert on it and are going to go teach about it at Harvard) So now you know that there actually is a number for the percent likeliness that we will find aliens! AWESOME.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Made-up Science
Humans love to name things. We name people, animals, cars, species, planets, stars, we classify everything. Even things that debatably don't exist. For instance, time. What is time? No, no, think about it for a second. If someone came out of the jungle and said "what's time?" What would you say? Dictionary.com (my favorite site in the FREAKIN WORLD--it's saved my butt so many times) says: the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another. It sounds all beautiful and all, but that just says 'it's the order in which things happen'. Its a way to measure out how things are in relation to one another.
So, it's a way of measurement, one might say. But what is measurement? It's something we have created! We named the meter and defined it and it is now considered a thing, but it's not. Without us naming it nothing would change, obviously. It is something we have created for our own purposes. And it's very useful, I understand that. I know why we did it and all that. It's just made-up science.
So now back to the time thing. Some say that time is the fourth dimension. That makes it a thing, correct? Maybe. I have heard theories that time is nonexistent because everything is happening right now. That there is a billion planet Earths, one being created every second, every plank time (that's an explanation for another post) and they are all exact photocopies of one another. Some say that if this were true then we could time travel. We could jump from Earth to Earth and see different stages of time. But then is it really time? Then it would be different stages, or something. If that turned out to be true, then we would have to change the name, because there is no fourth dimension--just many many many third dimensions. Whoa. So, time doesn't exist. What else have scientists made up?
A surprising amount, actually.
Dark Matter. The definition of this stuff is pretty much 'we can't see it, can't feel it, can't detect it, but we think it's there.' Wow. Okay, so though I am an extremely skeptical person, I do know that scientists don't just make up stuff for fun. Ha ha. Imagine a congregation of scientists: 'what can we convince them of next?' Ha ha! Anyway, the universe is expanding. Surprise! When the Big Bang (again am explanation for another post if you don't know exactly what that is) happened about 14 billion years ago, the force of it kept us going for a long long time. We are still being pushed outward from the explosion. But, the strange thing is that we are slowly speeding up. Imagine a bomb going off. The little sphere starts small, gets really big really fast, and then starts to slow down in it's expansion. But the universe isn't going like that. The universe started expanding really fast, and then like a car driving in a race, just kept speeding up. Now, I'm the first to admit this is really weird, but I think the explanation is not to say "well, it's probably something that we can't see feel or detect in any way." What?! No, we have to study more into gravity, investigate, find more. Not just make up dark matter to explain it.
And the best part is, they've made up two things! Dark matter, and dark energy. Dark energy is the exact same thing, just energy that we can't detect. Okay. Come on. I think that the answer to solving this problem lies more along the lines of gravity working differently than we thought than a bunch of 'stuff' in space pushing everything apart.
And some scientist thought the same way. He started looking into gravity and learning more about it. But it got to taking too long so he just made up a new thing to solve it.
The graviton! Wow. We do not know how it works, but it magically causes gravity. Okay. See, personally, I have always thought gravity seemed simple. Things gravitate towards each other, it's as basic as that. I guess it might not be, of course, I'm not very experienced with anything like that, but I do know it's not as simple as a particle that "makes gravity happen."
I certainly hope I don't sound like I hate scientists or that I cannot stand anything not backed completely by evidence, but I do get frustrated when these scientists can't find anything right away so they make something up and call it good. The time thing, however, is quite fascinating. Think about it; what is your definition of time? The things we do as human beings...They're quite interesting to think about when you stop and comprehend it.
So, it's a way of measurement, one might say. But what is measurement? It's something we have created! We named the meter and defined it and it is now considered a thing, but it's not. Without us naming it nothing would change, obviously. It is something we have created for our own purposes. And it's very useful, I understand that. I know why we did it and all that. It's just made-up science.
