Lasers can be used to force drugs into cells to destroy the plaques that cause memory loss in Alzheimer's disease
Also from New Scientist:
It may sound like a strange brew, but green tea and red light could provide a novel treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Together, the two can destroy the rogue “plaques” that crowd the brains of people with the disease. The light makes it easier for the green-tea extract to get to work on the plaques. Andrei Sommer at the University of Ulm in Germany, and colleagues, have previously used red light with a wavelength of 670 nanometres to transport cancer drugs into cells. The laser light pushes water out of the cells and when the laser is switched off, the cells “suck in” water and any other molecules, including drugs, from their surroundings.
Now, Sommer's team have found that the same technique can be used to destroy the beta-amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's. These plaques consist of abnormally folded peptides, and are thought to disrupt communication between nerve cells, leading to loss of memory and other symptoms. The team bathed brain cells containing beta-amyloid in epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) – the green-tea extract known to have beta-amyloid inhibiting properties – at the same time as stimulating the cells with red light for 1 minute. Beta-amyloid in the cells reduced by around 60 per cent. Shining the laser light alone onto cells reduced beta-amyloid by around 20 per cent.
It can be difficult getting drugs into the brain, but animal experiments show that the green-tea extract can penetrate the so-called blood-brain barrier when given orally together with pulses of red light. The light, which can penetrate tissue and bone, stimulates cell mitochondria to kick-start a process that increases the barrier's permeability, says Sommer. This could form the basis of a therapy for Alzheimer's, with or without complementary drugs
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Monday, November 07, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome
Judy Mikovits, the scientist who discovered the XMRV virus might be linked to the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has be sacked by the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada. They were investigating allegations of data manipulations. She was dismissed for failing to pass on a cell line to a fellow researcher.
Although her 2009 paper in Science brought new hope to sufferers of CFS that there might be a physical cause for their syndrome, other laboratories have failed to confirm her results and a study last year suggested that samples were contaminated with mouse DNA. On September 22 the authors of the science paper retracted part of the paper. and on the same day Science published a paper from nine separate laboratories including the Reno laboratory which failed to find XMRV in blinded samples.
Now Science is investigating images published with the paper after Abbie Smith, a graduate student blogged that it was suspiciously like an image used by Dr Mikovits in another context in a lecture given in Ottawa last year.
Although her 2009 paper in Science brought new hope to sufferers of CFS that there might be a physical cause for their syndrome, other laboratories have failed to confirm her results and a study last year suggested that samples were contaminated with mouse DNA. On September 22 the authors of the science paper retracted part of the paper. and on the same day Science published a paper from nine separate laboratories including the Reno laboratory which failed to find XMRV in blinded samples.
Now Science is investigating images published with the paper after Abbie Smith, a graduate student blogged that it was suspiciously like an image used by Dr Mikovits in another context in a lecture given in Ottawa last year.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The image of scientists
If you ask anyone, they will tell you that science has transformed their world with amazing discoveries. But then if you invite them to draw a scientist, what they depict is precisely what people would have described 50 years ago: they draw someone with a hangdog look, frizzy hair and test tube in hand, all in a scene where things are going wrong. There are national variations. In Italy, scientists tend to be scarred and have bolts in their necks, like Frankenstein's monster. In general, though, they are mostly white, male, bald and wearing a white coat.
Perhaps it comes from the image of the old Einstein with tongue out - the one everyone knows – the one taken on his 72nd birthday. But he was a dapper 26-year-old when he had his “annus mirabilis” and wrote the four papers that changed physics.
In fact scientists look like anyone else; many of them are women, most of them are young and some even look like Brian Cox who presents science of TV and looks like a rock star.
Perhaps it comes from the image of the old Einstein with tongue out - the one everyone knows – the one taken on his 72nd birthday. But he was a dapper 26-year-old when he had his “annus mirabilis” and wrote the four papers that changed physics.
In fact scientists look like anyone else; many of them are women, most of them are young and some even look like Brian Cox who presents science of TV and looks like a rock star.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Colors
Only primates have cones as well as rods in their retinas, so among mammals, only man and the great apes can see colors. 'Primate' also relates to Bishops in the Church of England, and only Bishops are allowed to wear purple shirts. My friend, Lee Rayfield, the Bishop of Swindon and an immunologist, tells me that there are two different shades of purple that are allowed, one bluish and one reddish.
Of course, things are not really colored at all; it is simply the way that light is reflected from their surfaces. Currently we have a vase of purple carnations in our sitting room. In daylight they appear bluish purple, but in artificial light they are definitely a reddish purple.
Of course, things are not really colored at all; it is simply the way that light is reflected from their surfaces. Currently we have a vase of purple carnations in our sitting room. In daylight they appear bluish purple, but in artificial light they are definitely a reddish purple.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Stem cell successes
In the past week we have heard of two stem cell successes. In one a man was transplanted with a new trachea (windpipe). A 36-year-old man whose own cancerous trachea had to be removed was treated with the procedure on 9 June at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, by Paolo Macchiarini.
No donor was needed for the new procedure. Instead the tissue was custom-built to fit the patient, then coated inside and out with his own stem cells. The treatment began after Alexander Seifalian of University College London received detailed scans of the patient's diseased trachea. Using these, Seifalian constructed a bespoke replacement from a novel polymeric material that he has developed and patented.
Two days before the operation, the team took 200 ml of bone marrow from the patient and from this extracted 40 ml of mesenchymal stem cells. By pouring these on top of the synthetic organ in a bioreactor developed by Harvard Bioscience of Holliston, Massachusetts, the trachea was successfully coated inside and out with the patient's own cells.
During surgery, Macchiarini's final touch was to add patches of the patient's nose lining to the inner surface of the trachea. These later grew into a layer of epithelial cells matching those lining the inner surfaces of the respiratory tract.
"The big conceptual breakthrough is that we can move from transplanting organs to manufacturing them,” says David Green, the president of Harvard Bioscience – although he adds that the concept would work best for simple structures such as tracheas, ureters and blood vessels.
In another stem cell development, a company called FCB-Pharmicell based in Seongnam, South Korea, became the first in the world to receive official approval for a stem-cell-based procedure to treat people who have survived heart attacks. In the newly approved procedure, stem cells are extracted from the patient's bone marrow, multiplied in the lab then injected directly into the heart through the coronary artery.
Little clinical data is publicly available to prove that the procedure benefits patients, but according to press reports last week, the company says that in trials, patients showed 6 per cent improvements in heart function six months after the procedure, compared with untreated patients.
It is important to recognize that these reports do not derive from embryonic stem cells which have to be produced from spare embryos manufactured by IVF, but from mesenchymal stem cells which come from the patient's own tissue (often bone marrow) that carries neither ethical not rejection risk.
