Clocks

Clocks don’t sound like a very interesting topic for a blog post, do they? I mean who cares about clocks? We just have them and they work. They perform a simple function well (hopefully) and what interesting new developments could possibly occur? Well quite a lot, actually.

My interest in horology began when I read a book by Dava Sobel called “Longitude”. Actually I read a few pages of it when I found it in a client’s office while I was waiting for an install to finish. It was so good that I bought a copy myself. It was a real paper book because this was a few years back before I started reading on the iPad.

So what’s the connection between longitude (which is the measure, usually in degrees, of a position around the Earth) and clocks? It goes back to the time of sailing ships when measuring longitude (and getting an accurate position) was impossible. The problem was that the Earth rotates on its axis so that unless you know the time accurately the observed location of the stars was useless as a measure of your position on Earth.

But clocks were notoriously difficult to keep accurate on a ship which was being tossed around at sea as well as experiencing extremes of temperature.

So the British Parliament offered a huge prize for solving this problem and the obvious way to do that was to build an accurate clock (there were other ways as well). A brilliant inventor and clock builder, John Harrison, built a series of increasingly accurate and compact clocks which were remarkably accurate even in the most difficult conditions.

They incorporated incredibly clever and complex mechanical mechanisms to compensate for the movement of the ship and changes in temperature. For example, bimetal strips would expand and contract and alter the balance of the clock’s timing just enough to keep it accurate. What he achieved was almost unbelievable.

His clocks (or copies of them) were used on famous voyages such as Captain Cook’s and on the Bounty. His most successful design, a large “watch” called H4 lost only 5 seconds after a two month journey at sea. But even though the clocks were admired by the sailors who used them he still had a lot of trouble extracting the full payment from the prize.

As I said, mechanical clocks are capable of impressive accuracy. In fact, according to a recent podcast (which was the reason for writing this post), the best pendulum clocks are actually more accurate than modern quartz electronic clocks. This probably only applies to standard modern models without accurate calibration and temperature control, I suspect. And also remember that modern quartz clocks are extremely cheap, compact, and reliable.

But that aside, mechanical clocks which achieved an accuracy of one hundredth of a second per day are very impressive. It’s also an example of genuine progress because the first pendulum clocks were only accurate to 15 seconds per day (but even that was almost one hundred times better than other technologies at the time).

So where have we gone from there? Modern atomic clocks are accurate to one second in about 50 million years. That is a hundred million times more accurate than the mechanical clocks I mentioned above.

And a new technology, which has been suggested by a team at an Australian university, is accurate to less than a second for the entire age of the Universe (about 14 billion years). As far as I know no one has yet built one of these “nuclear clocks” (which use neutron oscillation instead of the electrons used in conventional atomic clocks) but they would be another 300 thousand times more accurate than even atomic clocks.

But what’s the point? After all, if you are a billionth of a second late meeting your friend at the coffee shop it’s not really a big deal, is it? Obviously not, but picosecond timing can be useful for physics experiments involving precise measurements of events.

The recent controversy over the so-called faster than light neutrinos illustrates this issue. The neutrinos were travelling over 700 kilometers through the solid crust of the Earth and arriving at their target 0.0024 seconds later. But the timing revealed some arriving 0.00000006 seconds (or 60 billionths of a second) sooner than expected.

In that case the timing system was correct but the error was probably due to a faulty piece of cabling. However it does show the sort of accuracy required in modern experiments.

Incredibly precise measurements of time might lead to truly fundamental discoveries concerning the most basic laws of physics. They could tell us just how accurate theories like relativity and quantum theory really are (so far they have passed every test we have thrown at them) and even reveal if fundamental laws and “constants” are changing with time.

So something as simple as a clock is important and maybe just as critical as a far more spectacular bit of equipment like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Large Hadron Collider, or the (yet to be built) Square Kilometer Array.

Something Incredible

The world is sinking further into a major financial crisis but who cares because there’s a possibility that neutrinos might travel faster than light. The US is approaching a major political and economic disaster but does it really matter because Einstein might be wrong. Fundamentalist Islam is gaining power and threatens world peace but so what? CERN might have discovered something really amazing.

In the rhetorical rant above I’m trying to portray my thoughts for what’s important and what isn’t. I see the global financial, banking, and economic system as a silly exercise in futility where greedy people compete to see who can pull off the dirtiest tricks. But what really matters gets little publicity: fundamental discoveries in science which might truly revolutionise the world.