So now back to the time thing. Some say that time is the fourth dimension. That makes it a thing, correct? Maybe. I have heard theories that time is nonexistent because everything is happening right now. That there is a billion planet Earths, one being created every second, every plank time (that's an explanation for another post) and they are all exact photocopies of one another. Some say that if this were true then we could time travel. We could jump from Earth to Earth and see different stages of time. But then is it really time? Then it would be different stages, or something. If that turned out to be true, then we would have to change the name, because there is no fourth dimension--just many many many third dimensions. Whoa. So, time doesn't exist. What else have scientists made up?
A surprising amount, actually.
Dark Matter. The definition of this stuff is pretty much 'we can't see it, can't feel it, can't detect it, but we think it's there.' Wow. Okay, so though I am an extremely skeptical person, I do know that scientists don't just make up stuff for fun. Ha ha. Imagine a congregation of scientists: 'what can we convince them of next?' Ha ha! Anyway, the universe is expanding. Surprise! When the Big Bang (again am explanation for another post if you don't know exactly what that is) happened about 14 billion years ago, the force of it kept us going for a long long time. We are still being pushed outward from the explosion. But, the strange thing is that we are slowly speeding up. Imagine a bomb going off. The little sphere starts small, gets really big really fast, and then starts to slow down in it's expansion. But the universe isn't going like that. The universe started expanding really fast, and then like a car driving in a race, just kept speeding up. Now, I'm the first to admit this is really weird, but I think the explanation is not to say "well, it's probably something that we can't see feel or detect in any way." What?! No, we have to study more into gravity, investigate, find more. Not just make up dark matter to explain it.
And the best part is, they've made up two things! Dark matter, and dark energy. Dark energy is the exact same thing, just energy that we can't detect. Okay. Come on. I think that the answer to solving this problem lies more along the lines of gravity working differently than we thought than a bunch of 'stuff' in space pushing everything apart.
And some scientist thought the same way. He started looking into gravity and learning more about it. But it got to taking too long so he just made up a new thing to solve it.
The graviton! Wow. We do not know how it works, but it magically causes gravity. Okay. See, personally, I have always thought gravity seemed simple. Things gravitate towards each other, it's as basic as that. I guess it might not be, of course, I'm not very experienced with anything like that, but I do know it's not as simple as a particle that "makes gravity happen."
I certainly hope I don't sound like I hate scientists or that I cannot stand anything not backed completely by evidence, but I do get frustrated when these scientists can't find anything right away so they make something up and call it good. The time thing, however, is quite fascinating. Think about it; what is your definition of time? The things we do as human beings...They're quite interesting to think about when you stop and comprehend it.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Life
Life is so cool. I don't know why I am fascinated by it; probably because I'm amazed by anything. I was out running yesterday and we--me and some friends--ran by this tree. All the leaves are changing here, but this tree was amazing. It was absolutely neon yellow. It was so bright we all had to touch it to see if it was real. It was. Anyway, I was just thinking; what is life? What makes us different from the rocks and the dirt and the dogs and worms and Mercury and Venus? We have DNA, you might say. But how does having a complex carbon-based atom that makes up most of our body make us different? And, why does DNA classify us as alive? 'Dead' people still have DNA. They still are made up of cells. What's different? Perhaps the way we can adapt to our environment, you might suggest. So, like water. Pour water into a cup and it will adapt to its environment to fit the shape of the cup. To reproduce is a common argument. Fire? Clouds? To be able to move of our own accord? Trees can't. We classify them as alive. This probably seems pointless; to try and convince you that nothing is alive. But I am actually leading up to something way more cool.
We were watching Star Wars in my English class today--I know, coolest teacher ever!!--and seeing all of those fake-looking aliens makes you wonder. Did George Lucas have a specific thought in mind? Did he classify these things as alive? Did they have DNA? Were they made of cells? No? Well are they alive? I think people can be so narrow-minded when it comes to life. You all know, science class--
"The 7 characteristics of life: DNA, cells, able to adapt to its environment..." you know the drill. It just seems like we're relying so heavily on our view of 'life' that if we met life from another planet that we wouldn't classify it as alive because it wasn't carbon-based and didn't drink liquid water. Though of course I'm still not convinced that life is a real thing. It seems like something that we decided to call ourselves. "We move. Rocks don't. We're alive." It just seems like a strange way to think.
