Author Archives: Attention to the Unseen

New study indicates Earth’s inner core was formed 1-1.5 billion years ago

Phys.org reports: There have been many estimates for when the earth’s inner core was formed, but scientists from the University of Liverpool have used new data which indicates that the Earth’s inner core was formed 1 – 1.5 billion years ago as it “froze” from the surrounding molten iron outer core.

The inner core is Earth’s deepest layer. It is a ball of solid iron just larger than Pluto which is surrounded by a liquid outer core. The inner core is a relatively recent addition to our planet and establishing when it was formed is a topic of vigorous scientific debate with estimates ranging from 0.5 billion to 2 billion years ago.

In a new study published in Nature, researchers from the University’s School of Environmental Sciences analysed magnetic records from ancient igneous rocks and found that there was a sharp increase in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field between 1 and 1.5 billion years ago.

This increased magnetic field is a likely indication of the first occurrence of solid iron at Earth’s centre and the point in Earth’s history at which the solid inner core first started to “freeze” out from the cooling molten outer core.

Liverpool palaeomagnetism expert and the study’s lead author, Dr Andy Biggin, said: “This finding could change our understanding of the Earth’s interior and its history.” [Continue reading…]

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There is no known physics theory that is true at every scale — there may never be

Lawrence M Krauss writes: Whenever you say anything about your daily life, a scale is implied. Try it out. “I’m too busy” only works for an assumed time scale: today, for example, or this week. Not this century or this nanosecond. “Taxes are onerous” only makes sense for a certain income range. And so on.

Surely the same restriction doesn’t hold true in science, you might say. After all, for centuries after the introduction of the scientific method, conventional wisdom held that there were theories that were absolutely true for all scales, even if we could never be empirically certain of this in advance. Newton’s universal law of gravity, for example, was, after all, universal! It applied to falling apples and falling planets alike, and accounted for every significant observation made under the sun, and over it as well.

With the advent of relativity, and general relativity in particular, it became clear that Newton’s law of gravity was merely an approximation of a more fundamental theory. But the more fundamental theory, general relativity, was so mathematically beautiful that it seemed reasonable to assume that it codified perfectly and completely the behavior of space and time in the presence of mass and energy.

The advent of quantum mechanics changed everything. When quantum mechanics is combined with relativity, it turns out, rather unexpectedly in fact, that the detailed nature of the physical laws that govern matter and energy actually depend on the physical scale at which you measure them. This led to perhaps the biggest unsung scientific revolution in the 20th century: We know of no theory that both makes contact with the empirical world, and is absolutely and always true. [Continue reading…]

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Human Genome Project: Twenty-five years of big biology

Eric D. Green, James D. Watson& Francis S. Collins write: Twenty-five years ago, the newly created US National Center for Human Genome Research (now the National Human Genome Research Institute; NHGRI), which the three of us have each directed, joined forces with US and international partners to launch the Human Genome Project (HGP). What happened next represents one of the most historically significant scientific endeavours: a 13-year quest to sequence all three billion base pairs of the human genome.

Even just a few years ago, discussions surrounding the HGP focused mainly on what insights the project had brought or would bring to our understanding of human disease. Only now is it clear that, as well as dramatically accelerating biomedical research, the HGP initiated a new way of doing science.

As biology’s first large-scale project, the HGP paved the way for numerous consortium-based research ventures. The NHGRI alone has been involved in launching more than 25 such projects since 2000. These have presented new challenges to biomedical research — demanding, for instance, that diverse groups from different countries and disciplines come together to share and analyse vast data sets. [Continue reading…]

The Independent reports: The most comprehensive study of the human genome has discovered that a sizeable minority of people are walking around with some of their genes missing without any apparent ill-effects, scientists have found.

A project to sequence and analyse the entire genetic code of more than 2,500 people drawn from 26 different ethnic populations from around the world has revealed that some genes do not seem to be as essential for health and life as previously believed.

The finding is just one to have emerged from the 1,000 Genomes Project set up in 2008 to study the genetic variation in at least this number of people in order to understand the variety of DNA types within the human population, the researchers said. [Continue reading…]

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Technology is implicated in an assault on empathy

Sherry Turkle writes: Studies of conversation both in the laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in the periphery of their vision changes both what they talk about and the degree of connection they feel. People keep the conversation on topics where they won’t mind being interrupted. They don’t feel as invested in each other. Even a silent phone disconnects us.

In 2010, a team at the University of Michigan led by the psychologist Sara Konrath put together the findings of 72 studies that were conducted over a 30-year period. They found a 40 percent decline in empathy among college students, with most of the decline taking place after 2000.

Across generations, technology is implicated in this assault on empathy. We’ve gotten used to being connected all the time, but we have found ways around conversation — at least from conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, in which we play with ideas and allow ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable. But it is in this type of conversation — where we learn to make eye contact, to become aware of another person’s posture and tone, to comfort one another and respectfully challenge one another — that empathy and intimacy flourish. In these conversations, we learn who we are.

Of course, we can find empathic conversations today, but the trend line is clear. It’s not only that we turn away from talking face to face to chat online. It’s that we don’t allow these conversations to happen in the first place because we keep our phones in the landscape. [Continue reading…]

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As human power keeps growing, our ability to harm or benefit other animals grows with it

Yuval Noah Harari writes: This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped thousands of generations ago continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer necessary for survival and reproduction in the present. Tragically, the agricultural revolution gave humans the power to ensure the survival and reproduction of domesticated animals while ignoring their subjective needs. In consequence, domesticated animals are collectively the most successful animals in the world, and at the same time they are individually the most miserable animals that have ever existed.

The situation has only worsened over the last few centuries, during which time traditional agriculture gave way to industrial farming. In traditional societies such as ancient Egypt, the Roman empire or medieval China, humans had a very partial understanding of biochemistry, genetics, zoology and epidemiology. Consequently, their manipulative powers were limited. In medieval villages, chickens ran free between the houses, pecked seeds and worms from the garbage heap, and built nests in the barn. If an ambitious peasant tried to lock 1,000 chickens inside a crowded coop, a deadly bird-flu epidemic would probably have resulted, wiping out all the chickens, as well as many villagers. No priest, shaman or witch doctor could have prevented it. But once modern science had deciphered the secrets of birds, viruses and antibiotics, humans could begin to subject animals to extreme living conditions. With the help of vaccinations, medications, hormones, pesticides, central air-conditioning systems and automatic feeders, it is now possible to cram tens of thousands of chickens into tiny coops, and produce meat and eggs with unprecedented efficiency.

The fate of animals in such industrial installations has become one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time, certainly in terms of the numbers involved. These days, most big animals live on industrial farms. We imagine that our planet is populated by lions, elephants, whales and penguins. That may be true of the National Geographic channel, Disney movies and children’s fairytales, but it is no longer true of the real world. The world contains 40,000 lions but, by way of contrast, there are around 1 billion domesticated pigs; 500,000 elephants and 1.5 billion domesticated cows; 50 million penguins and 20 billion chickens. [Continue reading…]

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