No donor was needed for the new procedure. Instead the tissue was custom-built to fit the patient, then coated inside and out with his own stem cells. The treatment began after Alexander Seifalian of University College London received detailed scans of the patient's diseased trachea. Using these, Seifalian constructed a bespoke replacement from a novel polymeric material that he has developed and patented.
Two days before the operation, the team took 200 ml of bone marrow from the patient and from this extracted 40 ml of mesenchymal stem cells. By pouring these on top of the synthetic organ in a bioreactor developed by Harvard Bioscience of Holliston, Massachusetts, the trachea was successfully coated inside and out with the patient's own cells.
During surgery, Macchiarini's final touch was to add patches of the patient's nose lining to the inner surface of the trachea. These later grew into a layer of epithelial cells matching those lining the inner surfaces of the respiratory tract.
"The big conceptual breakthrough is that we can move from transplanting organs to manufacturing them,” says David Green, the president of Harvard Bioscience – although he adds that the concept would work best for simple structures such as tracheas, ureters and blood vessels.
In another stem cell development, a company called FCB-Pharmicell based in Seongnam, South Korea, became the first in the world to receive official approval for a stem-cell-based procedure to treat people who have survived heart attacks. In the newly approved procedure, stem cells are extracted from the patient's bone marrow, multiplied in the lab then injected directly into the heart through the coronary artery.
Little clinical data is publicly available to prove that the procedure benefits patients, but according to press reports last week, the company says that in trials, patients showed 6 per cent improvements in heart function six months after the procedure, compared with untreated patients.
It is important to recognize that these reports do not derive from embryonic stem cells which have to be produced from spare embryos manufactured by IVF, but from mesenchymal stem cells which come from the patient's own tissue (often bone marrow) that carries neither ethical not rejection risk.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
13 elements: Lanthanum and Cerium
Lanthanum and Cerium
Rare earth elements
Atomic numbers: 57; 58
Used in: Batteries
Criticality ratings: near-critical; near-critical
When it comes to batteries, lithium is the true Olympian. Lithium-ion batteries are unsurpassed in energy density, and dominate the market in laptops, cellphones and other devices where a slimline figure is all-important.
Yet they are also rather explosive characters: computer manufacturer Dell recalled four million lithium laptop batteries in 2006 amid fears they might burst into flames if overheated. That risk makes them unsuitable for use in electric and hybrid electric cars, leaving the market to the less explosion-prone nickel-metal-hydride batteries.
This is where lanthanum and cerium come in. They are the main components of a “mischmetal” mixture of rare earth elements that makes up the nickel-metal-hydride battery's negative electrode. The increased demand for electric cars, and the elements' subsidiary roles as phosphorescents in energy-saving light bulbs, place lanthanum and cerium on the US DoE's short-term “near-critical” list for green technologies – a position also assumed by lithium in the medium term.
Meanwhile, a mischmetal mixture is not totally inert: strike one and it produces a spark. This property has seen it being widely adopted as the ignition element in cigarette lighters – clearly no skill for would-be Olympians.
Rare earth elements
Atomic numbers: 57; 58
Used in: Batteries
Criticality ratings: near-critical; near-critical
When it comes to batteries, lithium is the true Olympian. Lithium-ion batteries are unsurpassed in energy density, and dominate the market in laptops, cellphones and other devices where a slimline figure is all-important.
Yet they are also rather explosive characters: computer manufacturer Dell recalled four million lithium laptop batteries in 2006 amid fears they might burst into flames if overheated. That risk makes them unsuitable for use in electric and hybrid electric cars, leaving the market to the less explosion-prone nickel-metal-hydride batteries.
This is where lanthanum and cerium come in. They are the main components of a “mischmetal” mixture of rare earth elements that makes up the nickel-metal-hydride battery's negative electrode. The increased demand for electric cars, and the elements' subsidiary roles as phosphorescents in energy-saving light bulbs, place lanthanum and cerium on the US DoE's short-term “near-critical” list for green technologies – a position also assumed by lithium in the medium term.
Meanwhile, a mischmetal mixture is not totally inert: strike one and it produces a spark. This property has seen it being widely adopted as the ignition element in cigarette lighters – clearly no skill for would-be Olympians.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
13 elements: Dysprosium
Dysprosium
Rare earth element
Atomic number: 66
Used in: High-temperature magnets
Criticality rating: critical
Like neodymium, dysprosium is prized for its magnetic properties – not least, when mixed with terbium and iron to form the alloy Terfenol D. It has the peerless ability to change shape in response to a magnetic field.
This “magnetostrictive” property has led to some far-out uses. The US navy has used Terfenol-D to develop an advanced active sonar transducer, producing and then picking up high-powered “pings” underwater.
Dysprosium's greatest selling point, however, is how it handles the heat. Magnets made from a pure neodymium-iron-boron alloy lose their magnetisation at temperatures above 300 °C. Adding in a small amount of dysprosium, at about 5 per cent by weight, solves that problem, making the element a vital component in high-performance magnets found in countless technologies from turbines to hard discs.
According to the US DoE, the wide range of its current and projected uses, together with the lack of any immediately suitable replacement, makes dysprosium the single most critical element for emerging clean energy technologies. China is the only country with significant known deposits, with the new mines opening in Australia and Canada only containing small quantities of the element in their rare earth ores. Even the US DoE's most conservative projections predict a shortfall of dysprosium before 2015.
Rare earth element
Atomic number: 66
Used in: High-temperature magnets
Criticality rating: critical
Like neodymium, dysprosium is prized for its magnetic properties – not least, when mixed with terbium and iron to form the alloy Terfenol D. It has the peerless ability to change shape in response to a magnetic field.
This “magnetostrictive” property has led to some far-out uses. The US navy has used Terfenol-D to develop an advanced active sonar transducer, producing and then picking up high-powered “pings” underwater.
Dysprosium's greatest selling point, however, is how it handles the heat. Magnets made from a pure neodymium-iron-boron alloy lose their magnetisation at temperatures above 300 °C. Adding in a small amount of dysprosium, at about 5 per cent by weight, solves that problem, making the element a vital component in high-performance magnets found in countless technologies from turbines to hard discs.
According to the US DoE, the wide range of its current and projected uses, together with the lack of any immediately suitable replacement, makes dysprosium the single most critical element for emerging clean energy technologies. China is the only country with significant known deposits, with the new mines opening in Australia and Canada only containing small quantities of the element in their rare earth ores. Even the US DoE's most conservative projections predict a shortfall of dysprosium before 2015.
