Evolution is Just a Theory - Theory vs. Law

The focus should not be between whether or not evolution is a theory or a law, as in, "I'll take evolution seriously when to goes from a theory to a law." Instead the debate should be between the theory of evolution going from a theory to a disproven theory. The distinction is important and I'd like to briefly outline why.

The usage of the word 'theory' in science is quite distinct from our normal, vernacular usage. In science, the term means 'model' or 'explanation' that incorporates a vast body of knowledge.

Other 'theories' that demonstrate the usage of the word 'theory' in science: cell theory (that tissue is made up of cells), germ theory (diseases and colds are caused by microscopic bacteria, protists and viruses), atomic theory (matter is composed of atoms), theory of gravity (the force of gravity is the explanation for the orbit of stars, planets, galaxies and objects to the Earth), theory of heliocentrism (the Sun is the center of the solar system).

This confusion is the source of some fun internet memes:

A scientific 'law' is not an explanation or model, like a theory, it's a simple statement of this does that. Newton's laws are a go to example--"A body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force". It offers no explanation like a 'theory' would, only a relationship--this does that. If we were to write that law as a theory we'd have to offer some explanation as to *why* it happened that way--something about mass, inertia, Higgs-Bosons, etc.

So in conclusion, the Theory of Evolution could *never* become a law because it could never stop being an explanation as to why biology looks the way it does today. That said, it could become something else--a disproven theory. All it would take for the theory of evolution to be disproven is one fossil, one organism, one anatomical structure, one DNA sequence, one piece of evidence that could definitely disprove common ancestry of life. It shouldn't be shocking that the Theory of Evolution has never become a law, but it should be unbelievably shocking that the theory has never been disproven. The Theory of Evolution has been under constant fire from day one 150 years ago and it has never once shown a sign of weakening. It has only gotten stronger as more evidence has been produced.

Limiting Factors - Can There Be More Than One?

Limiting factor: a resource or component that constrains a population's size.

Examples: food, water, nesting sites, predators, parasites, reproduction rates, finite chemicals (iron, phosphorous, nitrogen, potassium, etc.)

Considering all those examples, doesn't it seem like there's more than one limiting factor at a time?  Don't they all affect the population at once?

Can there be more than one limiting factor at a time?

The answer, counter-intuitively, is no.  Liebig's Law of the Minimum states that there can only be one limiting factor and uses an analogy of a barrel:

The lowest slat prevents the water (which represents the population) from increasing any higher.  If that resource were to become much more abundant then the population could rise again to create a new limiting factor.  

Video illustrating this: 

I hear you objecting: Yes, but aren't all those factors acting at once on the organism's population?  Say, aren't predators and limited food both keeping the population low?  Both are acting on the organism's population, but the strongest force is the one keeping the population at the suppressed rate that it currently is.  If you were to change that one most limiting factor the population would rise.  Change anything else and it would stay stationary (in theory).

The below illustration is something I played with to also add time into the equation showing how that limiting factors can change and how there are secondary effects of either too much or too little of a factor.  For example, too little sunlight and a plant can't photosynthesize well, too much and the plant becomes scorched; too little water and the plant desiccates, too much and it drowns.  

To use a plant as the example again (because their needs are simple), an understory plant's population is limited by a lack of sunlight.  Say a tree dies, falls over and opens up the canopy.  The aforementioned plant's population will now rise to a new level.  That level will soon be constrained by a new factor, such as limited water.  If rain came, then the population would be constrained by limited space or a chemical necessary for photosynethesis such as nitrogen.  The assumption is that a species will always produce more offspring than survive and that it is in a constant battle of increasing its population and then having it constrained.

There are some scientists that would like to play around with introducing iron into strategic locations in the ocean to boost marine productivity (since it's a limiting factor for phytoplankton) and possibly offset global warming by absorbing an abundance of CO2. More here. 

This idea of the weakest link breaks the chain also has been used in many other systems scenarios, such as management, economics, health, government, et cetera.

Pix and vid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_Law

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxPeGrl_0-4

The Human Scrapbook

I wanted to put into pictures the idea birthed here.    When we look in the mirror a myriad of generations and strange ancestral creatures peer back, if only we have the eyes to see it.  It's fun to think this way!  Examples abound and I post it now quite incomplete in hopes that I'll come back to it here and there and continue to amass great examples.

Teeth -  Possibly from small dermal plates

Jaw - You chew with a rib.

