Ahh, Science

Recently, Andrew, that historian brother of mine, has been taking a science class. I love science, and that's one of the reasons I know he's taking the class. The second reason is that when the book for this class arrived in the mail, I was home and present when it was unwrapped. The title-"Rare Earth"-was rather intriguing. The third reason I know he's taking the class is because he's having a lot of difficulty with it.

Thankfully, these difficulties are right up my alley. As I understand it, the assignment he's been working on as of late involves using the dates and times provided by the book to create a timeline of the history of the Earth. However, the book is riddled with inconsistencies. I haven't read it, and despite my interest before, I don't think I'm going to, but I've been reading the reviews on Amazon, both the positive and the negative ones to get a full perspective. At one point, the book says that it was take 300 Earths to match the mass of Jupiter, or fill it up (something like that), yet 3 pages later, it says that it would take 318, which, given the mass/size of the Earth, is a big difference. I wouldn't know which to believe, either. But there are also inconsistencies with the dates provided. At one point, it says that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, when in fact, it's 4.6 billion. It also provides false and conflicting information about when eukaryotic cells first showed up, how soon after the Great Oxygenation Event and Snowball Earth was oxygen first available, when the ice ages occurred, and so on. It contradicts itself constantly.

Apparently, the whole thesis of the book is that animal life like ours is rare because you have to have the perfect conditions to create intelligent life like us. In one sense, this is true. It's highly unlikely that there are any other species of humans wandering about the galaxy sending up satellites and whatnot. With the countless different ways that DNA could arrange itself, it is very unlikely that there is another species of human out there. And that's just if all DNA is carbon-based, and if all the conditions are exactly the same everywhere else. Here's an easier way to digest it. My dachshund is short-haired and brown (red in the right light). I have seen black shorthaired dachshunds, and just recently, I saw a tri-colored one. Not to mention that there are long-haired and wire-haired dachshunds. Now how could this be? They're all the same breed of dog. Because of DNA variations over time caused by mating, both selective and natural. Personally, I think that tri-colored dachshund is gorgeous, and stunning to look at, but I wouldn't trade my snoring, floppy-eared, red canine for anything. But even if you go as far back as to when the breed first appeared, when the conditions were relatively the same all over Germany, you had different colors, different sizes. I'm not yet a self-declared expert on the evolution of the breeds, but I'm pretty sure the different colors and sizes comes from the wolf genes still present and visible in the species of dog.

But to return to the point, because I could talk about dogs all day and not bore myself, it is also highly unlikely that we are the only form of intelligent life in the universe. We are the most intelligent that we are aware of, but that doesn't mean that, compared to everything else that might be there, we aren't bone-dead stupid. Right now I'm thinking of the Tralfamadorians from "Slaughterhouse-5". They could see through time and had humans in a zoo. They looked nothing like us, yet were clearly more intelligent than we. I also remember reading in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" about the Hooloovoo (I think it was), an "intelligent shade of blue". That's not even to mention the Buggers from "Ender's Game". They were clearly intelligent, at least enough to develop space travel, but we didn't understand how they communicated. If I remember right from the book, we didn't regard them as intelligent life. I always pictured the Buggers as space wasps, in my head. That's certainly not humanoid, unless I truly did miss something by covering up all those pictures of arthropods in middle school. It's highly unlikely that there are a lot of other humanoid species out there. Look how few humanoid species there are on Earth!

Humans aren't even the only form of intelligent life on Earth, and this I find fascinating. Octopi are the most intelligent, non-deuterostome on the planet. They play, just like we humans do. When lions play, it's really hunting practice, honing their predatory skills for later in life. Octopi play just to play, for fun, you might say. An octopus has accurately predicted the outcome of...some important sporting event, I can't remember which...for several years. And even among the deuterostomes like us, pigs are the 4th most intelligent animal. Dolphins are pretty high up there, too. The border collie is the smartest breed of dog. Elephants mourn their dead. Whale communication is a beautiful thing to hear. It's so complex, we can't crack it. The nonverbal language of dogs and chimpanzees is easier to grasp. And we're certainly not all that advanced in terms of sensory perception. Dogs, for example, can smell time. If you were to pull a petal off of a rose, a dog could smell the rate of decomposition, how long ago you pulled it off. They might also be able to tell who pulled it off. Dogs can smell fear, bombs, cancer...It's amazing, but here I am talking about dogs again.

The reason for the discrepancies in this book-I was talking about a book at the beginning, remember?-is that it was published 15 years ago. That may not sound like it's out of date, but science has drastically improved since then. As of the book's publication year of 2000, not very many exoplanets had been discovered. As of 2003, alone, over 100 had been discovered. As of March 3, 2015, 1821 confirmed exoplanets in 1192 planetary systems have been discovered, with 478 of those systems having more than 1 planet. And that's just in our galaxy, which is only 100,000 light years across. According to the best estimate of astronomers, there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. I know for sure that by 2000, we knew of at least 3000 galaxies.