So now, where did life (I'll just refer to it as that because you all know what I'm talking about even though it's not quite real.) come from? Could it really have just been a couple molecules that floated together and started swimming around? That seems, though reasonable, a little far-fetched. One thing that I like to consider is our sister planet; Venus.
Venus, God of Love, ironically, is really a fascinating planet. Once really similar to us, now she is hotter than Mercury. Some people worry that we will end up like her, but I have never worried about it, because why would we take so much longer? Anyway, similar size, similar composition, we are definitely related, right? Now just a tad of history; in the beginning of the solar system it was chaos. Meteors flying around, comets going every which way, it was insane. So what if we were switching meteors with Venus? Seems likely, right? There were pieces flying everywhere. So, if life originated on Venus, then it seems totally possible that it could've just floated over here and gotten started here as well.
Here's a random thought: we don't know why Venus is the way it is. What if life flourished there even more than it did here. Animals could have started building fires, and gotten more and more advanced until they were to where we are. Hmm? And then they found a big thing of coal. And they started burning it until they built up enough greenhouse gases to overheat the planet, evaporating the oceans and ultimately snowballing until Venus is--what it is now.
But back to the life thing, what if it didn't originate in Venus? Because even if it did start there, we would still have the same problem, correct? It had to start from something. Maybe, and I know I'm getting a little far-out here, but maybe it originated somewhere else. Like, Titan? Titan is awesome. I know I keep getting sidetracked, but this isn't a report for school, so as long as you're not bored I'm good. But in any case, Titan is the only moon--natural satellite--that that has a dense atmosphere like Earth. And it's just like us!! It rains there, they have lakes, oceans, rivers, a nice atmosphere, wind, pressure, it's perfect!! Except for one thing; there's not much water or oxygen. What? I thought you just said it has rivers, lakes, and oceans. Well, it does. They're just made of methane. And the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen.
Wow.
So what's to say that life couldn't be there, too, just Sodium-based. Okay. So the reason that Carbon is such a good thing for life to be based on is because it has so many empty electron shells; 4 in fact. That means it can connect to 4 different atoms to make huge chains. You know how DNA can be 3 meters long when it's all stretched out? That's one big molecule. And Sodium has 7 empty electron shells, which means that Sodium could make really long chains too. DNA is then possible, and so then life is too. So maybe there is/was/will be life on Titan. Who knows?
And now we're back to our age-old problem; where?! How?! What?! All right, what if it came from other solar systems? It seems reasonable to suggest that we are not the one anomaly in the 14.5 Billion years that the universe has been around (Or 'alive' some people would call it). People who think there are no such thing as aliens are just crazy. (Look at the probability!! How unlikely that in billions and billions and billions of planets there are no other bacteria anywhere?) It could have floated in and landed on our little planet and just kind of adapted to fit here.
I know, I know, I'm avoiding the question, but I'm ready to give you my answer now. You can tell that I'm a Lincon-Douglas debater by the fact that I give all these crazy theories with very little evidence to support them. Promise you won't think I'm crazy.
I was talking with another L-D Debater--you'll be able to tell--and we were talking about this same thing. And then he said something that just kind of made me think about everything ever.
"Well what if we're just a computer generation?" Like, we're just something a computer is showing. Now of course everyone else said "Had an extra dose of crazy in your pancakes this morning?" But he stopped us and backed it up with other theories. We can generate cells dividing, right? We can generate galaxies forming, though we've never seen it, correct? We can generate supernovas exploding though we can't get close enough without dying, yes? So, suppose someone got a big computer and set it rolling on cells, trying to get it to form the exact conditions that formed them and their set of DNA and such. And they left it rolling. Now suppose that their computer generated life forms invented similar computers and did the same thing; started a computer generated solar system. Now what if this goes on for a long time and then it ends up with a person sitting at a computer theorizing about life? Maybe every single thing that we know about is all 1s and 0s.