 

Hair - Well, hair had to come from somewhere.  Reckon it was modified scales.

Fingernails - More modified scales.

Arms and Legs - It's a different way to look at gymnastics as dancing on fins...

This dude's 73.  

Tail - I sit where my ancestors swam.

Ears - It should be a little weird to think that my ancestors breathed through the equivalent of my Eustachian tubes coming from my ears.

Nose - Fish have noses; they just don't go anywhere.  Amphibian evolution involved those pits deepening and finally opening to the palate.

Pix picked:
http://kingsenglish.info/2011/04/17/escaped-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth/
http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/bellyscales/Interesting
http://wildwhales.org/2011/02/offshore-killer-whales-a-diet-discovery/
http://www.life123.com/beauty/hairstyles-hair-care/layered-hairstyles/layered-hairstyles-for-long-hair.shtml
http://www.tattooingtattoo.com/cross-tattoos-2/back-tattoos-for-men/
http://enb150-2011f-thb.blogspot.com/2011/11/amphioxus.html?z
http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/09/03/4352115-
http://outlier.deviantart.com/art/Australian-Lungfish-3886569
http://onefatfish.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/22/
http://mad.blog.dccomics.com/tag/jay-leno/
http://www.muscleandstrength.com/forum/general-chat/64462-random-bodybuilding-thread-2.ht
ml
http://www.managemylife.com/mmh/questions/247358-broke-tail-bone-several-years
http://www.chicagoparent.com/magazines/web-only/october-2010/when-it's-time-to-see-an-ent
http://wonderaday.com/blog/The_Underwater_World_Of_Indonesia/
http://www.gigwise.com/news/49325/Michael-Jacksons-Nose-Could-Collapse-From-MRSA-Superbug

Nose Hairs in Humans - An Idle Evolutionary Speculation

If you think about it, noses are funny looking.  What do you think an alien or other species would think of our schnozes?   They come in all different shapes for different reasons.

http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7262&page=2

http://www.drawspace.com/lessons/p08/adult-noses-in-profile

They're quite different from other primate noses:

http://www.itsnature.org/trees/mammals-trees/proboscis-monkey/

http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/gorilla/physical-characteristics.htm

http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/golden_snub-nosed_monkey 

There's something else that's different.  The inside:

What does having a lot of nose hairs say about our evolution?  Let's consider some possibilities


Do other mammals have similar amounts of nose hairs to humans? Certainly they may, but I feel like I've typically seen nary a nose hair in another animal's nose by picture, pet, zoo.  Might we be special in this regard?  Frankly, I wish I knew more about this, but I'll offer some speculation (because I enjoy thinking about these things).

-We have the same amount it's just that humans have them closer to the exit of the nose. Possibly because we have dextrous fingers? :)

http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/hair-trimmer-nose-hair-trimmer-6003005/

http://mybeautifulstrange.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/london-zoo%E2%80%99s-nose-picking-gorilla/

-We have more nose hairs because we have little in the way of turbinates--cilia filtering, warming, moisturizing nasal corrugations. And why is that? Our ancestors needed to distance walk/run and therefore hyperventalate? What does that say about our evolutionary climate?  Moister? Warmer?  Less focus on smell?

Turbinates are drastically more complex and corrugated in other animals. 

http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/77199-Kodiak-hunters-want-a-quality-Skull-mount
Human:

http://chambermusictoday.blogspot.com/2008/01/humidifying-captive-singers-breathing.html

-Does it say anything about the specific evolutionary environment from which we come? High dust desert? High bug zone?

http://pippasperegrinations.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?pid=17088#p17088

The response I received: 

• Joe Daniel

• University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
• Posts: 143

Other animals have nose hairs, we are not special in that regard. The amount varies, but I couldn't say anything about how much exactly.

We don't lack turbinates. We have three sets, an inferior, middle, and superior. They are not as well developed as in some others, like say dogs and seals, but we have them and they are very important in helpig us to limit water loss through our nasal passages and to a small degree in helping to cool the brain (ok, only by about half to one degree, but still).

Most people think we evolved in a more open, drier climate, which was probably dusty, so it is possible we were selected for bushier noses than our more forest-bred ape relatives, but I don't know of any real studies on that.

Science Meditation

I had a friend recently say that, "Creativity is the combining of ideas in a new way." (Jamie Riley paraphrase)  I think he's on to something there.  Creativity is the game "Apples to Apples"--making new connections between disparate ideas.