I know that financial markets have a greater immediate direct influence on most people than discoveries in physics but the key words here are “immediate” and “direct” because I think quantum physics (I use that as an example of something most people see as esoteric and theoretical) has had a greater effect on the world than every financial institution that ever existed.

I won’t justify that opinion in this blog entry (although I could) because I want to go on to say a little bit about how incredible this discovery potentially is. But first I need to emphasise this is preliminary and unconfirmed, although an earlier but far less precise experiment at FermiLab found a similar result.

So the observation is that neutrinos produced in an experiment being run by the European physics organisation CERN have been observed to arrive at their destination a few billionths of a second earlier than expected. And that earlier arrival means they would be travelling faster than light would. It probably sounds unremarkable to the average person but to a science geek it is just stunning.

The speed of light being a limit to everything in this universe is such a fundamental part of modern science that the possibility that it isn’t true is genuinely astonishing. And there’s the point that objects travelling faster than light might have bizarre and useful properties which we might only be able to guess at now.

An alternative explanation is even more amazing. That is that there are extra dimensions involved which allow the neutrinos to take shortcuts which bypass the usual dimensions of our universe. In other words it might be possible to take a path shorter than a straight line between two objects.

Both of these hypotheses aren’t entirely new: tachyons (particles which travel faster than light) and extra dimensions (7 extra according to some theories) are already a part of the more speculative parts of physics. But finding evidence that these might be real is something else again.

But how would a neutrino travelling faster than light or an extra dimension really affect the average person on the street? We don’t know, but judging from the results of theoretical physics discoveries in the past I would say the potential practical applications would be significant.

Just a few of the discoveries coming from quantum physics have lead to the computer revolution and the information age. That revolution is the most significant for centuries and has changed the world more than any economic or financial intervention.

So yes, I think this could be big but we might not know how big for another 50 years. That’s the way truly fundamental scientific research works and it’s why it doesn’t fit into many of the simple-minded business or political models some people try to force onto it.

And even there does turn out to be a prosaic explanation for these observations I think my thoughts are still relevant because there will be other amazing discoveries out there. As Carl Sagan said: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

Lucky Earth or Doom Soon?

As I write this blog entry I am flying at over 10,000 meters on my way to Brisbane for an iPhone/iPad programming workshop. The flight to Australia is only 3 to 4 hours but it’s a good opportunity to catch up on some reading. Of course I am reading an ebook on my iPad, specifically a book about astronomers’ failure to find extraterrestrial intelligence called “the Eerie Silence”. Yes, this is the same book I blogged about a while ago – I read several books simultaneously and have only just got back to this one.

Currently the book is discussing the famous Drake Equation. This is an idea more than a formal equation which can be used to estimate how many intelligent civilisations there might be in our galaxy. Unfortunately many of the factors in the equation are rather poorly known (actually, let’s be honest: they aren’t known at all) so the final number can vary from 1 (us) to hundreds of millions.

So there is a lot of conjecture involved in estimating how common intelligence actually is. But there is also some real empirical evidence. We have been deliberately looking for intelligent life for many years now and there are also ways that observations intended for other purposes might reveal intelligent life’s existence.

But that evidence is famously absent. The universe is eerily silent (hence the name of the book). Why?

There seem to be several possibilities. First, we might be looking for the wrong thing. Most attempts at detecting extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) concentrate on detecting radio transmissions. But strong, undirected radio is a poor technology for most purposes and is declining even now on Earth. We now use more optical fibres, directional radio beams, and shorter range radio cells. So the period that our technological civilisation would be detectable by its radio signals is quite small.

But it’s reasonable to think that other anomalies would become apparent where an advanced technology is present. Yet we don’t see them, or at least we don’t recognize them. It’s possible that as a technology becomes very advanced it might not even be recognisable as technology. As science fiction author Arthur C Clarke said: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

But if the number of planets with intelligence is towards the high end of the estimate we might expect, just by luck, to detect something which we recognise. Yet we don’t, so again I ask, why not?

There seem to be two good possible reasons: the “lucky Earth” and the “doom soon” scenarios.