Now, you probably think I'm insane. But before you say 'well you're crazy' just try and prove that it's impossible. That'll twist your brain, won't it? Maybe there's little green men looking into a computer screen and seeing you walking home from school. Maybe our time is going extra fast for them, so for them it's been a blink of an eye since Hitler came and tried to take over the world. Consider them looking in at you from the 4th dimension when you're doing homework.
Though you can't prove it's true, you can prove that it is more likely than life actually developing from nothing. Here:
So, let's start out big. First of all, there is a very fine line in our universe between too much gravity and too little. When the Big Bang happened, we can only assume that the laws of physics couldn't have existed before them. (Long story if you don't understand. Comment and I can talk about it.) So, suppose there was a little bit more gravity. There would be black holes everywhere. Everything would pretty much be sucked into black holes and we would end up with almost exactly what we had before the Big Bang: No life. What about a little less gravity? With a little less gravity nothing would stick together. One of the astronauts that went up into a space station found out that when you put sugar in a sealed little bag in no gravity, they float together. Though that's only at this particular level of gravity. Much less, and everything would fly apart. Even meteorites and comets wouldn't work. We couldn't really have stars either because they kind of run off energy. So it's like one in a million that we would actually get this perfect little 'gravity goldilocks zone.' So if we were a computer generation we would be perfectly suited for life.
Speaking of the Goldilocks Zone, it's really surprising that there is a) a planet in the Goldilocks Zone and b) a rocky planet in the Goldilocks Zone! We search for them constantly and we have come up with a surprisingly small number of planets in the zone. And that includes gas planets too, with which it would be much harder to have life on. I'm not saying impossible, it would just have to be really light, and they certainly couldn't make big computers like this because they would have all gas. Back to the point; we have this perfect little planet that is very, as far as we can tell from our galaxy, out of the ordinary.
Have you heard of the Electromagnetic Field? Well, it's awesome. There would be no life without it. See, the sun is spitting out rays that would kill you really fast if you were in them. I am so general because there's different kinds. But it is here because we have a molten inner core. Coincidence? I think not. It protects us from these rays in ways that we couldn't protect ourselves. It's pretty amazing.
And then we come back to the theory of how life started. How could it have started? Of course it could've started the old-fashioned way, I'm definitely not ruling that out, I'm just saying it seems really improbable. But of course for this theory to work it would have had to happen at least once, or at least something happened. And I feel like this is kind of a one-theory-suits-all kind of thing, because I am religious, and I believe in God, and such, and I think if God wanted to send us here, it would have been really easy to insert our souls into a bunch of 1s and 0s instead of creating a whole universe.
And now I just have one more thing to add before I get off and leave you to your lives. If my crazy debate team and I are right, then that would mean that it would take one person tripping in one world somewhere to unplug us and literally obliterate us.
Thank you! And I hope you don't think I'm absolutely insane!
We were watching Star Wars in my English class today--I know, coolest teacher ever!!--and seeing all of those fake-looking aliens makes you wonder. Did George Lucas have a specific thought in mind? Did he classify these things as alive? Did they have DNA? Were they made of cells? No? Well are they alive? I think people can be so narrow-minded when it comes to life. You all know, science class--
"The 7 characteristics of life: DNA, cells, able to adapt to its environment..." you know the drill. It just seems like we're relying so heavily on our view of 'life' that if we met life from another planet that we wouldn't classify it as alive because it wasn't carbon-based and didn't drink liquid water. Though of course I'm still not convinced that life is a real thing. It seems like something that we decided to call ourselves. "We move. Rocks don't. We're alive." It just seems like a strange way to think.
So now, where did life (I'll just refer to it as that because you all know what I'm talking about even though it's not quite real.) come from? Could it really have just been a couple molecules that floated together and started swimming around? That seems, though reasonable, a little far-fetched. One thing that I like to consider is our sister planet; Venus.