Friday, June 24, 2011
13 Elements: Tellurium
Tellurium
Metalloid
Atomic number: 52
Used in: solar cells
Criticality rating: near-critical
In 2009, solar cells made from thin films of cadmium telluride became the first to undercut bulky silicon panels in cost per watt of electricity generating capacity. That points to a cheaper future for solar power – perhaps.
Both cadmium and tellurium are mining by-products – cadmium from zinc, and tellurium from copper. Cadmium's toxicity means it is in plentiful supply: zinc producers are obliged to remove it during refining, and it has precious few other uses. “The people who manufacture cadmium telluride photocells often say one of the best things you can do with cadmium is to put it between two sheets of glass and leave it there,” says Robert Jaffe, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For tellurium, the situation is reversed. Because the global market for the element has been minute compared with that for copper – some $100 million against over $100 billion – there has been little incentive to extract it. That will change as demand grows, but better extraction methods are expected to only double the supply, which will be nowhere near enough to cover the predicted demand if the new-style solar cells take off. The US DoE anticipates a supply shortfall by 2025.
The US DoE puts a “critical” alarm on supplies of indium for the next five years, but will reduce this to “near-critical” for the period 2015 to 2025 as we get better at extracting the element or develop indium-free technologies such as conductive polymers or nanowires (New Scientist, 23 October 2010, p 40). Even so, without expanded production after 2015, the DoE says reductions in “non-clean energy demand” will be needed “to prevent shortages and price spikes”. In other words, we might need to choose which is the more important – smartphones or solar cells.
Metalloid
Atomic number: 52
Used in: solar cells
Criticality rating: near-critical
In 2009, solar cells made from thin films of cadmium telluride became the first to undercut bulky silicon panels in cost per watt of electricity generating capacity. That points to a cheaper future for solar power – perhaps.
Both cadmium and tellurium are mining by-products – cadmium from zinc, and tellurium from copper. Cadmium's toxicity means it is in plentiful supply: zinc producers are obliged to remove it during refining, and it has precious few other uses. “The people who manufacture cadmium telluride photocells often say one of the best things you can do with cadmium is to put it between two sheets of glass and leave it there,” says Robert Jaffe, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For tellurium, the situation is reversed. Because the global market for the element has been minute compared with that for copper – some $100 million against over $100 billion – there has been little incentive to extract it. That will change as demand grows, but better extraction methods are expected to only double the supply, which will be nowhere near enough to cover the predicted demand if the new-style solar cells take off. The US DoE anticipates a supply shortfall by 2025.
The US DoE puts a “critical” alarm on supplies of indium for the next five years, but will reduce this to “near-critical” for the period 2015 to 2025 as we get better at extracting the element or develop indium-free technologies such as conductive polymers or nanowires (New Scientist, 23 October 2010, p 40). Even so, without expanded production after 2015, the DoE says reductions in “non-clean energy demand” will be needed “to prevent shortages and price spikes”. In other words, we might need to choose which is the more important – smartphones or solar cells.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
13 elements: Tantalum
Tantalum
Transition metal
Atomic number: 73
Used in: Almost all handheld electronics
Criticality rating: not rated
Your smartphone or tablet computer is a veritable wonder of modern materials technology, with its touchscreen interface incorporating indium (page 40), compact lithium-ion battery and tiny processors packed with nanoscale transistors (see hafnium).
This also extends to its capacitors, the humble components that store energy and smooth power flow in electronic circuits. It is thanks to two-faced tantalum that they remain so slimline. In its pure form, this metal forms one of two conducting plates on which charge is stored. As an oxide, meanwhile, it makes a highly effective insulator, only a thin layer of which is needed to prevent leakage between the plates. As a bonus, the oxide is self-healing, rapidly reforming to plug any leak that lets current through.
It is fortunate, then, that the US Geological Survey believes that tantalum is in plentiful supply, with known deposits covering projected need. In fact, during the recent global economic slowdown, several mines were temporarily shut down as demand dropped.
Transition metal
Atomic number: 73
Used in: Almost all handheld electronics
Criticality rating: not rated
Your smartphone or tablet computer is a veritable wonder of modern materials technology, with its touchscreen interface incorporating indium (page 40), compact lithium-ion battery and tiny processors packed with nanoscale transistors (see hafnium).
This also extends to its capacitors, the humble components that store energy and smooth power flow in electronic circuits. It is thanks to two-faced tantalum that they remain so slimline. In its pure form, this metal forms one of two conducting plates on which charge is stored. As an oxide, meanwhile, it makes a highly effective insulator, only a thin layer of which is needed to prevent leakage between the plates. As a bonus, the oxide is self-healing, rapidly reforming to plug any leak that lets current through.
It is fortunate, then, that the US Geological Survey believes that tantalum is in plentiful supply, with known deposits covering projected need. In fact, during the recent global economic slowdown, several mines were temporarily shut down as demand dropped.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
13 elements: Hafnium
Hafnium
Transition metal
Atomic number: 72
Used in: computer chips
Criticality rating: not rated
Hafnium's peerless heat resistance has taken it to the moon and back as part of the alloy used in the nozzle of rocket thrusters fitted to the Apollo lunar module. Since 2007, though, it has also been found much closer to home, in the minuscule transistors of powerful computer chips.
That's because hafnium oxide is a highly effective electrical insulator. Compared with silicon dioxide, which is conventionally used to switch transistors on and off, it is much less likely to let unwanted currents seep through. It also switches 20 per cent faster, allowing more information to pass. This has enabled transistor size to shrink from 65 nanometres with silicon dioxide first to 45 nm and now to 32 nm.
Such innovations keep our smartphones smart and small. And hafnium will probably not be the thing that slows that progress: despite its low profile, it is a relatively abundant element. Making up several parts per million of the Earth's crust, it is distributed widely around the globe.
Transition metal
Atomic number: 72
Used in: computer chips
Criticality rating: not rated
Hafnium's peerless heat resistance has taken it to the moon and back as part of the alloy used in the nozzle of rocket thrusters fitted to the Apollo lunar module. Since 2007, though, it has also been found much closer to home, in the minuscule transistors of powerful computer chips.
That's because hafnium oxide is a highly effective electrical insulator. Compared with silicon dioxide, which is conventionally used to switch transistors on and off, it is much less likely to let unwanted currents seep through. It also switches 20 per cent faster, allowing more information to pass. This has enabled transistor size to shrink from 65 nanometres with silicon dioxide first to 45 nm and now to 32 nm.
Such innovations keep our smartphones smart and small. And hafnium will probably not be the thing that slows that progress: despite its low profile, it is a relatively abundant element. Making up several parts per million of the Earth's crust, it is distributed widely around the globe.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
13 elements: Indium
Indium
Post-transition metal
Atomic number: 49
Used in: touchscreens, solar cells, medicine
Criticality rating: critical
We spend a lot of time looking at indium, yet rarely see it. The alloy indium tin oxide (ITO) possesses the rare combination of being both electrically conductive and optically transparent. That makes it essential for flat screen displays and televisions, where it forms the see-through front electrode controlling each pixel. A layer of ITO on a smartphone's screen gives it touch-sensitive conductivity, enabling the device to detect taps, swipes and pinches.