What I'd like to do is consider how two ideas--meditation and science literacy--might intersect.   Let me give a greenhorn's understanding of some meditation practices and then discuss how science can fit hand in glove with your own practice of meditation.

First, a story on how meditation saved my butt!!!

I was at a local meditation event listening to a guided meditation and my mind unprompted went where it often goes in these situations--to imagining the invisible electro-magnetic/atomic world around me.  I was imagining the atoms around the room bustle in Brownian motion, interact with photons, change quantum states, vibrate synchronistically through sound, circulate around the room in zyphers of wind and conviction currents, etc...and...suddenly...O SH%#!!!  I forgot to turn off a heating plate at my job at a chemistry lab!!!  Luckily I was able to call over and have it turned off, but I was so scared since I had it on for a few hours!!  Yikes!  Meditation saved my butt!  haha!

Ok, back to an over view of meditation so we can see how science meditation can fit in!

Types of meditations (as I understand it)

• Mind Scape Meditation
• Idea/mantra
• Focusing deeply on a central thought.  Learning about it. Thinking through it.  Applying it. Making it real within your mind. Reveling in it.
• Person
• Meditate on a person you truly admire.  Why do you admire them?  What can you learn from them?  How can you honor their lives with your life?
• Object
• Symbolism
• Essence
• Function
• Feeling
• Become self aware.  Not necessarily judging what you're mind is feeling, just only observing, analyzing.  Becoming mindful of your brain--the vast expanse of neural experiences within.
• Problem solving
• Taking time to work through a problem--reviewing past actions, considering future options.
• Thankfulness
• Counting  one's blessings.
• Bodyscape
• Become aware of your body
• What is your body feeling?  Pain?  Boredom?  Fatigue?  Why?  Analyze, don't judge.
• Motion
• Walk
• Be mindful of the motion, the muscles, the action, the intention.
• Surroundings
• Become aware of your senses.
• What sounds do you hear around you?  See?  Feel?
• For a challenge, see if you can observe more than one occurrence at a time.  Can you do three?  It's supposed to not really be possible to pay attention to three things with any real level of depth.

Now, within these three realms of focus--the mind, the body, the world around us--how can the teachings of science inform and empower our meditation?  My understanding of meditation centers around awareness, mindfulness and science has empowered human awareness to a degree that former generations could not have comprehended--so revel in it!  Become mindful of the universe happening around you right now!

• Mind
• Consider the crackle of electric impulses within your mind--100 billion neurons buzzing, humming, communicating, resting, their amoeboid arms stretching out to form connections totaling 100 trillion
• Consider the micro ocean of neurotransmitters chemically setting into motion the thoughts, sensation and actions of the body--just slight parts per billion that manifest huges changes

• Body
• Go from head to toe considering all the functions that are taking place in your body
• Blood
• Red blood cell oxygenation
• White blood cells capturing invaders and consuming dead or defunct cells
• Heart and its molecular muscle motors reacting to the power of ATP
• Lungs filling, oxygenating, dispursing CO2
• Liver, kidneys, pancreas, gall bladder, intestines, muscles and on and on!!!

• Surroundings
• Consider sound.  Become mindful of the sources of the sounds around you.  Consider the waves emanating from the source--the compression pulses of wave in the form of concentric circles growing larger and then reflecting and bouncing off the other objects in the wall.  Much like a 3-D version of the surface of a pool of water that has been disturbed.  Become aware of how that sound hits the curves and bowl of your ear, traveling down your ear canal to the ear drum, the three ear bones, the inner ear, the cochlea, the fluid and hairs within the cochlea, the impulses traveling from ear to brain, etc.  

• The Electromagnetic world around you
• The process of seeing
• The invisible spectrum

I have benefited greatly from these lectures by Dr. Feynman and really do hope you'll click on this link if for no other reason that to see that they exist.  Feynman has a brilliant way of bringing the invisible reality to life.: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+feynman+fun+to+imagine&aq=f

• Neutrinos
• There are billions of neutrinos flowing through our body every second flowing from the Sun.
• Geographic location
• Consider the forces that created the land around you.  Reverse, in your mind, time to undo the weathering forces, plate tectonics, igneous forces, etc.

• Elemental  history
• Consider the history of the elements around you.  Their age in billions of years.  Their star ancestry.

• Evolution
• If you're walking, consider an animal.  In your mind go through their evolution history, the epochs, bio-geography, the predators and prey its ancestors encountered.

