Sense of the World

This visualization, produced using the Hayden Planetarium’s Digital Universe—the most comprehensive and scientifically accurate, three-dimensional map of th…

This is a beautiful video that not only shows the spectra of a star and its four confirmed exoplanets, but shows you the spread and locations of many other confirmed exoplanets relative to our own solar system in a way that’s true to real proportions.

I found myself smiling with wonder at this video, much more than I thought I would.  When it pointed out that every blue circle is a star with a confirmed exoplanet, I literally whispered to myself “there’re so many.”  It was a beautiful realization: planets are indeed more the norm than not, around stars.  That’s an amazing fact of science.  I hope it affects you all the same way it affected me.

Biologists have identified a gene, previously implicated in Parkinson’s disease, that can delay the onset of aging and extend the healthy life span of fruit flies. This research has important potential implications for aging and disease in humans. The gene, Parkin, serves at least two vital functions. By increasing Parkin activity, the scientists extended the lifespan of the flies by more than 25 percent.

This is very cool!  One single gene can not only extend the lifespan of fruit flies, but also the “health span,” which, in my opinion, is just as cool—if not cooler.  They were healthier and more fertile for longer periods of time.  Additionally, the gene, called parkin, can prevent aging-related disorders like (you guessed it) Parkinson’s disease.

Personally, one of my greatest fears in life is losing my mind—that is, losing my memories as I get older, and losing my ability to recall the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, that make me me.  If you removed all the memories from my head, you’d be left with my basic personality but none of my developed characteristics that come from my experiences.

I saw my grandfather descend into dementia and Alzheimer’s after several strokes before he passed away when I was a teenager.  While it was nice to have him in my life until almost the end of high school, he wasn’t really “in my life” the way that he himself might have said so.  For the last several years of his life, he barely even recognized his own family and had very little idea what was going on.  In many ways, this was harder to deal with than if he had died from his very first serious stroke.

Transporting this scenario to me, I would much rather have more years of healthy living, especially for mental capacity, than just living longer.  What’s living an extra ten years if I don’t even know who I am any more?

The key to aging isn’t just living longer, it’s living better for longer. If we can achieve both by affecting simply one gene, imagine the benefits.  That, to me, sounds like an incredible breakthrough.

Hey guys!

I started a new blog to focus on my science/futurism ideas a little more exclusively.  I made the blog over at WordPress, which I think is far superior to Tumblr in terms of generating public discussion and commentary (as in, you CAN’T on Tumblr and you very easily can on WordPress).  Please check it out!

I’ll try to have as much overlap with this blog as I can, but I doubt it will be perfect.  I highly encourage you all to follow both if you’re into my science-y side.

It’s called Humanity Going.  Check it out!

I love Cracked…their lists are often hilarious and very well written, and are actually also well researched and intelligent.

I found this one particularly noteworthy because the examples it cites actually demonstrate the link between our planet’s early environment and the impetus for evolution rather well.  Of note, it makes sure to point out that many of these changes to the life of earth happened over tens of millions of years.  I think that’s what many evolution deniers can’t wrap their heads around: just how long the process can take.  It’s actually time that lets evolution take its course, more so than any other influence.  It is a very slow, gradual thing.  That’s why ignorant people think humans have been around forever.

thescienceofreality:

“New telescopes will be able to see whether the atmospheres of other, extremely distant planets contain oxygen. According to New Scientist magazine, the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), slated for completion on Cerro Armazones, a Chilean mountaintop within the next decade, will be able to divine whether the gases necessary to support life as we know it are present in a planet’s atmosphere.

Current telescopes aren’t strong enough to detect atmospheric makeup of anything but big, gaseous planets, called “gas giants.” There are two gas giants in our own solar system, Saturn and Jupiter, large planets made of liquids and gases which scientists study by examining the way light passes through their atmospheres. Ignas Snellen of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands told  New Scientist, “We do this now for Jupiter-sized planets.”

Atmospheres on smaller, rocky planets like our own are harder to detect, particularly when current telescopes have difficulty filtering out Earth’s own oxygen-rich atmosphere from its observations.

The ELT, however, will be a huge leap forward. It will boast a mirror 39 meters (about 130 feet) across and will be sensitive enough to see some of the furthest known galaxies and star systems in the universe. It will also be able to see beyond Earth’s atmosphere because it will be sensitive enough to read whether the air it’s observing is rotating with the Earth or with the other planet by way of the atmosphere’s wavelength band.

The search promises to be no easy task. A planet will have to pass between its home star and the telescope multiple times for astronomers to gather enough information about it to determine its atmospheric contents. Depending on the shape of its orbit and the size of its star, it could take between four years and four centuries to get the right data.”

Read more here & here.

This is incredible, and the future of SETI, probably.  The ability to actually see what’s ON a planet (or technically surrounding it) versus just seeing the planet itself is a huge leap forward.  It will be years before they find anything, but man I can’t wait already!