Faster-than-science Neutrinos

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It’s hard to keep up with this snowballing subject so let me try and break it down a little.

Two separate tests have yielded the same result – neutrinos have seemingly acted outside of Einstein‘s theory of special relativity by travelling faster than the speed of light. It’s almost unbelievable and could detract significantly from what has been thought of as the corner stone on modern physics for over a century. There is a problem though – if anything can travel faster than light (and this may seem as petty as it does odd) how can you trust your SatNav?

Two similar results do not necessarily make an experiment successful. Imagine you are baking a cake, it’s the same cake you have baked in the same oven in the same way time after time but this time it comes out burnt. What happened? Obviously your first reaction would be to try again to see if the result was anomalous. You bake the same cake again and remarkably it burns again. What is this telling you? There are 3 possible reasons (actually there are loads but we’ll boil it down a bit):

1.  Something changed – Your oven has got hotter over time so gas mark 3 is now gas mark 4 or your scales are not giving accurate results any more.
2. Your measurements are incorrect – perhaps you added 99g of butter instead of 100g – it can happen especially if your scales have degraded over time.
3. Something remarkable has happened – perhaps your oven has reached a molecular resonant frequency which is causing the molecules to heat up much quicker internally than externally.

Clearly it would be unscientific to ignore the first 2 points and charge headlong to the third conclusion so it stands to reason that the experiment needs to be conducted a number of times before the results can be accepted as correct. The media, of course, will always head straight to option 3 even when the reason the results were published was so that they could be checked by other scientists (it’s why the internet exists dontchaknow)

And so we come to the crux of the matter – it turns out that proper scientists think about science properly (who knew?) and, far from throwing their hands in the air and prostrating themselves before  their nearest deity, they have come up with a reasoned argument as to why the results are probably erroneous. And so I hand you over to the guiding hands of the aforementioned media so that you can make up your own mind

Robin Ince: Science versus wonder? on TED

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

The incomparable Robin Ince counters the argument the science expels wonder.

Bumpy Nipples Are Best (and Smelliest)

 

Bumpy nipple smells guide babies to milk – health – 12 October 2011 – New Scientist.

It turns out that the bumpier the nipple the better. This answers a bit of an old question for me. Now I will get to sleep that little bit easier at night knowing what those bumps are for.

Importantly this was quite a small sample (121) of women so further trials will be required to confirm the result. Interesting stuff though, especially when coupled with the discovery that babies respond better to an unwashed breast than a clean one.

I know this kind of research already has it knockers but let’s hope they haven’t slipped up and made a boob (sorry, couldn’t resist)

Call the Coastguards… Jupiter is in Trouble!

Jupiter, unavailable for comment

BBC News – Tynemouth lifeboat search after planet Jupiter mistaken for flare.

Amazing but not massively surprising…

On a bright autumn night, especially one that’s rocking record temperatures, Jupiter is big bright spot in the sky which can easily refract through the water droplets in clouds and appear much larger and much closer than it actually is. If people can happily mistake Chinese lanterns for flares then there is nothing surprising about mistaking a planet.

The plus side of this of course is that the caller in question will forever know how to find Jupiter in the night sky… Look for a distress signal and point your telescope in that direction.

Kudos to the RNLI for treating this as a genuine call and not berating the caller for time-wasting.

21st Ig Nobel Awards

Thanks to the hard working elves at QI, I have just been reminded that tonight is the 21st Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony from Harvard. You can watch the whole thing live from here: Ig Nobel Ceremony Webcast

Well done to all those new Laureates. Excellent work!

 

 

 

 

More Fun with your Slinky

Itching to know if you got it right? I won’t keep you hanging (on the end of a slinky wondering what will happen if someone drops you).

Welcome to the Blog of Tomorrrrrooooooowww

I socially linked to this yesterday but I thought it was interesting enough to make it on the blog… in its new location… hang on, this is the inaugural posting! <insert balloons and party hats>

So there you go, amaze yourself with the science and resist the temptation to call a priest. What will the future hold for such a revelation? Probably not very much but I hope it makes you smile and go about your day with an added spring in your step.

As you were

</insert balloons and party hats>

Dirty Cthulu Exposed

via bbc.co.uk

I could comment on this at length but seriously, just look at the photo… dirty!

SpongeBob is Dumber Than Your Kids

via newscientist.com

SpongeBob seems to make American Newspapers more stupid but doesn’t actually have any negative effects on your children.

The American press would have you believe that it “impairs thinking” but this is a very different proposition to impairing intelligence. Here’s the deal:

You’re trying to watch TV and your loved one is talking incessantly about something you’re not hugely interested in. Generally we will try to glean the relevant information from the program we are watching whilst trying to take in as much info as possible from our loved one – they take priority but they don’t have to take ALL of our concentration. This isn’t making you thicker, it’s just impairing your ability to pay attention to the TV.

Alternatively, watching a Carl Sagan’s Comos on DVD whilst driving a car will seriously impair your driving skills whilst improving your knowledge (If you’re watching a DVD whilst driving you probably are almost entirely brainless and Sagan can’t help you)

In short: American media: thick, your kids: less so.

Liberace had it ass backwards (pardon the pun)

via independent.co.uk

Cover your house in wax, stick a rope on top, set it alight and hey presto – It’s worth bloody millions… probably. Actually it might dramatically reduce the value but at least it will create microscopic diamonds by the shed full! Clicky for story.