Dekan

Could the answer lie in the TV series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation". In Season 11 of the series, Episode 16 was entitled "Turn on, Tune In, Drop Dead". Which fits the bit about the radio and subsequent demise. Perhaps other episodes cover the coming home, dinner, switching off lights, sleeping, and breakfast?

The simple explanation might be - that men have testicles. These organs produce hormones with the potential to dominate the male brain. Most men succumb to this power - their brains disappear into their trousers. They become politicians, start wars, copulate with interns, and generally disgrace themselves. However a valiant minority of men, resist the hormonal corruption. They rise above it, and become Scientists - keeping their minds free for the rational contemplation of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. After all, the greatest scientist in history - Isaac Newton - was a lifelong virgin. Doesn't that put it in a nutshell?

Chandragupta's posts are admirably courteous. They're a lesson in how to be polite. And they attempt, eloquently, to convey Indian mystical thoughts - the "Wisdom of the East". Such "wisdom" may look impressive at first sight. But it falls down when analysed linguistically. For example, every word in the "Vedas" seems to carry about ten different possible meanings. Can such vagueness convey precision of thought? Surely not - English is needed to clarify and pin down the meanings. Also, the question arises: has Eastern mysticism ever brought any tangible benefits - like inventing steam-engines and railways. India owes its railways to 19th-Century Westerners, who came in and built them - using Western Science and Engineering. No Eastern gods or demi-gods helped in the construction. So unless Eastern mysticism can demonstrate some practical results, shouldn't it be thrown into the dustbin of history?

That's right. Modern society can provide plenty of opportunities for people to achieve their goals - even if the goals are sometimes a bit dodgy. For example: 1. Exhibitionists can join naturist clubs. 2. Hot-tempered violent persons, can enlist in the army, or take up boxing. 3. Those with sadistic desires to cut human flesh, can become surgeons. These are all legal ways of sublimating base urges, and making them respectable, or even admired. But most people don't seem to take the rational, considered approach suggested in your post. Does something in human nature oppose it?

We have balloons. They go upwards, against the downward pull of gravity. They exhibit the essential quality - defying gravity. Suppose an alien spaceship arrives at Earth. And hovers pretensiously over New York. The upward-peering citizenry exclaim in awe: "Oy Veh - these schmucks must have mind-boggling anti-grav technology! See - their ship stays suspended in mid-air already!" Then President Obama, after due consultation with Joint Chiefs and the latest CIA Director, concludes - "Nah, it's just a big Zeppelin - send up a coupla F-16's and bring the m-fing gasbag down pronto - no problem." What I'm getting at is, why isn't a balloon regarded as a real and present anti-gravity device? What does it lack?

You're right to be impressed by the Universe - it's a big job, containing trillions of stars. But isn't this the point - the stars don't seem to be arranged very rationally. They should be in nice neat geometric patterns. Instead they look like the result of some drunk picking up a bucket of sand and chucking it all over the place. This is bound to offend human rationality and smacks of gross incompetence by the divine Perpetrator. And the flight of a butterfly isn't awesome, except in the sense of being awsomely bad. It's ungainly, aerodynamically inefficient, and wouldn't be tolerated by any aircraft designer. Be impressed by such things, if you will - but don't admire them.

Perhaps Psychology isn't exactly a science - it's more like a study - in the same way that History is a study. I don't think anyone would claim that History is a "science" - but that's not to demean it. It can give insights into how humans tend to behave. As Psychology can. Both History and Psychology are worthwhile studies. What they seem to lack is the precision, and predictive power, of true sciences such as Physics and Chemistry. Might that change in the future? I'm thinking of Arthur Koestler's novel "Darkness at Noon", in which 1930's Soviet political-prisoner Rubashov speculates about what goes on in Stalin's brain: "He pictured a cross-section through that brain ... the whorls of grey matter curled round one another like muscular snakes, became vague and misty like the spiral nebulae on astronomical charts...what went on in the inflated grey whorls ... one knew nothing. Perhaps, much later, a teacher would draw on a blackboard an algebraic formula, and, pointing with his ruler to a grey foggy landscape between the second and third lobe of Stalin's brain, say "Now it was this, which in the second quarter of the twentieth century led to the triumph of the totalitarian principle in Eastern Europe". Could Psychology ever get to that stage?