When mixed with other metals, indium loses its transparency and instead becomes a light-collector. Alongside cadmium telluride cells, solar cells made of copper, indium and selenium, sometimes with a sprinkle of gallium, are starting to challenge silicon's pre-eminence.
And that's not all. When medics need to follow what happens to blood platelets or neutrophils they label them with 111 Indium (a slightly radioactive form) and follow them with a gamma camera. In the same way they can image the pancreas, a very difficult organ to visualize.
Post-transition metal
Atomic number: 49
Used in: touchscreens, solar cells, medicine
Criticality rating: critical
We spend a lot of time looking at indium, yet rarely see it. The alloy indium tin oxide (ITO) possesses the rare combination of being both electrically conductive and optically transparent. That makes it essential for flat screen displays and televisions, where it forms the see-through front electrode controlling each pixel. A layer of ITO on a smartphone's screen gives it touch-sensitive conductivity, enabling the device to detect taps, swipes and pinches.
When mixed with other metals, indium loses its transparency and instead becomes a light-collector. Alongside cadmium telluride cells, solar cells made of copper, indium and selenium, sometimes with a sprinkle of gallium, are starting to challenge silicon's pre-eminence.
And that's not all. When medics need to follow what happens to blood platelets or neutrophils they label them with 111 Indium (a slightly radioactive form) and follow them with a gamma camera. In the same way they can image the pancreas, a very difficult organ to visualize.
Monday, June 20, 2011
13 elements: Technetium
Technetium
Transition metal
Atomic number: 43
Used in: medical imaging
Criticality rating: not rated
Technetium is exceedingly rare. Until 1937, it was just a hole in the periodic table. When element 43 was finally isolated, it was by the then-innovative expedient of synthesising it, rather than by digging it out of the ground.
That is because technetium, though present within uranium ores in Earth's crust, quickly falls apart through radioactive decay. What frustrated early element hunters is a boon for medical imaging. One of the element's forms, the isomer technetium-99m, has a half-life of just 6 hours – long enough for it to be injected into a patient and light up the body part of interest, but short enough to minimise radiation exposure.
Globally, around 30 million medical procedures involving technetium are performed each year. But two new Canadian reactors which were to secure supplies of technetium and other medical isotopes have been mothballed. So it questionable whether these procedures can continue at the same rate. For now, a handful of ageing reactors supplies the world's hospitals.
Transition metal
Atomic number: 43
Used in: medical imaging
Criticality rating: not rated
Technetium is exceedingly rare. Until 1937, it was just a hole in the periodic table. When element 43 was finally isolated, it was by the then-innovative expedient of synthesising it, rather than by digging it out of the ground.
That is because technetium, though present within uranium ores in Earth's crust, quickly falls apart through radioactive decay. What frustrated early element hunters is a boon for medical imaging. One of the element's forms, the isomer technetium-99m, has a half-life of just 6 hours – long enough for it to be injected into a patient and light up the body part of interest, but short enough to minimise radiation exposure.
Globally, around 30 million medical procedures involving technetium are performed each year. But two new Canadian reactors which were to secure supplies of technetium and other medical isotopes have been mothballed. So it questionable whether these procedures can continue at the same rate. For now, a handful of ageing reactors supplies the world's hospitals.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
13 elements - Erbium
Erbium
Rare earth element
Atomic number: 68
Used in: optical fibres
Criticality rating: not rated
Reading this article online? Or keeping half an eye on your email while you read? If so you are probably doing it with erbium.
Erbium is a crucial ingredient in the optical fibres used to transport light-encoded information around the world. These cables are remarkably good at keeping light bouncing along, easily outperforming a copper cable transporting an electrical signal. Even so, the light signal slowly fades as it racks up the kilometres, making amplification necessary.
Excitable ions of erbium are just the ticket. Embedded every so often within short sections of the optical fibre wall, they are pushed into a high-energy state by irradiating them with a laser. Light signals coming in along the fibre then stimulate the excited erbium ions to release their stored energy as more light of precisely the right wavelength, giving the signals a boost.
The good news is that while supplies of erbium are relatively tight, demand for optical fibres is not skyrocketing as it is for other technologies. On current trends, this is one element we will continue to be able to live with.
Rare earth element
Atomic number: 68
Used in: optical fibres
Criticality rating: not rated
Reading this article online? Or keeping half an eye on your email while you read? If so you are probably doing it with erbium.
Erbium is a crucial ingredient in the optical fibres used to transport light-encoded information around the world. These cables are remarkably good at keeping light bouncing along, easily outperforming a copper cable transporting an electrical signal. Even so, the light signal slowly fades as it racks up the kilometres, making amplification necessary.
Excitable ions of erbium are just the ticket. Embedded every so often within short sections of the optical fibre wall, they are pushed into a high-energy state by irradiating them with a laser. Light signals coming in along the fibre then stimulate the excited erbium ions to release their stored energy as more light of precisely the right wavelength, giving the signals a boost.
The good news is that while supplies of erbium are relatively tight, demand for optical fibres is not skyrocketing as it is for other technologies. On current trends, this is one element we will continue to be able to live with.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Elements you can't manage without.
I like reading New Scientist. You have to disregard its anti-religious bias, but it does come out with some remarkable facts from scientific esoterica. like today's article on 13 elements you can't live without I shall be posting on som,e of them over the next few days.
Neodymium
Rare earth element
Atomic number: 60
Used in: high-performance magnets
DoE Criticality rating: critical
Neodymium is the epitome of green, having been first harnessed to generate the light in green laser pointers. Fittingly, it has found a place at the heart of more than one green energy technology: in the magnets that keep the motors of both wind turbines and electric cars turning.
When mixed with iron and boron, neodymium makes magnets that are, weight for weight, 12 times stronger than conventional iron magnets. That's one reason your latest laptop is so compact and lightweight: the magnets allow finer control in the motors that spin the hard disc and the arm that writes and reads data to and from it, allowing much more information to be stored in the same area.
These numerous uses make for a perfect storm threatening future supplies. In its Critical Materials Strategy, which assesses elements crucial for future green-energy technologies, the US Department of Energy estimates that wind turbines and electric cars could make up 40 per cent of neodymium demand in an already overstretched market. Together with increasing demand for the element in personal electronic devices, that makes for a clear “critical” rating.