• Solar Power
• Become mindful of how a seething ball of magnetized gas 93 million miles away is heating itself to astronomical degrees--27 million in the core-- by the crush of gravity as new heavier elements are created and releasing prodigious amounts of energy.  Electron motion becomes wavicle photons that travel through a void of space to a spinning ball held in rotation by the gravitational bending of space time.  This energy causes photosynesis, which powers plants, which power the animals we see and ourselves.  Everything is solar powered.
• Space
• See through the Earth and the physical features around you.  See in your minds eye the position of the Sun, the moon, the stars through the atmosphere and through the Earth.   See the core of the Earth, the upside down walking of people on the other side of the Earth, consider the distances of how far they are, imagine birds flying upside down, water being pulled "up", kangaroos hopping upside down in Ausatralia, the thousands of people in the air in planes being ferried from place to place, etc.

So, why bother?  Why spend the time?  Why expend the energy?

To me that's almost like asking, "Why love?"  To connect.  To realize.  To become one.  To stretch.  To unbound yourself.

"The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality--we are connected; not in the trivial ways that Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways." --Carl Sagan

Later note: There are two main kinds of meditation--focused attention and open monitoring.  Focused attention finds holds an object in conscious attention.  Open monitoring allows the mind and senses to wander, allowing thoughts and perceptions to come and go as they will.  Open monitoring with science might include being in nature and simply soaking up the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations.  

Cambrian Explosion Explanations

Duck and cover! It’s the Cambrian Explosion!

Here’s a brief over view of evolution: Life started 3.5+ billion years ago. Then nearly nothing happens during the ‘boring billion’, as it’s affectionately known (with a lot of neat exceptions, like the Ediacaran fossils etc.). Then 580+- million years ago there was an ‘explosion’ of phylum constituting most of the 36 animal phyla now in existence. Some paleontologist estimate that as many as a 100 phylum were created over the period of only tens of millions of years. What gives? Why the billion years of nothing and then an explosion of diversity? Why haven’t we had a continuation or acceleration of this diversification? How come we’ve only added a hand full more phyla? Why hasn’t the pace continued? This blog will dabble in some of the exciting developments that have emerged in this exciting inquiry.

• Hox Genes: Evolution only works by mutations.  ONLY.  That means it can take a stupefyingly long time for big changes since big mutations are rare and the amount of big changes that are positive is vanishingly small.  So, when a break through mutation happens, like in the hox genes (those genes that regulate embryonic development of body shape) that can give a whole new range of possibilities for evolution to play with.  That is most likely what happened during the Cambrian Explosion - major developmental genes were developed and the landscape was drastically changed.

• Snowball Earth: If you don’t know about this, you are positively missing out.  Several times in the Earth’s history our planet has looked like the ice cube Europa.  Support for this includes evidence of glacier deposits at the then equator (based on paleomagnetism, marine sedimentation), and other chemical markers (like pH indicators, oxygen markers in iron deposits, iridium meteorite deposits, carbon isotope ratios, carbonite deposits, etc.)  The last major Snowball Earth period was right before the so called Cambrian Explosion.  This thaw out might have been the crack in the dam that had been building for some time.

Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Artist's rendition of what Earth may have look like as a snowball.

• Oxygen Levels: This chemical is a major limiting factor for life.  One might argue that we are oxygen powered animals since it serves such a vital function in making our energy.  There’s more to it than just energy, though.  What’s the most common protein in our body accounting for some 25-35%? Collagen.  What’s collagen need a whole lot of to be made?  Oxygen!  What’s it do?  It sticks cells together to make multicellular life and larger structures possible! So, during the Snowball Earth a massive amount of rock was pulverized and dropped into the ocean essentially as fertilizer to cyanobacteria that went nuts growing after the ice sheets melted away thereby producing a prodigious spike in oxygen levels.

That first bump up is the Cambrian Explosion.

• Predation: Things had been eating each other for a long time, but not really at a multicellular level.  During the Cambrian Explosion an arms race took place to hunt and escape that resulted in some amazing adaptations.
• Eyes: predation went from passive filter feeding to active hunting.

• Hard and Bony Parts: Being able to chew and have armor changed everything.

• Mouth: Just think sponge and jellyfish if you want kind of want to know what life was like before the C.E.  Jaws changed everything.

Gotta love the names of Cambrian stuff.  This is anomalocaris (from anomaly).   