Venus, God of Love, ironically, is really a fascinating planet. Once really similar to us, now she is hotter than Mercury. Some people worry that we will end up like her, but I have never worried about it, because why would we take so much longer? Anyway, similar size, similar composition, we are definitely related, right? Now just a tad of history; in the beginning of the solar system it was chaos. Meteors flying around, comets going every which way, it was insane. So what if we were switching meteors with Venus? Seems likely, right? There were pieces flying everywhere. So, if life originated on Venus, then it seems totally possible that it could've just floated over here and gotten started here as well.
Here's a random thought: we don't know why Venus is the way it is. What if life flourished there even more than it did here. Animals could have started building fires, and gotten more and more advanced until they were to where we are. Hmm? And then they found a big thing of coal. And they started burning it until they built up enough greenhouse gases to overheat the planet, evaporating the oceans and ultimately snowballing until Venus is--what it is now.
But back to the life thing, what if it didn't originate in Venus? Because even if it did start there, we would still have the same problem, correct? It had to start from something. Maybe, and I know I'm getting a little far-out here, but maybe it originated somewhere else. Like, Titan? Titan is awesome. I know I keep getting sidetracked, but this isn't a report for school, so as long as you're not bored I'm good. But in any case, Titan is the only moon--natural satellite--that that has a dense atmosphere like Earth. And it's just like us!! It rains there, they have lakes, oceans, rivers, a nice atmosphere, wind, pressure, it's perfect!! Except for one thing; there's not much water or oxygen. What? I thought you just said it has rivers, lakes, and oceans. Well, it does. They're just made of methane. And the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen.
Wow.
So what's to say that life couldn't be there, too, just Sodium-based. Okay. So the reason that Carbon is such a good thing for life to be based on is because it has so many empty electron shells; 4 in fact. That means it can connect to 4 different atoms to make huge chains. You know how DNA can be 3 meters long when it's all stretched out? That's one big molecule. And Sodium has 7 empty electron shells, which means that Sodium could make really long chains too. DNA is then possible, and so then life is too. So maybe there is/was/will be life on Titan. Who knows?
And now we're back to our age-old problem; where?! How?! What?! All right, what if it came from other solar systems? It seems reasonable to suggest that we are not the one anomaly in the 14.5 Billion years that the universe has been around (Or 'alive' some people would call it). People who think there are no such thing as aliens are just crazy. (Look at the probability!! How unlikely that in billions and billions and billions of planets there are no other bacteria anywhere?) It could have floated in and landed on our little planet and just kind of adapted to fit here.
I know, I know, I'm avoiding the question, but I'm ready to give you my answer now. You can tell that I'm a Lincon-Douglas debater by the fact that I give all these crazy theories with very little evidence to support them. Promise you won't think I'm crazy.
I was talking with another L-D Debater--you'll be able to tell--and we were talking about this same thing. And then he said something that just kind of made me think about everything ever.
"Well what if we're just a computer generation?" Like, we're just something a computer is showing. Now of course everyone else said "Had an extra dose of crazy in your pancakes this morning?" But he stopped us and backed it up with other theories. We can generate cells dividing, right? We can generate galaxies forming, though we've never seen it, correct? We can generate supernovas exploding though we can't get close enough without dying, yes? So, suppose someone got a big computer and set it rolling on cells, trying to get it to form the exact conditions that formed them and their set of DNA and such. And they left it rolling. Now suppose that their computer generated life forms invented similar computers and did the same thing; started a computer generated solar system. Now what if this goes on for a long time and then it ends up with a person sitting at a computer theorizing about life? Maybe every single thing that we know about is all 1s and 0s.
Now, you probably think I'm insane. But before you say 'well you're crazy' just try and prove that it's impossible. That'll twist your brain, won't it? Maybe there's little green men looking into a computer screen and seeing you walking home from school. Maybe our time is going extra fast for them, so for them it's been a blink of an eye since Hitler came and tried to take over the world. Consider them looking in at you from the 4th dimension when you're doing homework.