Neodymium
Rare earth element
Atomic number: 60
Used in: high-performance magnets
DoE Criticality rating: critical
Neodymium is the epitome of green, having been first harnessed to generate the light in green laser pointers. Fittingly, it has found a place at the heart of more than one green energy technology: in the magnets that keep the motors of both wind turbines and electric cars turning.
When mixed with iron and boron, neodymium makes magnets that are, weight for weight, 12 times stronger than conventional iron magnets. That's one reason your latest laptop is so compact and lightweight: the magnets allow finer control in the motors that spin the hard disc and the arm that writes and reads data to and from it, allowing much more information to be stored in the same area.
These numerous uses make for a perfect storm threatening future supplies. In its Critical Materials Strategy, which assesses elements crucial for future green-energy technologies, the US Department of Energy estimates that wind turbines and electric cars could make up 40 per cent of neodymium demand in an already overstretched market. Together with increasing demand for the element in personal electronic devices, that makes for a clear “critical” rating.
Flat Earthers
There is a lot of nonsense talked about flat-earthers. It is used as a stick to beat people who disagree modern scientific theories like climate change and evolution. In fact nobody has believed the earth was flat since the start of the iron age except in 17th century China and Terry Pratchett fans. The misconception that educated people at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as "The Myth of the Flat Earth". (Members of the Historical Association (1945). Common errors in history. General Series, G.1. London: P.S. King & Staples for the Historical Association. , pp.4–5. The Historical Association published a second list of 17 other common errors in 1947.) As early as the venerable Bede (c.672 – 735) the common view among Christians was that the earth was an orb.He wrote in his influential treatise on computus, The Reckoning of Time, that the Earth was round ('not merely circular like a shield [or] spread out like a wheel, but resembling] more a ball'), explaining the unequal length of daylight from "the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called 'the orb of the world' on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature.
Flat-earthism became the province of weirdos and mad Americans. For example: In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society, better known as the Flat Earth Society, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society, just before the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. He responded to this event "Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It is just the same for those satellites." His primary aim was to reach children before they were convinced about a spherical Earth. Despite plenty of publicity, the space race eroded Shenton's support in Britain until 1967 when he started to become famous due to the Apollo program. His postbag was full but his health suffered as his operation remained essentially a one-man show until he died in 1971.
There is a portion of the earth that is flatter then it ought to be; I mean at the two poles; the earth has flattened head and feet making it officially oblate rather than absolutely spherical. How did they discover that?
I obtained this from the current New Scientist.
In 1671, France sent astronomer Jean Richer to South America to map the skies of the southern hemisphere. Richer, whose work helped the French navy navigate the world, took with him two pendulum clocks. Though they had been carefully calibrated in Paris, he was dismayed to find that they lost 2 minutes 28 seconds per day in French Guyana compared with local clocks.
Upon his return home in 1673, this discrepancy caused an international scientific uproar. Isaac Newton declared that the clocks beat more slowly near the equator because the force of gravity was less there, and that gravity was less because the planet bulged at its waist due to the centrifugal force generated by its rotation. French scientists rejected Newton's oblate Earth, maintaining instead that the planet is pointed, rather than flattened, toward the poles.
Both sides realised that measuring the length of a degree of latitude at various points – especially near the equator and poles – would reveal the true shape of the Earth. An expedition needed to be sent to the equator to survey a line, as nearly north-south as possible, hundreds of kilometres long.
In 1733 a Franco-Spanish team of scientists, naval officers, device-makers and servants was assembled. In Measure of the Earth, Larrie Ferreiro tells the story of their adventures. They set sail in 1735, expecting to spend three or four years taking measurements in the viceroyalty of Peru. Instead, it would be nine years before any of them would see Europe again, and several would never make it. Their surgeon died by the sword, the youngest succumbed to malaria, while two were marooned in the New World for lack of money.
The team did measure the surface distance of one degree of latitude in what is now Ecuador. They found it to be 56,753 toises (a French unit of measurement at the time) – just 50 metres off today's value – proving Newton right. Ironically, by the time they reached Paris, another French team had gone north to the Arctic circle and taken measurements confirming the Earth to be oblate, ending the debate.
Measure of the Earth, by Larrie D. Ferreiro, Basic Books, £15.99/$28.
Flat-earthism became the province of weirdos and mad Americans. For example: In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society, better known as the Flat Earth Society, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society, just before the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. He responded to this event "Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It is just the same for those satellites." His primary aim was to reach children before they were convinced about a spherical Earth. Despite plenty of publicity, the space race eroded Shenton's support in Britain until 1967 when he started to become famous due to the Apollo program. His postbag was full but his health suffered as his operation remained essentially a one-man show until he died in 1971.
There is a portion of the earth that is flatter then it ought to be; I mean at the two poles; the earth has flattened head and feet making it officially oblate rather than absolutely spherical. How did they discover that?
I obtained this from the current New Scientist.
In 1671, France sent astronomer Jean Richer to South America to map the skies of the southern hemisphere. Richer, whose work helped the French navy navigate the world, took with him two pendulum clocks. Though they had been carefully calibrated in Paris, he was dismayed to find that they lost 2 minutes 28 seconds per day in French Guyana compared with local clocks.
Upon his return home in 1673, this discrepancy caused an international scientific uproar. Isaac Newton declared that the clocks beat more slowly near the equator because the force of gravity was less there, and that gravity was less because the planet bulged at its waist due to the centrifugal force generated by its rotation. French scientists rejected Newton's oblate Earth, maintaining instead that the planet is pointed, rather than flattened, toward the poles.
Both sides realised that measuring the length of a degree of latitude at various points – especially near the equator and poles – would reveal the true shape of the Earth. An expedition needed to be sent to the equator to survey a line, as nearly north-south as possible, hundreds of kilometres long.
In 1733 a Franco-Spanish team of scientists, naval officers, device-makers and servants was assembled. In Measure of the Earth, Larrie Ferreiro tells the story of their adventures. They set sail in 1735, expecting to spend three or four years taking measurements in the viceroyalty of Peru. Instead, it would be nine years before any of them would see Europe again, and several would never make it. Their surgeon died by the sword, the youngest succumbed to malaria, while two were marooned in the New World for lack of money.
The team did measure the surface distance of one degree of latitude in what is now Ecuador. They found it to be 56,753 toises (a French unit of measurement at the time) – just 50 metres off today's value – proving Newton right. Ironically, by the time they reached Paris, another French team had gone north to the Arctic circle and taken measurements confirming the Earth to be oblate, ending the debate.
Measure of the Earth, by Larrie D. Ferreiro, Basic Books, £15.99/$28.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The insecure platform of science
In today's New Scientist are a series of remarkable articles on things that scientists have got wrong. I have quoted verbatim from the one about genes, but there are eight others taking in the periodic table, the classification of vertebrates, nuclear fission, hydrogen bonds, the limits of microscope optics, the number of separate species in the world, magnetism, and Einsteinian physics.