So, why so little phylum generation since then?...Let me know if you have other thoughts, but I'd imagine that much of it would have to do with so many of the environmental niches being filled already...But, I'm open to other ideas!

Pix from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Science as Myth Part I of II

 Note: these are sketch notes from my presentation at UUCT. They aren't meant to read like my typical blogs. Some of the below was in my presentation and some of it is clippings from the cutting room floor that I thought were great, but not conducive to my presentation 's thrust. Thus, the below may seem a little scattered.

• Intro quotes to the topic of science and religion.
• “I am absolutely convinced hat science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than are the classics, but the products of the stimulus do not normally see the light because scientific men as a class are devoid of any perception of literary form.” JBS Haldane
• “The next great task of science will be to create a religion for humanity.” --Lord Morley
• “New ideas, usually classed as scientific, have permeated a large section of the community and prevented them from belonging to any of the established churches, whose belief in miracles, in revelation, in the inspired authority of the Bible, runs counter to the established truth, as the scientifically trained see it. The problem is to make a religion for these men and women, whose numbers are bound to increase with the spread of education, and who will otherwise be left without a religion, or with one to which they cannot whole-heartedly give their assent. The conflict between religion and science in the last half-century resulted in the complete defeat of religion's claim to impose its view as authoritative on man’s mind, but it did not build up anything for those whom it emancipated. That reconstruction is our problem today.”--Julian Huxley
• “We can keep from a child all knowledge of earlier myths, but we cannot take from him the need for mythology” Carl Jung

• Purpose of myth - What's function? Purpose? Why is every religion largely collections of myths? Why is the Bible a story book and not a theological disertation?
• UNI(one)VERSE(many)
• Identity - Who am I? Identity supersedes activity. We must know who we are.
• Worth - is the universe/humanity/I good? Can I trust the universe/humanity? Can I open myself up to loving and being vulnerable others?
• Awe/Mystery - What is my context? People must have something greater than themselves to worship or we worship ourselves.
• “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein
• Sacred/hallowed -
• What is sacred to you?
• ‘reverence for life’
• Morality - How should I relate to others? How should I live? Moral compass to avoid shipwrecking.
• Evil/Devil - “A movement can exist without a god, but never without a devil. There has to be an enemy to be destroyed." --Tony Campolo
• Who is our devil?
• Gratitude - is life worth it? Gratitude is the secret to happiness.

• “The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.” EO Wilson
• Why so ineffective then?
• Why 40% of America not believe?
• What are ways we tell history of universe poorly?
• How not to tell:
• Anti-Gospel - biological history is a history of aggression, dog eat dog, “Struggle for Life” “war of nature, from famine and death” --Darwin , Malthusian, heat death of universe...
• Facts versus story
• All we are? 4 nucleotides, 22 amino acids and one millionn billion cells? If so, of course people don't give a flip.

Star Dust - Children of the Cosmos - Our Atomic हिस्टरी

• For thousands of years we got our mythology, the heavens. Nothing has changed!!
• Before you were a  twinkle in your mother's eye you were a twinkle in a star!!!
• The true alchemists: stars!
• 1% of the static on an old tv set is caused by microwave radiation background noise from big bang
• Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.' --Dan Wallach
• Smile at the person next to you. Think about the awesome fact that the calcium in their and your bones and teeth is formed by the process of nucleosynthesis deep within the core of a star or in a nova event.
• Press your fingernail and watch the red blood fill your flesh again. Why red? Iron. Same message.
• Supernova overview: Once iron core, no more fusion fuel - core collapses into neutron star whose gravitation force causes an outer layer collapse at 70 km/s that causes it all to undergo nuclear fusion in a matter of seconds causing a bounce back shock wave making heavier elements and the light of 4 billion suns, or all the energy of the sun’s entire life in a matter of moments at 10k miles per second.
• Who wearing gold/jewelry? Those heavier metals only formed in super novas.