The first states that the Earth has been extremely lucky. First life arose quite quickly, then it evolved without becoming totally extinct and passed through several difficult transitions (the appearance of photosynthesis, multicellular life, etc), then advanced intelligence arose (by that we mean intelligence capable of producing a technology which can communicate with ETI on other planets). Maybe all of this happening within the window of opportunity which the life of a typical star creates is unlikely. Maybe we really are here just through luck. Maybe there is no other ETI in the whole observable universe just because no other planet has been lucky enough.

That’s an intriguing thought in itself. Being the only intelligent life is even more surprising than actually finding ETI.

But what about the second idea: doom soon? This posits the theory that intelligence does arise fairly commonly but it doesn’t last for long. There could be many reasons why a technological civilization might disappear: environmental destruction, conflict, various global natural disasters, or just social and political instability. If intelligent life doesn’t last long then it might have arisen many times but we just haven’t been looking at the right time. In the almost 14 billion year age of the universe we have only been looking for about 50 years. That’s just 0.0000004% of the universe’s age.

So both of these theories are a mixture of good and bad. The lucky Earth means we will probably survive as a species a lot longer (perhaps indefinitely in some form) but we will probably never find any other intelligence in the whole universe. But the doom soon theory suggests we might meet an unfortunate end in the relatively near future, but on the other hand there could be many other intelligent civilizations we could meet before then.

There really is no way to pick between these (and other ideas as well) until we get some real empirical evidence. The radio-based SETI program has failed – at least it has failed to find positive evidence which is an important finding in itself – but what other options are there?

The current most relevant program is the Kepler mission. I have discussed this in the past. It is an extremely interesting and precise mission which has detected many planets orbiting other stars. Because of the way it works Kepler has mainly found very big planets orbiting their stars in very short periods but as time passes it should return data on a wider range of planets.

That mission is designed to find planets, not intelligent life, but it might be able to detect some of those interesting anomalies I mentioned earlier. Just finding one other example of life (preferably intelligent life) would give us so much more data. Currently we are trying to make probability-based predictions based on a sample size of one. It might be more honest not to even try!

The Nuclear Danger

The recent problems surrounding the Japanese nuclear power plants, along with the two famous historial nuclear accidents: Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, often make people comment that nuclear power is not a good option. Many people in New Zealand say they are glad we are nuclear free, from both weapons and power generation. But how real is the threat from nuclear power?

Is the threat of a nuclear accident really as bad as some people think? It seems to me that a lot of the fear is generated from ignorance. The word “nuclear” is scary to most people. When you go to the hospital for an MRI scan do they mention the real name for the technique is nuclear magnetic resonance imaging? Is it just an accident that the “N” word has been dropped?

The fact is that many countries cannot realistically provide the energy they need any other way apart from nuclear so it’s here to stay whatever you think of it. And the accidents which have happened have all involved old first generation plants, some of which were poorly constructed and maintained (read about Chernobyl some time – it would have been funny if it wasn’t so serious) and many of which were run beyond their original expected life.

And concerning the recent events in Japan. How many people died as a result of the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear problem? That’s right, despite the amount of news coverage of radiation leaks, not a single person has been killed or even seriously injured by radiation. But the tsunami killed tens of thousands. Should we be scared of water instead?

Even the grossly mismanaged Chernobyl disaster only resulted in 31 confirmed direct deaths. WHO suggests it could reach 4000 and Greenpeace are suggesting 200,000 (although their obvious political bias greatly reduces the credibility of this figure). Sure that’s bad – even one death is bad. But it’s a small number compared with other disasters which have happened. I heard that living near a storage pond for waste from a coal fired plant produces the same risk as smoking a packet of cigarettes a day. How many deaths does that cause which we don’t even hear about?

There has never been a major problem with a second or third generation power plant and new technologies of the future will make nuclear power look even better: safer, more efficient, producing less waste, producing less material which could be used for weapons, and a lot more environmentally friendly than the alternatives.

The people who say they genuinely care about the planet should be encouraging research and construction of modern nuclear power facilities. If some of the promise of future technologies can be realised (and I’m not even starting to talk about fusion here) then our oil based civilisation can be revolutionised. Electric cars are the future of transport for example, but plenty of cheap electricity (generated without producing a lot of atmospheric carbon) will be needed. Nuclear power is the best way to achieve this.