When we "worship" God , aren't we just playing safe. I mean, suppose there actually is a Supreme Being, or "God", who created the present Universe. No rational human could admire the Universe. It's nasty and cruel, as jp255 points out. It makes humans undergo continual suffering. But the suffering might get worse, if we raised objections. Suppose we criticised God's creation. Then He might get angry and inflict us with even worse tribulations. Therefore it's best for us to placate Him with praise and worship. By doing so, we pretend that really - it's a good life. As in the famous SF story.

I wonder whether the use of "reading spectacles" can actually make eyesight deteriorate. To put this question in context - I've unfortunately reached the age at which focussing on close things, gets difficult. So reading a book, requires holding it at quite a distance. Not exactly "at arm's length", but further away than is physically comfortable. To overcome this problem, I have for many years used a "reading-glass" - a single, non-achromatic, convex crown-glass lens, 4 inches in diameter. This lens has enabled me to read in comfort even the finest book-print, for hours on end, without any eye-strain. However the lens does have two drawbacks: 1. The 4" diameter lump of glass is quite heavy, and after a while, the effort of holding it, causes aching in the wrist; 2. It has to be held in one hand, so if the other hand is holding the book, there's no hand free to write notes etc. So to try to get round these drawbacks, I recently bought a pair of reading-spectacles - 3.5 dioptre. These give about the same magnification as the single lens. And they're very light, perched on the nose. No wrist-ache - and they leave both hands free. The only thing is - after wearing the spectacles for 20 minutes or so, my eyes start to ache. Which causes me to take the spectacles off. And after taking them off - my vision seems blurred for a while, which I never experienced with the single lens. All this makes me fear that the spectacles - if used continually - may cause eyesight damage. Is this fear justified, do you think?

The gravitational force seems hard to explain. Perhaps it isn't really a force at all. Couldn't it be just a natural tendency for all matter to gather together - to be "at home", so to speak. For example - suppose you see a stone lying peacefully at rest on the ground. The stone is at home, in natural contact with its fellow earth. Then suppose you disturb the stone's rest - by picking it up with your hand, gripping it, and lifting it up into the air. The stone is now placed in an unnatural position, poised in the air. What happens if you release the grip of your hand - the stone, freed from your clutch, quickly moves, or falls, back down to the ground. And so resumes its natural place. Does the stone's behaviour need to be explained in terms of outside forces acting on it. Might it not be only a demonstration that all matter belongs together?

If the LHC has insufficient magnification to resolve the SUSY particles, then a bigger instrument is needed. Or perhaps there aren't any SUSY particles. They might be the equivalent of Martian Canals?

This is a good question. What would you see, if you were inside an atom? Doesn't the answer depend on what kind of atom it is. For example, suppose you're in a hydrogen atom. Then you'll just see a proton at the centre, with an electron perpetually orbiting around it. And that situation will continue for ever (unless the central proton eventually decays - but that's another story). The point is - inside a Hydrogen atom, the situation is stable and unchanging. So there's no apparent way to measure time within the atom - no change, hence no time. However - what if the atom you're in, is made of Uranium. The Uranium atom isn't stable. It keeps throwing out particles, until it eventually decays into an atom of Lead. This steady process of decay will be seen by an observer within the atom. Won't that make the observer aware of the steady passage of time?

Chandra, if you're right, what are the implications for AI - will we never be able to make a computer like HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey"?

Couldn't the USA build a chain of enormous wind-turbines all along its East Coast. There's enough space for at least 5,000 of them. Each with three 100-metre blades. These huge rotating triple-blades would generate a colossal amount of electric current. Plus - they'd soak up the wind energy from incoming hurricanes, and smooth it out - thus transforming wildly rushing air currents into a source of steady power, and US consumer satisfaction. Moreover, the wind-turbines could be coated in re-cycled aluminium foil. This would reflect the hot solar rays back into outer space, and so help reduce Global Warming! And turbine-chains on the Pacific Coast too, would generate a lot of useful power, and reflect more sunlight away. With all these advantages and benefits, what's stopping the USA from doing it?