Though you can't prove it's true, you can prove that it is more likely than life actually developing from nothing. Here:
So, let's start out big. First of all, there is a very fine line in our universe between too much gravity and too little. When the Big Bang happened, we can only assume that the laws of physics couldn't have existed before them. (Long story if you don't understand. Comment and I can talk about it.) So, suppose there was a little bit more gravity. There would be black holes everywhere. Everything would pretty much be sucked into black holes and we would end up with almost exactly what we had before the Big Bang: No life. What about a little less gravity? With a little less gravity nothing would stick together. One of the astronauts that went up into a space station found out that when you put sugar in a sealed little bag in no gravity, they float together. Though that's only at this particular level of gravity. Much less, and everything would fly apart. Even meteorites and comets wouldn't work. We couldn't really have stars either because they kind of run off energy. So it's like one in a million that we would actually get this perfect little 'gravity goldilocks zone.' So if we were a computer generation we would be perfectly suited for life.
Speaking of the Goldilocks Zone, it's really surprising that there is a) a planet in the Goldilocks Zone and b) a rocky planet in the Goldilocks Zone! We search for them constantly and we have come up with a surprisingly small number of planets in the zone. And that includes gas planets too, with which it would be much harder to have life on. I'm not saying impossible, it would just have to be really light, and they certainly couldn't make big computers like this because they would have all gas. Back to the point; we have this perfect little planet that is very, as far as we can tell from our galaxy, out of the ordinary.
Have you heard of the Electromagnetic Field? Well, it's awesome. There would be no life without it. See, the sun is spitting out rays that would kill you really fast if you were in them. I am so general because there's different kinds. But it is here because we have a molten inner core. Coincidence? I think not. It protects us from these rays in ways that we couldn't protect ourselves. It's pretty amazing.
And then we come back to the theory of how life started. How could it have started? Of course it could've started the old-fashioned way, I'm definitely not ruling that out, I'm just saying it seems really improbable. But of course for this theory to work it would have had to happen at least once, or at least something happened. And I feel like this is kind of a one-theory-suits-all kind of thing, because I am religious, and I believe in God, and such, and I think if God wanted to send us here, it would have been really easy to insert our souls into a bunch of 1s and 0s instead of creating a whole universe.
And now I just have one more thing to add before I get off and leave you to your lives. If my crazy debate team and I are right, then that would mean that it would take one person tripping in one world somewhere to unplug us and literally obliterate us.
Thank you! And I hope you don't think I'm absolutely insane!
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Teleportation
I am a complete science nerd.I am just going to start with that. Now to the good stuff:
I like quantum mechanics a lot. I like talking about possibilities, and lately the thing that's been on my mind a lot is teleportation.
I was talking with a friend, and we were discussing the likeliness of it happening randomly to a person. Technically, it's possible. Quantum particles, which is pretty much anything smaller than an electron, have the ability to randomly jump around. Sometimes, they can go from somewhere right here to somewhere right there without crossing it physically.
In English we call it teleportation.
It's pretty cool, right? But the thing is, that only quantum particles are small enough to do it. So now we're getting into quarks and such and it's getting really really tiny. (Quarks are the things that make up protons, by the way. There's 7 different kinds, Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top, and Bottom. Yeah. It's pretty cool.) Anyway, I want you to imagine the probability of one of the billions of billions of billions of billions of electrons in the whole universe teleporting, is in you. The probability is tiny! And that's of one electron in your body moving a little ways away.
Now; it would be super awesome if one of your electrons, or quarks, or whatever make up quarks left, but it wouldn't make a big difference. That's not what causes cancer, or makes the sun burn, or anything else amazing or detrimental. So now let's think about an entire atom just up and going. All the electrons. All the quarks. And everything that makes up quarks (because some of them aren't quantum particles and thus not capable of teleportation, but they're made up of quantum particles, probably.) Imagine a billion over a billion over a billion over a hundred. That's probably pretty close to the probability of that happening.