How many people know that coal fired power plants produce more radiation than nuclear plants? Oak Ridge National Lab showed that the effective dose is 100 times higher from a coal plant and that after 100 years of operations coal plants worldwide would have released 830,000 tons of uranium into the atmosphere! Sure, I agree that nuclear can create a much greater immediate hazard if things go wrong, but the radiation from burning coal is a factor which many people don’t even consider.

Nuclear power is one area where I disagree with traditional “left-wing” or “green” dogma. Of course there are many others as well (although I also agree with a lot of their core beliefs) which is one reason I resist those tags being applied to me. We should look at all technologies as a whole. They all have good and bad points. Concentrating on the bad while ignoring the good, or ignoring the bad in alternatives, is not a good way to reach the most sensible conclusion.

I’m not saying nuclear power is something we don’t need to worry about. Old plants should be decommissioned when their safe life is over. Very strict regulations should be applied to all plants. And if there are safer alternatives we should use them. But we need to look at all the facts and not just reject a useful technology because its name contains that one scary word “nuclear”.

The Limits of Science

Is there a limit to what we can know? Does the scientific method stop working after a certain point? And if there is a limit, how close are we to the edge and how will we know when we get there? These are questions tackled in a recent Guardian Science podcast by Peter Atkins, the professor of chemistry at Oxford University, author of a leading physical chemistry text book, and author of popular science books “Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science”, and “On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence” (which deals with origins and other fundamental topics).

Atkins is optimistic that there is nothing science can’t answer, and that it will replace all myths about the unknown. He agrees there are many things that we have no answer for now: consciousness, and what came before the Big Bang would be two examples. But he thinks that just because we don’t have an answer now that doesn’t mean will never have one.

Naturally, I agree. There is no way to really prove that science can answer every question and there is no way to prove that it’s even the best way to answer any question, but there are two informal reasons why I think we should accept both of those ideas. First, science gets results: in all the years various philosophies have been applied to the world’s problems it is only since we used science that we have made significant progress. And second, it just makes sense. If you want to understand something you should observe it in an objective way and set up unbiased experiments to test ideas. That is the scientific method.

Atkins identifies three routes to “knowledge”: old texts (religion); sitting around thinking about it (philosophy); and examining the world, and doing experiments (science). Of course the word knowledge in that context doesn’t really mean facts. After all, how can examining old texts lead to facts when they all say something different and there’s no way to tell which (if any) might be true? And just thinking about a subject is a great way to come up with ideas but how do we know which ideas are real unless we use experiments and observation?

When asked why it had taken so long to get to the point where science is extensively used he replied that it was a matter of breaking the power of those who prefer the other methodologies.

The Greek philosophers generally used pure thought to decide what was true. Famously Aristotle thought women had less teeth than men. A simple observation would have tested that idea! Note though that there might have been good reason for the belief: apparently at the time women were often deficient in some vitamins leading to greater tooth loss. But Aristotle could have counted the gaps. Still, the point is not as simple as it initially seems!

And religious leaders rely on revealed “knowledge” from holy books and oral history. Reading something in a book or hearing it from an elder is fine but unless there is some skepticism about the information errors will never be corrected. Plus there is the problem that a lot of the content of religious books is designed to strengthen the religious group rather than reveal real truth.

Science flourished in the western world after the Enlightenment when the authority of the church was broken and science, skepticism, empiricism, maths, and logic took over as the preferred way to establish the truth. Clearly that process is still happening and many churches are still fighting a ridiculous rearguard action against the facts of science, such as evolution, today. They can’t win because the truth always becomes apparent in the end. It just takes longer for some people!

When asked “Is your intention in the book to do away with mythical creation type stories?” He replied “Oh, absolutely … Myths are placeholders, not actual explanations of what went on … Science is showing that reality is even more wonderful than what the myth makers have imagined.”

Again, I completely agree. Myths were ideas some people had when there was no good information to formulate a real theory. They are interesting and fun but they are useless as an indicator of what is true. It’s great to see authors not being scared to criticise religion. It has taken a while but Hitchens, Dawkins, and the other new atheist have lead the way.

He says don’t resort to referring to handbooks (such as the Bible, Koran, etc). They are collections of anecdotes about people’s ideas on solving problems in the past. You can use them as a guide, but don’t treat them as a unarguable authority.

So he doesn’t seem to be inspired much by theologians and religious people, what about philosophers? I’m afraid he’s pretty condescending to them as well! He sees philosophy as a millstone around science’s neck. It is used to point out the deficiencies in theories of knowledge (which is fair enough) but to also suggest that some things just cannot be done or known.