Thanks Arete. You seem to be suggesting that arthropods are the same as vertebrates, as regards body systems. But is that true - for example, may I ask this question: Can arthropods survive nuclear radiation better than vertebrates? I know the answer's "yes" - but why? Is it because arthropods have less complex internal organs, which can better withstand, and repair, radiation-induced cellular damage. If so, doesn't it seem possible that arthropods might also be less susceptible to cancer-induced damage?

Well, that depends on how much time the galaxies have had to accelerate away. If they've had 13.7 billion years to accelerate, they should by now be travelling so fast that they'd have exceeded light-speed - and thus completely vanished from our sight. Yet we can still see galaxies. For example - a few nights ago I observed the Andromeda M.31 galaxy through my Zeiss 7X50's. The galaxy was definitely still visible. How do you explain that?

Insects have very small bodies. So they've only got a small number of body cells which might become cancerous. Whereas big animals - such as humans - have far more cells. This abundance of cells, offers far more opportunity for cancer to start. Therefore one might expect cancer to be much more common in big animals, than in small ones. Also, insects have fewer specialised internal organs. For example, no insect could get lung cancer, because it hasn't got any lungs.

Thanks DH - I cited Venus (as you probably guessed!) - because its retrograde rotation seems to blow a hole in the tidal-lock idea. Venus is rotating in the wrong direction. Going backwards, so to speak. This anomalous behaviour seems hard to explain by tidal lock. Of course there are Velikovskian explanations - about Venus being a kind of rogue comet shot out from the Sun. But this seems chemically and physically implausible. And is confuted by the almost perfect circularity of the Venusian orbit - not an orbit likely to be taken up by a rogue body. So we have to get back to normal explanations. And in this connection, I'm grateful to you for drawing attention to the thick Venusian atmosphere. Before reading your post, I hadn't given any consideration to planetary atmospheres, and their possible effect on rotation. It seems, intuitively, that the atmospheric effect must be very small. But that may be a facile impression. Therefore I'd be glad of your guidance on these two questions, please: 1. What is the mass of the Venusian atmosphere - as a percentage of the mass of the planet's rocky body? 2. What contribution does the atmosphere make - in percentage terms - to the planet's angular momentum?

Does "Accelerating expansion" make sense? If it was true, we wouldn't even see any galaxies. They'd long ago have speeded away into the diistance, and vanished from our sight. The fact that they haven't vanished seems to refute the "acceleration" theory. The whole business is probably due to some error of measurement, as you say.

What if a "black hole"is made to eat a 20MT thermonuclear bomb, which we drop in. When the bomb detonates, what effect will it have?

US currency is respected, and valued, all over the world. I know this, because when I used to go on holidays in foreign countries, dollar notes were always accepted as real money. Local currency was sometimes rejected. But American dollars never failed.

Thanks D H, appreciate your interesting post. You say that a key factor is the distance between the two bodies. The distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 93 million miles. And you suggest that at such a distance, tidal locking can't have an effect - at least, not for hundreds of billions of years. At what distance would tidal locking take effect? For example, suppose the Earth were closer to the Sun - say at a distance of about 63,000,000 miles- like the planet Venus. Is Venus tidally locked?

"Tidal locking" has always seemed to me vaguely suspect. Mainly because the Earth isn't tidally locked to the Sun. Surely it ought to be? Or at least, the Earth's axial rotation should be quite slow - dragged by Solar tidal effects - resulting in a slowly-rotating Earth. Yet this isn't so - the Earth seems to display a complete disregard for tidal effects. It spins fast on its axis - 365 times in just 1 orbit round the Sun! Where's the tidal locking?

The politicians put it in the water - because they found out that fluoride weakens the human brain. Specifically, the fluoride damages a part of your brain called the "hippocampus", which controls your personality. Once the hippocampus has been got at by the fluoride, your personality becomes more docile. More likely to obey orders. Vote for anyone. Do as you're told. As is well known, this was discovered by a big German chemical company in the 1930's. Which explains a lot. You don't think governments are keen to fluoridate water because of concern for your dental health, do you?

The technical details of this theory, are admittedly hard to grasp at first sight. However let's not dismiss any new theory out of hand. Even if wrong, it might provide an impetus to Science. After all, the development of Science in Western countries was strongly influenced by ideas contained in the Bible. So if the Qu'ran offers possible alternative ideas and insights, shouldn't we at least consider them?