Science

13 things that don't make sense

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New Scientist is reporting on 13 things which do not make sense. It's an interesting article about 13 areas in which observations do not line up with current theory. From the placebo effect to dark matter, it's a list of areas in need of additional research. Explanations could lead to significant breakthroughs... or at least new and different errors in scientific observations.

Seven

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Ever wondered why a week contains 7 days ? Seven is actually a weid odd number. Ten or six days would have been much easier : a year is 365 days, so nearly 60 'weeks' of six days, and a month would have been exactly 5 weeks. It seems that the 7 day week is a remnant of the Babylonians, who were vivid astronomers : their calendar was based on the moon, from which the month originates. But they needed something smaller than a month, and larger than a day. Four weeks of seven days were closest to the 29.5 day moon cycle, so they stick with it.

Names of weekdays is also a fun subject : they were named after the planets, which in their turn were named after the gods. In Roman languages, weekday names contain the Roman gods (lundi, mardi, ...), whereas in German based languages, the days contain the names of the Scandinavian gods (Wodan, Freya, ...)

The future of cosmology

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There's a very interesting Slashdot interview with Charles Seife, who writes for Science magazine and is the author of "Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe". Charles gives a detailled round-up on the current state of cosmology, the study of the universe.

It's rather strange to see that some of the problems of 30 years ago, still exists. Such as the question on the infinity of space. There are people who believe that space is (mathematical) infinite. However, in that case, it is very possible (almost certain) that in this infinite universe, there's a mirror of you reading this mirror website on a mirror internet, located on a mirror earth, located somewhere else in space. The question of parallell worlds is nicely described in this Scientific American article, about the so-called multiverse.

Folding@Home

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I'm leaving Seti@Home for what it is. No more searching for little green men. Instead, I''m devoting my CPU time now to more down-to-earth science : Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.

Since proteins play such fundamental roles in biology, scientists have sequenced the human genome. The genome is in a sense a "blueprint" for these proteins -- the genome contains the DNA code which specifies the sequence of the amino acids beads along the protein "necklace." However, only knowing this sequence tells us little about what the protein does and how it does it. In order to carryout their function (eg as enzymes or antibodies), they must take on a particular shape, also known as a "fold." Thus, proteins are truly amazing machines: before they do their work, they assemble themselves! This self-assembly is called "folding." Understanding protein folding may lead to a cure for protein related diseases.

Phonetic Numerals

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The Phonetic Numerals system provides a convenient way to remember long strings of numbers. It's really simple: the system replaces the numbers 0-9 with the symbols S, T, N, M, R, L, J, K, F and P. Take a long number (3.1415926, for example), convert it into Phonetic Numerals (MTRTLPNJ), then come up with a phrase using those letters (MoTheR ToiLed a PaN Job.) See? Easy!

Teaching physics with superheroes

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In the 1940s, a lot of superheroes gained their powers through some mystical artifact from the Far East; in the 1960s, they got them through radioactivity; and, since the 1990s, they get them through genetic engineering. It's interesting to see the connections between comic superheroes and physics. For a sampling, see the following sites :