I think this is a bit unfair. I agree there are some philosophers who say science can never know anything but there are plenty of others who recognise the validity of the scientific method. If anyone was being truly honest they would say we can never be 100% sure of anything, even of our own existence, but most would embrace a more pragmatic compromise view where certain things were assumed to be true even if that isn’t strictly formally accurate.

But what about areas of knowledge where science doesn’t work? Are there any? The areas of ethics and spirituality might be good examples. Atkins says what we often regard as being outside of science’s domain: religion, spirituality, etc, are actually open to scientific investigation because they are aspects of the psychology of people.

It’s hard to disagree. In my opinion the only subjects which cannot be answered scientifically are “non-questions”. That is sets of words which seem to be questions but when they are analysed carefully they have no meaning. Here are a few “profound” questions I found on the web…

Question: Why did the Creator become man and identify himself with us, dying for us? Answer: He didn’t. There is no creator, and the Jesus story is almost entirely a myth.

Question: Who am I? Answer: I presume you want a deeper answer than your name and other identifying information. If you do then ask the question in a way which makes it clear exactly what you want to know.

Question: Why do we yawn? Answer: Because we’ve read too many boring, inane questions. Actually that’s not true. This is actually a really good question and no one seems to have a definitive answer yet. There are various theories involving increasing oxygen intake, social signals, and others, but (as is always the case) more research is needed!

Question: Does anything really exist or is it all just an illusion of our mind? Answer: Wow! Great question. I can’t think of any way that science (or religion or philosophy) could really prove that anything really exists. After all, even if we devised an experiment to prove something wasn’t in our mind couldn’t that experiment be a delusion created by our mind as well? Maybe that’s one genuinely difficult question which nothing can answer!

But are there some things which are just too hard for our brains to comprehend? Maybe, but the internet now allows for faster collaboration which helps minimise those limitations. And there is some reason to believe that computer technology might advance to the point where computers can do the thinking for us. A thinking computer might be the last invention ever necessary.

Finally, despite all the enthusiasm for science Atkins was gloomy about the future. First there is fundamentalism which he says diminishes self respect and imposes constraints on real progress. Plus the related topic of what he calls stupidity: wars, terrorism, etc.

This certainly seems to be true but there are signs that things are gradually improving in the west. The Islamic world just seems to sink further into the depths of superstition and ignorance though. That is unfortunate, as is the fact that a large part of the population, even in the US, still doesn’t believe a theory (evolution) which has such overwhelming support that it would require willful ignorance to reject it.

So out of all the contentious points which arose in the discussion it was only the outright rejection of philosophy which I was a bit doubtful of. The rest was totally realistic!

New Year Prediction

Here we are in a new year and two popular activities seem to have proliferated: the first is going over what happened last year and offering commentary on it, and the second is predicting what notable events might happen in the new year. Predicting the future always seems more interesting than rehashing the past so I thought I might give it a try!

First I need to say that, according to a recent news item I heard (or read), experts are very poor at predicting the future. In fact, in many cases, they are worse than what you would expect from chance. I didn’t see this broken down by area of expertise because I would expect business commentators and economists for example to get it wrong more than most, but it is a salient point I believe. But of course, I’m not an expert on most of the things I comment on so that removes that annoying detail!

I am an experienced amateur astronomer and science enthusiast so I want to make my first prediction in those general areas. So what exciting astronomy, cosmology, etc, related news item will we see this year?

I think one big trend will be the discovery of more Earth like planets, especially by the Kepler observatory currently in operation. This mission has already discovered many new potential planets orbiting other stars (I say potential because many have yet to be confirmed by continued and independent observations) but none have had conditions exactly like what we would expect to allow life similar to that on Earth to exist.

So I think many more planets will be discovered and the trend towards finding planets surprisingly different to those in our own Solar System will continue. But I also hope that small, warm, watery worlds might be found too. It will not be easy to confirm the presence of water at the distances involved but it’s not impossible either. In fact, there are even techniques for detecting signs of life by examining the atmosphere of the planets as they transit the star.

So as well as more planets and some planets very similar to Earth I’m hoping that maybe signs of water and perhaps even signs of life might be found. Obviously this is pushing the abilities of observational techniques to their limits but none of it is impossible.