All of this astronomy is difficult to grasp for the average person, and if that's false, then at the very least, it's very difficult for Andrew. He's not a science-y person like I am. All of that data in the above paragraph took a bit of research on my part. All the discrepancies in the book are throwing Andrew for a loop. They are a great source of frustration for him. But, like I said, all of those problems are right up my alley. Last year, Mr. Allchurch gave me, among other data files for AP Biology, a powerpoint about the history of the Earth. I trust Mr. Allchurch implicitly. So I gave Andrew the powerpoint and told him that it would be, without a doubt, absolutely correct. I also, as just a bit of fun for myself, looked up the history of animal evolution and sorted all of my animal figures in the order that they evolved in. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd. I bookmarked the website I got my dates from and sent him that, too. Hopefully they'll be of some use to him.

Blimey, I love science!

Silence and Laughter

This morning, I had the pleasure of viewing a conversation held entirely in silence. I know, it kind of seems like a contradiction in terms, but I'm telling you, the only words spoken from the time it began to the time it ended, the only words that were spoken were "Bless you" when somebody sneezed, and the sneezer was not one of the two conversationalists. For the purposes of this blog, they will be called E.G. and R.J. They know who they are, but all you guys will be left guessing. Ha-ha.

Today, in 5th period, which is Environmental Science, we had a test. (And believe me, that's a blessing all it's own. Have you ever had those moments where you just want to "kill" people? Like not literally kill but you just want to make them go away? That's basically 5th period for me. I love the class, but I can't stand my classmates. So there's a knife murderer that comes out. She basically looks like the guy from "Assassin's Creed". But, anyway, a test day is the day where no one talks. Which means, no one I have to silence with my soul-stealing blade, made of dragon tooth and igneous rock. Man, it's gorgeous.) On test days, one of the-I get the feeling they're not exactly special-ed, but that's really the best name right now-teachers takes several students (some of the ones that are most often subject to my Blade) to another room to take their test. This makes the room even quieter. I often get my test done, if not first, then second or third. So then I get about an hour to do whatever I want to, so long as it's quiet. Usually I choose to write. After all, it's a perfect time. Today, however, the teacher had a project she wanted us to get started on. So I grabbed everything I needed and got to work. Unfortunately, the person sitting across from me was making the only sounds in the room. He has a voice that you can easily pick out of a jumble of voices, so naturally when it's the only voice it's pretty distracting. So I had to stop working.

I don't know why, but after I stopped I spent some time just looking at the ceiling not doing anything. I guess I was just relaxing. But when I started paying attention to the room around me, the first thing I noticed was in my peripheral vision. I don't know what it was, but it was enough to catch my attention.  R.J. What on earth was he doing? So I followed his motion as he threw something across the room. E.G. caught it. I had just stumbled across a cross-room duel, which included spear throwing, upside-down gun shooting, and grenade throwing. 

Now, usually, interactions like this are accompanied by sound, and are just plain annoying. But when it's just the motions, all exaggerated and silent, it's ruddy hilarious. And I had to stifle all of my laughter because people were still taking their tests. 

Then, and this was the highlight, E.G. got ahold of a meter stick. R.J. had been moved across the room so as to discourage cheating (there were only 2 people per table), but had left his bag beside E.G. So he got ahold of it with the meter stick and tried to pick it up. Apparently it was really heavy, and it fell right to the floor. That was funny on it's own, but the teacher didn't even notice, which made it even funnier. Then he managed to bring the bag close and started digging through it. He would pull things out, glare hilariously across the room at R.J. and then place the object on the table. Except-He took R.J.'s asthma inhaler-at least I think that's what it was, I wasn't exactly nearby-and put it into the pocket of his hoodie. Then he pulled out a PopTart. Supreme glare. He shoved it into his hoodie, like you do when you're trying to hide something, you know? You hide it under your jacket? So he stuffed this PopTart into his hoodie. Then he pulled out a large black notebook, and he glared even bigger. Then, I don't know how, but he managed to stuff this notebook into his hoodie. Now perhaps I should say here, that he wasn't shoving this stuff into the bottom of the hoodie. He was shoving stuff into the head hole. And when your head's in the way, there's not exactly enough space for a notebook that big. Then he proceeded to make sure the bag was completely empty and then put it on his head. Later, when he held R.J.'s "heart" up to the sky, he looked like a priest worshipping some sun god. Blimey, it was hilarious! And I couldn't make a sound.

Also-and personally, I think this is the best part-they knew I was watching the whole time. So every time I laughed, they laughed. And every time one of them would look at me, especially E.G., I couldn't help but laugh.

Okay, maybe this was a "you had to be there" situation, but I just thought it was a gift to be able to watch a totally silent conversation take place, not to mention an absolutely amazing comedic opportunity.