What defines life's building blocks? It depends who you ask, says Michael Le Page
As Gregor Mendel showed in painstaking experiments on peas in the 19th century, many traits of living things are all or nothing. Seeds are either green or yellow, round or wrinkled, and so on. This led to the idea that an organism's characteristics are determined by discrete “particles” passed from one generation to the next: genes.
But what is a gene? This question seemed to be settled with the discovery of the function of DNA in the 1950s. A gene, biologists agreed, was a DNA sequence that encoded the instructions for making a protein, the molecules that do all the work in living things.
Half a century on, such harmony has vanished. We now know that single “gene” can consist of dozens of distinct DNA segments that can be combined to make thousands of different proteins; that overlapping DNA sequences can encode quite distinct proteins; and that a few proteins are encoded by combining pieces of what were regarded as separate genes.
Even more confusingly, we are discovering ever more DNA sequences that are not blueprints for making proteins, but instead code for RNA molecules that carry out various functions directly. “If you open the door to RNA, it gets much more complicated,” says Mark Gerstein, a bioinformatics researcher at Yale University.
Reverting to an updated version of the original idea, and defining a gene simply as a DNA segment that affects the characteristics of offspring – by whatever means – doesn't help. That's because it would mean the inclusion not just of protein or RNA-encoding DNA segments, but also a myriad of regulatory DNA sequences that switch those segments' activity on or off.
These days, then, what a gene is depends on who you ask. Gerstein has suggested it be defined, in simplified terms, as a union of sequences that encodes one or more “functional products”. But he readily admits this is a fudge. “What is function?” he asks. “What does it mean?” A gene that is important for survival in one species may have become redundant in a closely related strain, for instance, even though the sequence is identical. Does that make it a gene in one species and not in the other?
It seems that unless you are an expert in a particular field you are operating in science with an enormous fudge factor. Science is fluid. There is no truth, just a succession of theories. When the facts change I change my mind, said Maynard Keynes. It seems he wasn't the only one.
What defines life's building blocks? It depends who you ask, says Michael Le Page
As Gregor Mendel showed in painstaking experiments on peas in the 19th century, many traits of living things are all or nothing. Seeds are either green or yellow, round or wrinkled, and so on. This led to the idea that an organism's characteristics are determined by discrete “particles” passed from one generation to the next: genes.
But what is a gene? This question seemed to be settled with the discovery of the function of DNA in the 1950s. A gene, biologists agreed, was a DNA sequence that encoded the instructions for making a protein, the molecules that do all the work in living things.
Half a century on, such harmony has vanished. We now know that single “gene” can consist of dozens of distinct DNA segments that can be combined to make thousands of different proteins; that overlapping DNA sequences can encode quite distinct proteins; and that a few proteins are encoded by combining pieces of what were regarded as separate genes.
Even more confusingly, we are discovering ever more DNA sequences that are not blueprints for making proteins, but instead code for RNA molecules that carry out various functions directly. “If you open the door to RNA, it gets much more complicated,” says Mark Gerstein, a bioinformatics researcher at Yale University.
Reverting to an updated version of the original idea, and defining a gene simply as a DNA segment that affects the characteristics of offspring – by whatever means – doesn't help. That's because it would mean the inclusion not just of protein or RNA-encoding DNA segments, but also a myriad of regulatory DNA sequences that switch those segments' activity on or off.
These days, then, what a gene is depends on who you ask. Gerstein has suggested it be defined, in simplified terms, as a union of sequences that encodes one or more “functional products”. But he readily admits this is a fudge. “What is function?” he asks. “What does it mean?” A gene that is important for survival in one species may have become redundant in a closely related strain, for instance, even though the sequence is identical. Does that make it a gene in one species and not in the other?
It seems that unless you are an expert in a particular field you are operating in science with an enormous fudge factor. Science is fluid. There is no truth, just a succession of theories. When the facts change I change my mind, said Maynard Keynes. It seems he wasn't the only one.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Frank Whittle
It was a German designer, Hans von Ohain, who got the first jet-powered prototype off the ground in 1939. But it was more of a manned firework than a viable design.
At the end of next month is the 70th anniversary of the first flight of the Gloster Pioneer, the first 'proper'flight of a jet plane. Frank Whittle, a serving officer in the RAF during WWII, built the first jet plane from his own patented designs for a jet engine. The patent was issued in 1930, when von Ohain was still a schoolboy. The Third Reich was good at building roads, invading Poland and stealing ideas. Whittle never received a penny in royalties from the German designs for fighter airplanes based on his patent nor from the Americans whose dominance in aviation is based on his designs. After the war the Whittle designs were given to America by a grateful British government along with penicillin and nuclear technology.
Whittle was a remarkable man. He was certainly lauded in my childhood but he now seems almost forgotten. There are plans for enormous celebrations in London for Yuri Gagarin, there were headlines in national newspapers about the Brixton riots of 40 years ago, and there has been a Hollywood film about the creator of Facebook, but the only celebration of Whittle's achievement will be a drinks party in the Officer's Mess at Cranwell where he studied. He was later to achieve a first class honors degree at Cambridge where he completed his degree course in two years rather than the usual three and was given the highest accolade that Britain can offer, the Order of Merit,by the Queen. He died fifteen years ago.
At the end of next month is the 70th anniversary of the first flight of the Gloster Pioneer, the first 'proper'flight of a jet plane. Frank Whittle, a serving officer in the RAF during WWII, built the first jet plane from his own patented designs for a jet engine. The patent was issued in 1930, when von Ohain was still a schoolboy. The Third Reich was good at building roads, invading Poland and stealing ideas. Whittle never received a penny in royalties from the German designs for fighter airplanes based on his patent nor from the Americans whose dominance in aviation is based on his designs. After the war the Whittle designs were given to America by a grateful British government along with penicillin and nuclear technology.
Whittle was a remarkable man. He was certainly lauded in my childhood but he now seems almost forgotten. There are plans for enormous celebrations in London for Yuri Gagarin, there were headlines in national newspapers about the Brixton riots of 40 years ago, and there has been a Hollywood film about the creator of Facebook, but the only celebration of Whittle's achievement will be a drinks party in the Officer's Mess at Cranwell where he studied. He was later to achieve a first class honors degree at Cambridge where he completed his degree course in two years rather than the usual three and was given the highest accolade that Britain can offer, the Order of Merit,by the Queen. He died fifteen years ago.