• We have right place in galaxy.
• close in for heavy elements
• far out for gamma radiation.
• “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible, but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.” Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Nature”
• “We are the local embodiment of a cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars!” --Carl Sagan on Cosmos series
• To you ladies, the next time someone asks you how old you are now you have a new response
• I am 13.7 b y old
• Eschatology
• We need to have care in how we speak about death and end times.
• Resurrection
• We have our life through the Death of Stars - Connie Barlow
• Circle of Life
• Legacy

“Middle World” Dawkins

• Large Scale - (Pictures below) Earthrise (230k miles away), Mars Lander Pic (about 50ish million miles), Pale Blue Dot picture from Voyager 1 (3.7 billion miles)

• If the Earth was the size of a basketball:
• Proxima Cetauri - 4400miles. Driving distance from Tallahassee to Anchorage, AK
• The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter. We would have to make our model 100 million miles wide. This means that to make a model of our galaxy where our sun is the size of a basketball, our model would have to reach from the sun to a point some 10 million miles beyond the earth.
• The edge of the universe, if it's proper to talk about the universe having an edge, is thought to be about 15 billion light years away from us in all directions. Distances this large are incomprehensible. To extend our model to include the entire universe we would need all the space between here and Alpha Centauri

• “Telescopes are time machines.” Carl Sagan
• So old that stars as we seem them must look completely different in reality
• So old in completely different location
• Huble Deep Space
• 3,000 galaxies in shot with 100 bil stars each
• picture size of grain of sand at arm’s length
• 125 billion galaxies

• 70,000 million million million stars. That's the total number of stars in the known universe, according to a study by Australian astronomers. It's also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts. 7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately, 70 sextillion
• When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.” --Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World

• Small
• If you were to blow up an atom to the size of a stadium the nucleus would be the size of a fly.

• If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple. --Richard Feynman

• Hardest, densest rock is almost completely empty
• Click on this for the most amazing flash you've ever seen demonstrating the chasm of sizes that humans straddle--we are both unfathomably, ineffably large and at the same time unfathomably, ineffably small.

• Mysteries Universe - How much we don't know
• Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.” JBS Haldane

• 4 Fundamental forces
• We have no a how the four fundamental fources work. I mean, why don't electrons (negative) and protons (positive) collide? We have no idea!
• Matter - what is matter made of? What are quarks? Are they made of smaller subatomic particles?
• Electron spin revolves 6.568*10^15 rev per second at much the speed of light
• Time - Is it an illusion? Why is that as you approach the speed of light that time slows down?  Why is that massive bodies have slower time nearer to them (in comparison.
• Space - quantum entanglement - electrons created at the same time separated by hundreds of kilometers behave and spin connectedly. Is space an illusion? Is all matter entangled?

• Electro-magnetism
• Light - double slit experiment - two slits - interference patterns - what happen if you shoot one photon through slits? - interference patterns - goes thru 1, none, left, right simultaneously - observe it only goes thru one - knows it’s being watched...

• If you thought of the electromagnetic spectrum as a movie real running 2,500 miles from Tallhassee to San Francisco, CA, visible light would be one frame on that reel.

• Close eyes. Every second, about 65 billion (6.5×1010) solar neutrinos pass through every square centimeter on the part of the Earth that faces the Sun. (no charge, no interaction)
• Darks - expanding at an increasing rate? What is 90% of the universe? We have no freakin' clue.

• Sun Worship - Children of the Sun - Our Chemical History
• Pop quiz: What's the closest star to us? THE SUN! Duh!
• Fusion Solar Power is what the Earth runs off of
• Did you guys hear the news? Fusion power on Earth has been perfected over the weekend. (Punchline is that fossil fuels are stored fusion power of the sun)
• Hey, did you guys hear? I just bought a solar powered car that can go 120 miles per hour and accelerates from 0 to 60 in about 6 or 7 seconds. (Punchline is that fossil fuels are stored solar power)
• Think about this. The Olympics are just a masterful symphony of solar energy being expended.
• Drinking soda is drinking solar energy (the sugar is stored solar energy).
• Bite in Steak- stored fusion energy!

• Potosynthesis
• Is bombarding photons and exciting electrons to transfer energy.
• Base of ecology of ecosystem
• Predators eat herbivores which eat plants which eat sunshine. So, indirectly we all eat sunshine!!(being overly simplistic)

 

Solar Powered

Solar Powered

Solar Powered

“For the first time in human existence, we have a cosmic story that is not tied to one cultural tradition, or to a political ideology, but instead gathers every human group into its meanings...We are now creating the common story which will enable Homo sapiens to become a cohesive community. Instead of structuring American society on its own human story, or Soviet society on its own human story and so on, we have the opportunity to tell instead the cosmic story, and the oceanic story and the mammalian story, so that instead of building our lives and our society’s meanings around the various human stories alone, we can build our lives and societies around the Earth story.” 

--Brian Swimme from “The Cosmic Creation Story” in The Reenchantment of Science