BUT!! That's just the thing. The fact that there is a tiny tiny tiny possibility of that happening is two times amazing!! A whole atom traveling somewhere faster than light! Just because we're talking about atoms I have to mention--atoms are really small. This means nothing. This isn't like half of a golf ball or something, this is really really really really small. I remember it with this cool analogy:
An atom is to a base ball what a golf ball is to the earth.
That's really small. So now that we have our one atom that's teleported, it still doesn't mean much. Especially because this atom didn't even make it there without almost blowing apart. There are electrons everywhere, the protons aren't stuck together, it's a mess. Teleportation isn't all perfectly aligned like I'd love it to be. But, let's remember, there's always the microscopic chance that they are still perfectly formed.
Now we must return to moving up the scale in size of teleportation. Now one of your atoms is gone--you wouldn't even notice the difference. Your pool isn't half empty, the computer you're reading an amazing essay on is still working, but probability, probability!!! What's the biggest number you can possibly imagine? Bigger than a google-google-google? Times it by three, put it over one hundred, and then you probably have the probability that anything is going to teleport anywhere. Then times it by nine and there's your chances that it will still be in perfect form and not just a smear in the cosmos.
WHAT?!
Go back to your number over a hundred. That's a possibility. It will almost certainly not happen, but we can't rule out the possibility.
Well, you kind of can.
So, if you like other nerdy science things like this, then comment a question you have and I'll post something about it!
I like quantum mechanics a lot. I like talking about possibilities, and lately the thing that's been on my mind a lot is teleportation.
I was talking with a friend, and we were discussing the likeliness of it happening randomly to a person. Technically, it's possible. Quantum particles, which is pretty much anything smaller than an electron, have the ability to randomly jump around. Sometimes, they can go from somewhere right here to somewhere right there without crossing it physically.
In English we call it teleportation.
It's pretty cool, right? But the thing is, that only quantum particles are small enough to do it. So now we're getting into quarks and such and it's getting really really tiny. (Quarks are the things that make up protons, by the way. There's 7 different kinds, Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top, and Bottom. Yeah. It's pretty cool.) Anyway, I want you to imagine the probability of one of the billions of billions of billions of billions of electrons in the whole universe teleporting, is in you. The probability is tiny! And that's of one electron in your body moving a little ways away.
Now; it would be super awesome if one of your electrons, or quarks, or whatever make up quarks left, but it wouldn't make a big difference. That's not what causes cancer, or makes the sun burn, or anything else amazing or detrimental. So now let's think about an entire atom just up and going. All the electrons. All the quarks. And everything that makes up quarks (because some of them aren't quantum particles and thus not capable of teleportation, but they're made up of quantum particles, probably.) Imagine a billion over a billion over a billion over a hundred. That's probably pretty close to the probability of that happening.
BUT!! That's just the thing. The fact that there is a tiny tiny tiny possibility of that happening is two times amazing!! A whole atom traveling somewhere faster than light! Just because we're talking about atoms I have to mention--atoms are really small. This means nothing. This isn't like half of a golf ball or something, this is really really really really small. I remember it with this cool analogy:
An atom is to a base ball what a golf ball is to the earth.
That's really small. So now that we have our one atom that's teleported, it still doesn't mean much. Especially because this atom didn't even make it there without almost blowing apart. There are electrons everywhere, the protons aren't stuck together, it's a mess. Teleportation isn't all perfectly aligned like I'd love it to be. But, let's remember, there's always the microscopic chance that they are still perfectly formed.
Now we must return to moving up the scale in size of teleportation. Now one of your atoms is gone--you wouldn't even notice the difference. Your pool isn't half empty, the computer you're reading an amazing essay on is still working, but probability, probability!!! What's the biggest number you can possibly imagine? Bigger than a google-google-google? Times it by three, put it over one hundred, and then you probably have the probability that anything is going to teleport anywhere. Then times it by nine and there's your chances that it will still be in perfect form and not just a smear in the cosmos.
WHAT?!
Go back to your number over a hundred. That's a possibility. It will almost certainly not happen, but we can't rule out the possibility.
Well, you kind of can.
So, if you like other nerdy science things like this, then comment a question you have and I'll post something about it!
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