Friday, April 22, 2011
When scientists speculate beyond their observations
Francis Galton died just 100 years ago and this anniversary is commemorated in today's Lancet. His theories of “racial types” and long association with the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie today leave a bitter taste. As a proto-geneticist, Galton's abiding passion was individual difference, but how he measured these differences and the theories he espoused were plainly crazy. His measurement and theorising of mental difference, which were based on a mixture of craniometry and the confidence that he could scientifically identify and classify intellectual ability across cultures and centuries were risible. It is his founding (and naming) of eugenics as a science that has made Galton such a controversial figure today. Today's collective memory of the Nazi death camps and their justification in the racist science of Germany's leading geneticists, made the word eugenics almost synonymous with evil.
What is often conveniently forgotten is the extent to which Galton's ideas were shared widely by the cultural elite of his time, which encompassed people of various political persuasions, including conservatives, liberals, and socialists. His interest in racial types, stimulated by his early expeditions to Africa and the Middle East, was of a piece with his assumption of the natural superiority of the European “races”. It made Petrie, the younger and poorer man, an ideal associate. Galton funded Petrie's Egyptian archaeology, with the instruction that he prepare photographs and papier-maché casts of the faces in the carved tomb and sarcophagus bas-reliefs. He and Petrie then classified these into racial categories—Egyptian, Hebrew, Aryan, and others—on the basis of the profiles. Galton experimented with making composite faces by merging photographs to reveal ideal types. As with his eugenicism, Galton's and Petrie's racism reads uncomfortably to modern ears.
It is just over 100 years ago that Ernst Haeckel founded the Monist League, the main object of which was to promote the idea of Eugenics with a view to achieving 'racial improvement'. The race which the Monists considered superior to all the others, in physique and intellect, was the white race; and among its most impressive manifestations, the Germanic people.
Most people have heard of or been taught the idea that the human embryo goes through (or recapitulates) various evolutionary stages, such as having gills like a fish, a tail like a monkey, etc., during the first few months that it develops in the womb. I was taught this as a Biology student. This idea (called embryonic recapitulation) was vigorously expounded by Ernst Haeckel from the late 1860s. Lacking the evidence, Haeckel set out to manufacture the data. He fraudulently changed drawings made by other scientists of human and dog embryos, to increase the resemblance between them and to hide the dissimilarities.
Haeckel’s German peers (notably, in 1874, Wilhelm His, professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig) were aware of this fraud and extracted a modest confession from him, in which he blamed the draughtsman for blundering—without acknowledging that he himself was that draughtsman. Heckel was charged with fraud by five professors and when convicted by a university court at Jena admitted that he had altered his drawings. One writer reports his saying, "A small percent of my embryonic drawings are forgeries; those namely, for which the observed material is so incomplete or insufficient as to compel us to fill in and reconstruct the missing links by hypothesis and comparative synthesis. I should feel utterly condemned and annihilated by the admission, were it not that hundreds of the best observers and biologists lie under the same charge. The great majority of all morphological, anatomical, histological and embryological diagrams are not true to nature but are more or less doctored, schematized and reconstructed.
Recently, Michael Richardson has attempted to repeat Haeckel's work and further exposed the fraud. His team collected embryos of 39 different creatures, including marsupials from Australia, tree-frogs from Puerto Rico, snakes from France, and an alligator embryo from England. They found that the embryos of different species are very different. In fact, they are so different that the drawings made by Haeckel (of similar-looking human, rabbit, salamander, fish, chicken, etc. embryos) could not possibly have been done from real specimens.
He is quoted in the Times as saying, "This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It’s shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry … What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don’t … These are fakes."
Despite the obvious fraud, Haeckel still has his defenders. He was perhaps too assertive, he was generalizing, he was basically correct just over-enthusiastic.
Haeckel and Galton both had the same grand idea. It's amazing what you can convince yourself of when a great idea grips you.
What is often conveniently forgotten is the extent to which Galton's ideas were shared widely by the cultural elite of his time, which encompassed people of various political persuasions, including conservatives, liberals, and socialists. His interest in racial types, stimulated by his early expeditions to Africa and the Middle East, was of a piece with his assumption of the natural superiority of the European “races”. It made Petrie, the younger and poorer man, an ideal associate. Galton funded Petrie's Egyptian archaeology, with the instruction that he prepare photographs and papier-maché casts of the faces in the carved tomb and sarcophagus bas-reliefs. He and Petrie then classified these into racial categories—Egyptian, Hebrew, Aryan, and others—on the basis of the profiles. Galton experimented with making composite faces by merging photographs to reveal ideal types. As with his eugenicism, Galton's and Petrie's racism reads uncomfortably to modern ears.
It is just over 100 years ago that Ernst Haeckel founded the Monist League, the main object of which was to promote the idea of Eugenics with a view to achieving 'racial improvement'. The race which the Monists considered superior to all the others, in physique and intellect, was the white race; and among its most impressive manifestations, the Germanic people.
Most people have heard of or been taught the idea that the human embryo goes through (or recapitulates) various evolutionary stages, such as having gills like a fish, a tail like a monkey, etc., during the first few months that it develops in the womb. I was taught this as a Biology student. This idea (called embryonic recapitulation) was vigorously expounded by Ernst Haeckel from the late 1860s. Lacking the evidence, Haeckel set out to manufacture the data. He fraudulently changed drawings made by other scientists of human and dog embryos, to increase the resemblance between them and to hide the dissimilarities.
Haeckel’s German peers (notably, in 1874, Wilhelm His, professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig) were aware of this fraud and extracted a modest confession from him, in which he blamed the draughtsman for blundering—without acknowledging that he himself was that draughtsman. Heckel was charged with fraud by five professors and when convicted by a university court at Jena admitted that he had altered his drawings. One writer reports his saying, "A small percent of my embryonic drawings are forgeries; those namely, for which the observed material is so incomplete or insufficient as to compel us to fill in and reconstruct the missing links by hypothesis and comparative synthesis. I should feel utterly condemned and annihilated by the admission, were it not that hundreds of the best observers and biologists lie under the same charge. The great majority of all morphological, anatomical, histological and embryological diagrams are not true to nature but are more or less doctored, schematized and reconstructed.
Recently, Michael Richardson has attempted to repeat Haeckel's work and further exposed the fraud. His team collected embryos of 39 different creatures, including marsupials from Australia, tree-frogs from Puerto Rico, snakes from France, and an alligator embryo from England. They found that the embryos of different species are very different. In fact, they are so different that the drawings made by Haeckel (of similar-looking human, rabbit, salamander, fish, chicken, etc. embryos) could not possibly have been done from real specimens.
He is quoted in the Times as saying, "This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It’s shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry … What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don’t … These are fakes."
Despite the obvious fraud, Haeckel still has his defenders. He was perhaps too assertive, he was generalizing, he was basically correct just over-enthusiastic.