Then there’s Mars. During the previous year there have been interesting discoveries there too but it might need to wait for missions further in the future (if they happen at all) before those questions are settled. So ironically there might be signs of life detected light years away on planets orbiting other stars while possible life on the second closest planet, a mere 100 million kilometers away, is ignored.

Just on the topic of the discovery of life I do want to say that I don’t like the approach some organisations, such as NASA, are taking when making announcements on the topic. The recent press event where NASA announced the discovery of a life form which can utilise arsenic instead of phosphorous was rather unfortunate. I think it’s important that science doesn’t become too tied up with publicity and marketing.

The standard dishonest practices of engaging in hyperbole and self-centered selective reporting are OK in the business world but I would prefer to keep them out of science. Of course because of the political nature of some organisations that is unlikely so I can just hope that people don’t equate popular science news from newspapers and some organisations with real science.

So there’s my first prediction: that we will know a lot more about extra-Solar planets and that will affect the predictions of life elsewhere in the Universe. Stay tuned for more predictions in other areas for the year.

Carl Sagan Day

The first message my computer calendar system presented to me this morning was that it’s Carl Sagan Day. Sagan was a scientist who popularised science, especially through his TV series “Cosmos”. Today is the 76th anniversary if his birth and it has been celebrated for the grand total of two years now, and mainly by science geeks. So yes, Sagan Day isn’t exactly the most famous day on the calendar for most people but he has near legendary status amongst people with an interest in science.

I can remember watching the Cosmos series myself, many years ago, and how it affected me because of its great balance of hard science and near poetic commentary by Sagan. He really did have a great way of making science accessible while emphasising the grandeur and mystery of the universe.

Sagan had some very perceptive an clever quotes and I would like to mention a few of them here, and offer my commentary on them, of course!

Perhaps this one captures his sense of wonder best: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Yes, that one sums up the way all science enthusiasts really think. We find discoveries about the origin of the universe far more satisfying than petty gossip about the latest movie star, or the financial state of a company which makes soft drinks, or who won the latest game of rugby (well maybe that one does deserve some respect!) or most of the other nonsense the majority of people think is news. In a years time the origin of the universe will still be a source of wonder, but who will really care about the others?

Some Sagan quotes put human activities in a realistic perspective. For example: “The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” Yes, as far as the universe is concerned the existence of humanity is irrelevant, contrary to the opinions of many religious people.

And there’s this: “Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” Again this is contrary to many religious views but as time goes by we seem to become less significant. First we found our star was just one in a vast galaxy, then that the galaxy was just one in a vast universe, now it looks like our entire universe might just be one in a vast (maybe infinite) multiverse.

But he recognised (as do all true skeptics and science devotees) that the truth was the only thing that really matters, not matter how much nicer fantasy is. This quote expresses that well: “For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Judging by how many people deny evolution, global warming, and other inconvenient truths, many people prefer the fantasy.

As well as being a lover of science Sagan was a real skeptic (one of the reasons we do admire him so much). Here’s a few quotes which show that aspect well: “But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” But he recognised that simple adherence to facts and well recognised processes wasn’t enough: “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

Like many of us Sagan was concerned about the ignorance of many people towards the things that actually matter. He said: “Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works” and “We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

Maybe he had seen the results of surveys showing extreme ignorance of the most basic scientific ideas. But he also encountered it himself: “I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.” But that might be because science education is so poor (especially in the US) that it’s almost worse than nothing: “I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.”

Sagan died 14 years ago and there has been some debate about whether there is anyone who could replace him today. There are a few scientists starting to achieve cult status around the world and many of them have a similar attitude encompassing both wonder and skepticism (Richard Dawkins would be an obvious example) but I don’t think any of them would really claim to be in Sagan’s league, especially because he was a populariser of science when that wasn’t considered a worthwhile activity by many of his colleagues. Also the seeming lack of resolve to produce science programs today makes another “Cosmos” seem unlikely.

That’s unfortunate, because as Sagan said: “When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.”

The End of Discovery

I recently listened to a podcast in the Guardian Science Weekly series where Prof Russell Stannard was interviewed about his book “The End of Discovery.” The book examines (and rejects) the idea that we might eventually have a “theory of everything” or might “know everything”. I presume he doesn’t believe the idea literally and maybe the concepts would be better expressed as “a theory which explains all the major phenomena in the universe: forces, particles, interactions, through one set of equations” and “we know all the significant details about all the significant objects and events in the universe” (of course I readily admit that “significant” in this context is very much open to interpretation.