Haeckel and Galton both had the same grand idea. It's amazing what you can convince yourself of when a great idea grips you.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Climategate
Another whitewash out today slapping the wrist of the East Anglian 'scientists' who had their e-mails leaked. Of course, no one questions their honesty or integrity, but they really should have been more open and complied with the FOI request.
Here is an e-mail that Phil Jones sent that wasn't leaked but sent directly to a global warming sceptic:
"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Because, Phil, that's how science works. Once you have formulated a theory you try as hard as you can to knock it down. Otherwise it's like saying that all swans are white and refusing to go to Australia to view the black ones.
Here is an e-mail that Phil Jones sent that wasn't leaked but sent directly to a global warming sceptic:
"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Because, Phil, that's how science works. Once you have formulated a theory you try as hard as you can to knock it down. Otherwise it's like saying that all swans are white and refusing to go to Australia to view the black ones.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Age of wonder
I have been reading "The Age of Wonder" by Richard Holmes - how the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science.
It is an extended series of short biographies of major scientists operating from the end of the eighteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth. These scientists were the contemporaries and often the friends of the romantic poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Southey. The scientists include Banks, the botanist/explorer, Herschel the astronomer, the French balloonists Montgolfier, Charles and Blanchard, the explorer Mungo Park, the chemist Hunphrey Davy, the engineer Charles Babbage and the physicist Michael Faraday.
William Herschel was a musician from Hanover who emigrated to England in the wake of the Elector of Hanover who became King George the First. It was George the Third who befriended and funded him. Using a reflector telescope that admitted far more light the conventional refractor, Herschel meticulously scanned the night sky and discovered the planet Uranus. Although this brought him fame, more important was his discovery that the Universe was far larger than anyone had suspected and that light had apparently been coming from the farthest stars for millions of years.
This discovery upset the clergy who had determined that the world was created one afternoon in September in 4004 BC.
Actually, I think too many assumptions are made to set so precise a date on the creation, but one thing the Bible is clear on is that the world had a beginning and that it was created 'up-and-running'.
Thus Adam was not created as a baby, but as a fully grown man and Eve as a fully grown woman. The stars were visible at creation, they did not have to wait for millennia for the light from those stars to reach planet earth. The photons streaming from the stars were part of the Biblical creation.
This argument was put forward in the nineteenth century by Philip Gosse, whose memory has been traduced by his rebellious and unbelieving son, the critic Edmunde. Philip Henry Gosse (April 6, 1810 – August 23, 1888) was an English naturalist and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. Without a University position and without wealth or noble background, he was unusually made an FRS. He was also a leading light in the Plymouth Brethren and his evangelical beliefs led him to publish a book 'Omphalos' which stated that the only way of reconciling the immense age of the earth, implied by astronomy and geology, was to postulate that the earth as created had an implied history that in real life had never happened. Thus, Adam though never born in a conventional way (and therefore in no need of a navel - omphalos) did indeed have an umbilicus, implying that he had been born with an umbilical cord.
He was attacked for this 'outrageous' view. His friend, Charles Kingsley (The Water Babies), exclaimed that God would surely not deceive us in this way.
Yet since God has quite precisely had it written down how, exactly, he created the world, no deception is involved. It is merely a matter of believing what God has said rather than what man conjectures. Is it to be believed that had Adam taken an axe to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, that it would have had no tree rings?
Scientists have scoffed at Gosse but they can only do so for prejudiced reasons. However, Martin Gardner, in Facts & Fallacies (1957), agrees that Gosse "presented a theory so logically perfect, and so in accordance with geological facts that no amount of scientific evidence will ever be able to refute it."
Gosse's thesis is not, of course, "scientific." While it may be true, it is not testable, nor does it suggest future research projects. It is a dead end. Gosse recognized this. Nevertheless, he urged his fellow scientists to continue as if unreal history were real and to construct their theories independent of his thesis.
It is an extended series of short biographies of major scientists operating from the end of the eighteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth. These scientists were the contemporaries and often the friends of the romantic poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Southey. The scientists include Banks, the botanist/explorer, Herschel the astronomer, the French balloonists Montgolfier, Charles and Blanchard, the explorer Mungo Park, the chemist Hunphrey Davy, the engineer Charles Babbage and the physicist Michael Faraday.
William Herschel was a musician from Hanover who emigrated to England in the wake of the Elector of Hanover who became King George the First. It was George the Third who befriended and funded him. Using a reflector telescope that admitted far more light the conventional refractor, Herschel meticulously scanned the night sky and discovered the planet Uranus. Although this brought him fame, more important was his discovery that the Universe was far larger than anyone had suspected and that light had apparently been coming from the farthest stars for millions of years.
This discovery upset the clergy who had determined that the world was created one afternoon in September in 4004 BC.
Actually, I think too many assumptions are made to set so precise a date on the creation, but one thing the Bible is clear on is that the world had a beginning and that it was created 'up-and-running'.
Thus Adam was not created as a baby, but as a fully grown man and Eve as a fully grown woman. The stars were visible at creation, they did not have to wait for millennia for the light from those stars to reach planet earth. The photons streaming from the stars were part of the Biblical creation.
This argument was put forward in the nineteenth century by Philip Gosse, whose memory has been traduced by his rebellious and unbelieving son, the critic Edmunde. Philip Henry Gosse (April 6, 1810 – August 23, 1888) was an English naturalist and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. Without a University position and without wealth or noble background, he was unusually made an FRS. He was also a leading light in the Plymouth Brethren and his evangelical beliefs led him to publish a book 'Omphalos' which stated that the only way of reconciling the immense age of the earth, implied by astronomy and geology, was to postulate that the earth as created had an implied history that in real life had never happened. Thus, Adam though never born in a conventional way (and therefore in no need of a navel - omphalos) did indeed have an umbilicus, implying that he had been born with an umbilical cord.
He was attacked for this 'outrageous' view. His friend, Charles Kingsley (The Water Babies), exclaimed that God would surely not deceive us in this way.
Yet since God has quite precisely had it written down how, exactly, he created the world, no deception is involved. It is merely a matter of believing what God has said rather than what man conjectures. Is it to be believed that had Adam taken an axe to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, that it would have had no tree rings?
Scientists have scoffed at Gosse but they can only do so for prejudiced reasons. However, Martin Gardner, in Facts & Fallacies (1957), agrees that Gosse "presented a theory so logically perfect, and so in accordance with geological facts that no amount of scientific evidence will ever be able to refute it."
Gosse's thesis is not, of course, "scientific." While it may be true, it is not testable, nor does it suggest future research projects. It is a dead end. Gosse recognized this. Nevertheless, he urged his fellow scientists to continue as if unreal history were real and to construct their theories independent of his thesis.
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