As I listened to the interview I got the feeling that there was something I was missing. He seemed to be hiding something, or being deliberately obscure and imprecise about some things, or taking a deliberately and unjustified negative view towards science. So I Googled him and found – yes, I should have known – he has some sort of wacky religious belief! So the same criticism I have levelled at Francis Collins applies here: he is (presumably) a good scientist and knows his subject well but his religious beliefs warp his judgement when it comes to subjects which are based more on opinion than fact.

Maybe the most ironic thing was when he criticised Stephen Hawking (indirectly) by quoting a theologian’s comment about him: When Hawking talks about physics he is a great physicist and when he talks about religion he is a great physicist. In other words: stick to subjects you know something about! I thought that was a clever comment but it could just as easily apply to Stannard himself. His comments in the area of religion and philosophy are just as misplaced as Hawking’s, but in the opposite direction (being too supportive of religion instead of being too antagonistic towards it, like Hawking’s).

As I said, there was a point when I got the feeling something was wrong. It seems that I can now pick out people with a religious bias even when they are good scientists in their professional life. Actually it’s not that hard. All I have to do is wait for the telltale signs of comments concerning “there are things we will never know”. Actually, that’s not totally fair because I think many non-religious people believe that too. For example, I think we might never understand this question: why is there something rather than nothing?

No one can even begin to answer that question. Even religious people who resort to using god as an explanation only push the subject back one step because they can’t explain why that god exists rather than no god, which is really the same problem that the existence of the god was designed to answer.

But the difference is more about being deliberately negative or pessimistic to emphasise the idea that there might be mysteries we will never solve. For example, Stannard rejects the idea that computers can be used to answer these big questions. He suggests computers can only do what we can already do but faster. He completely ignores several possible ideas: something which is sufficiently fast will seem like it has entirely new capabilities, or when computers get smart enough they might be able to design a new type of computer, or as computers get bigger and faster they might develop emergent capabilities that we never expected.

Anther example is the claim (which I often hear) that some theories, such as multiverse theories and string and M theories, cannot be tested. According to some theorists I have heard from this is not true. For example, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, has said there are ways of testing string theory, although I must admit I can’t remember exactly what he suggested.

Of course being unrealistically positive is almost as bad and Hawking could possibly be put in that category. According to Stannard (and I haven’t confirmed this) Hawking claims that science can eventually answer all questions. I don’t think that is necessarily true. Maybe it might be able to answer all specific and well defined questions about the physical universe but the “ultimate question” I mentioned above (why is there something rather than nothing – which seems like a reasonable question) and a few others might never be answered.

So in summary, it would be interesting to hear some genuine and impartial thoughts on these deep and philosophical questions but people with flawed philosophical approaches like Stannard and Collins will never be able to do that.

Do the Science

Many people treat the real world as if it was really simple. They think that what has been accepted as true in the past or is accepted by a large number of people must be true. They think that what seems obvious intuitively must be true. Or they think that something must be true simply because it’s taken seriously by people with the same beliefs as they have (sometimes referred to as people they can trust).

All of these factors are an obvious source of false beliefs in the area of politics and religion and I don’t think I really need to demonstrate this with examples. But what about more subtle things? One of the aspects of psychology which I found fascinating (I majored in psych – along with computer science – when I was at university) was the amazing subtlety required to allow for human biases and behaviours when designing experiments to study social phenomena.

Recently I have heard of a few examples where subtle behaviours have lead to interesting, counter-intuitive results in studies of human behaviours.

Here’s an example: which is safer, riding with a cycle helmet on or without one? It has been shown that, while many helmets don’t offer a huge amount of protection, they are still a lot better than nothing. So the answer would obviously be that it’s safer to ride with a helmet on, right? Wrong! According to at least one study you are more likely to be injured or killed when wearing a helmet. How can that be? Apparently it’s because people wearing helmets feel safer and take more risks. Also car drivers tend to treat cyclists with helmets with less care than those without. So if you do crash the helmet will help but without one you are less likely to crash. Isn’t that interesting!

Here’s a similar example: which season is the most dangerous for driving? Most people say winter because the roads are more slippery, visibility is reduced, and the general conditions are much more difficult. But the answer is summer. More people drive in summer, but more importantly, people take more risks because they feel safer. When the road is icy or visibility is reduced by a rain storm it’s actually safer because people are far more cautious.

So by now you are probably getting the hang of this. Often the obvious answer is wrong because many of these phenomena are controlled by people’s behaviours which depends on perception rather than reality. So let’s try one more. If you are going to spend time in the sun should you use sunblock?

Most people would say yes, although some would say no because they think sunblocks contain dangerous chemicals. I’ll provide another clue here: the chemicals haven’t been shown to be dangerous so that logic fails. But if you took notice of the previous examples you might reach another conclusion: that using sunblock is dangerous because it gives people a false sense of security and they therefore spend more time in the sun.

Combine this with two other factors. First, most people don’t use enough sunblock; and second, they misinterpret the SPF number. Doubling the number does not double the effectiveness.

So people who use sunblock get more skin problems because they don’t use enough, misinterpret the protection it would offer even if they did use enough, and spend more time in the sun as a result. Interestingly, there is no well established link between the most serious form of skin cancer (melanoma) and sun exposure anyway. In fact there are some indicators that some sun exposure might help prevent some cancer, possibly through vitamin D production!

So the real world is very complex. There is no easy way to establish truth through intuition. In real life many factors are at work and all of those need to be taken into account before a real conclusion can be formed. And even then that conclusion should be provisional. The best way to establish what’s really happening is to test the phenomena using a controlled experiment.

The whole mechanism sounds very much like something we already know about doesn’t it? It sounds like empiricism and the scientific method. So the next time someone tells you they believe in god because it says so in a book, or they think right wing politics works because a blogger says so, or that global warming is false because humans could never influence the climate of the whole planet, just remember they are being pathetically naive. To really understand what’s going on in the world you need to transcend simplistic notions like that and do the science!

Playing God

There has been a lot of controversy and excitement recently over the development of a “synthetic genome” by Craig Venter’s group of researchers. Many people seem outraged that they have dared to “play god”. They say that as if it’s a bad thing but I would say that’s what science is all about.

Of course I don’t mean that literally because there is no good reason to think there is a god but what I do mean is that science should try to gain the abilities that are traditionally associated with gods. On the other hand, some of the actions attributed to gods in the past may not be what we should strive for: death, destruction, and immature behaviour are some of the negative aspects of gods. I’m thinking more of the more positive god-like attributes such as creativity.

So what has Venter’s group actually achieved? Well there is a lot of misinformation and flashy headlines going around which I think are very misleading. Basically they have succeeded in developing the first living cell which is controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The DNA was created by machine from a computer program and injected into an already living cell from a different species.

All of the machinery of the cell already existed but the new DNA will cause that cell to replicate and those cells will have been “created” by the synthetic DNA. From what I understand most of the DNA is a sequence from an existing species (a different one from the cell) but that has been modified and the researchers can create any DNA sequence they want.

So what’s the point? Is this some sort of Frankenstein-like act entirely designed to show how clever the scientists are and to create a potential risk with no hope of a positive outcome?

Of course not. All science is good and this would be even if had no practical purpose. But the ability to create a living cell with a DNA sequence specified by machine is potentially revolutionary. For a start it can be used to decide which parts of the sequence code for what because sections can be removed or changed easily. So it will lead to a much better understanding of how DNA sequences are translated into working proteins and how these function in biological processes.

And it means that entirely new life forms will be able to be created which might solve many of the greatest problems we have today: problems like energy generation and making spare body parts and designing new medical processes.

Naturally there have been many groups who are worried about the future of this technology. I call it the “Frankenstein syndrome”. People naturally assume that technologies they don’t understand and which seem to be “unnatural” must be dangerous. I agree that any technology can be dangerous and biological engineering certainly needs to be used carefully, but the potential advantages are so huge that it should take far more than just a vague general concern about genetic manipulation to halt the research.

It would be interesting to know if some of the objectors would change their mind if the technology was about to develop a cure for a disease they were likely to die from, for example. That might not be the case directly but in the long term it is likely to be true. Eventually most people will get a disease which this technology could fix. The problem is that the time gap between initial research and practical applications can be quite long and most people don’t cope well with any process which takes longer than a few months.

Maybe if scientists were really playing god they could do the whole job in 7 days (including the well earned rest at the end) but their abilities aren’t quite that divine just yet!